Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Denial of Violence Ottoman Past Turkish Present and Collective Violence Against the Armenians 1789-2 Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009. Histories of the fate of the Ottoman Armenians have long, and understandably, been dominated by two themes. Firstly, the quest for ‘proof’ of the genocidal intent behind the treatment of the Armenians in 1915. Secondly, the attempt to locate and classify the case of the Armenians within comparative histories of genocide, in other words, does the fate of the Armenians constitute the first modern genocide? The lead-up to the centenary of the Armenian Genocide in April 2015 has however prompted a wave of publications addressing this contested history from new perspectives. Some draw on new research or critical perspectives in order to investigate the causes of the massacre and deportation of the Ottoman Armenian population, for example Ronald Grigor Suny’s forthcoming, They Can Live in the Desert and Nowhere Else. (1) Others meanwhile focus on the long term aftermaths of these events, notably Thomas de Waal’s, Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide .(2) Müge Göçek’s Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and Collective Violence against the Armenians 1789 – 2009 is thus part of a wider shift in this field from unearthing ‘evidence’ of genocide towards more nuanced and theoretically informed approaches to not only to causes but also to experiences of Genocide, the responses it engendered and its complex aftermaths. As the introduction makes clear, Denial of Violence is an ‘intensely personal’ text which addresses Müge Göçek’s own encounter with the wider Turkish past. This encounter, she explains, began through her work on the groundbreaking WATS (Workshop on Armenian Turkish Scholarship) project. This project, initiated by scholars at the University of Michigan, over a course of several years, brought together Turkish, Armenian and international scholars, journalists and other parties to engage with shared, if conflicting, pasts.(3) Given the persistence of state-sponsored denial of genocide by Turkey and the ongoing attempts to restrict or silence those who question the official Turkish narrative Göçek’s undertaking should also be recognised as intensely brave. Indeed, the final chapter of this book focuses on the still unresolved case of Göçek’s friend and colleague, Hrant Dink, editor of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos and advocate of both Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and democratisation in Turkey. Hrant Dink was murdered in Istanbul in January 2007. His tragic death has prompted an ongoing debate within and beyond Turkey on the question of Armenian/Turkish relations and the possibilities of recognition and reconciliation. Denial of Violence is very much a product of this context. It is representative of the growing engagement of historians of this region and period with an expanding range of source material and a willingness to look for new ways to address the question of what may be suppressed or absent from the official Turkish archival record. The text does not go over the old ground of gathering ‘evidence’ to counter denial narratives (an approach which is increasingly redundant given that countering denial is not a simply a matter of finding the ‘right evidence’ but of deconstructing narratives and understanding both their origins and their ongoing social and political functions). Instead Göçek approaches this subject from the perspective of historical sociology, examining the autobiographical writings of a wide range of Turkish, Armenian, Kurdish and other figures published in Turkish in the period from 1798 (the start of the ‘systematic modernization’ of the Ottoman Empire) to 2009. These narratives are addressed in a comparative framework in order to analyse the collective memory of violence against the Armenians, moving beyond ‘individual recollections and interpretations to capture patterns of meaning which exist within society at large’ (p. 54). The focus of her analysis is locating and interpreting memories (and silences) regarding violence against the Armenians in order to examine the layers and dynamics of denial over time. However Göçek goes beyond addressing the fate of the Armenians and ultimately poses a much broader question, ‘why does violence seem endemic to Turkish state and society?’ Her answer is that the fate of the Armenians may be regarded as an act of ‘foundational violence’ which, unresolved and unacknowledged, has allowed for continued patterns of violence and lack of democratisation: ‘As the Turkish state fails to confront the past and the violence contained therein, denial remains normalised, reproducing itself throughout Turkish state and society. True democracy therefore remains a constant challenge for Turkey as its failure to acknowledge the collective violence embedded in its past keeps reproducing such violence in the present’ (p. 2). Such acknowledgement of the long term consequences of violence for perpetrators as well as victims as well as an integration of the aftermaths of the Genocide into wider histories of modern Turkish politics and society is an important departure from the existing literature. Nonetheless, given the growing literature on collective memory after violence and conflict in the modern world (especially in the case of the Great War) I wonder if contextualisation of the Turkish case within this literature would have helped to bring this case into dialogue with broader histories of memory and the construction of national identities in inter-war Europe. Because of the emphasis on memoir Göçek’s interpretation differs from previous analyses of denial in that her focus is not solely upon ‘the state as the primary actor’ (p. 3). Whilst some scholarship on this subject has examined the mechanisms of genocide denial at the level of the state or of academic research in Turkey, the fact of denial is nonetheless often ‘taken for granted’ in the existing literature, and the social and cultural forces and even individual actors which lie behind it had not yet been adequately investigated. In this respect too, Göçek’s work is a very welcome addition to the scholarship. The focus on memoir allows Göçek to effectively address what she terms the ‘affective’ as well as the ‘structural’ elements which have shaped denial over the course of the century. Göçek argues that ‘affective elements are significant in that they capture the meaning-making processes that inform not only the norms and values of social groups but also their social actions’. Her emphasis on ‘affect’ is important because it provides insight not only into the motivations behind denial but also into how denial narratives have functioned and what has enabled them to be reproduced so effectively over time (p. 31). However, whilst the authors of the memoirs analysed here are listed in an appendix some feel quite ‘anonymous’ in the body of text. Although the emphasis here is on the shape (and the silences) of collective memory, in some cases I was left wanting to know more about the identities and experiences of the authors of the texts. Although the aftermaths and memories of genocide for Armenian communities are not of course the focus of this book, given the subject matter the complexities of Armenian relationships with the past could perhaps have been highlighted a little more in the introductory sections. Statements such as ’Meanwhile, the Turkish denial prevents all Armenians scattered throughout the world from adequately mourning, grieving and thereby eventually coming to terms with their own tragic past’ effectively capture the enduring legacies of genocide and denial for many Armenians (p. 31). However they also perhaps gloss over the complexities of Armenian collective memories and social identities and the divisions and tensions which exist within and between different communities and generations. Such issues are perhaps beyond the scope of this already wide-ranging work but given the growing theoretical literatures on both collective memory of conflict and ‘trauma’, they are perhaps a subject ripe for further analysis elsewhere. The focus of Denial of Violence is not the causes of violence against the Armenians per se, but chapter one helpfully contextualises violence against the Armenians in the advent of modernity, changing economic structures, social relations and visions of the political order in the Ottoman Empire. Göçek explains clearly how ‘escalating polarisation in the Ottoman social structure with the advent of western European modernity gradually transformed the preexisting prejudice and discrimination of Muslims against non-Muslims subjects into acts of episodic violence’ (p. 124). Over the course of the text she also draws out the continuities and changes in patterns of violence against the Armenians (and other groups) from the late Ottoman period through to the contemporary Turkish Republic. The attention to identifying continuities of ideas, practices and the leadership and elites across the divide of the First World War and founding of the new Republic is a real strength of this work. Göçek identifies four distinct phases of violence and denial: Imperial denial of the origins of violence 1789–1907, Young Turk denial of the act of violence 1908–18, early Republican denial of the actors of violence 1919–73 and late Republican denial of the responsibility for violence 1974–2009. Each of these phases are discussed in separate chapters, all of which have rather different tones and emphases. In each chapter Göçek addresses a particular narrative and identifies an event central to legitimating it. Chapter one examines the way in which a denial narrative emerged in the aftermath of violence against the Armenians in the 1890s (the ‘Hamidian massacres’). In this narrative, the 1896 Armenian attack on the Ottoman bank and sympathetic Armenian relations with the European powers were used by the Ottoman authorities in order to construct an image of the Armenians as a threat to the Empire and thus legitimise violence against them. Chapter two meanwhile focuses on violence committed against the Armenians during the First World War – the Armenian Genocide. Göçek demonstrates that violence against the Armenians is very much present in the accounts and recollections of this period of members of the CUP and local Ottoman authorities. Through her analysis of their memoirs she is able to demonstrate in a concrete manner the ways in which such acts of violence were justified, rationalised and ultimately denied. Göçek is therefore able to shift the focus from the eyewitness accounts of the Armenian genocide by ‘westerners’ (missionaries & diplomats) on which many current analyses are based, to accounts from within the Ottoman Empire in the hope that ‘the careful documentation of such violence will hopefully enable the contemporary Turks to recognise what happened in their past as narrated by their own ancestors’ (p. 227). This chapter echoes other recent interpretations of the causes of the Armenian genocide in emphasising the importance of Ottoman defeat in the Balkan wars and refugee crises which followed in their wake. The contents of the memoirs demonstrate in precise and powerful ways how these events not only created a sense of collective vulnerability or trauma but also re-shaped personal and familial attitudes, mentalities and world views in the lead-up to the genocide. The following two chapters address the periods currently more readily associated with denial of the Armenian Genocide. Chapter three draws out the continuities between the late Ottoman and the early Republican periods, deconstructing the notion of a clean break between Ottoman past and a new ‘modern’ Turkey. The central theme of this chapter is that because violence against the Armenians was not acknowledged or reflected upon in the early Turkish Republic it became normalised and would later be deployed against other minorities and opposition groups. Göçek demonstrates how many former Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) members and individuals implicated in violence against the Armenians were gradually integrated into the elites of the new Republic and suggests that these groups joined the new nationalists in ‘sustaining and normalising collective violence within state and government they practiced exclusionary nationalism, systematically excluding from the body politic of the nation first the non-muslims and then the Kurds, communists and Islamists’ (p. 332). Whilst the inadequacies of the post-war military tribunals of the perpetrators of the genocide are identified as the ‘legitimating event’ for the denial narratives which emerged during this period, Göçek also addresses the wide ranging mechanisms of the state for controlling narratives of the past through education and the media and traces the evolution of ‘exclusionary practices’ for defining both the nation and its enemies. The final chapter deviates from the format of those preceding in that it is more personal and feels more highly emotionally charged, tracing not only continued violence but also the emergence of a public ‘counter narrative’ since 2000. Göçek identifies the ways in which the ‘official’ narrative has been challenged by memoirs which expose shared Turkish and Armenian pasts, the work of organisations such as the Hrant Dink foundation, journalism and the research of academics at private universities. This chapter in particular draws parallels between earlier violence against the Armenians and the treatment of other ethnic, religious and social groups in modern Turkey, in particular Kurds, Alewites and non-Muslims. In focusing on the work of Hrant Dink and others to challenge the ‘exclusionary nature of Turkish nationalism, the official discriminatory Turkish state policy against non-Muslim minorities, and the continued lack of accountability for past collective violence committed against the Armenians’ (p. 418) the methodology of this chapter departs a little from the close focus on the analysis of memoir which provides the foundation for earlier chapters. Göçek also pays attention to the consequences of the attacks and assassinations by the Armenian terrorist groups the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCOAG). These acts, she argues in reality fostered the development of the modern Turkish denial narrative and allowed the Turkish state to portray Armenians as ‘violent perpetrators’. Commenting on a 1983 JCOAG statement Göçek observes that ‘it is fascinating that the JCOAG could not comprehend that its own violence not only failed to generate any dialogue: for at least the following two decades it instead bolstered and legitimated the Turkish refusal and resistance to engage in such dialogue’ (p. 452). Göçek does not shy away from acknowledging that the ‘official’ Armenian narrative of modern history is also selective and ‘especially overlooks the Armenian massacres of the Turks and Kurds that occurred in the eastern and southern provides at the end of the war and during the Allied occupation’ (p. 452). Such willingness to engage with complex and prolonged patterns of violence rather than simply reproduce national narratives in painting all Turks as perpetrators and all Armenians as eternal victims is another strength of this work. At 656 pages of dense prose, this highly detailed account is by no means an easy introduction to the history or the aftermaths of the Armenian genocide or to Armenian-Turkish relations more broadly. Nor does Göçek’s text offer any easy answers or definitive conclusions, in Göçek’s own words her frustratingly short conclusion reflects her desire to ‘capture that awkward, unsatisfactory state of incompletion that the lack of closure produces and has produced for almost a century for the Armenian victims and their descendants’(p. 447). Rather this text presumes of its readers an understanding of both the history of the fate of the Ottoman Armenians and a willingness to engage with a range of critical theoretical approaches to its aftermaths. Thus for those already engaged in the complex histories of the aftermath of the Armenian genocide or on questions of memory, forgetting and denial of violence in the modern world more broadly, Göçek’s work is a welcome addition to the scholarship. However, it seems important to note that although the publication of texts like Göçek’s which engage with this contested history from a conceptually and methodologically sophisticated perspective represent crucial developments in the field, they also highlight that introductory texts which would render this subject accessible to undergraduate audiences and take these critical debates beyond specialists are still very much lacking. Armenia. The Armenian Genocide unofficially began with the arrest of 250 Armenian intellectuals by Turkish officials on April 24, 1915. Over the next several years a series of systematic deportations and mass executions along with intentional starvation would cause the deaths of more than one million Armenians. The aftermath left the remaining Armenian population scattered, resulting in one of the greatest diasporas in the twentieth century. Below is a condensed history of the Armenian Genocide, beginning with the life of the Armenians before the genocide and extending to the genocide's legacy today. The Armenians before the Genocide. The Armenians and other Christian communities, including the Greeks and Assyrians, were significant minorities in the Ottoman Empire. Despite being a multi-religious and multi-ethnic state with members from all three of the great monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism), the empire was dominated by ethnic Turks. The second half of the 19th century, saw the rise of Turkish nationalism that placed emphasis on the ethnic and religious identity of the majority element of the empire to the growing detriment of religious and ethno-religious minorities inhabiting the country. Beset by a series of military defeats, an ever-shrinking economy, and an overall political instability on both domestic and international fronts, the Ottoman Empire eventually turned inwards. The various Turkish nationalist movements meanwhile grew both in strength and stature, a growing sign of their influence being the nearly overnight proliferation of literature and articles that touted the uniqueness and supremacy of Turkish civilization. The military losses that saw the further fragmentation of the empire and the ensuing reactionary nationalism would have a disastrous impact on Empire’s remaining Christian minorities, but especially the Armenian community. It left them as one of the largest Christian groups in the Ottoman Empire, geographically largely confined to Eastern Anatolia and away from other Christian populations, and thus especially vulnerable to political abuse and collective violence. Although throughout the centuries Armenians had been considered the “loyal nation,” and had risen to economic and civic prominence in the most important of imperial urban centers and in the capital, with the rise of Turkish nationalism their situation was becoming increasingly intolerable and untenable. The first Armenian political parties established around this period sought to address the increasing vulnerability of the Armenian cultural life in the empire, seeking political and economic reforms that would alleviate the growing discrimination towards the Armenian minority. This growing Armenian political awareness on one hand, and their economic overachievement in the Sultan’s domain on the other, would contribute to the atmosphere of distrust between Turks and Armenians. The Armenian question, long a fixture of European and Ottoman diplomacy, was now becoming a fiercely debated topic of highest importance in Turkish politics. Political and economic reforms advocated by European powers and at least on paper embraced by Ottoman authorities was fast becoming a mere afterthought given how fast events on the ground were developing. Tensions would ultimately come to a head when a series of pogroms were unleashed against the Armenians and to a lesser extent against other Christian groups in the empire. The Hamidian massacres of 1894-1896 claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Armenians, serving, in the words of one Armenian historian, as a “dress rehearsal” for the Armenian Genocide of 1915. In the years leading up to the genocide, the Ottoman authorities would further tighten the restrictions for learning, property ownership, and religious practices for minorities, including the Armenians, in the empire. This would foreshadow future events. The Armenian Genocide. It can be difficult to pinpoint an exact date when the Armenian Genocide begins because it was the culmination of a series of policies targeting the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population. In February 1915, Armenians serving in the Ottoman army were removed from active duty and forced into labor battalions. However, April 24, 1915 is widely considered the date the genocide began because it was then that Turkish authorities arrested 250 Armenian intellectuals. The reason given was fear that the Armenians were in league with Russia, the Ottoman Empire’s historic rival, and could serve as a potential fifth column. The hysteria created by World War I created a perfect cover for the Ottoman government led by the nationalist ruling party of Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), a.k.a. the Young Turks, to set in motion its genocidal plan against their Armenian fellow citizens. In May 1915, the deportation of the Armenians from Empire’s eastern provinces began apace. A series of consecutive laws passed by the Turkish government gave it the right to confiscate or otherwise impound Armenian properties and businesses left behind by the departing deportees as a wartime necessity. Other restrictions of similar or harsher nature soon followed, leaving the Armenian population defenseless, property-less, and generally destitute. Forced marches, massacres became more commonplace and widespread, especially on deportation routes. The Turkish military instituted a number of gruesome methods to exterminate the Armenian population, some of which would be adopted and refined by the Nazis a mere 25 years later. Those who were not killed outright by the military often faced starvation along the way. Rapes of women and girls were also commonplace. The Armenians who managed to survive the marches were sent on foot to concentration camps created by the Ottoman military. These camps were located near modern Turkey’s southern border, in the Syrian desert of Deir ez-Zor. The Turkish government routinely withheld food and water from the Armenians in the camp. The lack of nourishment, coupled with unsanitary conditions and widespread disease, meant life expectancy at the camps was extraordinarily short. Armenian women and girls were often sold while in the camps by Turkish gendarmes to local Arab bedouins and chieftains. Many of the Armenian women were also routinely abducted and taken as forced brides by Turkish and Kurdish militiamen. Much of the genocide would come to an end in 1918 with the conclusion of World War I. Reaction to the Genocide. The international community was fully aware of the genocide as it was unfolding. Several European countries and the United States had active consular missions throughout the Ottoman Empire providing a detailed account of events during the Armenian Genocide. In addition, Christian missionary organizations and charities were also active in the area at the time. It is through these missions that newspapers of the period were able to get regular updates on the events in Turkey. In the years after the genocide, several western witnesses to the atrocities would publish their own accounts, most notably Henry Morgenthau, the former US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Aid groups, especially from the United States, sent groups to provide relief to the Armenian people. In the aftermath of the genocide, thousands of Armenian people were adopted by westerners. In all, relief groups raised more than $100 million to provide aid to more than two million Armenian refugees. Between 1919 and 1920, a series of Turkish court cases issued guilty verdicts to the Three Pashas, three senior officials and orchestrators of the genocide. These convictions were for naught, as all three had left the country. One hundred and fifty Turkish men implicated in the genocide were arrested by Allied authorities and sent to Malta for trial. All the detainees would eventually be returned to Turkey without trial. In the end, there was no punishment for those involved with the Armenian Genocide. The lack of justice inspired Polish law student Raphael Lemkin to begin his work defining the term genocide. The massacres against Armenians influenced Lemkin’s drafting of a law to punish and prevent genocide. Although it would take more than 20 years, Lemkin would eventually see the crime of genocide made illegal by the international community when the United Nations passed the Genocide Convention in 1948. The Armenian Genocide, Denial, and Memory. As the first of the modern genocides, the Armenian Genocide holds a complicated place in world history. For decades, the Armenian community, dispersed throughout the globe, struggled with recognition. Today, more than twenty countries officially acknowledge the atrocities as genocide. Uruguay was the first to officially recognize the genocide back in 1965. Several countries, including Austria, Switzerland, Slovakia and, most recently, Cyprus in early April 2015, have gone as far to make genocide denial a crime. The topic of recognition is a largely political issue in the United States. Turkey is seen as a strategic ally, especially post 9/11, making leaders in Washington, DC cautious about officially recognizing the genocide. However, 48 states have taken steps to officially call the massacre of the Armenians genocide, the latest state to do so being Indiana. In Minnesota, the genocide was first marked by a proclamation by Governor Jesse Ventura. Two countries officially deny the Ottoman government’s role in the elimination of the Armenian community—Azerbaijan and Turkey. Turkey has taken a far more aggressive approach to genocide denial, threatening lawsuits and calling into question the authenticity of academic research into the Armenian Genocide. One famous example is Dr. Taner Akçam, a Turkish scholar. Dr. Akçam has written extensively on the Armenian Genocide, and came under harsh criticism by Turkish or pro-Turkish scholars. In 2007, while a guest lecturer at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Akçam was sued under Turkey’s laws that forbid ‘insulting Turkish-ness.’ The lawsuit was eventually thrown out. The University of Minnesota itself was sued by a pro-Turkish American organization which questioned the authenticity of materials found on the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies website. In 2011, this suit was also dismissed. Besides lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, and public denunciation by Turkish officials the denial of the Armenian Genocide has also academic dimensions with studies designed to cast doubt on the veracity of eyewitness reports, consular dispatches from sites of massacres, and relativization of the numbers of persons killed. Despite the persistence of denial, the overwhelming majority of historians and genocide scholars agree that the massacres of the Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire cannot but be classified as genocide, given the intent of the perpetrators, the scope of the massacres, and their social, demographic and cultural consequences. Beyond the reach of international politics, the legacy of the Armenian Genocide continues to be explored by a new generation of Armenians and Armenian-Americans through film, music, and literature. Further Reading. For more information on the Armenian Genocide, denial, and memory, check out: Killing Orders: Talat Pasha’s Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide , by Taner Akçam. This new book by acclaimed Turkish historian offers a fresh new take on documents showing criminal intent on the part of the Turkish rulers during the Genocide and refutes contemporary denial of the Armenian Genocide through primary sources and meticulous research. Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence Against the Armenians, 1789-2009 , by Fatma Müge Göçek. University of Michigan sociologist Fatma Müge Göçek tackles the Armenian Genocide and its denial in this groundbreaking study of original Turkish sources by tracing the emergence of the official Turkish narrative from its origins to its present-day form. “Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide,” by Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton. In this article published in the Journal of Holocaust and Genocide studies, a trio of American genocide scholars unveil the secret correspondence between former Princeton University historian Heath Lowry and the Turkish Ambassador to the United States wherein Prof. Lowry offers to ghost-write a letter on behalf of the Turkish ambassador to Robert Jay Lifton and protest latter’s inclusion of the Armenian Genocide in his book on Nazi doctors. It tackles the broader issue of professional ethics and genocide denial in the academia. My Grandmother: An Armenian-Turkish Memoir , by Fethiye Çetin. This book by Turkish human rights activist and prominent lawyer Fethiye Çetin details her discovery of her Armenian roots, which had been an elaborate and decades-long family secret. Court Dismisses Turkish Coalition Lawsuit Filed Against the University of Minnesota. On March 30, 2011, US District Court Judge Donovan Frank dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Turkish Coalition of America against the University of Minnesota. The lawsuit arose from materials posted on the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) website, including a list of websites CHGS considered “unreliable” for purposes of conducting scholarly research. The Turkish Coalition claimed the university violated its constitutional rights, and committed defamation, by including the Turkish Coalition website on the “unreliable” websites list. Related News Articles: : Minnesota Public Radio News (5-4-2012) : Inside Higher Ed (5-4-2012) : MN Daily (3-31-2011) : Inside Higher Ed (3-31-2011) : MN Daily (11-22-2010) : MN Daily (11-30-2010) : Inside Higher Ed (12-1-2010) : MPR News (12-01-2010) : MN Daily (12-06-2010) : MN Daily (12-07-2010) : Inside Higher Ed (12-20-2010) : Armenian Weekly (1-10-2011) Bruno Chaouat, Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in 2011, said of the ruling: “This is an important victory for scholars and educators all over the United States. I want first to express my gratitude to General Counsel at the University of Minnesota, and in particular to Brent Benrud, for his outstanding work on this case. I applaud Judge Frank’s decision, as it bears witness to the high esteem in which the judicial system in this country holds academic freedom. This outcome honors the principles of freedom of speech, and is a remarkable example of the law’s protection of free inquiry into matters of public interest.” Denial Of Violence Ottoman Past Turkish Present And Collective Violence Against The Armenians 1789 2009. Book Review: Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past,. Turkish Present and Collective Violence against the. Armenians, 1789-2009. Andrekos Varnava. Flinders University. Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/ gsp. This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Tampa Library at . Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective. Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish. Present, and Collective Violence against the. Armenians, 1789–2009, by Fatma Mu¨ ge. Göcçek. New York: Oxford University Press,. 2015. 656 pp. $78.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780199334209. ATESç ALTıNORDU. Sabancı University [email protected] A number of major . The Armenian Genocide and its denial: a review of recent scholarship. Taner Akçam. The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian. Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012, xlii + 528 pages. Fatma Müge Göçek. Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and. Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009 . Denial of violence. Ottoman past, Turkish present, and collective. Denial of violence. Ottoman past, Turkish present, and collective violence against the. Armenians 1789-2009, Fatma Müge Göçek, New York, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 656, US$78.00 (hardback), HC 978-0199334209. Fatma Müge Göçek presents us with original research on what she calls “collective vio-. . Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective. Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past,. Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Arme- nians, 1789–2009. New York: Oxford University Press,. 2015. Pp. xviii, 656. $74.00. RONALD GRIGOR SUNY. “They Can Live in the Desert but . Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide. (Human Rights and Crimes . One hundred years later: the personal, the political and the historical. Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009 by Fatma Müge Göcek, New York, Oxford. University Press, 2014, 656 pp., £51.00 (hbk), ISBN 978-0-19-933420-9. Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide by Thomas de Waal, New . Denial of violence: Ottoman past, Turkish present, and collective. Denial of violence: Ottoman past, Turkish present, and collective violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009. By Fatma Müge Göçek. New York: Oxford Unversity. Press. 2014. 680pp. £43.20. isbn 978 0 19933 420 9. Available as e-book. Fatma Müge Göçek's book is an important, topical and policy-relevant contribution to. Genocide Studies and Prevention. There are two works that represent some facet of the Armenian Genocide. In one, Andrekos Varnava provides a thorough analysis of Fatma Müge Göçek's, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and Collective. Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009. In the other, Taner Akçam's lengthier review essay gives. | Department of Near Eastern Studies. Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009. F. M. Göçek. Book. “While much of the international community regards the forced deportation of Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, where approximately 800,000 to 1.5 million Armenians perished . Suggested Readings 1. History of Armenians and the Armenian. Fatma Müge Goçek, Deciphering Denial: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. • Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide. (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999). “Twenty-five Percent Armenian”: Oral History Accounts of the. arguments that maintain the fear that the recognition of the Armenian Genocide poses a real trouble to the existence of the Turkish state. 47 Fatma Müge Göçek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence Against the. Armenians, 1789-2009 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 8. History 755 -- Winter 2017 History, Heritage and Memory: How the. Fatma Muge Gocek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009. Michelle Tusan, Smyrna's Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide, and the Birth of the Middle East. Vahakn Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to. ATTRIBUTIONS (DEFINING GENOCIDE, WORLD GENOCIDE. The Armenian Genocide ​ The Critically Acclaimed PBS. Documentary. ○ Gocek, Fatma. M. Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective. Violence against the Armenians, 1789​2009. ○ Gust, Wolfgang. The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office. Archives, 1915​ 1916. Commemorating the Armenian Genocide: The Politics of Memory. 6 Fatma Müge Göçek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective. Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 19. 7 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of. Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991); E. J Hobsbawm, . Empire, Ideology, Mass Violence: The long 20th century in. Recent studies on genocide and mass violence include e.g. Alex Alva- rez: Native America and the Question of Genocide (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014);. Fatma Müge Göçek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and Collective Vio- lence against the Armenians, 1789–2009 (Oxford & New York : Oxford . GREETINGS FROM ASA PRESIDENT MICHÈLE LAMONT. Aug 12, 2017 . Markel. Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective. Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009 (Oxford University Press,. 2016) by Fatma Muge Gocek. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown Publishing. Group; 2016) by Matthew Desmond and $2.00 a Day: Living on. International Journal of Middle East Studies POSTCOLONIALITY. Jul 26, 2012 . period defined in history as the Armenian Genocide, but I then decided to expand the temporal boundaries back to 1789 and forward to 2009 because the episodes of collective violence and the bases of their subsequent denial preceded and succeeded these three years. Analyzing this Ottoman practice of . THE 'OTHER' CITIZENS: ARMENIANS IN TURKEY BETWEEN. May 21, 2016 . illusion of a turning of a new page in the state's relationship with the Armenian. Community. 4 Fatma Müge Göçek, Denial of violence: Ottoman past, Turkish present and collective violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 21. 5 For example, in 1943 the Varlɪk . SAYFO 1915: An International Conference on the Genocide of. Jun 27, 2015 . a recent book “Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009” spoke about the Comparison of the denial of violence committed against the Armenians with that of the Assyrians/ Arameans. Prof. Göçek stressed that her presence as ethnic Turk . The Arts of Memory. The Remembrance of the Armenians in Turkey. May 18, 2016 . Friedman, Carl. Nightfather. New York: Persea Books, 1995. Göçek, Fatma Müge. The Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and Collective. Violence against the Armenians 1789-2009. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Gündoğdu, Cihangir. “Doksan Yıl Önce İstanbullu Hayvanseverler”. Denial of Violence : Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and Collective Violence Against the Armenians, 1789-2009. In Denial of Violence, Fatma M ge G ek seeks to decipher the roots of this disavowal. To capture the negotiation of meaning that leads to denial, G ek undertook a qualitative analysis of 315 memoirs published in Turkey from 1789 to 2009 in addition to numerous secondary sources, journals, and newspapers. She argues that denial is a multi-layered, historical process with four distinct yet overlapping components: the structural elements of collective violence and situated modernity on one side, and the emotional elements of collective emotions and legitimating events on the other. In the Turkish case, denial emerged through four stages: (i) the initial imperial denial of the origins of the collective violence committed against the Armenians commenced in 1789 and continued until 1907; (ii) the Young Turk denial of the act of violence lasted for a decade from 1908 to 1918; (iii) early republican denial of the actors of violence took place from 1919 to 1973; and (iv) the late republican denial of the responsibility for the collective violence started in 1974 and continues today. Denial of Violence develops a novel theoretical, historical and methodological framework to understanding what happened and why the denial of collective violence against Armenians still persists within Turkish state and society. DENIAL OF VIOLENCE: Fatma Müge Göçek seeks to decipher the roots of Turkish disavowal of the Armenian genocide. She argues that denial is a multi-layered, historical process with four distinct yet overlapping components: the structural elements of collective violence and situated modernity on one side, and the emotional elements of collective emotions and legitimating events on the other. In the Turkish case, denial emerged through four stages: (i) the initial imperial denial of the origins of the collective violence committed against the Armenians which began in 1789; (ii) the Young Turk denial of the act of violence that lasted from 1908 to 1918; (iii) early republican denial of the actors of violence took place from 1919 to 1973; and (iv) the late republican denial of the responsibility for the collective violence that continues today.