Remembering to Forget: Sabbateanism, National Identity, and Subjectivity in Turkey

Abstract

According to Fatma Arığ, a fifty-one-year-old Turkish woman of Sabbatean heritage, her search for the past began with this shock she recalls experiencing as a child. Her quest was fulfilled by way of history, for lack of memory. Behind her story lies a little-known community, and its three hundred and fifty-year-old relationship with the state and the dominant society in Turkey.