The Politics of Denial and Recognition: Turkey, Armenia and the EU

Abstract

A century has passed since the annihilation of the Ottoman Armenians by the Young Turk regime, without the Turkish Republic having shown any signs of self-critically facing its genocidal past. In the last hundred years we have witnessed how Turkey not only tried to annihilate the Armenians physically but erase them from memory by means of political power, suppression or outright violence. After being present in Anatolia for centuries, Armenians are decimated into a tiny minority in Turkey, where being Armenian — or anything associated with Armenians for that matter — is perceived as derogatory. In 2008, for instance, Turkish President Abdullah Gul felt compelled to publicize his family tree showing his Turkish and Muslim lineage as far back as six centuries into history following claims that his mother had Armenian origins. The President also filed a lawsuit against the claimer for assault on his ‘personal and family values, honour and reputation’.2 The claimer in turn insisted on a DNA test, since according to her, this was the only reliable way to prove one’s ethnic origins.3