Ulus-devletin yeniden üretilmesi olarak köy isimlerinin değiştirilmesi: Mardin örneği

In this thesis, we investigated how the nation-state reproduced itself by changing the village names. We tried to read this practice of the nation-state, which adheres to the ideal of one language, one nation, one history, through the city of Mardin, which is known for its multilingual and multi-ethnic structure in Turkey. Undoubtedly, place names in the general sense and village names in the particular sense are powerful symbols that are carriers of social memory. These names encode their own meaning to the human mind every time they are pronounced. In this context, changing the village names that conflict with the national identity by the political power emerges as a strategy to create a new identity by shaping the social memory. In the field interviews we conducted, we saw that the name changes were carried out together with the assimilation policies, and in this context, the school was also used as a tool. However, despite these policies, we realized that the awareness of the villagers was high and they developed a resistance identity by using their old village names. On the other hand, we found that the change of village names was used as a tool to cover up the various persecutions experienced in the villages in question.