maintaining turkeys narrative of the armenian genocide(dixon)

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Defending the Nation? MaintainingTurkey's Narrative of the ArmenianGenocideJennifer M. Dixon

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Defending the Nation? MaintainingTurkey’s Narrative of the ArmenianGenocideJennifer M. Dixon

This paper focuses on two recent periods in which agents of the Turkish state actively

defended Turkey’s official narrative of the Armenian genocide. I argue that the set ofstrategies developed by Turkish officers and bureaucrats under the military regime in

power from 1980 to 1983 established a pattern of state response that was replicated bybureaucratic elites in the face of new challenges to the official narrative two decades later.

Understanding this authoritarian legacy helps explain the mechanisms by which andrepertoire of action through which agents of the Turkish state have defended andre-produced its official narrative.

Keywords: Turkey; Military; Armenian Genocide; Authoritarian Legacy; Democratic

Consolidation; Institutional Continuity

Credited with defending the territorial integrity of the Turkish nation and defeating

the occupying Greek army after World War I (WWI), the Turkish military has held

a special place in Turkey’s political system since the founding of the Republic in 1923.

As a general in the Turkish military, Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) led the resistance

movement that achieved these victories. Ever since, the military has cultivated its

image as the most professional and trustworthy government institution in Turkey,

fashioning itself as the protector of the secular nature and territorial integrity of

the state.In contrast to these hallowed images, however, the first few decades of the Republic

were characterised by authoritarian, single-party rule and the Turkish military has

intervened in national politics multiple times in the past half-century. Indeed, while

Turkey held its first multi-party election in 1946 and Ataturk’s Republican People’s

Party (CHP) was voted out of power in 1950, the military’s repeated interventions

make it difficult to pinpoint Turkey’s ‘transition’ to democracy. Turkey’s process of

democratisation has been repeatedly interrupted and set back, and authoritarian

ISSN 1360-8746 (print)/ISSN 1743-9612 (online) q 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2010.513605

South European Society and Politics

Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2010, pp. 467–485

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legacies remain powerful. As such, Turkey’s democracy is still relativelyunconsolidated, with a weak civil society, inconsistent rule of law, political institutions

that have been captured by particular political factions, and an ongoing struggle to

civilianise politics.Centrally, the influence of the military and bureaucratic elite has fundamentally

shaped the political and social arena in Turkey, stifling the development of anindependent Turkish civil society, framing the beliefs and knowledge of the majority of

the Turkish public and accounting for the persistence of debilitating taboos within thepublic sphere. A prominent taboo has been on the discussion of the 1915–17

Armenian genocide.1 On this issue, military and bureaucratic elites—especially in themilitary’s National Security Council (MGK), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA),

the Ministry of the Interior, the National Education Ministry (MEB) and the state

archives—have been largely responsible for setting and defending the state’s officialnarrative2 throughout the Republican period.

In this paper, I focus on two recent periods in which agents of the Turkish stateactively defended and articulated Turkey’s official narrative of the ‘Armenian question’

(Ermeni sorunu/meselesi), as the issue is termed in Turkey.3 In response to challengesto the official narrative, in the early 1980s Turkish bureaucrats developed a

multi-pronged strategy that involved a variety of government agencies and focused ondomestic and foreign audiences. This set of simultaneously defensive and proactive

strategies was first developed by Turkish officers and bureaucrats under the 1980–83

military regime, but was later replicated by bureaucratic elites after 2000. At that time,in response to a new set of challenges, Turkish bureaucrats followed the framework

developed in the 1980s, defending and disseminating the official narrative throughmany of the same institutions and strategies that had been successful in the earlier

period. As a result, despite significantly changed domestic and international contextsand the coming to power of a non-establishment party in Turkey, key elements of and

strategies for defending the state’s official narrative of the Armenian question have

remained relatively consistent.This argument adds a new dimension to the analysis of Turkey’s official narrative of

the Armenian genocide. Many contemporary scholars emphasise that this officialnarrative is largely shaped by continuities and constraints inherited from the founding

of the Republic (e.g. Akcam 2004; Gocek, forthcoming). In particular, they highlightthe striking continuities among political elites from the Young Turk through the

Republican periods, the concentrated interests of a small group of business andpolitical elites whose wealth can be traced back to confiscated Armenian assets, and the

homogenising and Turkifying nature of Turkish national identity. This paper offers a

complementary explanation, which is focused on the process through and agency bywhich this official narrative has been perpetuated over time. Thus, while not disputing

the importance of these crucial factors, this paper demonstrates how more recentauthoritarian legacies have shaped the repertoire of action through which the agents of

the Turkish state have defended and re-produced this narrative. Furthermore, thisresearch sets the groundwork for the study of the sources of change in Turkey’s official

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narrative, since the mechanisms of institutional continuity carry both the obstacles toand the opportunities for change therein (Thelen 1999).

I develop the argument as follows: In the first section, I sketch the historicalbackground to the more recent politics that are the focus of the paper, describing the

basic facts of the genocide, the aborted transitional justice efforts for several years afterthe genocide, and the silence that was imposed on the issue in subsequent decades.

In the second section, I turn to new pressures on the official narrative that arose in the1970s, the initially reactive responses of the Turkish government and the development

of proactive strategies to defend the official narrative following the 1980 coup. Thesestrategies were designed to bolster and disseminate the official narrative, andsucceeded in entrenching support for it domestically and generating some support

internationally. The third section reviews changes in the international and domesticcontexts that arose in the 1990s, and challenges to the official narrative from each of

these domains. In the fourth section, I note several shifts in the state’s narrative sincethe Justice and Development Party’s (AKP’s) coming to power and highlight recent

indications of possible future change in the official narrative. In the second half of thesection, I elaborate the strategic responses implemented in the past decade, which have

reinforced the official narrative in the face of these new pressures. Finally, in the lastsection I discuss the implications of this analysis for understanding the sources of bothchange and continuity in this narrative.

Historical Background

Let me move on to the historical events that set the backdrop for the politics analysedin the rest of the paper. The Armenian genocide occurred between 1915 and 1917,

when the governing leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) organisedand executed the forced deportation of the vast majority of Armenians living in the

Ottoman Empire. An estimated 800,000 to 1.5 million Armenians were killed over thecourse of, and under the cover of, this forced deportation.4 As a result, the Armenian

minority community that had lived for centuries in Anatolia—in what is now theterritory of the Republic of Turkey—was destroyed. This occurred within the broader

context of ethnic cleansing and mass killing of non-Muslims in Ottoman territorieswhich took place during WWI.5

In the aftermath of the WWI, the massacres of Armenians and other minorities were

known and debated in Ottoman society; and the Ottoman government was pressured byBritain, other states and some internal sources to punish the organisers and perpetrators

of the massacres. In response, the Ottoman government established a military tribunal in1918 to try officials accused of involvement in the deportation and massacres of

Ottoman Armenians (Bass 2000; Kramer 2006). At the same time, there were internalinvestigations and debates over responsibility for the events within the Ottoman

government, including a commission of investigation in the parliament (Aktar 2007).As the War of Independence took shape, however, Turkish leaders’ tolerance for

discussion of the issue abated. By late 1920, the leaders of the new nationalist

South European Society and Politics 469

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movement had turned away from the prosecution of perpetrators of the genocide anddisavowed official responsibility for the events (Akcam 2004). Two main reasons were

behind this shift: First, allowing CUP leaders and Ottoman officials to be heldresponsible for the Armenian massacres would have threatened the nationalists’ goal

of securing the Anatolian heartland for the Turkish nation. Second, many of theperpetrators of the genocide were involved in organising and leading the nationalist

movement; and their support, organisational skills and networks in Anatolia wereinvaluable (Kaiser 2003; Akcam 2004). As a result, when the post-war peace settlement

was renegotiated by the victorious Turkish nationalists and WWI Allied Powers in1923, the Turkish representatives refused to allow any reference to the Armenianmassacres in the treaty. Thus, the Treaty of Lausanne marks the silencing of this issue

in official Turkish discourse (Gocek 2006).This official silence continued for decades within Turkey, with no official recognition

of what had befallen Ottoman Armenians during WWI, and the gradual elision ofdocumentary and physical evidence of the historical presence of Armenians in the

Ottoman Empire (Kouymjian 1985; Oktem 2008). This silence was perpetuated byTurkey’s geostrategic position in the Cold War (Bloxham 2005), and by constraints on

democratic freedoms and the oppression of minorities domestically (Icduygu et al.2008; Kurban 2004–5). Reflecting the tabooed nature of the issue, only a few bookswere published on the topic in the decades following the establishment of the Republic.

In conjunction with this domestic silence, the Turkish government also fought tosilence the issue internationally through diplomatic channels and international

pressure (e.g. Minasian 1986–87).

Defending the Official Narrative

While this official silence continued in the 1950s and 1960s, political events in the

mid- to late 1970s challenged and brought international attention to Turkey’s silence.Initially, the Turkish government’s response to these new pressures was ad hoc and

reactive. Following the 1980 military coup, however, Turkish officials and bureaucratsdeveloped a set of strategies to actively respond to these challenges.

In the wake of the 50th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in 1965,groups throughout the Armenian diaspora mobilised, and some decided to take actionto increase international awareness and recognition of the Armenian genocide

(Bloxham 2005, p. 215). In the 1970s, two distinct approaches emerged. Individualsand groups began political efforts to get other states to officially recognise the

Armenian genocide. At the same time, others resorted to terrorism: between 1975 and1983, radical Armenian terrorist groups targeted Turkish diplomats and other Turkish

entities in a number of attacks (e.g. Lutem 2008) that were intended to pressure Turkeyto acknowledge the Armenian genocide.

Despite these new pressures, there were no notable changes in Turkey’s policiesconcerning the Armenian question in the 1970s. This can be largely explained by the

Turkish military’s preoccupation with the Cyprus problem, and the widespread

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domestic political unrest and violence in Turkey in the late 1970s. Because of theseother concerns, the Turkish government’s initial responses were primarily reactive;

including condemnation of the terrorist attacks, denial of the veracity of genocideclaims, and the heightening of security measures for Turkish diplomats and

government agents working abroad.6 Turkish diplomats also continued efforts tooppose such claims internationally (e.g. Smith 1992, p. 11).

Strategies to Defend the Official Narrative Following the 1980 Coup

After the 1980 coup, however, Turkish military and bureaucratic elites developed andimplemented new strategies to systemically respond to these challenges and to bolster

their narrative of the Armenian question. Their set of strategies involved severalelements: (1) centralising control over the official narrative, (2) publishing defences of

the official narrative, (3) marshalling evidence to support the official narrative,(4) teaching the official narrative to Turkish students and (5) gaining international

support for the official narrative.7

The official narrative that was disseminated through this set of strategies includedthe following claims: the charge of genocide was baseless; claims of genocide were

based on false propaganda by Armenians; Armenians had constituted a small minorityof the population in the Ottoman Empire; Armenians were well treated under

Ottoman rule; Armenians had collaborated with the Ottoman Empire’s enemiesduring WWI and rebelled to gain independence; and Armenians had committed

massacres and atrocities against Ottoman Turkish citizens, using terrorist methodsthat were again being used in attacks on Turkish diplomats.

Centralising control over the official narrative. One of the first steps taken as part of the

new set of strategies was an institutional innovation: the creation of the DirectorateGeneral of Intelligence and Research (Istihbarat ve Arastırma Genel Mudurlugu,

IAGM) within the MFA in 1981. Its primary task was to conduct research into andproduce scholarship on the Armenian question.8 This unit was created at thesuggestion of the military officer who headed the MGK’s Intelligence Department,

which was dealing with the Armenian question. After the creation of IAGM, theArmenian question was handled in a centralised place within the MFA, in coordination

with the military.9 Subsequently, IAGM worked with other government agencies toproduce and distribute evidence supporting the official narrative.10

Publishing defences of the official narrative. A second strategy was the publication of

books that articulated and defended the Turkish government’s narrative of theArmenian genocide. At first, IAGM tried to encourage Turkish historians to conduct

research on and write about the Armenian question, but diplomats soon decided thatthey themselves were better informed. As a result, Turkish diplomats wrote and

published key statements of the official narrative in the 1980s.11 The first such book waswritten by the Deputy Foreign Minister, Kamuran Gurun. He claimed (1985, p. 217)

that 702,900 Armenians were deported and no more than 300,000 died during WWI;


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this became a standard element of the official narrative. In addition to this and other

‘scholarly’ publications, government officials wrote a manual (Foreign Policy Institute

1982) about the Armenian question that refuted accusations against Turkey and

offered an overview of the issue.12 Moreover, several other government agencies

published books on the Armenian question.As a result of these efforts, the total number of official and quasi-official

publications on the Armenian question skyrocketed: from one book published

between 1976 and 1980, to 21 books published between 1981 and 1985 (see Figure 1).

This increase is particularly stark when compared with the previous decades, in which

only a few books were published on the topic, primarily by the quasi-official Turkish

Historical Society (TTK).13

Marshalling evidence to support the official narrative. Another initiative was to

encourage and support archival research on the Armenian question and the

publication of relevant documents from the Ottoman archives. This was conducted

both through the bureaucratic administration of the archives, as well as through

external efforts. Ismet Binark, the Director General of the Prime Minister’s State

Archives, was instructed to find and publish archival documents on the Armenian

question (Lutem, interview, 2009; Sarafian 1999). The MFA also summoned a group

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Prime Minister's Office

National Education Ministry(MEB)

Ministry of Culture andTourism

Ministry of Foreign Affairs,Center for Strategic Research

Turkish Parliament (TBMM)

State Archives (PM's office)

Military Archives (ATASE)

Turkish Historical Society(TTK)

Thinktanks with governmentties

Figure 1 Trends in official and quasi-official publications on the Armenian question,1950–2005Sources: The data used to create this chart were compiled by searching catalogues andbibliographies on the Armenian question created by Turkish governmental institutionsand thinktanks, and by consulting bibliographies on the topic (Vassilian 1992; Ilter 1997;Hovannisian 1978) and in several TTK publications. Quasi-official publications are thosethat were primarily published under the direction of or at the instruction of the MFAand/or the MGK.

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of retired diplomats and officers who could read Ottoman Turkish, and these retiredofficials worked with Ottoman archival documents related to the Armenian

question.14 Several books resulted from this effort, including the publication ofdocuments (Okte 1989) and an English translation of a seminal book articulating the

official Turkish position (Uras 1988), which had first been published in 1950 by aretired Turkish diplomat and former Unionist official who had been involved in the

genocide (Kaiser 2003, pp. 12–14).

Teaching the official narrative to Turkish students. The fourth element of the state’sresponse was to educate Turkish students about this issue, at both the tertiary and

secondary levels.15 Government officials worked with universities, especially throughthe newly created Council of Higher Education (YOK), to establish courses on theArmenian question and to encourage academic research into the issue. In 1983, the first

university course on the Armenian question was offered, by the political scientistTurkkaya Ataov at Ankara University.16 Turkish academics, most notably Ataov, also

started to publish work on the Armenian question. At the same time, the Armenianquestion was also introduced in Turkish secondary school textbooks. High school

history textbooks, which had previously been silent on the topic, now dedicated severalpages to the Armenian question. Some of these textbooks acknowledged that the

Ottoman government had deported Armenians during WWI, but focused ondefending the deportation as a necessary and appropriate action. All of the textbooks,however, detailed Armenian violence committed against Turks before, during and after

the war (Dixon 2010).

Gaining international support for the official narrative. The final element of thisstrategic framework targeted external sources of criticism. Turkey began to respond to

international resolutions and pressure with the argument that history should be left tohistorians, not legislated by politicians. To bolster this contention, ‘in 1985, the

Turkish Government . . . announced the complete opening of all official OttomanArchives relating to the Armenian question’ (van Gorder 2004, p. 20). Realising that

there were documents in the archives that would support Turkish arguments on thisissue, the MFA pushed to have the relevant archives catalogued and opened on an

expedited basis (Sarafian 1999)17. While some of these archives were made available in1985, the rest were opened in 1989. The announced opening of the archives allowedTurkish officials to claim that they were taking positive steps to look into the issue,

which convinced some foreign politicians to back off from pressuring Turkey, and gaveTurkey credibility by making the government appear responsive to criticisms. Thus,

when the cataloguing of the archives was completed and they were officially ‘opened’in 1989, the Turkish Foreign Minister Mesut Yılmaz declared, ‘The issue of Armenian

claims must no longer be a subject of political exploitation. This is not a matter forpoliticians to solve but for historians and we want to contribute to this effort’

(Gurdilek 1989). Yılmaz further declared, ‘the archives w[ould] be opened “primarilyto render ineffective the claims of Armenian genocide”’ (Vryonis 1991, p. 104).

Notably, only some of the relevant archives were opened at the time, and those who


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were granted permission to research the Armenian question in the archives wereprimarily scholars whom Turkish authorities knew would not challenge the official

narrative.At the same time, Turkey extended its efforts to disseminate and institutionalise its

official narrative to the United States (US). Sukru Elekdag, the Turkish Ambassador tothe United States from 1979 to 1989, tried to counter the developing trend toward

international recognition of the Armenian genocide with efforts focused on gainingsupport for Turkey’s image and position among academics, business interests and

powerful lobbying groups in the US. Thus, the Turkish government established andfunded (with US$3 million) the Washington-based Institute of Turkish Studies, whichsupports academic research on modern Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. Elekdag also

encouraged the establishment and/or revitalisation of Turkish-American organisationsand business associations for American companies with interests in Turkey.

In addition, the Turkish government hired ‘public relations firms to undertake the“improvement of Turkey’s public image” and to promote the country’s causes’ in the

US, at the expense of over US$1 million per year (Vryonis 1991, p. 88). And, finally,Elekdag wooed the support of Jewish-American organisations and academics

specialising in Turkish and Ottoman studies for Turkey’s position on the Armenianquestion, which gave Turkey local, legitimate advocates in subsequent debates in theUS Congress (Vryonis 1991, pp. 79–118; Bali 2009).

New Pressures on the Official Narrative

While in the 1980s the Turkish narrative of the Armenian question emerged fromsilence to address claims of genocide, a new set of international and domestic forces

put renewed pressure on this narrative in the late 1990s and early 2000s.The end of the Cold War presented a significant change in the international context

that had structurally supported Turkey’s position on the Armenian genocide, and thisaltered its calculus on the issue in several ways. First, it prompted a shift in the foreign

policy priorities of Turkey’s key ally, the US. Second, it introduced a new state into thepolitics surrounding the Armenian genocide: Turkey recognised the Republic of

Armenia at its independence in 1991, but two years later it severed diplomatic relationsand closed the shared border in response to the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict betweenArmenia and Azerbaijan. Since then, the issue of the genocide has become intertwined

with the normalisation of relations between Turkey and Armenia, and Turkey has usedthe Nagorno-Karabagh conflict to rhetorically support its narrative of the genocide.

Another change in Turkey’s external relations was its acceptance as a candidate forEU membership in December 1999. This has led to the passage of a number of reforms

in Turkey, and pressure for further reform, especially in the areas of human and civilrights, and in the role of the Turkish military in civilian politics. Turkey’s EU candidacy

has also introduced new external actors into the politics surrounding the Armenianquestion. Initially, the European Parliament (EP) and some EU member-states claimed

that Turkey’s recognition of the genocide would be a precondition of membership

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in the EU. However, the EP changed its position on this issue around 2006–7, andsince then has called on Turkey to work with Armenia to establish good neighbourly

relations and to resolve the controversy over the ‘tragic past’. As a result, EUinstitutions now refrain from pressuring Turkey on the issue of the genocide, and the

EU Commission supports civil society efforts to combat discrimination and improvedialogue within Turkish society.

Finally, the past fifteen years have seen a dramatic increase in internationalrecognition of the Armenian genocide. In particular, a number of legislative

resolutions were passed in different states in 2000. Of these, two particularly provokedthe Turkish government: the consideration of a resolution (HRes 596) recognising theArmenian genocide in the US House of Representatives in the autumn of 2000, and

France’s recognition of the Armenian genocide in January 2001. These officialrecognitions and calls by states for Turkey to apologise for the Armenian genocide

have resulted from domestic and international civil society efforts, along with somecooperation from the government of Armenia.

Domestic Activism on the ‘Armenian Question’

In the domestic sphere, a growing number of civil society efforts have addressed theArmenian question and/or the situation of Armenians and other minorities in

contemporary Turkey since the early 1990s. A first critical book on the Armenianquestion was published in Turkey in 1992 (Akcam 1992), and since then a handful of

publishing houses have published books that challenge aspects of the officialhistoriography of the Armenian genocide. In the Turkish media, the first criticalcoverage of the issue was in 1995. Since 2000, coverage of the Armenian question has

dramatically expanded, such that today one can find a range of attitudes expressed onthe topic in the Turkish media. Activism related to the Armenian question also started

in 1992, but has been relatively scant.18 Finally, a small group of academics in Turkey,most of whom work at private universities, has started to work on issues related to the

Armenian question. This has led to a growing body of critical, Turkish scholarship onvarious aspects of the Armenian question, which the sociologist Fatma Muge Gocek

(2006) has argued constitutes a ‘postnationalist critical narrative’.The emergence of domestic attention to the Armenian question has gradually lifted

the taboo on its discussion, such that now activists, writers, intellectuals and

journalists frequently discuss the issue in the public sphere.19 Moreover, the officialnarrative is now challenged from within Turkish society, in addition to the ongoing

external challenges described above. For example, while most of the political partiesin Turkey have strongly supported the official narrative on the Armenian question,

challenges have been recently voiced by politicians from the ethnically KurdishDemocratic Society Party (DTP). In December 2008, members of the DTP

parliamentary delegation called on the Turkish Parliament to apologise to Armeniansfor the ‘events of 1915’ and used the Kurdish word for ‘genocide’ (Asbarez News

2008). And, in October 2009, the Deputy Chairman of the DTP’s parliamentary


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group called for the Turkish government to question and change its official policyabout this past, declaring, ‘During the last period of the Ottoman Empire, in

1915–16, the Union and Progress Party systematically pursued a policy ofextermination of the Christians who had been the native peoples of the country for

centuries’ (Gunaysu 2009). These statements offer evidence of the lifting of the tabooon this issue within Turkey.

Outsiders in Power: The 2002 Election of AKP

In addition to the emergence of domestic discussion on this issue, AKP has further

threatened the status quo in Turkey since winning a majority of seats in the November2002 parliamentary elections. AKP is a socially conservative party whose leadership

comes from outside the political and bureaucratic elite. As the mainstream inheritor ofthe Islamic political movement that has developed since the 1970s (Ozbudun 2006),

many of its leaders and some of its supporters have suffered under Turkey’s secularregime. As a result, the party has several motivations to challenge the status quo inTurkish politics: (1) to expand the scope of civil rights, especially limits on religious

expression; (2) to discredit the military and secular establishment and constrain itsability to shut down the party; and (3) to garner votes from disaffected groups within

Turkish society, such as Kurds and Alevis.In the past two years, AKP has taken significant steps to challenge entrenched

sources of power and assumptions in Turkish politics, especially in the Ergenekoninvestigation and the ‘democratic opening’ initiative. ‘Ergenekon’ is the name of an

ultranationalist group that is accused of conspiring to create terror and chaos inTurkey in order to discredit AKP, derail Turkey’s EU candidacy and create the

conditions for a military coup that would re-install secularists in power. Sincemid-2007, there have been over 100 arrests of individuals allegedly involved in thisconspiracy, including active and retired military officers, police officers, journalists,

lawyers and politicians. Moreover, this investigation reveals ‘deep state’20 elements thathave influenced policies on the Armenian question, since the assassination of the

Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink is claimed to be linked to this conspiracy,and some of the most prominent members of Ergenekon have actively incited

nationalist sentiment on this issue over the past several years. More recently, AKPannounced a ‘democratic opening’ to comprehensively address the ‘Kurdish question’

and deepen Turkey’s democratisation. While legislative proposals to address humanrights and other aspects of the Kurdish question are currently stalled because ofrevelations of another alleged coup plot, this initiative is a historic step and a sign of

the space that has been opened up in Turkish politics.

Strong Continuities and Limited Change in the Official Narrative

In response to the changes outlined above, there have been subtle shifts in the Turkish

narrative on the Armenian question. However, the institutionalised strategies and

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preferences of military and bureaucratic elites have been strong sources of continuityand of resistance to pressures for change in the official narrative.

On the Armenian question, AKP has demonstrated some willingness to reconsiderthe issue, and has taken steps in the direction of change. Over the past several years,

especially under the leadership of President Abdullah Gul, AKP has engaged in agradual rapprochement with Armenia, culminating in the October 2009 signing of a

protocol to establish diplomatic relations by the foreign ministers of Turkey andArmenia. While this step does not constitute a change in the official narrative, the two

states have agreed in principle to the creation of a subcommittee to look into the‘historical dimension’, which could lead to change in the future.

Moreover, AKP leaders have taken several symbolic steps on this issue. In 2005,

Foreign Minister Gul sent a statement of support to be read at the opening of the firstscholarly conference in Turkey that critically investigated what befell Ottoman

Armenians during WWI. In 2006, Prime Minister Erdogan announced that the phrase‘so-called Armenian genocide’ (sozde Ermeni soykırımı) should not be used by

government officials, who were instead instructed to use the more neutral phrase‘the events of 1915’ (1915 olayları). While this decision has not always been followed in

practice, the decision indicates AKP’s different approach to this issue. Finally, in May2009 Erdogan stated that ‘For years . . . People of other ethnicities were driven fromthe country. Did we gain anything because of that? This was the result of a fascist

approach’ (Kart 2009). While it was not clear to which ethnicities Erdogan wasreferring, this was a seminal acknowledgement for a Turkish head of state. At the same

time, Erdogan continues to assert the impossibility of Turks or Muslims evercommitting genocide (Hurriyet Daily News 2009).

The content of the official narrative has also shifted in response to some of thesechallenges. Most notably, the official narrative no longer elides the fact that hundreds

of thousands of Ottoman Armenians were killed in the deportation. This is nowadmitted, but additional arguments then rationalise and/or relativise these deaths.

In particular, greater emphasis is now placed on the arguments that these deathsoccurred in a context of civil war or ‘mutual massacre’ between Armenians and Turks,and that the number of Muslim deaths greatly exceeded those of Armenians.

Following the Repertoire of Action Established in the 1980s

Aside from these shifts, however, the overall gist of the official narrative of theArmenian genocide has remained largely the same, since agents of the Turkish state

have taken steps to respond to and rebuff these new challenges to the official narrative.Remarkably, these responses have largely followed the strategic framework that was set

in the early 1980s.

Centralising control over the official narrative. In a step reminiscent of the creation ofIAGM in 1981, the Turkish government sought to counter the spate of legislative

resolutions recognising the Armenian genocide by establishing the loose, inter-agency


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Committee to Coordinate the Struggle with the Baseless Genocide Claims(Asılsız Soykırım Iddiaları ile Mucadele Koordinasyon Kurulu, ASIMKK) in 2001.

Co-headed by the foreign minister and the general who heads the National SecurityCouncil, the committee includes high-level representatives from key government

ministries and organisations, including the Ministry of the Interior, the TTK and thearchives (Zaman 2002). While the committee’s existence is not widely or openly

discussed, it appears that its main goals have been to coordinate and execute acentralised strategy for responding to international pressures on this issue, and to

shape public opinion in Turkey and abroad on this issue. 21

A thinktank that focuses solely on the Armenian question was also formed in late2000/early 2001, in response to a resolution in the French Parliament. This

thinktank, the Institute for Armenian Research (ERAREN), is headed by the retireddiplomat and former head of IAGM, Omer Engin Lutem. While it is nominally

independent from the government, it was established with the involvement of YOK,22

many of its contributors are retired diplomats and former government officials and

its main funding came from a Turkish company (ULKER) that has strong ties toTurkish politicians. ERAREN publishes a quarterly journal called Armenian Studies,

which is available in both English and Turkish; it has published several academicbooks on the Armenian question; and it has organised academic conferences tobuild networks among Turkish academics working on the Armenian question.23 Also

in the past few years, several other thinktanks and research groups that work at leastin part on the Armenian question have been formed, most with some government

involvement.

Publishing defences of and marshalling evidence to support the official narrative. Again

in the policy mould set in the 1980s, official efforts have focused on publishing‘academic’ books on the Armenian question. As a result of this effort, which has been

loosely coordinated by ASIMKK,24 there has been a dramatic increase in the number ofofficial publications on the Armenian question since 2001. The nearly twofold increase

in official publications (from 15 to 28) between the late 1990s and the first five years ofthe new millennium has also involved a wider range of government agencies than in

the 1980s. For example, the Turkish parliament (TBMM) has published several booksand reports on the Armenian question in the past few years, which is a new trend.These trends can be seen in Figure 1. In addition, the state and military archives have

each published a number of books of archival documents on the Armenian question(nine and five, respectively, between 2001 and 2005), as part of the overall strategy of

marshalling and publishing evidence to support the official narrative.25

Mirroring these trends, and probably related to ASIMKK’s efforts, is the increase in

quasi-official publications, which include books published by the TTK and byERAREN. In particular, the TTK has striven to publish books that respond to the

arguments underlying the claims of genocide,26 publishing 15 books on the topic inthe five-year period from 2001 to 2005, compared with two books in each of the

previous two five-year periods (1991–95 and 1996–2000). Even more strikingly, the

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number of non-academic, non-official books published on the Armenian question inTurkey increased almost two-and-a-half times over the previous five-year period

(from 27 books published between 1996 and 2000, to 67 books from 2001 to 2005).While part of this increase can be attributed to private publishers’ and writers’

attempts to capitalise on a new issue of public interest since 2000,27 there is reason tobelieve that part of this increase has been supported and/or encouraged by the Turkish

government,28 possibly to reinforce the official narrative among the Turkish public.

Teaching the official narrative to Turkish students. As in the 1980s, the Turkish statehas used the national educational system to inculcate the official narrative in the next

generation, with the Turkish politician Devlet Bahceli emphasising that ASIMKK hasstriven to ‘ensure that young people are informed about the past, present, and future

of unfounded allegations of genocide’ (European Stability Initiative 2009, p. 7).In 1999, even before ASIMKK’s creation, the government sent a letter to schools

indicating that Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians wanted to divide the country, and

it also created a programme to prepare teachers to answer questions about allegationsof massacres or genocide of these groups (Ozgur Politika 2003). Then in 2002,

‘The National Education Ministry . . . decided to teach issues related to so-calledArmenian genocide claims . . . to elementary and high school pupils . . . to make

students more aware of the issues and lobby activities related to “Armenian GenocideClaims”’ (Turkish Daily News 2002). Furthermore, in 2003, the MEB required all

Turkish students (including those in private Armenian schools) to write an essayrefuting Armenian genocide claims, and directed schools to organise conferencesagainst Armenian genocide claims and to encourage students to write theses disputing

allegations of genocide. Finally, in the recent comprehensive curriculum reforms, theNational Security Council rejected many proposed changes in the sections about

Armenians and the Armenian question.29

Gaining international support for the official narrative. In the last element of thisstrategic framework, Turkish diplomats have worked to win international support for

the official narrative from academics, politicians and organisations, for example instates such as the US and Israel. This has involved financial and administrative support

for organisations that back the Turkish government’s interests in other states, financialsupport for research that does not criticise official policies on sensitive topics such as

the Armenian question (Matossian 2008), and the employment of powerful publicrelations firms and lobbyists to advocate on Turkey’s behalf, especially in the US

(Bali 2009; Holthouse 2008; Edmonds & Giraldi 2009).

Toward Building a New Research Agenda

I have argued that Turkish officers and bureaucrats under the military regime in power

from 1980 to 1983 established a repertoire of action through which agents of the statedefended and bolstered the official narrative of the Armenian genocide. Two decades

later, this strategic framework was followed again by bureaucratic elites facing a new


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set of challenges to the official narrative. In the two decades that separated these twoperiods, the international and domestic political contexts changed in several

important respects, and Turkey’s official narrative came under increasing threat,

especially domestically. Nevertheless, Turkey’s authoritarian and military legacies havecontinued to structure the state’s approach to this issue. The agents that constructed

and executed this strategy include a range of bureaucratic and military elites,including: military officers; diplomats; historians, both in the TTK and at some public

universities; the Council of Higher Education; the MEB; and the state and militaryarchives. Via the authority and reach of these offices, agents of the Turkish state have

continued to reject claims of genocide and oppose them with statements, publications

and textbooks articulating an official (counter-)narrative.This prompts the question of what accounts for the continued ability of these

officials—many of whom are unelected—to structure the state’s position on this issue.One of the central factors accounting for the strength of this authoritarian legacy has

been the institutionalisation of the military’s role in Turkish politics. During and at theend of the 1980–83 military regime (and again following the military’s ‘intervention’

in politics in 1997), a number of institutional innovations were made to preserve themilitary’s authoritative role in politics after the transition to civilian rule. These

include the writing of a new constitution, the increase in the military’s formal advisory

role via the National Security Council, the writing of laws granting immunity foractivities during the period of military rule and the writing of laws proscribing

criticism of the military and other state institutions (Jacoby 2005). As Hite andMorlino (2004) argue, the implementation of institutional innovations under

authoritarian rule is one factor that accounts for the stronger presence of authoritarianlegacies in post-authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, the transition from the military

regime to civilian rule in 1983 was fully orchestrated by the military. An example ofthis is that the general in charge during the period of military rule was made president

for the seven years following the transition. The fact that the transition involved

neither a break with nor a repudiation of the period of military rule also explains thecontinuation of policies begun by the military (Hite & Morlino 2004). While there are

a number of other factors that have shaped the continuities in Turkey’s position on theArmenian question, these authoritarian legacies help account for the stickiness of the

strategies discussed in this paper.Finally, this analysis highlights the need to combine different academic approaches to

fully understand the political dynamics that produce continuities and changes in thisnarrative. This case does not fit easily into the dominant literatures used to study how and

why states grapple with violent and shameful pasts. On one hand, the early aborted

attempts at justice and the subsequent silencing of the history of the genocide in Turkey’snational historiography make this case an awkward fit with the literature on transitional

justice, which is often limited to a relatively short timeframe during transitions todemocracy (e.g. Elster 2004). However, more recent work linking issues of transitional

justice with legacies of authoritarianism yields important insights into some of theinstitutional sources of continuity in Turkey’s official narrative (e.g. Cesarini & Hite 2004).

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This paper builds on these insights by elucidating the processes, mechanisms and actorsthathaveproducedandre-producedTurkey’snarrative of theArmeniangenocide,whichis

akeystepinanalysingtheoverallpoliticaldynamicsshapingthisofficialnarrative. Infutureresearch, these insights into the sources of continuity should be analysed alongside

complementary work on memory politics and apologies, which offer valuable findingsabout the processes and factors that influence changes in official, collective and individual

memories of traumatic events (e.g. Nobles 2008; Art 2006).

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Tobias Schulze-Cleven, David Mendeloff, Antonio Costa Pinto, LeonardoMorlino and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and comments. I am grateful to theUniversity of California (UC) Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation; the Andrew W. MellonFoundation; and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the European Union Center of Excellence andthe Travers Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley for funding that supported this research.

Notes

[1] A large body of evidence has documented the genocidal nature of these events. For political andlegal evaluations, see: International Association of Genocide Scholars 2005; Whitaker 1985;International Center for Transitional Justice 2003. For historical scholarship, see: Bloxham2003; Akcam 2004; Dadrian 1995; Kaiser 2001; Hovannisian 2003. For primary sources, see:Sarafian 1993; Davis 1989. For dissenting views, see: Lewy 2005; McCarthy 1995.

[2] I define ‘official narrative’ as a state’s characterisation of an event, including the nature andscope of the event, and the state’s characterisation of its own involvement in and responsibilityfor the event’s planning and organisation.

[3] Hereafter I will write the phrase ‘Armenian question’ without quotes, for simplicity’s sake.[4] The number of Armenians killed is difficult to ascertain, and is one of the sites of dispute in the

historiography of the genocide. Estimates range from a low of 55,000 (Halacoglu 2002) to ahigh of 1.5 million.

[5] On this, see: Schaller & Zimmerer 2008; Bjørnlund 2008; Ungor 2008.[6] Author’s interview with A. Erman, retired Turkish ambassador, Istanbul, 10 April 2009.[7] While not all of the activities that were part of these strategies occurred during the period of

military rule (1980–83), the overall strategic framework was developed in that period.[8] Erman, interview. IAGM’s first head was Omer Engin Lutem, and its work was closely overseen

by the Deputy Foreign Minister, Kamuran Gurun. Its name has since been changed to theSecurity Affairs Directorate. Author’s interview with O. E. Lutem, Ankara, 11 March 2009.

[9] Author’s interview with anonymous individual, Istanbul, 9 April 2009. Lutem, interview, 2009.[10] Author’s interview with I. Turkmen, retired Turkish ambassador and former foreign minister,

Istanbul, 8 April; Erman, interview.[11] Author’s interviews with O. E. Lutem, retired Turkish ambassador and current chairman of

ERAREN, Ankara, 20 May 2008 and 11 March 2009.[12] Lutem, interview, 2009.[13] The TTK was established by Ataturk in 1931 to create a glorified national history for Turkey and

Turks (Gocek 2007). While it is nominally an independent foundation, TTK publicationsfrequently reproduce and advance official ideologies on a range of topics, including theArmenian question.

[14] Erman, interview.[15] Lutem, interview, 2008.


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[16] Author’s interview with anonymous individual, Istanbul, 9 April 2009.[17] Turkmen, interview; Erman, interview; Lutem, interview, 2008.[18] While these trends are primarily due to domestic factors, some of these developments have

been supported and funded by international actors.[19] Some people are still charged by prosecutors for violating the state-defined boundaries of allowable

speech on this issue, but prosecutions are inconsistent and often do not result in conviction.[20] Analysts and observers of Turkish politics often make a distinction between the elected

government and the so-called ‘deep state’, which consists of elements of the military, alliedinstitutions and other influential but usually unelected actors in Turkish society.

[21] In a daily press release from the Directorate General of Press and Information, theannouncement of the establishment of this committee on 25 May 2001 was mentioned. Itspurpose was reported to be ‘to dismiss—without causing negative effects on [the] country—efforts concerning the unjust and baseless genocide claims to which Turkey was exposed, and toeliminate their negative effects on [Turkey’s] national interest’ (T.C. Basbakanlık Basın-Yayın veEnformasyon Genel Mudurlugu 2002).

[22] Author’s interview with anonymous academic, Ankara, 29 April 2008.[23] Lutem, interview, 2009.[24] Ibid.[25] While the number of books published by the archives has increased in general (author’s

interview with Y. Sarınay, historian and Director General of the Prime Minister’s State Archives,Ankara, 25 March 2009), the increase in publications by the archives on the Armenian questionis at least in part related to ASIMKK’s activities (author’s interview with K. Cicek, historian andresearcher at the TTK, Ankara, 9 March 2009).

[26] Cicek, interivew.[27] Author’s interview with R. Bali, independent researcher, Istanbul, 1 April 2009.[28] Author’s interview with R. Zarakolu, book publisher, Istanbul, 1 April 2009.[29] Author’s interview with anonymous academic, Ankara, 23 March 2009.

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Jennifer M. Dixon is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley and a Research Fellow in the International Security Program at theHarvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Sheholds an MA in political science from Berkeley and an AB in Government fromDartmouth College. Her dissertation investigates how states’ narratives about darkpasts are shaped and contested over time. Her work has also been published inThe International Journal for Education Law and Policy.


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