2015/05/01 by Ľubica Polláková · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #Global Peace and Security Dynamics #African history and culture analysis
paper · doi:10.1111/1468-2346.12307
openalex publication_date 2015/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Denial of violence: Ottoman past, Turkish present, and collective violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009. By Fatma Müsge Göçek. New York: Oxford Unversity Press. 2014. 680pp. £43.20. ISBN 978 0 19933 420 9. Available as e-book. Fatma Müge Göçek's book is an important, topical and policy-relevant contribution to both scholarly literature and to the discussion among Turkish and Armenian scholars and civil society. Its primary focus is on the reasons behind the Turkish state's continued denial of the genocide committed against Armenians during the First World War—timely considering this year's centenary of these events. The book approaches the issue of denial as a process that changes with time and concentrates on the Turkish state's attitude to its Armenian minority from the late eighteenth century up to 2009. The book is divided into four chapters, covering the late imperial era (1789–1907), the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) years (1908–18), the early republican period (1919–73) and the late republican period (1974–2009). The chapters are built around four instances of violence: the 1893–6 anti-Armenian pogroms, the 1915 massacres, the 1955 violence targeting the non-Muslim community, and the murder of Hrant Dink in 2007. The book also analyses how and why the Ottoman/Turkish state used another four events to legitimize discrimination and violence towards the Armenian community: the 1896 occupation of the Ottoman Bank by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, the 1920 mistrial of Nusret Bey (the governor of the surrounding region of Urfa who was executed for his alleged involvement in the Armenian massacres), and the assassinations of Turkish diplomats by Armenian terrorists in the 1970s and 1980s.