WATERTOWN, Mass. — Turkish journalist and historian Osman Köker will present his book, Armenians in Turkey 100 Years Ago, at the Armenian Library and Museum of America (ALMA) on Wednesday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m.
The event, which marks Köker’s first public appearance on the East Coast of the United States, is co-sponsored by ALMA, the Friends of Hrant Dink, the National Association For Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives. The event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.
Köker first came to international attention in 2005 when he organized the unprecedented exhibition “Sireli Yeghpayrs (My Dear Brother),” in Istanbul. Eventually seen by thousands of people, it presented photographs of Armenian life in pre-Genocide Ottoman Turkey, drawn from a large collection of postcards owned by the collector Orlando Calumeno. In the five years since then, the exhibition has also been mounted in Paris, Munich, Koln, Frankfurt and last year in Yerevan.
Köker originally intended to write a book about Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire, but with the discovery of the postcard collection the scope of the project changed. Following the exhibition he published the massive and beautifully-produced volume 100 Yil Önce Türkiye’de Ermeniler, subsequently published in English as Armenians in Turkey 100 Years Ago, featuring hundreds of images showing where and how Armenians in the Ottoman Empire lived.
Köker was also involved in the creation in 1996 of the Istanbul Turkish-Armenian daily Agos and Aras Publishing House, the only publishing house which publishes books in Armenian and books translated into Turkish from the Armenian.