Although the number of Armenians living in Turkey today is estimated to be only 60,000, less than 2 per cent of the country’s population (Dündar 2000; Hür 2008),1 the controversies described variously as the Armenian Question (Ermeni meselesi or Ermeni Sorunu),2 the 1915 events, Armenian deportation (Ermeni tehciri), the Armenian Genocide (Hayots Tzeghasbanutyun in Armenian, Ermeni Soykırımı in Turkish ) or the Great Crime (Medz Yeghern) depending on one’s political standpoint, remain highly sensitive. In the Turkish historiography based on Ottoman and Turkish language state documents, memoirs of state officials and certain consulate reports, deportation [tehcir ] or civil war [iç savaş] are the predominant concepts adopted to refer to the events of 1915. Yet Armenians claim that these terms trivialize and downgrade the crimes committed by the Ottoman Empire. The argument between Armenian and Turkish historians has not changed for decades. While the Armenian side states that Armenians were deported en masse, and that many of them were massacred as part of an ideological agenda which they refer to as ‘genocide’,3 the Turkish side responds that the deportation occurred as a natural and unavoidable result of war and that the Young Turks did not intend to eliminate the Armenians as a people. The number of losses has also not been agreed. In Armenian history there are two dates that represent a major point for the Anatolian Armenians. These are 24 April and 23 May 1915. The former refers to the general arrests of the Armenian élites in Constantinople, and the latter is the date when the general deportation order to annihilate the Armenians was given. According to the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the death toll between 1915 and 1916 was ‘more than a million’; the Turkish Republic estimates the total to be 300,000. Although the tragedy took place more than a century ago, because the Turkish Republic has never confronted its past and responded to the demands of descendants of the victims, any debate on these events triggers further controversy, and the issue continues to be, as many have described it, a ‘bleeding wound’ (kanayan yara).
However, whenever the events are denounced as genocide by any country or figure, this has always led to a deterioration in relations between Armenians and Turkey. For instance, in 2015, Pope Francis described the large-scale killings as the “first genocide of the twentieth century” during a mass marking the 100th anniversary of the deaths. Turkey summoned the Vatican ambassador to Ankara and recalled its own ambassador to the Vatican. In the following year, Pope Francis again used the word ‘genocide’, this time during his Yerevan visit, which again evoked anger from Turkey. In the same year, the German Parliament recognized the Armenian Genocide, and this was denounced angrily by Turkey. During the century since the Armenian Genocide, despite the recognition of many European parliaments, the Turkish state has never wavered in its denial. In fact, since 1915, there has been an ongoing struggle in Turkey about how to narrate the story of the country’s past. Uğur Ümit Üngör (2014, p. 161) discusses the dynamics of memory and identity, and describes Turkish and Armenian histories as polarized opposites, where “Armenians wish to remember a history that Turks would like to forget.” But as this book argues, even non-Armenians want to remember what happened to Armenians for the sake of their own future and in the name of democracy by raising awareness, activism, mobilization and social empathy. In this context, I follow the thesis that the waves of mobilization represented by new social movements (NSMs) and their predecessors appear in phases of crisis, and Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink’s assassination is one such crisis. The public outrage and rally in protest at the 2007 assassination of Dink constituted a momentous event; it was far outpaced by its glorification in the public sphere as a mythical turning point in terms of social transformation and minority issues. In this respect, civil society within Turkey has used every tool available to challenge the state’s denial discourse, especially through the politics of remembering and reliving memory, but the assassination of Dink also triggered calls for truth and reconciliation. Many individuals participated in new social movements to express dissatisfaction with specific policies or to criticize general social norms. The emergence of these initiatives, civic groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and intelligentsia in contemporary Turkey represents a form of political contestation complying with the definition of processes of mobilization delineated by the new social movement theorists, who include the struggles of political parties, ethnic groups, civilian groups and lobbying by peaceful social movements and solidarity groups, through to revolutions, as mobilization actors and “horizontal networks needing no leader, capable of organising without a central authority” (Abdelrahman 2013, p. 571). These social groups demand that “democracies open their political process to a more diverse and citizen-oriented set of interests” (Dalton et al. 1990, p. 3). Accordingly, centennial commemorative events were organized by NGOs in Istanbul, Diyarbakır and other Turkish cities for the victims of the genocide in which democracy is requested not just for Armenians but for all Turkish citizens. These initiators and activists have created the possibility for the past to be remembered differently from officially imposed history or discourse. On the other hand, state censorship, intimidation, obfuscation of historical realities and the re-writing of history are still predominant elements of the Turkish government. Hence, there is a conflict between the official version of history and several competing historical narratives.
Open discussion of Armenian issues, including the genocide, became possible when the Alliance for the Public with The Justice and Development Party (AKP ) was first elected in 2002, as a consequence of the liberalization associated with its campaign for EU membership. This lasted until 2005, though even when Dink was assassinated in 2007, there was a relatively liberal atmosphere compared to later (especially after 2013), and this provided the environment in which hundreds of thousands of civilians could protest against Dink’s assassination. Since then, annual commemorations of his assassination as well as Armenian Genocide commemorations have attracted the support of a large number of activist groups, NGOs, publishers, intellectuals and political figures to voice their call for the government to acknowledge that genocide took place in 1915 and to find Dink’s real murderers.4 Hrant Dink is considered to be the latest victim of the genocide, and his assassination brought the unspoken Armenian Question to the fore for the first time, resulting in contentious mobilizations of intelligentsia, human rights and democracy activists and NGOs. Many civil groups and initiatives have been established to fight against inequality, censorship and oppression in Turkey, using Dink’s assassination as the starting point. After Dink, new associations were formed and new initiatives put in place to enhance civic values, by promoting a solidarity that works to maintain and create social cohesion. A new form of social mobilization and new possibilities for political interaction or contestation have come to the surface. The aim of this book is to understand how the social movements led by such intellectuals and activists challenge state hegemony on the Armenian issue, thereby promoting the democratization of Turkey with regard to inequality, the Kurdish issue and freedom of speech. This study focuses on public figures and specific groups or individuals who have aimed to mobilize the masses or open up public debate on Armenians or the massacres in particular. It does not directly engage with how Armenians see or define themselves in modern Turkey. This book particularly aims to investigate the importance of political protest and contemporary social movements as a way for diverse sections of the community to express their views. Parliamentary politics and traditional political organizations do not necessarily bring freedom or democracy to society. The new social movements provide new opportunities for the individual to learn about democracy and participate with others in a multitude of projects. My goal here is to elaborate empirically the new social movements theory (NSMT) on the national political contest and mobilization patterns regarding Armenian-related issues, that is, Islamized Armenians, Dink’s assassination, state denial of genocide, confiscation of Armenian properties and so on.
The movements related to Armenians display a markedly different set of features to traditional social movements so it is hard to define their activities under one title. Such clusters of movements usually constitute a specific ‘movement industry’ (McCarthy and Zald 1977) or ‘movement family’ (Della Porta and Rucht 1991). I argue that the theories of new (also named ‘contemporary’) social movements can be applied to the activities and campaigns on the Armenian Question at least during the last decade. Many theories on new social movements involve either implicit generalization about movements or dismiss other small-scale specific mobilizations. For this reason, the activities concerning Armenian-related issues could be considered not to fit under the conceptual framework of new social movements. However, I argue that a closer look at the more specific strategies and actions of individual or groups is needed, as this reveals differences and parameters which lead one to acknowledge the fact that new categories should be created in order not to neglect the specificity of particular movements. In this regard, this book argues that the series of actions or strategies for the recognition of the genocide, urging the state apparatus to come to terms with the past atrocities against Armenians (non-Muslims in general), for fair trial over Dink’s assassination and for a change to more positive policies toward Armenians, should be understood under the conc...