The collection of essays presented at the conference "Social and Ecomic History of Diyarbakır and Region", held in Diyarbakır on November 11-13, 2011 by Hrant Dink Foundation, has now been published in Turkish by Hrant Dink Foundation Press.
The book includes 24 essays on the region by researchers abroad and in Turkey. Its importance is due to its contribution to the debates about the peace process that Turkey goes through nowadays.
"Memory is returning to these lands. It is coming from a far, from the period of nation-building, which is over a century away. Surely, what has been deemed fit by the state for the inhabitants of these lands during the process of nation-building, what the inhabitants deemed fit for each other, the suffering, the collective violence, every malign recollection that has been forgotten or worse, made to forget, is returning now. But it is not just the malign memory that is returning; the differences that these lands embraced, the wealth that has been destroyed or ignored as a result of the nation-making are also returning. Since decades, this country witnesses every day a lot of information, existence and absence which is new but not really new," said Cengiz Aktar, professor of political science at Istanbul's Bahcesehir University.
