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Norms, Narratives, and Scholarship on the Armenian Genocide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2015

Jennifer M. Dixon
Jennifer M. Dixon*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Villanova University, Villanova, Pa.; e-mail: Jennifer.m.dixon@villanova.edu
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Extract

Analyzing the politics of the past in the context of the Armenian Genocide reveals an evolving interplay between international norms, official narratives, and broader discourses. This short essay explores three aspects of these interrelationships. First, I draw on my own research to highlight the ways in which changes in Turkey's narrative of the genocide—typically referred to in official discourse as sözde Ermeni sorunu (the so-called Armenian question), or more recently as 1915 olayları (the events of 1915)—have to some extent paralleled shifts in the meaning and salience of the norm against genocide. Second, I note key ways in which the Turkish state's official discourse has shaped public understandings—within and, to a lesser extent, outside Turkey—of the nature of the violence against Ottoman Armenians. Third, I suggest that in influencing public understandings of the relationship between this event and the concept of genocide, Turkey's official narrative has the potential to affect understandings of the meaning of genocide more generally.

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Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , November 2015, pp. 796 - 800
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Analyzing the politics of the past in the context of the Armenian Genocide reveals an evolving interplay between international norms, official narratives, and broader discourses.Footnote 1 This short essay explores three aspects of these interrelationships. First, I draw on my own research to highlight the ways in which changes in Turkey's narrative of the genocide—typically referred to in official discourse as sözde Ermeni sorunu (the so-called Armenian question), or more recently as 1915 olayları (the events of 1915)—have to some extent paralleled shifts in the meaning and salience of the norm against genocide. Second, I note key ways in which the Turkish state's official discourse has shaped public understandings—within and, to a lesser extent, outside Turkey—of the nature of the violence against Ottoman Armenians. Third, I suggest that in influencing public understandings of the relationship between this event and the concept of genocide, Turkey's official narrative has the potential to affect understandings of the meaning of genocide more generally.

The contention that Ottoman officials were not responsible for the deaths of Ottoman Armenians in World War I has been an important—and well-known—continuity in Turkey's official narrative of the Armenian Genocide. While this feature has remained constant, Turkish officials updated the state's narrative in the early 1980s, in the mid-1990s, and again in the early 2000s, primarily in response to accumulated international pressures.Footnote 2 In each instance, the relative centrality of the concept of genocide in the official narrative and rationalizations for rejecting the label shifted. These shifts paralleled changes in the content and salience of the norm against genocide, signaling Turkish officials' awareness of this norm, even as they continued to deny its relevance to the Armenian case.

The term genocide was first introduced in 1944 by the jurist Raphael Lemkin in response to the Holocaust. It became part of international law with the passage of the United Nations' Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. While Turkey was one of the first twenty states to sign on to the new convention, over the subsequent three decades Turkish officials did not refer to the concept of genocide. Instead, they attempted to suppress any and all references to the deportation and deaths of Ottoman Armenians in World War I.Footnote 3

Beginning in the 1960s, Armenians in the diaspora began to more frequently use the label “genocide” to characterize the catastrophic events of World War I.Footnote 4 In the late 1970s, genocide scholars started to broaden their focus by analyzing cases of genocide other than the Holocaust, especially the Armenian case. In response to increased international attention to the Armenian Genocide during the mid- to late 1970s, Turkish officials decided in late 1980 to revise the official narrative. Alongside a number of additional changes, the increased salience of the norm against genocide prompted a new focus on the concept of genocide in the state's narrative. Although at the time some scholars were beginning to compare the Holocaust with other cases of genocide, many still argued that the Holocaust was sui generis. Playing on these understandings, the revised official narrative drew a sharp line between the Holocaust and the suffering of Armenians, arguing that what had happened during World War I was a civil war, and that calling it a genocide would undermine the strength of that concept and the memory of the Holocaust's victims.

The official narrative was again updated in the early 2000s, similarly in response to international pressure on Turkey to acknowledge the genocide. While continuing to reject the applicability of the genocide label to the events of 1915–17, officials began to emphasize that genocide was a legal concept and that, in order for it to be applied to the Armenian case, its applicability would have to be “proven” in an international court.Footnote 5 This legal “defense” against the charge of genocide reflected shifts in the content and salience of the norm against genocide—and the growing body of international case law regarding the crime of genocide—that arose in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

Turkey's official narrative has, in turn, shaped scholarship about the Armenian Genocide. The official narrative's emphasis on the need to distinguish between the Holocaust and the experience of Ottoman Armenians has pushed scholarship to focus on the ways in which the Armenian Genocide was like the Holocaust. As Taner Akçam has pointed out, “similarity to the Holocaust became the yardstick against which an event might or might not measure up as genocide.”Footnote 6 While he argues that this was the case for scholars of genocide working on various cases, it was true of scholars of the Armenian Genocide in particular. Consequently, early work on the Armenian Genocide emphasized points of similarity with the Holocaust, such as deportations by train, the centrality of racist ideology and religious identity in the persecution, and signals of genocidal intent prior to the start of the war. (Over the past decade, some of these arguments have been replaced with understandings that stem from the study of the Armenian case on its own terms.)

This focus on similarities also meant that aspects of the Armenian Genocide that were dissimilar from the Holocaust were neglected. Thus, scholars overlooked the significance of what are now understood as central aspects of the genocide, such as economic expropriation and demographic (re-)engineering,Footnote 7 as well as particularly gendered patterns of persecution.Footnote 8

One can also discern the clear imprint of Turkey's narrative on the ways in which the public thinks about the event and about the concept of genocide more broadly. Within Turkey, the influence of the state's narrative is reflected in the commonly encountered argument that what happened was a tragedy but not a genocide.Footnote 9 Moreover, the Turkish state's framing of genocide as a “controversial,” “political,” and most recently, “legal” concept has shaped the way many nonspecialists think, speak, and write about the Armenian Genocide. In the past few years, for example, several influential journalists within and outside Turkey have argued that the term “genocide” is inherently political, and have suggested that it should be avoided or that an alternative one should be used.Footnote 10 While this term does carry a significant degree of opprobrium, and has always had both politico-legal and analytical dimensions, to argue that it should not be applied to the Armenian case because it is controversial overlooks the central role of the Turkish state in framing it as such.

This short essay makes two conclusions. First, there is a fundamental interrelationship between the norm against genocide, Turkey's official narrative of the “Armenian question,” and public discourse within and outside Turkey on the destruction of Ottoman Armenians. The content of the norm against genocide has shaped the range of legitimate justifications and defenses that can be made in response to charges of genocide. Moreover, the state's characterizations of the nature of the events of 1915–17 have shifted in parallel with changes in interpretations of the norm against genocide. The state's narrative has, in turn, framed the ways in which many in Turkey and some outside the country think about the meaning of genocide and its relationship to the deportation and killing of Ottoman Armenians. Probing these structural effects—as I have begun to do in this essay—reveals important facets of the politics that have shaped understandings of this event. Second, attention to the discursive particularities inherent to the politics surrounding the Armenian Genocide make clear the need for and importance of comparative analysis, which can shed light on misinterpretations and misframings.

Finally, it is important to note that, since the taboo on talking about the genocide has been broken, the ways in which the Armenian Genocide is studied and understood have begun to change. Illustrating the increasing depth, breadth, and variety of work on the topic, recent scholarship has explored the central role of economic expropriation in the genocide, the fundamentally gendered nature of the genocide, and the broader context of violence against non-Muslims—notably Greeks and Assyrians—in which the Armenian Genocide occurred. Scholars have also begun to draw new parallels between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, which has led to, among other things, a reconsideration of the processes through which violence unfolded and escalated in the Armenian case; an exploration of the role of “righteous” Turks, Kurds, and others who helped, warned, and/or saved Armenians; and investigations into the micropolitics of violence in different localities.Footnote 11

References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Taner Akçam, Ayhan Aktar, Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Tobias Schulze-Cleven, Uğur Ümit Üngör, Keith David Watenpaugh, and the IJMES editors for their valuable feedback and suggestions.

1 Norms are defined as “collective expectations for the proper behavior of actors with a given identity.” See Katzenstein, Peter J., “Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security,” in The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, ed. Katzenstein, Peter J. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 5Google Scholar.

2 Dixon, Jennifer M., “Defending the Nation?: Maintaining Turkey's Narrative of the Armenian Genocide,” South European Society and Politics 15 (2010): 467–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dixon, “Turkey's Narrative of the Armenian Genocide: Change within Continuity,” in Le Génocide des Arméniens: Cent ans de recherche 1915–2015, ed. Becker, Annette et al. (Paris: Armand Colin, 2015), 249–56Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Bobelian, Michael, Children of Armenia: A Forgotten Genocide and the Century-Long Struggle for Justice (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 132Google Scholar.

4 On Armenians' use of the term “genocide,” see Mouradian, Khatchig, “From Yeghern to Genocide: Armenian Newspapers, Raphael Lemkin, and the Road to the UN Genocide Convention,” Haigazian Armenological Review 29 (2009): 133Google Scholar.

5 For an example of the argument that genocide is a legal concept, see Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Turkey, “Presentation by Ambassador Gündüz Aktan at the House Committee on International Relations on September 14, 2000,” accessed 2 June 2015, http://www.mfa.gov.tr/presentation-by-ambassador-gunduz-aktan-at-the-house-committee-on-international-relations-on-september-14_-2000_.en.mfa.

6 Akçam, Taner, The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), xxixGoogle Scholar. For work that emphasizes the similarities between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, see Dadrian, Vahakn N., “The Common Features of the Armenian and Jewish Cases of Genocide: A Comparative Victimological Perspective,” in Victimology: A New Focus, vol. 4, ed. Drapkin, Israel and Viano, Emilio (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1973), 99–120Google Scholar; Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (New York: Berghahn Books, 1995)Google Scholar; and Balakian, Peter, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response (New York: HarperCollins, 2003)Google Scholar.

7 On economic expropriation, see Kaiser, Hilmar, “Armenian Property, Ottoman Law and Nationality Policies during the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1916,” in The First World War as Remembered in the Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Farschid, Olaf, Kropp, Manfred, and Dähne, Stephan (Beirut: Orient-Institut; Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2006), 49–71Google Scholar; Der Matossian, Bedross, “The Taboo within the Taboo: The Fate of Armenian Capital at the End of the Ottoman Empire,” European Journal of Turkish Studies (2011), accessed 29 May 2015, http://ejts.revues.org/4411Google Scholar; Üngör, Uğur Ümit and Polatel, Mehmet, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (London and New York: Continuum, 2011)Google Scholar; and Akçam, Taner and Kurt, Ümit, The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015)Google Scholar. On demographic engineering, see Şeker, Nesim, “Demographic Engineering in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Armenians,” Middle Eastern Studies 43 (2007): 461–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dündar, Fuat, Modern Türkiye'nin Şifresi: İttihat ve Terakki'nin Etnisite Mühendisliği (1913–1918) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2008)Google Scholar; and Üngör, Uğur Ümit, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 On gendered aspects of the genocide, see Sarafian, Ara, “The Absorption of Armenian Women and Children into Muslim Households as a Structural Component of the Armenian Genocide,” in In God's Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century, ed. Bartov, Omer and Mack, Phyllis (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 209–21Google Scholar; Derderian, Katherine, “Common Fate, Different Experience: Gender-Specific Aspects of the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1917,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 19 (2005): 1–25Google Scholar; Bjørnlund, Matthias, “‘A Fate Worse than Dying’: Sexual Violence during the Armenian Genocide,” in Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe's Twentieth Century, ed. Herzog, Dagmar (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 16–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ekmekçioğlu, Lerna, “A Climate for Abduction, a Climate for Redemption: The Politics of Inclusion during and after the Armenian Genocide,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55 (2013): 522–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and David Watenpaugh, Keith, “‘Are There any Children for Sale?’: Genocide and the Transfer of Armenian Children (1915–1922),” Journal of Human Rights 12 (2013): 283–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 For evidence of this, see Necef, Mehmet, “The Turkish Media Debate on the Armenian Massacre,” in Genocide: Cases, Comparisons and Contemporary Debates, ed. Jensen, Steven L. B. (Copenhagen: The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2003), 225–62Google Scholar; Bayraktar, Seyhan, Politik und Erinnerung: Der Diskurs über den Armeniermord in der Türkei zwischen Nationalismus und Europäisierung (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2010)Google Scholar; Erbal, Ayda, “Mea Culpas, Negotiations, Apologias: Revisiting the ‘Apology’ of Turkish Intellectuals,” in Reconciliation, Civil Society, and the Politics of Memory: Transnational Initiatives in the 20th and 21st Century, ed. Schwelling, Birgit (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2012), 51–94Google Scholar; and Bakiner, Onur, “Is Turkey Coming to Terms with Its Past? Politics of Memory and Majoritarian Conservatism,” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 41 (2013): 691–708CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 For example, see Aktar, Cengiz, “Soykırım Ötesi Büyük Felaket,” Radikal (2009), accessed 10 June 2015, http://www.radikal.com.tr/radikal2/soykirim_otesi_buyuk_felaket-933179Google Scholar; Temelkuran, Ece, Deep Mountain: Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide (New York: Verso, 2010)Google Scholar; and de Waal, Thomas, Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)Google Scholar. For an example of the effects of the state's framing of “genocide” as a legal concept, see Can Dağlıoğlu, Emre, “‘1915’ in Tümüyle Tarihçilere Bırakılması Anlamlı Değil,” Agos, 18 April 2015, accessed 12 June 2015, http://www.agos.com.tr/tr/yazi/11319/1915in-tumuyle-tarihcilere-birakilmasi-anlamli-degilGoogle Scholar.

11 On the escalation of violence, see Bloxham, Donald, “The Armenian Genocide of 1915–1916: Cumulative Radicalization and the Development of a Destruction Policy,” Past & Present 181 (2003): 141–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On “righteous” individuals, see Göçek, Fatma Müge, “In Search of Just Turks in the Collective Violence Committed against the Armenians,” in The Transformation of Turkey: Redefining State and Society from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Era (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 223–40Google Scholar. On the “micropolitics” of violence, see Kaiser, “‘A Scene from the Inferno:’ The Armenians of Erzerum and the Genocide, 1915–1916,” in Der Völkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah, ed. Kieser, Hans-Lukas and Schaller, Dominik J. (Zürich: Chronos, 2002), 129–86Google Scholar; and Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey. On the victimization of other non-Muslim groups, see Gaunt, David, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Bjørnlund, Matthias, “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent Turkification,” Journal of Genocide Research 10 (2008): 41–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schaller, Dominik J. and Zimmerer, Jürgen, ed., Late Ottoman Genocides: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish Population and Extermination Policies (London: Routledge, 2009)Google Scholar.