National Narrative and Social Psychological Influences in Turks’ Denial of the Mass Killings of Armenians as Genocide

2013/03/01 by Rezarta Bilali · 101 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Armenian #Attribution #Construal level theory #Construals #Criminology #Cultural Differences and Values #Denial #Genocide #Government (linguistics) #Harm #History #Law #Narrative #Political science #Psychoanalysis #Psychology #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence #Turkish

paper · doi:10.1111/josi.12001

published in Journal of Social Issues 69(1), 16-33 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2013/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/30

Abstract

This article sheds light on the nature of the Turkish denial of Armenian mass killings. A survey study investigates Turkish students’ construals (i.e., attributions of responsibility and perceived severity of harm) of Turkish massacres of Armenians at the beginning of the 20th century. The results demonstrated a high correspondence between participants’ individual construals and the Turkish official narrative of the events. Structural equation modeling indicated that in‐group glorification, perceived in‐group threat, and positive attitudes toward war predicted less acknowledgment of in‐group responsibility, which in turn predicted less support for reparations of the harm inflicted on Armenians. The study highlights the influence of government‐sponsored national self‐images in the production and endorsement of legitimizing narratives of the in‐group's violence. The findings call for research that examines the combined influence of psychological and societal mechanisms on people's beliefs about in‐group actions.

Citations

• The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior
• Toward a Measure of Patriotic and Nationalistic Attitudes
• Ontological (In)security and State Denial of Historical Crimes: Turkey and Japan
• Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities
• Development and testing of the velicer attitudes toward violence scale: evidence for a four‐factor model
• Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices
• Selective Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency

Cited by

• Armenian genocide denial [wikipedia]
• Bias in curricula [wikipedia]

Related

• The manufacturing of denial: the making of the Turkish ‘official thesis’ on the Armenian Genocide between 1974 and 1990
• Defending the Nation? Maintaining Turkey's Narrative of the Armenian Genocide
• Lost in commemoration: the Armenian genocide in memory and identity
• Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence Against the Armenians, 1789–2009. By Fatma Müge Göçek.
• Denial of Violence—Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789−2009Fatma Müge Göcek