Armenian genocide denial

The Ottoman government banned photographs of Armenian refugees or the bodies of victims in order to cover up the genocide. This one was taken in defiance of the prohibition by Armin Wegner and smuggled out of the country.

A protest against Armenian Genocide recognition on the 100th anniversary on Istiklal Avenue, Istanbul

Armenian Genocide denial is the claim that the Ottoman Armenians were not victims of a genocide, orchestrated by the Ottoman government, during World War I, as documented in a large body of evidence and affirmed by the vast majority of scholars. Denial was an integral part of the killings, carried out under the guise of resettlement. In the aftermath of the genocide, incriminating documents were systematically destroyed.

Deniers claim that the events of the genocide did not occur or represent them as something else, such as a civil war. They argue that the relocation of Armenians was a legitimate response to a real or perceived Armenian uprising and the high death toll resulted from "bad luck, bad planning, bad weather, bad local officials, and bad Kurds" rather than a deliberate state policy of extermination. At an extreme, deniers claim that Armenians committed genocide against Turks, rather than vice versa. The techniques of denial, as well as its aim—to rehabilitate the perpetrators—have often been compared to Holocaust denial.

As of 2020, only the governments of Turkey and Azerbaijan deny the genocide. Genocide denial is a major aspect of Turkey's foreign policy dating back to the 1920s, leading many other countries, such as the United States until October 2019, to avoid officially recognizing the genocide. Turkey has spent millions of dollars on Washington lobbying, and has threatened other countries, to prevent recognition of the genocide. The century-long effort by the Turkish state to deny the genocide sets it apart from other cases of genocide in history.

The denial of the genocide has profound consequences both for Armenians and in Turkey, and is hypothesized to contribute to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as well as ongoing violence against Kurds and political opponents in Turkey.

Background

Main article: Armenian Genocide

When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.

— Ambassador Morgenthau's Story

Beginning in mid-1914, scattered massacres of Armenians began, accelerating after the Ottoman entry into World War I later that year, on the side of the Central Powers. The starting date of the genocide is conventionally marked on 24 April 1915, the day that thousands of Armenian intellectuals were arrested in Constantinople. Systematic deportation of Armenians then began, given a cover of legitimacy by the 27 May deportation law. The deportation convoys, consisting mostly of women, children, and the elderly, were subject to massacres and drowning while the rest were left to die of starvation or disease. The deportation was ordered by the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress (Young Turks), especially Talat Pasha, who was well aware that he was sending the Armenians to their deaths.

Historians estimate that 1.5 to 2 million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, of which 800,000 to 1.2 million were deported during the genocide. In 1916, a wave of massacres targeted the surviving Armenians in Syria; by the end of the year, only 200,000 deported Armenians were still alive. Around 1 million Armenians died in the genocide, about half the prewar population. Another group, an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 women and children, were integrated into Muslim families through such methods as forced marriage, adoption, and conversion. Property belonging to the Armenians who were deported or murdered was redistributed by the state.

The genocide is extensively documented, in both the Ottoman archives and those collected by foreign diplomats—including the Ottoman allies Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary—as well as eyewitness reports by Armenian survivors and Western missionaries, and the records of the Turkish courts-martial of 1919–1920. Talat Pasha kept his own statistical record, which revealed a massive discrepancy between the number of Armenians deported in 1915 and those surviving in 1917.

Origins

In the 1916 book The Armenian Aspirations and Revolutionary Movements, many photographs claimed to depict Armenian atrocities against Turks, such as this one, were published.

Denial was an integral part of the killings, perpetrated under the guise of resettlement. Denial emerged due to the Ottoman desire to maintain American neutrality in the war (until 1917) and German financial and military support. In addition, there was no popular demand for the genocide.

In May 1915, Russia, Britain, and France sent a diplomatic communiqué to the Sublime Porte condemning the Ottoman massacres of Armenians and threatening to "hold personally responsible for those crimes all members of the Ottoman government, as well as those of its agents who will be found implicated in similar massacres". The Ottoman government replied,

1. Denying that massacres of Armenians had occurred
2. Claiming that Armenians colluded with the enemy
3. Alleging Armenian massacres of Muslims
4. Arguing that national sovereignty justified Ottoman policies towards Armenians
5. Making counter-accusations of Allied war crimes

In early 1916, the Ottoman government published a two-volume work titled The Armenian Aspirations and Revolutionary Movements, which rejected the charge that the Ottoman government tried to exterminate the Armenian people. At the time, little credence was paid to such statements. Nevertheless, the themes of genocide denial that originated during the war were later recycled in later denial of the genocide by Turkey.

In 1919, Mustafa Kemal, the leader of the Turkish nationalist movement, defended the Ottoman government's policies towards Christians:

Whatever has befallen the non-Muslim elements living in our country, is the result of the policies of separatism they pursued in a savage manner, when they allowed themselves to be made tools of foreign intrigues and abused their privileges. There are probably many reasons and excuses for the undesired events that have taken place in Turkey. And I want definitely to say that these events are on a level far removed from the many forms of oppression which are committed in the states of Europe without any excuse.

Causes

Talaat Pasha, the architect of the genocide, was buried in 1943 at the Monument of Liberty, Istanbul as a national hero.

Continuity between the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Turkey was significant, and Kemal's Republican People's Party has been described as the successor of the Committee of Union and Progress that carried out the genocide. Many leading members of Kemal's Turkish nationalist movement had been perpetrators of the genocide, or enriched themselves from it, creating an incentive for silence. The troops under the new republic conducted massacres of Armenian survivors in Cilicia and killed around 200,000 Armenians during the Turkish occupation of the Caucasus; thus, historian Rouben Paul Adalian has argued that "Mustafa Kemal completed what Talaat and Enver had started in 1915".

Historian Erik-Jan Zürcher argues that "a serious attempt to distance the republic from the genocide could have destabilized the ruling coalition on which the state depended for its stability". From the founding of the republic, the genocide has been viewed as a necessity and raison d'état. Its main perpetrator, Talat Pasha, was hailed as a national hero and given a posthumous state funeral. Those convicted and executed for war crimes, such as Mehmet Kemal and Behramzade Nusret, were proclaimed "national" and "glorious" martyrs, with schools and neighborhoods were named after them.

One important factor in explaining denial is Sèvres Syndrome, a narrative that portrays Turkey as besieged by implacable enemies, which would be undermined if it were admitted that Armenians were not enemies seeking the destruction of Turkey, but the victims of state-sponsored murder. Despite the unlikelihood that recognition would lead to any territorial changes, many Turkish officials believe that Armenians want to annex eastern Turkey or demand other reparations. Another factor is that acknowledging the genocide would call into question Turkey's founding myths. Akçam states that "It’s not easy for a nation to call its founding fathers murderers and thieves". Admitting that Turkey's leadership has been lying to its citizens for a century, and the military's role in carrying out and profiting from the genocide, could also undermine their prestige.

Turkish historian Doğan Gürpınar states that the Armenian Genocide has evoked such intense reactions because:

...the official narrative on the Armenian massacres constituted one of the principal pillars of the regime of truth of the Turkish state. Culpability for these massacres would incur enormous moral liability; tarnish the self-styled claim to national innocence, benevolence and self-reputation of the Turkish state and the Turkish people; and blemish the course of Turkish history. Apparently, this would also be tantamount to casting doubt on the credibility of the foundational axioms of Kemalism and the Turkish nation-state.

Terminology

On 19 December 1915, The Washington Herald condemned "The Massacre of a Nation"

Contemporary observers used unambiguous terminology to describe the genocide, including Völkermord—the German word for genocide—"the murder of a nation", "race extermination" and so forth. The English word "genocide" was coined by the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1943 from the Greek words "genos" and "ktonos" which means race killing. In a 1949 CBS interview with Quincy Howe, Lemkin explained, "I became interested in genocide because it happened so many times. It happened to the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler took action."

Although most international law scholars agree that the 1948 Genocide Convention, which established the prohibition of genocide in international law, is not retroactive, the events of the Armenian Genocide otherwise meet the legal definition of genocide. David Gutman states that "Few if any scholars, however, reject the use of 'genocide' to characterize the fate of Ottoman Armenians during World War I solely" because they consider it anachronistic. Many Turkish intellectuals have been reluctant to use the term genocide because, according to Akçam, "by qualifying it a genocide you become a member of a collective associated to a crime, not any crime but to the ultimate crime".

The Turkish government uses expressions such as "so-called Armenian genocide", "Armenian Question", or "Armenian Tragedy", often characterizing the charge of genocide as "Armenian allegations" or "Armenian lies". However, in 2006, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered government officials to say "the events of 1915" instead of "so-called Armenian genocide". Erdoğan, as well as some Turkish intellectuals, have distinguished between "good" Armenians (those who live in Turkey and Armenia) who do not discuss the genocide and "bad" ones (primarily the Armenian diaspora) who insist on recognition.

In Turkey

Destruction and concealment of evidence

By an edict of the Ottoman government, foreigners were banned from taking photographs of Armenian refugees or the corpses that accumulated on the side of the roads on which death marches were carried out. Those who disobeyed were threatened with arrest. Strictly enforced censorship laws prevented Armenian survivors from publishing memoirs in Turkey, or "any publication at odds with the general policies of the state".

After the 1918 armistice, incriminating documents in the Ottoman archives were systematically destroyed. However, this destruction was incomplete, and according to Akçam, sufficient evidence can be found in the archives to prove the genocide as well as the responsibility of the CUP and Special Organization in the killing. Recognizing that some archival documents would support its position, in 1985, the Turkish government announced that the archives relevant to the "Armenian question" would be opened; cataloguing of the archives was complete by 1989. In practice, not all the archives were opened, and access was only granted to scholars known to share the government's view of the past. Access was further liberalized in the twenty-first century, but as of 2012, some key archives remain closed to scholars.

Armenian places renamed in Turkey

Talat Pasha had decreed that "everything must be done to abolish even the word 'Armenia' in Turkey". In the postwar Turkish republic, Armenian cultural heritage has been subject to systematic destruction as an attempt to eradicate any traces of the Armenian presence. On 5 January 1916, Enver Pasha ordered all place names of Greek, Armenian, or Bulgarian origin to be changed to Turkish names, a policy which was fully implemented in the later republic. Mass graves of genocide victims have also been destroyed, although many still exist.

Turkish historiography

During the genocide itself and the postwar trials, a literature emerged in which the occurrence of massacres against Armenians was not in doubt. With the rise of Turkish nationalism, later reports increasingly view the persecution of Armenians as necessary and justified. In Kemal's 1927 speech, which was the foundation of Kemalist historiography, the foundation of Turkey was dated to 1919, thus excising the genocide from history. For decades, Turkish historiography ignored the "Armenian question". One of the early exceptions was the genocide perpetrator Esat Uras, who wrote The Armenians in History and the Armenian Question in 1950. Uras' book, probably published in response to post-World War II Soviet territorial claims, was a novel synthesis of prior arguments deployed by the CUP during the war, and represented the bridge between wartime denial and the "official narrative" on the genocide developed in the 1970s and 1980s.

Number of official or quasi-official publications on the "Armenian question"

In the 1980s, following Armenian efforts for recognition and a wave of assassinations by Armenian militants, Turkey began to present an official narrative of the "Armenian question", which it framed as an issue of contemporary terrorism rather than historical genocide. Retired diplomats were recruited to write denialist works, completed without regard to professional methodology or ethical standards, generally based on cherry-picking from the archives to find information favorable to Turks and unfavorable to Armenians. The Council of Higher Education, set up in 1981 by the Turkish military junta, has been instrumental in cementing "an alternative, 'national' scholarship with its own reference system". Besides academic research, the first university course on the "Armenian question" was taught by Türkkaya Ataöv in 1983.

Around 1990, Taner Akçam, working in Germany, was the first Turkish historian to acknowledge and study the genocide. In 2005, the first academic conference to challenge conventional views on the genocide in Turkey was held at Bilgi University, after having been cancelled due to a campaign of intimidation. This event occurred during Turkey's bid for European Union membership and was cited as evidence of Turkey's openness. The conference represented the first major challenge to Turkey's founding myths in the public sphere; acknowledgement of the genocide among Turkish historians could no longer be dismissed as a fringe view.

Education

The Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum promotes the view that Armenians committed genocide against Turks, rather than vice versa.

Turkish schools, regardless of whether they are public or private, are required to teach history based on the textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education. The state uses its monopoly to promote its opinion of Armenians and to increase support for the official denialist position. For decades, these textbooks omitted any mention of Armenians as part of Ottoman history. Since the 1980s, textbooks discuss the "events of 1915", but deflect the blame from the Ottoman government to other actors, especially imperialist powers who allegedly manipulated the Armenians to achieve their nefarious goals of undermining the empire, and the Armenians themselves, for allegedly committing treason and presenting a threat to the empire. Some textbooks admit that deportations occur and Armenians died, but present this action as necessary and justified. Most recently, textbooks have accused Armenians of perpetrating genocide against Turkish Muslims.

Teachers are instructed to tell seventh-year students:

State to your students that the Russians also made some Armenians revolt on this front and murder many of our civilian citizens. Explain that the Ottoman State took certain measures following these developments, and in May 1915 implemented the ‘Tehcir Kanunu’ [Displacement Law] regarding the migration and settlement of Armenians in the battleground. Explain that care was taken to ensure that the land in which the Armenians who had to migrate were to settle was fertile, that police stations were established for their security and that measures were taken to ensure they could practice their previous jobs and professions.

Society

The genocide was for decades a taboo subject in Turkish society. Besides the Turkish state, Turkish intellectuals and civil society have also participated in denial. According to Gürpınar, many Turks regard "the ‘Armenian allegations’ as mere slander and an offence to the dignity of the Turkish nation". Noting that many people in eastern Turkey have passed down "vivid memories" of the genocide, genocide scholar Uğur Ümit Üngör states that "there is a clash between official state memory and popular social memory: the Turkish government is denying a genocide that its own population remembers". Turkish fiction that deals with the genocide typically denies it, and according to Özlem Belçim Galip, "institutionalizes literature as a tool for nationalist discourses".

Laws against "insulting Turkishness" have been used to prosecute those who acknowledge the genocide. These convictions are justified on the basis that freedom of expression "can be limited in accordance with aims such as the protection of national security, of public order, of public security". Since the 2007 assassination of Hrant Dink, an increasing number of Turks are acknowledging the genocide and challenging denial. In 2016, when Germany recognized the genocide, angry reactions came from all major parties except the Peoples' Democratic Party and many pro- and anti-government media and civil society organizations.

In 2013, a study concluded that 65% of Turks agree with the official view that Armenian deaths occurred as a result of a "inter-communal warfare" and 10% blamed Armenians for causing violence. A 2014 survey found that only 9% of Turkish citizens though that their government should recognize the genocide.

Foreign relations of Turkey

At the Lausanne Conference of 1922–1923, Turkish representatives repeated the version of Armenian history that had been developed during the war. The resulting Treaty of Lausanne annulled the previous Treaty of Sevrès which had mandated the prosecution of Ottoman war criminals and the restoration of property to Christian survivors. Instead, Lausanne contained a secret annex granting impunity to all perpetrators. Turkey's laws seizing "abandoned" property left behind by deported Armenians were nevertheless in violation of the Treaty of Lausanne.

Turkish efforts to project its genocide denial overseas date to the 1920s, or, alternately, to the genocide itself. According to sociologist Levon Chorbajian, Turkey's "modus operandi remains consistent throughout and seeks maximalist positions, offers no compromise though sometimes hints at it, and employs intimidation and threats". Turkey's response to the Armenian issue was fairly ad-hoc and reactive until the 1980 Turkish military coup, when it developed more institutionalized ways of countering genocide claims. In 1981, the foreign ministry established a dedicated office (İAGM) specifically for the purpose of promoting Turkey's view of the "Armenian question".

Motivated by the antisemitic idea of a global Jewish conspiracy, the Turkish foreign ministry has recruited Turkish Jews to participate in denialist efforts. Turkish Jewish leaders helped defeat resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide and avoid mention of the genocide in academic conferences and Holocaust museums. Turkish embassies report on any conference that mentions the Armenian Genocide and in most cases Turkish lobbyists obtained concessions, either enclosing the word "genocide" in quotation marks or else including speakers that represent the Turkish state's view.

Historian Vahagn Avedian emphasizes the role that other countries play in enabling Turkey's denial by refusing to recognize the genocide. Israeli historian Yair Auron states, "There is at least one cynical lesson from this: for a 'good' price, a nation can purchase a revision of its own history, even the history of an act as terrible as genocide."

Germany

See also: Germany's role in the Armenian Genocide

During the war, German newspapers repeated the Ottoman government's denial of committing any atrocities and stories of alleged Armenian treachery. Historian Margaret L. Anderson states that Germany lied to itself throughout the genocide about the nature of what its ally was doing. Genocide denial in Germany mostly ended after the assassination of Talat Pasha in Berlin by Armenian student Soghomon Tehlirian in 1921; the trial of Tehlirian revealed so much evidence that formerly denialist newspapers accepted the fact of the genocide, including the perpetrators' intent. German nationalists instead began to portray the genocide as justified.

United States

Main article: United States recognition of the Armenian Genocide

Historian Donald Bloxham states that "In a very real sense, 'genocide denial' was accepted and furthered by the US government before the term genocide had even been coined." In interwar Turkey, prominent American diplomats such as Mark L. Bristol and Joseph Grew endorsed the Turkish nationalist view that viewed the genocide as a war against the forces of imperialism. In 1922, before receiving the Chester concession, Colby Chester argued that Christians of Anatolia were not massacred; his writing exhibited many of the themes of later genocide denial. In the 1930s, the Turkish embassy scuttled a planned film adaptation of Franz Werfel's popular novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by the American company MGM, threatening a boycott of American films. Attempts to revive the film in the 1950s and 1960s were also shot down by Turkish embassies with the support of the United States State Department. In 1953, United States diplomat Arthur Richards expressed hope "that the book would never be made into a play or a movie because the Turkish people are particularly sensitive to this period of their history and are trying desperately to cover it up".

In more recent years, Turkey has spent millions of dollars lobbying Washington against the recognition of the genocide. In 2007, an effort for the federal government to recognize the resolution failed due to Turkish pressure. Opponents of the bill stated that a genocide had taken place, but argued against formal recognition to prioritize relations with Turkey. In 2019, the United States Congress formally recognized the genocide.

United Kingdom

In 2001, the United Kingdom initially refused to invite Armenian Genocide survivors to an official commemorative event of the first Holocaust Memorial Day, which included survivors of several genocides, but later relented.

Israel

See also: Israel–Turkey relations and Azerbaijan–Israel relations

Turkish Soldiers Monument for the fallen Ottoman soldiers in the Battle of Beersheba.

According to historians Rıfat Bali and Marc David Baer, "the single most important factor in successfully concluding the process of normalization between Israel and Turkey" was Armenian Genocide denial.

The 1982 International Conference on Holocaust and Genocide, which took place in Tel Aviv, included six presentations on the Armenian Genocide. Turkey threatened that if the conference was held, the lives of Jews fleeing Iran and Syria through Israel would be in jeopardy. As a result, the Israeli Foreign Ministry joined the ultimately unsuccessful effort to cancel the conference.

In April 2001, foreign minister Shimon Peres was quoted in a Turkish newspaper as stating, "We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through, but not a genocide." According to Charny and Auron, this statement "entered into the range of actual denial of the Armenian Genocide, comparable to the denial of the Holocaust". However, scholar Eldad Ben Aharon states that Peres simply made explicit what had been Israel's policy since 1948.

Israel–Turkey relations deteriorated in the late 2010s, but Israel's relations with Azerbaijan are close and the Azerbaijan–Israel International Association has lobbied against recognition of the genocide.

Armenia

See also: Armenia–Turkey relations

Monument to Humanity by Mehmet Aksoy in Kars, Turkey. Intended to commemorate all war victims, it was erected without consultation with the Armenian community.

The Turkish authorities have put forth certain conditions before attempting to reconcile with Armenia. Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 following the First Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan. The borders have remained closed because the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute has not been settled to this day. Although Armenia was willing to normalize relations without preconditions, Turkey demanded that the Armenian side abandon all support for the recognition efforts of the Armenian diaspora.

In 2005 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan invited Turkish, Armenian and international historians to form a commission to reevaluate the events of 1915 by using archives in Turkey, Armenia and other countries. The idea of a historical commission met stiff resistance from the Armenian diaspora. Many Armenians viewed it as "an attempt to re-legislate an issue that had already been decided". There have been two major attempts at Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, both of which failed partly due to the controversy over the Armenian Genocide. In both cases, namely the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission (2000–2004) and the Zurich Protocols (2009), the mediators did their best to sideline the issue of the genocide; however, this proved impossible. Armenian diaspora groups opposed both initiatives, feeling like their history was being sold for political advantage. According to Avedian, reconciliation cannot occur without some common narrative and therefore is unlikely as long as the official denialist policy continues.

Azerbaijan

Since the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijan, a Turkic country, has adopted Turkey's genocide denial and worked to promote it internationally. Many Armenians saw a connection between the genocide and later anti-Armenian violence such as the 1988 Sumagit pogrom. However, the connection between the Karabakh conflict and the Armenian Genocide is mostly made by Azerbaijani elites. Azerbaijani nationalists accused Armenians of staging the Sumagit pogrom and other anti-Armenian pogroms, similar to the Turkish discourse on the Armenian Genocide. According to Azerbaijan, genocide has been "repeatedly committed against the Azerbaijani people", citing events such as the Treaty of Gulistan (1813), the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828), Baku Commune, January 1990 deployment of Soviet troops to Baku, and especially the 1992 Khojali massacre. However, Armenians never suffered any mistreatment, let alone a genocide. Azerbaijan sees any country that recognizes the genocide as an enemy and has even threatened sanctions. Vicken Cheterian has argued that the "unresolved historic legacy of the 1915 genocide" helped cause the Karabakh conflict and prevent its resolution, while "the ultimate crime itself continues to serve simultaneously as a model and as a threat, as well as a source of existential fear".

Denialism in academia

Until the twenty-first century, Ottoman and Turkish studies marginalized the killings of Armenians, which many portrayed as a wartime measure justified by emergency and avoided discussing in depth. These fields have long enjoyed close institutional links with the Turkish state. The ethics of academics' decision to deny the Armenian genocide have been questioned. According to Marc David Baer, the most prominent Jewish scholars of the Ottoman Empire, including Stanford Shaw and Bernard Lewis, rejected the Armenian Genocide in favor of presenting a narrative of "tolerant Turks, grateful and loyal Jews, and anti-Semitic Armenian and Greek traitors, a narrative that has simultaneously served to deny the very possibility of an Armenian genocide".

Beginning in the 1980s, the Turkish government has funded research institutes that deny the genocide. Their methodology has been compared to the tactics of the tobacco industry or global warming denial; funding biased research, creating a smokescreen of doubt, and thereby manufacturing a controversy. According to David B. MacDonald, the minority of scholars who deny the genocide "hardly demonstrate the existence of a genuine academic dispute". Denial of the genocide has shaped scholarship, for example spurring many authors to focus on countering denial arguments.

"Lewis Affair"

On 19 May 1985, The New York Times and The Washington Post ran an advertisement in which a group of 69 American historians, including the prominent historian Bernard Lewis, who called on Congress not to adopt the resolution on the Armenian Genocide. Heath Lowry, director of the Institute of Turkish Studies (funded by the Turkish government), helped secure the signatures of the academics and the advertisement was paid for by the Committee of the Turkish Associations. For his efforts, Lowry received the Foundation for the Promotion and Recognition of Turkey Prize. Over the next decade, Turkey funded six chairs of Ottoman and Turkish studies to counter recognition of the genocide; one of these went to Lowry.

The Armenian Assembly of America found that many or most of the 69 academics benefited directly or indirectly from Turkish government research grants, and a majority were not specialists on the historical period during which the genocide occurred. In 2000, former Turkish ambassador to the United States Şükrü Elekdağ admitted that the statement had become useless because none of the original signatories besides Justin McCarthy would agree to sign another, similar declaration.

Since 2000

More recent academic denialism in the United States has focused on the theme of an alleged Armenian uprising, which is said to justify the persecution of Armenians as a legitimate counterinsurgency. In 2009, the University of Utah opened its "Turkish Studies Project", funded by Turkish Coalition of America (TCA) and led by M. Hakan Yavuz, with Elekdağ on the advisory board. Professor Keith David Watenpaugh charges the program with "promoting the falsification of history through its grants and political advocacy... the University of Utah has provided an institutional home to genocide denial." University of Utah Press has published a number of books denying the genocide. The series began with Guenter Lewy's The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey (2006), which had been rejected by eleven publishers and, according to Marc Mamigonian, became "one of the key texts of modern denial". TCA has also provided financial support to several authors including McCarthy, Michael Gunter, Yücel Güçlü, and Edward J. Erickson for writing books that deny the Armenian Genocide. According to Richard G. Hovannisian, of recent deniers in academia, "Almost all are citizens of the Turkish state or have lived and served in the Turkish Republic. The Turkish authors are all past or present officials of the Turkish foreign ministry."

Academic integrity

In 1990, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton received a letter from Nüzhet Kandemir, Turkish ambassador to the United States, questioning his inclusion of references to the Armenian Genocide in one of his books. The ambassador inadvertently included a draft of a letter from Lowry advising the ambassador on how to prevent mention of the Armenian Genocide in scholarly works. Lowry was later named to the Atatürk chair of Ottoman Studies at Princeton University, which had been endowed with a $750,000 grant from the Republic of Turkey. Lowry's actions were described as "subversion of scholarship" and "further proof of the Institute of Turkish Studies’ and scholars’ collusion with Turkish state interests". Lowry later apologized for writing the letter, saying that he "goofed".

In 2006, Ottomanist historian Donald Quataert—one of the 69 signatories of the 1985 statement to the United States Congress—published a review Donald Bloxham's book The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. Quataert stated that he used the word genocide because "to do otherwise... runs the risk of suggesting denial of the massive and systematic atrocities" and that "what happened to the Armenians readily satisfies the U.N. definition of genocide". The review has been cited as challenging the field's habitual neglect of the Armenian Genocide. Weeks later, Quataert resigned from the position of the chairman of the board of directors of the Institute of Turkish Studies. Quataert stated that Turkish officials threatened that if he did not retract the classification of genocide or resign, the institute's funding would be withdrawn. Several members of the board resigned and both the Middle East Studies Association and Turkish Studies Association criticized the violation of Quataert's academic freedom.

In a lecture he delivered in June 2011, Akçam stated that he was told by a Turkish foreign ministry official that the Turkish government was offering money to academics in the United States for denial of the genocide, noting the coincidence between what his source said and American historian Michael M. Gunter's book Armenian History and the Question of Genocide. He also stated that the four individuals who praised Gunter's book "are well known for their denialist position and works". Hovannisian believes that books denying the genocide are published because of flaws in peer review leading to "a strong linkage among several mutually sympathetic reviewers" without submitting the books to academics who would point out errors.

Academic consensus

Historian Donald Bloxham wrote The Great Game of Genocide because "denial and its accommodation could not be properly understood without knowledge of how the outside world related to the deeds of the Ottoman Empire during and immediately after".

Since 2000, several scholars have stated that accumulating evidence and scholarship makes it increasingly difficult to sustain the position that there was no Armenian Genocide. An increasing number of Turkish historians are acknowledging and studying the genocide. Akçam stated that since the 2010s, the Turkish government position is summarily dismissed in the academy. In 2006, international law scholar William Schabas wrote that expanding interpretations of the Genocide Convention further undermine the arguments of those who deny that the Armenians were victims of a genocide.

Denial of the Armenian Genocide is frequently compared to Holocaust denial because of similar tactics of misrepresenting evidence, false equivalence, claiming that atrocities were invented by war propaganda and that powerful lobbies manufacture genocide allegations for their own profit, subsuming the specific and one-sided killings of genocide into war deaths, and blaming genocide victims for provoking their own suffering. Both forms of negationism share the goal of rehabilitating the ideologies which brought genocide about. Holocaust denial, however, is not supported by a powerful state apparatus, meaning that it is less developed and less respectable.

Academic organizations of genocide scholars such as International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, and Institute for the Study of Genocide accept the genocide as a historical fact. The Permanent Peoples' Tribunal in 1984 and the International Center for Transitional Justice in 2002 (commissioned by the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission) conducted investigations into whether the Armenian Genocide met the legal definition set forth in the Genocide Convention, both concluding that it did.

On 9 June 2000, in a statement published in The New York Times, 126 scholars, including Nobel Prize-winner Elie Wiesel, historian Yehuda Bauer, and sociologist Irving Horowitz, signed a document "affirming that the World War I Armenian genocide is an incontestable historical fact and accordingly urge the governments of Western democracies to likewise recognize it as such". In a 2005 open letter to Erdogan, IAGS emphasized that "to deny [the Armenian Genocide's] factual and moral reality as genocide is not to engage in scholarship but in propaganda and efforts to absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims, and erase the ethical meaning of this history".

Examination of claims

Deniers claim that the events of the genocide did not occur or represent them as something else, such as a civil war. Many denialist works share much of the facts about events with non-denialist histories, but differ in their interpretation and emphases. Historian Ronald Grigor Suny summarizes the main denialist argument as "There was no genocide, and the Armenians were to blame for it." At the extreme end of denialist claims is that it is not Turks who committed genocide against Armenians but vice versa, as articulated by the Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum. This theory relies on an exaggeration of revenge killings committed during the Russian occupation of eastern Anatolia, decontextualized from the genocide of 1915.

The defense of Van is a crucial element in works that seek to deny or justify the genocide.

Civil war theory

One major claims is that there was a "civil war" or generalized Armenian uprising planned by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaks) in collusion with Russia. In reality, there was Armenian resistance—primarily the uprisings in Shabin Karahisar, Musa Dagh, Urfa, and Van—but these were localized, desperate, and mostly unsuccessful attempts at self-defense against imminent anti-Armenian measures. The books that make this argument often rely on the arguments published by genocide perpetrator Esat Uras. Another frequently cited source is a 1923 pamphlet Hovhannes Kachaznuni, which criticizes Dashnak actions, written to obtain Soviet permission to return to Soviet Armenia; this source is frequently misrepresented by deniers. Neither Ottoman archives nor other sources support the hypothesis of a general Armenian uprising, as admitted by one of the proponents of this theory, Edward Erickson.

Justification for anti-Armenian persecution

See also: Genocide justification

Denialist works portray Armenians in negative terms as a terrorist and secessionist fifth column; in other words, they were to blame for their own suffering, and thus the attacks against them cannot be considered genocidal. Historian Lerna Ekmekçioğlu states that the perception of Armenian disloyalty is often justified by pointing at postwar support for an Armenian state in eastern Anatolia. However, these demands came into being after the genocide. Related claims include alleged mass defections of Ottoman Armenians to the Russian Army. Such defections did occur on a limited scale but the Armenian regiments in the Russian army were composed mostly of Russian Armenians. According to this logic, the deportations of Armenian civilians was a justified and proportionate response to Armenian treachery, either real or as perceived by the Ottoman authorities.

Proponents cite the doctrine of military necessity and attribute collective guilt of all Armenians for the military resistance of some, despite the fact that the law of war criminalizes the deliberate killing of civilians. German consul Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter stated that the "measures cannot be justified on military grounds, because there is no reason to expect an uprising by the local Armenians, and the deportees are old men, women, and children". Historians including Akçam and Hilmar Kaiser have emphasized that the deportations were only possible behind the front lines and away from any active uprising; Armenians in the war zone were massacred rather than being deported.

Non-intentionality of the genocide

Under the Genocide Convention, genocide requires "intent to destroy"; deniers of the genocide argue that this criterion has not been proven. According to this theory, the Ottoman government ordered the "relocation" of Armenians but did not intend for them to die; Armenian deaths resulted from "bad judgment, bad luck, bad planning, bad weather, bad local officials, and bad Kurds", as Marc Mamigonian put it. False claims made along these lines include that the Ottoman rulers took actions to safeguard Armenian lives and property during their deportation, and prosecuted 1,397 people for harming Armenians during the genocide.

This position disregards the significant body of direct evidence proving the Ottoman government's intent to destroy the Armenians as such. Subjecting the persecuted group to conditions incompatible with life is part of the crime of genocide, and the Ottoman rulers knew that death would result from sending Armenians to the desert around Deir-ez-Zor. In addition, international courts have ruled that genocidal intent can also be proven with circumstantial evidence, especially "the scale of atrocities committed, their general nature, in a region or a country, or furthermore, the fact of deliberately and systematically targeting victims on account of their membership of a particular group, while excluding the members of other groups". Based on this jurisprudence, the genocidal intent in the Armenian case can be proven from the actual fate of the Ottoman Armenians.

Minimization of Armenian deaths

According to some deniers the number of Armenians killed was only 300,000 or even less, perhaps no more than 100,000. The numbers of Armenian victims are minimized to diminish the guilt of the perpetrators or even absolve them entirely, by allowing the Armenian Genocide to be normalized as an ordinary outcome of wartime conditions, rather than a systematic extermination. Historian Donald Bloxham sees this as "part of the project of fraudulently minimizing the number of Armenians who had ever lived in the Ottoman empire, thereby undermining Armenian claims for autonomy or independence".

Allegedly excluded groups

Some of the writers who reject genocidal intent, including Yusuf Halaçoğlu and Lewy, claim that certain groups of Armenians were spared deportation, including Catholic and Protestant Armenians as well as the families of Armenian soldiers serving in the Ottoman Army. The latter claim is false; the vast majority of families of soldiers were deported, especially after the Armenian soldiers themselves were killed. In the former case, the Ottoman authorities did issue orders to spare Catholic and Protestant Armenians, to appease German demands, but such orders were quickly rescinded with explicit orders to deport every Armenian regardless of confession.

Another claim is that the Armenian communities of Smyrna and Constantinople were spared from deportation, which according to proponents would prove that there was no systematic effort to exterminate the Armenians. Documentation confirms the deportation of Armenians from both areas. Irregular deportation from Constantinople, beginning with the deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915, occurred throughout the remainder of the war, but German pressure prevented the total deportation of the community, as planned by the Young Turks. Deportation from Smyrna was halted after German general Otto Liman von Sanders threatened to use force to block additional deportations.

Veracity of evidence

Because of the systematic destruction of evidence in the Ottoman archives, documents there are unlikely to provide a "smoking gun" to prove the genocide. Deniers then demand a "smoking gun" to prove that the genocide happened, question the veracity of the evidence that has survived, and discount Armenian and foreign witnesses to the genocide. For example, in the 1990s Lowry argued that Ambassador Morgenthau's Story was an unreliable source, although much of the information in the book is corroborated by diplomatic cables and Morgenthau's access to the Young Turk leadership has been documented elsewhere.

Talat Pasha telegrams

Bahaeddin Şakir telegram of 4 July 1915: "Have Armenians who were deported from there been eliminated? Have those harmful elements who were distanced [from there] through deportation been liquidated or simply deported?"

The Talat Pasha telegrams, originally published in 1919 as part of The Memoirs of Naim Bey, provide concrete evidence that the genocide of Armenians was implemented as a state policy. Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca argued in their 1983 book The Talât Pasha "telegrams": historical fact or Armenian fiction? that Naim Bey did not exist, and his memoir and the telegrams were forgeries by the Armenian journalist Aram Andonian. According to Akçam, their claims "were some of the most important cornerstones of denying the events of 1915" and "the book became one of the most important instruments for the anti-Armenian hate discourse". Since it was difficult to prove the authenticity of the documents, many scholars avoided citing them.

In 2017, Akçam found the original of two of the original telegrams; one, from Bahaeddin Şakir on 4 July 1915, stated "Have Armenians who were deported from there been eliminated? Have those harmful elements who were distanced [from there] through deportation been liquidated or simply deported?" In 2018, Akçam published a book, Killing Orders, that debunked the arguments of Orel and Yuca as well as corroborated the information in the telegrams. Akçam stated that, if the telegrams were indeed forgeries, the Turkish government could easily prove it by publishing the encryption keys. That it did not was further evidence of their authenticity.

Alleged Turkish or Muslim innate tolerance

Another major argument deployed to counter the Armenian Genocide is that the claim that the Ottoman Empire represented "500 years of friendship" between Jews and Muslims. The actual degree of friendship is exaggerated, Turkish antisemitism is elided, and the history is used to justify Armenian Genocide denial, according to the argument that Turkish benevolence towards Jews means that they could not have committed genocide against Christians. This argument perhaps originated during the genocide, when Talat Pasha asked Henry Morgenthau Sr., the United States ambassador, why he would care about Armenians given that Ottoman Jews were treated well. Additionally, Turkey has presented itself as a rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust, without acknowledging that thousands of Jews were deported to extermination camps because their Turkish citizenship was not acknowledged. It is claimed that if Turkey saved Jews from genocide, it could not have committed genocide against Armenians. During a visit to Sudan in 2006, Erdoğan denied that there had been a Darfur genocide because "a Muslim cannot commit genocide".

Legality

According to former ICTY judge Flavia Lattanzi, the present Turkish government's "den[ial of] past Ottoman and Turkish authorities' wrongdoings is a new violation of international law". Agostina Latino, another law scholar, writes that Turkey's denial violates the right to truth and right to memory of the victim community.

Some European countries have adopted laws to criminalize denial of the genocide. Criminal prosecution of genocide denial is controversial, being claimed by opponents to erode freedom of speech. Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was repeatedly prosecuted for "insulting Turkishness"; before his assassination, he opposed laws against Armenian genocide denial because of his belief that such laws would entrench polarized positions on the issue and hinder reconciliation.

France

In 1993, American historian Bernard Lewis gave several interviews in the French press in which he argued that there was no Armenian Genocide because the Armenians brought their fate upon themselves. Criminal proceedings were brought by a state prosecutor under the Gayssot Law, but failed as the court determined that the law did not apply to events prior to World War II. In a 1995 civil proceeding brought by three Armenian Genocide survivors, a French court censured his remarks under Article 1382 of the Civil Code and fined him one franc, as well as ordering the publication of the judgment at Lewis' cost in Le Monde. The court ruled that while Lewis has the right to his views, their expression harmed a third party and that "it is only by hiding elements which go against his thesis that the defendant was able to state that there was no 'serious proof' of the Armenian Genocide".

In the 2000s, France passed multiple laws to criminalize Armenian Genocide denial, but they were all struck down in court as unconstitutional.

Perinçek v. Switzerland

Main article: Perinçek v. Switzerland

In March 2007, Turkish ultranationalist politician Doğu Perinçek, a member of the Talat Pasha Committee, named after the main perpetrator of the genocide, was found guilty of racial discrimination by a Swiss district court in Lausanne for denying the Armenian Genocide. Perinçek appealed; in December, the Swiss Federal Court confirmed his sentence. The verdict was overturned by the European Court of Human Rights in Perinçek v. Switzerland on freedom of speech grounds. Although the court did not rule on whether the events of 1915 constituted genocide, several concurring and dissenting opinions recognized the reality of the Armenian genocide as a historical fact.

Since the ECtHR has ruled that member states may criminalize Holocaust denial, the verdict has been widely criticized for creating a double standard between the Holocaust and other genocides, along with failure to acknowledge anti-Armenianism as a motivation for genocide denial. Perinçek and the Talat Pasha Committee misrepresented the verdict to claim that they "put an end to the genocide lie".

Consequences

When recognizing the Armenian Genocide in April 2015, Pope Francis added, "concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it". David Tolbert, president of the ICTJ, emphasized that "The consequences of denial are deep and lasting, not only for the descendants of the Armenians, but also for Turkey itself, in large and small ways. Putting perpetrators of genocide in the Turkish pantheon of national heroes has its price." Vicken Cheterian states that genocide denial "pollutes the political culture of entire societies, where violence and threats become part of a political exercise degrading basic rights and democratic practice".

For Armenians

According to an article in Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, "[d]enial prevents healing of the wounds inflicted by genocide, and constitutes an attack on the collective identity and national cultural continuity of the victimized people". Göçek argues that the lack of closure due to ongoing Turkish denial has left the descendants of Armenian victims in an "awkward, unsatisfactory state of incompletion". The activities of Armenian terrorist groups in the 1970s and 1980s, such as Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia and Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide, was caused partly by the failure of peaceful efforts to elicit Turkish acknowledgement of the genocide. Historian Thomas de Waal argues that "For many individual Armenians, and for Diaspora Armenians collectively, the problem is that the unresolved legacy of the Genocide is a prison, and it is the Turks, and not they themselves, who have the key to release them."

For Turks

Funeral of a baby killed in the Şırnak clashes, 2015

Denial of the genocide has had profound effects on Turkish society, and has contributed to continuing violence against Kurds and political opposition. Akçam states: "If a society, if a state, doesn’t acknowledge its wrongdoing in the past, this means there is a potential there, always, that it can do it again." Cheterian argues that:

By censoring the Armenian Genocide, its impact, traces and consequences do not simply disappear. It continues in various forms: the repression of Armenian and other Christian minorities and their destruction as organised communities within Turkey; anti-Kurdish violence; and the aggressive stance taken towards the Armenians by Azerbaijan.

Most of all, according to Cheterian, there is a continuity between deep state organs such as the Special Organization set up to carry out the genocide, and the deep state which continues to operate in Turkey (e.g. Ergenekon) outside of political or legal accountability.

For the world at large

According to Cheterian, the consequences of denial extend beyond the community of victims and perpetrators:

A state, instead of protecting its citizens, deported them to the desert, stole their belongings, kidnapped their children. Now, after 100 years, our global political institutions still cannot call this crime by its name. For 100 years we lived in that village where the serial killer was acclaimed as role model. A world that has failed to bring justice for a genocide committed 100 years ago is a world that lacks the courage or the moral righteousness to address the wrongdoings of our own times.

Historian Stefan Ihrig has argued that impunity for the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide, as well as silence or justification from bystanders of the crime, emboldened the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

References

Sources

Books

• Akçam, Taner (2012). The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15333-9.
• Akçam, Taner (2018). Killing Orders: Talat Pasha's Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide. Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-69787-1.
• Auron, Yair (2003). The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7658-0834-9.
• Avedian, Vahagn (2018). Knowledge and Acknowledgement in the Politics of Memory of the Armenian Genocide. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-84515-4.
• Baer, Marc D. (2020). Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-04542-3.
• Bloxham, Donald (2005). The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-922688-7.
• Cheterian, Vicken (2015). Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks and a Century of Genocide. Hurst. ISBN 978-1-84904-458-5.
• de Waal, Thomas (2015). Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-935069-8.
• Ekmekçioğlu, Lerna (2016). Recovering Armenia: The Limits of Belonging in Post-Genocide Turkey. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-9706-1.
• Galip, Özlem Belçim (2020). New Social Movements and the Armenian Question in Turkey: Civil Society vs. the State. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-030-59400-8.
• Göçek, Fatma Müge (2015). Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and Collective Violence Against the Armenians, 1789-2009. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-933420-9.
• Ihrig, Stefan (2016). Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-50479-0.
• MacDonald, David B. (2008). Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: The Holocaust and Historical Representation. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-08572-9.
• Suny, Ronald Grigor (2015). "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-6558-1.

Chapters

• Akçam, Taner (2010). "Facing History: Denial and the Turkish National Security Concept". Shadows of War: A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-48434-3.
• Bayraktar, Seyhan (2016). "The Politics of Denial and Recognition: Turkey, Armenia and the EU". The Armenian Genocide Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 197–211. ISBN 978-1-137-56163-3.
• Chorbajian, Levon (2016). "'They Brought It on Themselves and It Never Happened': Denial to 1939". The Armenian Genocide Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 167–182. ISBN 978-1-137-56163-3.
• Erbal, Ayda (2012). "Mea Culpas, Negotiations, Apologias:: Revisiting the "Apology" of Turkish Intellectuals". Reconciliation, Civil Society, and the Politics of Memory. Transcript Verlag. pp. 51–94. ISBN 978-3-8376-1931-7.
• Göçek, Fatma Müge (2011). "Reading Genocide: Turkish Historiography on 1915". In Suny, Ronald Grigor; Göçek, Fatma Müge; Naimark, Norman M. (eds.). A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire. Oxford University Press. pp. 42–52. ISBN 978-0-19-979276-4.
• Hovannisian, Richard G. (2001). "Denial: The Armenian Genocide as a Prototype". Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 796–812. ISBN 978-1-349-66019-3.
• Latino, Agostina (2018). "The Armenian Massacres and the Price of Memory: Impossible to Forget, Forbidden to Remember". The Armenian Massacres of 1915–1916 a Hundred Years Later: Open Questions and Tentative Answers in International Law. Springer International Publishing. pp. 195–236. ISBN 978-3-319-78169-3.
• Lattanzi, Flavia (2018). "The Armenian Massacres as the Murder of a Nation?". The Armenian Massacres of 1915–1916 a Hundred Years Later: Open Questions and Tentative Answers in International Law. Springer International Publishing. pp. 27–104. ISBN 978-3-319-78169-3.
• Robertson, Geoffrey (2016). "Armenia and the G-word: The Law and the Politics". The Armenian Genocide Legacy. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 69–83. ISBN 978-1-137-56163-3.
• Zürcher, Erik Jan (2011). "Renewal and Silence: Postwar Unionist and Kemalist Rhetoric on the Armenian Genocide". In Suny, Ronald Grigor; Göçek, Fatma Müge; Naimark, Norman M. (eds.). A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire. Oxford University Press. pp. 306–316. ISBN 978-0-19-979276-4.

Journal articles

• Avedian, Vahagn (2012). "State Identity, Continuity, and Responsibility: The Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey and the Armenian Genocide". European Journal of International Law. 23 (3): 797–820. doi:10.1093/ejil/chs056.
• Avedian, Vahagn (2013). "Recognition, Responsibility and Reconciliation: The Trinity of the Armenian Genocide". Europa Ethnica. 70 (3/4): 77–86. ISSN 0014-2492.
• Aybak, Tunç (2016). "Geopolitics of Denial: Turkish State's 'Armenian Problem'". Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. 18 (2): 125–144. doi:10.1080/19448953.2016.1141582.
• Baker, Mark R. (2015). "The Armenian Genocide and its denial: a review of recent scholarship". New Perspectives on Turkey. 53: 197–212. doi:10.1017/npt.2015.23.
• Bayraktar, Seyhan (2015). "The Grammar of Denial: State, Society, and Turkish–Armenian Relations". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 47 (4): 801–806. doi:10.1017/S0020743815001014.
• Ben Aharon, Eldad (2015). "A Unique Denial: Israel's Foreign Policy and the Armenian Genocide". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 42 (4): 638–654. doi:10.1080/13530194.2015.1043514.
• Ben Aharon, Eldad (2019). "Recognition of the Armenian Genocide after its Centenary: A Comparative Analysis of Changing Parliamentary Positions". Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs. 13 (3): 339–352. doi:10.1080/23739770.2019.1737911.
• Bilali, Rezarta (2013). "National Narrative and Social Psychological Influences in Turks' Denial of the Mass Killings of Armenians as Genocide: Understanding Denial". Journal of Social Issues. 69 (1): 16–33. doi:10.1111/josi.12001.
• Bloxham, Donald (2006). "The roots of American genocide denial: Near eastern geopolitics and the interwar Armenian question". Journal of Genocide Research. 8 (1): 27–49. doi:10.1080/14623520600552843.
• Cheterian, Vicken (2018). "The Uses and Abuses of History: Genocide and the Making of the Karabakh Conflict". Europe-Asia Studies. 70 (6): 884–903. doi:10.1080/09668136.2018.1489634.
• Dadrian, Vahakn N. (2003). "The signal facts surrounding the Armenian genocide and the Turkish denial syndrome". Journal of Genocide Research. 5 (2): 269–279. doi:10.1080/14623520305671.
• Demirdjian, Alexis (2018). "A Moving Defence: The Turkish State and the Armenian Genocide". Journal of International Criminal Justice. 16 (3): 501–526. doi:10.1093/jicj/mqy035.
• Dixon, Jennifer M. (2010). "Defending the Nation? Maintaining Turkey's Narrative of the Armenian Genocide". South European Society and Politics. 15 (3): 467–485. doi:10.1080/13608746.2010.513605.
• Dixon, Jennifer M. (2010b). "Education and National Narratives: Changing Representations of the Armenian Genocide in History Textbooks in Turkey". International Journal for Education Law and Policy. 2010 Special Issue: 103–126.
• Eissenstat, Howard (2014). "Children of Özal: The New Face of Turkish Studies". Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. 1 (1): 23–35. doi:10.2979/jottturstuass.1.1-2.23. ISSN 2376-0702.
• Erbal, Ayda (2015). "The Armenian Genocide, AKA the Elephant in the Room". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 47 (4): 783–790. doi:10.1017/S0020743815000987.
• Ertür, Başak (2019). "Law of Denial". Law and Critique. 30 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1007/s10978-019-09237-8. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |lay-url= ignored (help)
• Gürpınar, Doğan (2013). "Historical Revisionism vs. Conspiracy Theories: Transformations of Turkish Historical Scholarship and Conspiracy Theories as a Constitutive Element in Transforming Turkish Nationalism". Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. 15 (4): 412–433. doi:10.1080/19448953.2013.844588.
• Gürpınar, Doğan (2016). "The manufacturing of denial: the making of the Turkish 'official thesis' on the Armenian Genocide between 1974 and 1990". Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. 18 (3): 217–240. doi:10.1080/19448953.2016.1176397.
• Gutman, David (2015). "Ottoman Historiography and the End of the Genocide Taboo: Writing the Armenian Genocide into Late Ottoman History". Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association. 2 (1): 167. doi:10.2979/jottturstuass.2.1.167.
• Hovannisian, Richard G. (2015). "Denial of the Armenian Genocide 100 Years Later: The New Practitioners and Their Trade". Genocide Studies International. 9 (2): 228–247. doi:10.3138/gsi.9.2.04.
• Kaligian, Dikran (2014). "Anatomy of Denial: Manipulating Sources and Manufacturing a Rebellion". Genocide Studies International. 8 (2): 208–223. doi:10.3138/gsi.8.2.06.
• Mamigonian, Marc A. (2015). "Academic Denial of the Armenian Genocide in American Scholarship: Denialism as Manufactured Controversy". Genocide Studies International. 9 (1): 61–82. doi:10.3138/gsi.9.1.04.
• Quataert, Donald (2006). "The Massacres of Ottoman Armenians and the Writing of Ottoman History". The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 37 (2): 249–259. doi:10.1162/jinh.2006.37.2.249. ISSN 0022-1953. JSTOR 4139548. S2CID 145622783.
• Suny, Ronald Grigor (2009). "Truth in Telling: Reconciling Realities in the Genocide of the Ottoman Armenians". The American Historical Review. 114 (4): 930–946. doi:10.1086/ahr.114.4.930.
• Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2014). "Lost in commemoration: the Armenian genocide in memory and identity". Patterns of Prejudice. 48 (2): 147–166. doi:10.1080/0031322X.2014.902210.

Further reading

• Turan, Ömer; Öztan, Güven Gürkan (2018). Devlet aklı ve 1915: Türkiye'de "Ermeni Meselesi" anlatısının inşası [Raison d'état and 1915: Turkey's "Armenian Question" and the construction of narratives] (in Turkish). İletişim Yayınları. ISBN 978-975-05-2349-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |lay-url= ignored (help)
• Selected Bibliography on Denial of the Armenian Genocide, Zoryan Institute, 2001.