The elimination of the Ottoman Armenians from their historic homeland during World War I through deportations and massacres, for which (through the UN Convention of 1948) the term ‘genocide’ was introduced, is one of the most tragic and hotly debated chapters of modern world history. Strongly fuelled by denial on the part of the Turkish state, debate in the 1990s centred on the question whether the events in question did constitute genocide. Historical research was limited by a nationalist discourse.

A question of genocide is a book with a history, the outcome of a decade-long process of dialogue between Armenian, Turkish and other historians, begun in 2000 ‘to move beyond the barriers that had long shackled research on the tragedies of the late Ottoman Empire and kept two communities frozen in history’ (p. 3). The participants particularly wanted to reach out to the small number of scholars in Turkey who had begun to question their own history. In an opening statement, Robert Suny called the meeting of WATS (Workshop of Armenian-Turkish Studies) ‘the first time that scholars of various nationalities, including Armenians and Turks, have gathered together to present papers and discuss in a scholarly fashion the fate of the peoples of the Ottoman Empire as that state declined and disintegrated’ and ‘an attempt to form a new scholarly community inspired by liberal Ottomanism, tolerance of difference on the basis of equality and respect, rather than exclusivist nationalism’ (p. 4). During the period 2002–10 six more WATS meetings followed, considered successful by the organisers. By 2007 a joint meeting with the Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on Mass Killing had shown ‘how far shared discussions had evolved – how questions that had troubled the earlier meetings of WATS had been resolved’ (p. xx1). On the ‘G problem’ however, the WATS participants never did come to an agreement – hence the enigmatic title of the book.

The fifteen articles in the volume are distributed over five sections on historiography, pre-history, international context, local context and ‘continuities’ – preceded by an overview of the key aspects of the events by Norman Naimark. Of course all the contributions cannot be honoured equally.

In the first section Ronald Suny summarises the development of the historiography of the Armenian-western tradition over the years. Fatma Müge Göçek does the same for the Turkish historiography. Both identify a key text setting parameters and guidelines for later writers: in the Armenian-western case the memoirs of the US ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau, in the Turkish case the 1927 ‘Speech’ (Nutuk) of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk).

The study of the Armenian genocide and of the late Ottoman Empire in general has developed rapidly in recent years, and the contributions to A question of genocide reflect that. Uğur Üngör and Erik-Jan Zürcher, who both write on the continuity between the Young Turk period, during which the Armenians were deported, and the early republican period, during which the Turkish nation-state was established, testify to the degree to which the early years of the republic have also become a subject of scholarly scrutiny.

Historical research requires readiness to evaluate circumstances in their contemporary context and distanced from partisan views. Gerard Libaridian presents a good case in the third section when questioning what was so revolutionary about the Armenian revolutionary parties before the First World War. He stresses that, contrary to the standard Turkish view of them as ‘terrorists’ seeking independence, these parties were actually relatively closely interwoven with Ottoman society and finds that ‘a common history’ has been lost. Not every contribution is made in this spirit however. Stephan Astourian's piece on agrarian issues as background to ethnic conflict, important in itself, fails to recognise that many of the woes affecting rural Armenians in the eastern provinces also affected the Muslim population.

A question of genocide offers a wide array of perspectives reflecting the degree of sophistication acquired in the field of genocide studies. Somewhat surprisingly, however, few authors deal with the events themselves – the massacres and deportations. Out of fifteen contributions, I counted only three such (Donald Bloxham, Aram Aykun and Fuat Dündar), five if we include David Gaunt's contribution on the fate of the ‘Assyrians’ of Hakkari and Hans-Lukas Kieser's portrait of Dr Mehmed Reşid and his reign of terror as governor of Diyarbekir in 1915–16.

Donald Bloxham's relation of the development of the Armenian genocide is one of the central contributions to the book. He argues that there was no premeditated plan for genocide, but a gradual radicalisation, fed by ideology as well as changing circumstances. Bloxham's analysis demonstrates that the historiography has come a considerable way since the simplistic narratives of even two decades ago.

With his detailed narrative of the Zeytun Revolt (March–April 1915), Aykun offers an exemplary local history, showing the multiple shades of human behaviour, explaining that the revolt was the work of a minority of radicals, but that none the less the Ottomans deported everyone, including the majority of Zeytun Armenians, who remained loyal to them. This mountain town, throughout the nineteenth century a stronghold of Armenian activism and scene of several revolts, was however hardly an ordinary case. Elsewhere, Armenians had no means at their disposal to defend themselves, let alone to rise in protest. Zeytun, as an isolated case, can easily project a distorted image of the Armenian position in 1915.

Fuat Dündar, who made his name with some pioneering studies on the ethnic and demographic engineering of the Young Turk regime, writes on the deportations, which he calls ‘relatively under-studied’ compared to the mass killings. After a characterisation of the harshness and inhospitality of the desert region of Deir-ez-Zor, where just ten months before his decision to send the Armenians there, Talat Pasha had not wanted to settle Muslim refugees (‘muhacir’), because, as he said, ‘they would all be dead of hunger’, the author briefly lists five ‘waves of deportation’. Disappointingly, his study is based exclusively on documents from the Ottoman archives without any connection to the reality on the ground, as available in the numerous eyewitness reports and studies by other scholars. Strangely, Dündar does not dwell on the massacres perpetrated in Zor (mentioned by Bloxham at p. 271), nor on the concentration camps described by others, whose existence he seems in fact to doubt (p. 283).

Inexplicably, to my mind at least, some of the contextual articles tend to underrate questions that should figure high on the agenda. For example Fikret Adanır's instructive article on the mobilisation of non-Muslims in the Balkan War of 1912–13 certainly sheds some light on the background to the separation of Armenians and other Christians in the infamous labour battalions a year later (rather than be conscripted into the Ottoman military), but these battalions are seldom mentioned in the book. Two authors (Eric D. Weitz and Margaret Lavinia Anderson) deal eloquently with the important German role in the period, but do not endeavour to get to the bottom of accusations of German complicity (p. 176). In a detailed analysis of Russian politics during occupation of the ‘Armenian provinces’, Peter Holquist touches just very briefly on the role of Armenian volunteers in the Russian army, when it is their supposed ‘stab in the back’ that has over time become the backbone of official Turkish historiography and thus surely deserves a more extensive treatment.

Occasionally, one senses an assumption, in my view erroneous, that authoritative, comprehensive histories are in place and that the time has come for writing on secondary capita selecta. Or are contributors so familiar with the core aspects of the genocide that they assume that everyone is? Or is it weariness to discuss again subjects worn by endless nationalist disputes? As the outcome of a decade-long cycle of meetings a more comprehensive approach and more teamwork was to have been hoped for. Not only in this book, but generally, many aspects of the genocide are still unaddressed. Various specific but important subjects like the number of victims, local variances, perpetrator motivation at the micro-level, and the apparent survival of converts to Islam, await research. The crucial role played by the Kurds, not recognised as distinct dialogue partners in A question of genocide, still needs critical examination.

Recent years have seen a rapid change in the intellectual climate in Turkey. All kinds of historical and political topics previously considered taboo, are now being discussed. The electrifying 2005 Genocide Conference in Istanbul, the first scholarly meeting on the subject on Turkish soil, was organised by a number of the Turkish WATS participants, and can be seen as a by-product of the dialogue initiated by WATS. This conference caused a nationalist outcry, but also an unprecedented amount of discussion and reflection in the Turkish media on the plight of the Armenians. Strangely, the book does not reflect much of this dialogue. Only four contributors are of Turkish and Kurdish origin, of whom only one presently resides in Turkey. The volume often refers to the Turkish official historiography, but perhaps the real test of dialogue would have been to include a contribution by one of its more intellectual and moderate representatives, a report of a discussion, or an explanation of breaking points. The official Turkish school was of course always more characterised by state prescription than by an open mind, and it would be naive therefore to expect reconciliation. But in the dialogue underpinning this volume, the denialists seem to have been ignored altogether. Confidence is expressed (preface, p. xviii) that ‘after reading these contributions no scholar could contend that there was not genocide in the Armenian case’. Sadly, Turkish academicians of the old school will probably ignore this book, just as the book has ignored them. The inclusion among the many contexts of a predilection of the denialists, such as the ethnic cleansing by Armenian bands after 1916, would have been a nice way to bridge a gap. In vain I searched for even a reference to these events, which, although misused for propagandist aims – defying chronology and difference in scope, they are used in Turkey to invoke an image of ‘civil war’ between Armenians and Turks – are, nevertheless, part of the family history and perception of the ‘Armenian Question’ of tens of thousands of inhabitants of Turkey. Finally, and no less important, since there are no contributions to the book from historians from the Republic of Armenia, a consideration of their perspective also is lacking.

In short, while this volume undoubtedly has interesting content that deserves to be read, as a testimony of the ‘state of the art in the field’ (preface, p. xviii), and, even more, as the fruit of a prolonged dialogue it somewhat disappoints. A question of genocide is more the usual collection of essays, reflecting the research interests of the participating scholars, sometimes insufficiently aware of each other's findings, than a concerted attempt to sort out conflicting positions.