Genocide: - DIIS

Mehmet Necef
its worst. No fact, no event, and no aspect of history has any fi xed meaning or
content. Any truth can be retold. Any fact can be recast. There is no ultimate historical
reality ... Holocaust denial is a part of this phenomenon. 67
An analysis of different positions on the Armenian massacre suggests that
what has to be deconstructed is the offi cial truth of the Turkish state about
the Armenian question, not a scholarly conception of history as such. Attempts
to deconstruct history as science only helps nationalists and – in the
Turkish context – deniers of the Armenian massacre. Or it leads to theoretical
and political sterility, as one can see when one looks closer at a number
of Turkish intellectuals. 68
Conclusion
In international relations there has developed – in Charles Taylor’s words
– “a world public scene” on which peoples of the world see themselves
being assessed and rated. 69 This rating is of importance to them, since in
the modern world national identities are more and more formed in direct
relation to others, in a space of recognition. According to Taylor this
space is dominated by a “vocabulary of relative advance”. 70 Taylor does
not mention it, but a part of this vocabulary has to do with a competition
among nations as to how much “our” nation has contributed to humanity
and human civilisation or the opposite: Has my or your nation perpetrated
an atrocity, ethnic cleansing, genocide, massacre, slave trade in the past?
While nations who can boast of famous authors, scholars, artists, sportsmen,
discoverers and inventors, Nobel Prize winners have a positive symbolic
capital on the world public scene, nations and peoples whose pasts
are claimed to be stained by massacres and ethnic cleansing start with
negative capital. Therefore it is natural that both inhabitants of a certain
67 Lipstadt (1994), p. 18-19.
68 In relation to critical and non-nationalist Turkish historians and intellectuals who keep
silent about the Armenian Massacre, it is not always easy to fi nd out whether their silence
is due to philosophical or ideological reasons or fear of persecution by Turkish authorities.
Akcam thinks it is the fi rst, see Akcam (2000a), p. 21-22.
69 Charles Taylor (1997), “Nationalism and Modernity“, in Robert McKim & Jeff McMahan
(eds.), The Morality of Nationalism. Oxford, p. 47.
70 Ibid., p. 46.
256