Conflict and cooperation in Armenian diaspora mobilisation for genocide recognition

Mobilising for genocide recognition has been central for sustaining the Armenian diaspora for over a century. This chapter analyses how genocide recognition claims become sustained through conflict and cooperation, internal and external to the Armenian diaspora. Internally, activists have been involved in cooperation with different diaspora sub-groups, despite often existing party rivalries. Externally, Armenian diaspora activists have been involved in both cooperative and conflictual relationships with other diasporas. Arameans and Pontus Greeks, also affected by the 1915 genocide, have been long-time allies to the better-organised Armenians. Conflict has been pronounced with Turks and Azeri in the diaspora, who have developed their own counter-mobilisations. This chapter concludes that both conflict and cooperation are central to sustain diaspora mobilisation for genocide recognition

Imagining the Turkish nation through 'othering' Armenians

National identities are socially constructed and inherently relational, such that collective imagination depends on a dialectical opposition to another identity. The ontology of otherness becomes the necessary basis of social imagination. National identity can hardly be imagined without a narrative of myths, and the Turkish nation is no exception. This article argues that the Turkish nation was imagined as a modern nation with territorial sovereignty after the erosion of traditional Ottoman umma (religious community) identity. During the process of this imagination, the Armenians became the first ‘others’, whose claims over eastern Anatolia were perceived as a real threat to Turkish territoriality and identity. Based on the analysis of modernist theories of nationalism, the methodological concern of this study is twofold: to explore the causal link between the policies of Ottoman modernisation and the emergence of Turkish nationalism; and to incorporate the self and other nexus into the relationship between the emergence of Turkish nationalism and the process of ‘othering’ the Armenians