My Grandmother

“When it came out in 2004 this book really did cause a minor earthquake in Turkey, because it confronted Turks with the Armenians in their midst, both dead and alive. It’s an extraordinary story that broke the taboo in Turkey almost overnight, about the fact that so many people in Turkey had Armenian grandparents, or great-grandparents, who were the survivors as children of these horrific deportations in 1915, but who had been absorbed into Turkish society. Fethiye Cetin tells the story of how her grandmother – a very beloved figure – in her mid-sixties suddenly revealed in secret that she wasn’t the Turkish lady Seher, who her granddaughter believed her to be, but an Armenian called Heranus. Her parents were not her real parents but her adoptive parents, who’d picked her up from of deportation column in 1915 as the Armenians were being destroyed – and as most of her family were being destroyed. This was a secret that she had carried with her most of her life.” Read more...

Memoirs of the Armenian Genocide

Thomas de Waal, Foreign Correspondent

“It’s a very empathetic, straightforward read. It’s short. It gives an insight into the ethnic origins of Turkey today that no one has been talking about until very recently. A lot of Armenians were deported and a lot were massacred, but a lot also stayed behind in Turkish families. This book is about someone discovering, quite unexpectedly, that her grandmother is one of these people. She’s been a good Muslim all her life, because when Armenians joined these families, they became Muslims of Armenian heritage and culture, believing in Islam, but also making Armenian cakes on Armenian religious days.” Read more...

The best books on Turkish Politics

Hugh Pope, Development & Aid Workers (see also Economists)