The Grammar of Denial: State, Society, and Turkish–Armenian Relations

2015/10/14 by Seyhan Bayraktar · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Turkey's Politics and Society #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #Global Peace and Security Dynamics

paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0020743815001014

openalex publication_date 2015/10/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The existing literature on the denial of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 tends to concentrate on either the Turkish state's political practices or civil society's increasing openness to alternative readings of the event. I argue that both approaches reduce denialism to the political practices and defense mechanisms of Turkey by prioritizing the state as the sole agent of genocide denial. Although the state is indeed a dominant actor of denialism, to juxtapose state and society is to overlook the power that rests in the discourse itself and its pervasiveness across different—at times even competing—social and political settings.

Citations

• Lost in commemoration: the Armenian genocide in memory and identity

Cited by

• Armenian genocide denial [wikipedia]

Related

• The manufacturing of denial: the making of the Turkish ‘official thesis’ on the Armenian Genocide between 1974 and 1990
• Geopolitics of Denial: Turkish State’s ‘Armenian Problem’
• Denial of Violence—Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789−2009Fatma Müge Göcek
• Denial of the Armenian Genocide 100 Years Later: The New Practitioners and Their Trade
• Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence Against the Armenians, 1789–2009. By Fatma Müge Göçek.