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• Deep Mountain: Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide garners divided responses

  The legacy of the history and historiography of the 1915 Armenian genocide is a fraught one. Ece Temelkuran's Deep Mountain: Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide, an exploration of the controversial subject of the living history and continuing denial of the Armenian genocide, has attracted both high praise and strong criticisms from different quarters.

  For the New Left Project, Jamie Stern-Weiner describes Deep Mountain as "a thoughtful reflection on the personal and communal politics of nationalism". Introducing his interview with Temelkuran, he summarizes his thoughts on the book thusly:

  Its value, in my view, lies primarily in its exposition of the subjective experience of nationalism and the ways in which personal and communal identity can become bound up with political demands.

  While Stern-Weiner's views are characteristic of the more positive reviews, the book has also garnered a response of a very different kind. G. M. Goshgarian writing for New Politics has penned a scathing attack on the book which he deems as "genocide denial light". In an in-depth and comprehensive piece, he explains that he was baffled as to why Verso had published a book that, in his words, could be best be likened to "latter-day national- socialist treatments of the holocaust". With the aim of facilitating an open dialogue on this sensitive issue, it is interesting to present his critique here. Goshgarian hopes that his review will add to a wider discussion that "may help spark a badly needed clarification of the ambiguities muddying the political and ideological movement that has spawned Temelkuran's book."

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  By Kishani Widyaratna / 25 October 2011 / post comment

• "Chasing Dreams"—an interview with Ece Temelkuran by New Left Project

  The New Left Project website have published an in-depth interview with Ece Temelkuran about her book, Deep Mountain, by Jamie Stern-Weiner:

  You say that in Turkey people are encouraged to be indifferent to the issue—you write in the book that "a nation can forget en masse". What are the mechanisms by which this takes place?

  There is huge propaganda in the schools against Armenians, but it's not only that. It's on the street, it's everywhere. ‘Armenian' is a curse word in Turkish, still. And when you ask people about Armenians, you get this blank expression. It's like you've entered the wrong password and their brain just stops, and the password is ‘Armenian'. They go blank.

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  By Tamar Shlaim / 25 January 2011 / post comment

• Ece Temelkuran talks about modern Turkish identity on the Riz Khan Show

  Leading Turkish journalist Ece Temelkuran talks to Riz Khan about her book, Deep Mountain: Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide, and modern Turkish national identity on the "Riz Khan Show" on Al Jazeera English. 

  Visit Al Jazeera to watch the "Riz Khan Show" online.

  By Tamar Shlaim / 09 January 2011 / post comment