Genealogy

This study conceptualizes place as a dynamic configuration of historical experiences, familial ties, social relationships, memory, and belonging, developing this perspective through the concept of genealogies of place. The concept describes how places acquire meaning through familial, historical, social, and narrative connections that extend beyond biological lines of descent. The study draws on texts published in the first 14 issues of Bağ-lar, a magazine focusing on the cultural and historical experiences of Balkan Turkish communities. Using qualitative document analysis, it examines how a place is understood and represented in relation to the past, ancestry and origins, memory, migration, shifting borders, and belonging. The findings reveal that family histories, homes, and everyday life position place as a repository of intergenerational memory, while cities and settlements emerge as spatial archives of collective memory and historical experience. Place names and material traces preserve connections between past and present, whereas sites associated with war, destruction, death, and commemoration serve as focal points of traumatic memory. Changing political and social conditions also reshape feelings of belonging and familiarity within the same physical locations, giving rise to experiences of alienation in place. These findings demonstrate how places continue to acquire new meanings through familial, collective, and intergenerational narratives despite shifts in political and social boundaries. The study contributes to scholarship on Balkan Turkish communities by illuminating the role of place as a dynamic setting in which the past, memory, identity, and belonging are continually reconstructed.

The 14-year Syrian Civil War is shifting towards peace following the fall of Bashar Al-Assad, and families of Syrian refugees abroad are making the decision whether to return while navigating the cultural identity of the life they built in a new country. In Türkiye, Syrian families have grown, assimilated, and thrived within new communities, building new personal identities through lived experiences. Adults who fled Syria have deep memories of Syrian culture from before and during the war. However, not all have shared those memories with the children they are raising abroad. Drawing on established frameworks from the foundations of identity and lived experienced from Edward Casey and Marianne Hirsch’s theory of ‘postmemory’ for generations following conflict, this article investigates how family identity is shaped by the omission of familial memories and the narrative of location within personal experiences. Based on interviews in Gaziantep, Türkiye, conducted in July 2025, December 2025, and August 2026, I analyze the evolution of family identity between parents and their children as personal identity is rooted in differing cultures. Through a comparative case study of two Syrian families, this research analyzes personal identity across generations within a family and the impact of return migration on family identity development. Sharing two family stories of conflicting identity, I argue omission of family memories enabled generational foundations to become rooted in a differing culture, creating complexity in family identity.

Readings of Israel as God’s chosen people, reinforced by Christian Zionism, shape how many Christians understand the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Alternative readings define the chosen people inclusively within the new covenant, yet the contribution of Pentecostal theology to this debate remains under-researched. This qualitative, literature-based study addresses that gap through an exegesis of Ephesians 2:11–22, using the Pauline theology of peace and reconciliation as its theoretical framework. Because the texts concern Jewish and Gentile believers in the early church rather than modern political communities, the article moves from text to context by theological principles and analogy, not direct correspondence. The exegesis shows that Christ removes the barrier between Jews and Gentiles, that election is inclusive rather than a replacement of Israel, and that reconcilliation culminates in shared access to God in “one Spirit”. The article argues that this pneumatological emphasis gives Pentecostal theology distinctive resources for peacemaking, while acknowledging that many Pentecostals hold Christian Zionist views and that Pentecostal churches have often rebuilt the walls their theology declares broken. Pentecostalism can contribute to reconciliation only by recovering its own theology of the Spirit, by rejecting exclusive readings of chosenness, embracing Israeli and Palestinian believers alike, and holding forgiveness and justice together.