U. Üngör u.a.: Confiscation and Destruction 2013-3-122 U˘ gur Ümit, Üngör; Polatel, Mehmet: Confis- cation and Destruction. The Young Turk Seizu- re of Armenian Property. London: Continuum International Publishing Group 2011. ISBN: 978-1-441-13578-0; XVI, 226 S. Rezensiert von: Bedross Der Matossian, De- partment of History, University of Nebraska- Lincoln After more than nine decades the question of the Armenian property remains one of the most vexing issues in Turkey as part of the Armenian Genocide conundrum. The schol- arship on the Armenian abandoned proper- ties in the past couple of years has received some attention by historians and journalists alike. However, most of these works tend to concentrate more on providing a histori- cal narrative of the abandoned properties and some of them even have journalistic tenden- cies. The book under review by U˘ gur Ümit Üngör and Mehmet Polatel should be consid- ered as the most sophisticated publication to date that discusses the fate of the Armenian properties through its innovative theoretical and conceptual analysis. The book sheds light on the interrelated nature of property confis- cation carried by the Young Turk regime dur- ing World War I in cooperation with the local elites within two eastern provinces of the Em- pire: Adana and Diyarbekir. The main thrust of the book is that Turkish political elite dur- ing World War I „launched a process of so- cietal and economic transformation in order to establish a Turkish nation state with a ro- bust economy consisting of ethnic Turks“ (p. X). This transformation (according to the au- thors) was only possible through violent ho- mogenization of an ethnically heterogeneous Ottoman economy. The main themes in the book that the au- thors explore include: ideology, law, and mass violence. In the opening section of chapter one, the authors introduce the problem from a theoretical and comparative perspective by explaining the ways in which the genocidal elites dealt with the victims’ property and how the expropriation process preceded the destruction of the Armenians. The authors argue that the confiscation of the Armenian properties during the genocide „offered the Young Turk political elite opportunities to re- structure Ottoman society by forging alliances and eliminating opponent groups“ (p. 3). The book itself is divided into seven chap- ters through which the authors provide a sys- tematic explanation of the fate of the Arme- nian properties during World War I. Chap- ter two discusses the ideological foundations of the confiscation process. Chapter three of the book discusses one of the most critical di- mensions of the confiscation process: its legal- ity. The chapter provides a detailed account of the laws, regulations, and the commis- sions that were established in the framework of the sophisticated bureaucratic apparatus to implement the confiscation process. One of the most important commissions was the Abandoned Properties Commission (Emvâl- ı Metruke Komisyonu) that had 33 branches in the Empire. The commission took the task of registering, liquidating, appropriating, and allocating the Armenian properties. In the end of the chapter the authors raise one of the most important questions that deal with the theme of legality: why would authors of mass crimes feel the necessity to establish a juridical apparatus to organize the dispossession of the vulnerable population in the most minute de- tail? Despite the fact that the authors do not provide a conclusive answer, their answers are worth taking into consideration. They ar- gue that the Young Turk regime at the time did not „see all consequences of their pol- icy coming.“ According to them most orders camouflaged the plunder and lent it a „juridi- cal quasi-legitimacy“. This „legal“ fac¸ade ful- filled the vital function of „increasing the ef- fectivity of the dispossession measures.“ Fi- nally, the laws were also expected to calm foreign (especially German) firms and con- sulates’ requests for accountability or com- pensation (p. 58). Other scholars have argued that the aim of using law and legality was to create a degree of state control over the situa- tion in order to avoid the spontaneous seizure of ‘Abandoned Property’ by the local popu- lation. 1 The choice of the authors to provide multiple factors as opposed to one factor is 1 Bedross Der Matossian, The Taboo within the Taboo: The Fate of „Armenian Capital“ at the End of the Ottoman Empire, in: European Journal of Turkish Studies, Complete List (2011), <http://ejts.revues.org /4411> (23.08.2013); Hilmar Kaiser, Armenian Prop- © H-Net, Clio-online, and the author, all rights reserved.