Violence, nationalism and the statistics of violence/violations: The Ottoman case

Abstract

Collective and political violence that dominated the late century of the Ottoman Empire still prevails in the same lands with its destructive consequences. This historical and actual problem deservedly receives attention in the academia. However, the issues of how to define the colective violence and how it was measured have been grossly ignored. If such violence involved a rationale behind, one would inevitably expect it to be measured as well. This essay attempts to question the main characteristics of how nationalism produced what may be called statistics of violence/violations and seeks to find some answers to such questions.