Abstract
The chapter on research design begins with an outline of the practical methodology used to tackle this amorphous and diverse issue, the discourse on the Armenian Genocide. The approach taken here is an analysis of arguments, specifically of those arguments rejecting the genocide allegations. It is assumed that it is by recourse to such more or less explicit arguments that the conflict about the right version of history is carried out. The idea behind this approach is that it would thus facilitate a deeper look into the premises and consequences ingrained in each of the arguments, and thereby in the different versions of history offered by different historical narratives. These arguments were extracted empirically from various written texts published on the homepage of the Turkish Foreign Ministry. Finally, the chapter briefly touches upon some of the most flagrant points which this work could therefore not address, such as a more encompassing evaluation of the entire discourse beyond argumentation alone, or a similar assessment of those arguments which are made in support of the genocide allegations.
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Notes
- 1.
For instance Hajer (1993): 45.
- 2.
“Policy discourse” is from Rein and Schön (1993: 145), who define it as “the interactions of individuals, interest groups, social movements, and institutions through which problematic situations are converted to policy problems, agendas are set, decisions are made, and actions are taken.”
- 3.
- 4.
However, argumentation analysis is certainly far from being an innovation of political science, being already widely known for instance in linguistics and legal studies. For argumentation analysis in general see for instance the various articles in Eemeren et al. (1986, 1996); Eemeren and Grootendorst (2004); Eemeren and Houtlosser (2005).
- 5.
Fischer (1993: 22–24) does not fail to mention also some adverse effects of these developments, such as troubling questions about representational politics, or the inversed direction of influence, the “politicization of expertise”, i.e. the intentional funding, consulting, promoting of experts by political actors along political interests. See also Saretzki (2003).
- 6.
- 7.
Eemeren (2004): 3.
- 8.
Another important value to legitimize decisions and actions in this context is national interest. However, as I mentioned decisions need not only be legitimate in the national context but also increasingly internationally, and that imposes certain constraints on the legitimate pursuit of national interests.
- 9.
Torgerson (2003). 126.
- 10.
See also Eemeren (2004: 95f) for a similar interest in studying arguments.
- 11.
Saretzki (2003): 400f.
- 12.
Eemeren et al. (1996): 22.
- 13.
Hoppe (1993): 78f.
- 14.
See also Schäfer (1998: 112) claiming that an examination of arguments may enable us to expose certain values as irrational.
- 15.
See also Saretzki (2003): 402–404.
- 16.
See for instance Eemeren and Grotenhorst (2004).
- 17.
Being present for instance in Sources 24, 28, 29.
- 18.
For instance Sources 5, 10, 20, 28, 30.
- 19.
For instance Hosfeld (2005: 311) puts the number of Armenians in contemporary Turkey at 600,000, whereas Kuper (1981: 113) only at 32,500, and the web page http://www.armeniadiaspora.com/population.html goes as high as roughly two million (accessed on May 4, 2008). According to a report on minorities in Turkey, prepared by the Turkish Foreign Ministry, there are 60,000 Armenians living in Turkey (Hürriyet Daily News, December 13, 2008). To these of course a number of illegal immigrants must be added, which ranges again between 12,000 (estimated by the Eurasia Partnership Foundation, as quoted in Today’s Zaman, March 18, 2010), and 100,000, as suggested by Prime Minister Erdoğan in an interview with the BBC in March 2010 (which was later explained by a Turkish Armenian as his own misinformation to the Prime Minister, correcting the number down to 20,000—see Today’s Zaman, March 27, 2010; Hürriyet Daily News, April 1, 2010), with the former President of the Turkish Historical Society (TTK), Yusuf Halaçoğlu, putting the number of illegal Armenians at 70,000 (quoted in Turkish Daily News, July 24, 2008), and the Armenian Foreign Ministry at 15,000 (Hürriyet Daily News, March 22, 2012). Obviously, such estimates involve the question marks imperative to all such guesses, maybe even more so in a country like Turkey where ethnic minorities are a delicate issue to begin with.
- 20.
European Stability Initiative (2009b): 24.
- 21.
Today’s Zaman, April 28, 2009.
- 22.
- 23.
Hürriyet Daily News, July 18, 2013.
- 24.
McCarthy (2005; Source 5). In 2001 he had brought the same allegation more to the point: “Does any rational analyst deny that the ultimate intent of the Armenian nationalists is to first gain »reparations«, then claim Eastern Anatolia as their own?” (Source 6). For similar admonitions see also Center for Strategic Research (2007): 46 (Source 29).
- 25.
McCarthy (2005; Source 5).
- 26.
Note that McCarthy’s account could be understood as a twofold projection: first, in a temporal manner as a speculation about the future. And second, in a psychological way because in a presentation about expulsions of Ottoman Armenians, he inverts the accusation and blames the Armenian government of alleged future expulsion of its imaginary Turkish subjects.
- 27.
European Parliament “Resolution on a political solution to the Armenian question”, Doc. A2-33/87, June 18, 1987, Article I.2.
- 28.
The Applicability of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to Events Which Occurred During the Early Twentieth Century. Legal Analysis Prepared for the International Center for Transitional Justice (2003): 4.
- 29.
Quoted in Turkish Daily News, June 20, 2008.
- 30.
Today’s Zaman, May 10, 2009.
- 31.
Which certainly does not preclude that Armenia would raise such claims at a later stage…
- 32.
Turkish Daily News, October 10, 2007.
- 33.
European Stability Initiative (2009a): 67.
- 34.
Quoted in Today’s Zaman, 08. April 2010
- 35.
Quoted in European Stability Initiative (2009a): 84.
- 36.
- 37.
As far as I know there have already been cases filed against insurance companies in some other countries. The New York Life Insurance Co. was successfully sued in 2000 in California, yet the court decision was later annulled. However, New York Life reached a settlement with the litigants paying USD 20 million to the heirs of the victims. And likewise a settlement was reached with the French AXA for another USD 17 million (see Turkish Daily News on February 6, 2008; Today’s Zaman on August 22, 2009; July 30, 2010; December 13, 2010).
- 38.
Indeed Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan only recently proposed just the opposite, at least in the eyes of Turkish observers, when he explained that it was the task of future Armenian generations to reclaim Western Armenia (see Today’s Zaman and Turkish Daily News, July 27 and 28, 2011). The Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan dismissed the strong reactions from Ankara as an interpretation “out of context” (Today’s Zaman, July 28, 2011), but that is very unlikely to assuage Turkish suspicions.
- 39.
That is also the reason why I did not specifically incorporate this point in the contra-genocide arguments I shall discuss in this paper. It is a purely political argument declaring that for the sake of interests these events should not be recognized as genocide – it is not an argument at all that these events are not genocide. And unlike the other arguments I shall discuss in more detail, it is one which on its own could hardly justify the contra-genocide position.
- 40.
Eventually, also the description of Turkish soil as “Western Armenia” is not necessarily a call to hand over this territory to Armenia—it may just as well be the establishment of a symbolic affiliation with a territory for historical reasons, or worse a symbolic challenge to the legitimacy of Turkish sovereignty over this land, a question how it came to be Turkish soil in the first place.
- 41.
Estimates are most likely to be taken with a deep breath of circumspection, but to give an impression of the numbers circulating in the literature: on June 5, 1996, the US House of Representatives adopted an amendment to House Bill 3540 to reduce aid to the Republic of Turkey by three million USD until the Turkish government acknowledges the Armenian Genocide and takes steps to honor the memory of its victims—and these three million USD were set as an estimate of the amount of money spent by Turkey for lobbying against the bill (Çiçek (2007): 11; Kiendl (1998): 72). According to Anderson (2009: 105), the Republic of Turkey in 2007 spent approximately USD 3.2 million for lobbying activities against another resolution of the House of Representatives to recognize the Armenian Genocide. So it may be said that these are yearly costs, for an unknown period of time, and most probably not only in the United States of America.
- 42.
Estimates about the current trade volume between Turkey and Armenia are obviously even more different than those about expenses for lobbying, given that the borders are closed and any trade is either illegal or via third countries, most notably Georgia. One estimate is that the current trade volume is at USD 150 million per year, and would increase with an opening of the borders to USD 400 million within the first 6 months after opening the borders (Turkish Daily News, September 13, 2008). Other numbers for the current trade volume between the two countries are given for 2009 by the Armenian Chamber of Commerce (USD 300 mio.), the World Bank (USD 200 mio.), and the Turkish-Armenian Business Development Council (USD 150 mio.) (Today’s Zaman, February 3, 2010) and would therefore most likely produce different projected growth rates.
- 43.
- 44.
See for instance Barkan (2002: 33, 360), who asserts that moral considerations are becoming more and more important in various conflicts, and a useful tool in international relations.
- 45.
Tatiana Zhurzhenko (2007) transformed this nicely into realpolitik terminology, expressing quarrels such as the one I am examining here as “geopolitics of memory”. As Maier (Maier 2002a, b: 35f) notes, history and memory are a seminal resource and part of political strategies in the formulation of claims in the present.
- 46.
I believe three caveats are needed to these simplifications: first, also in Germany public acknowledgment was a long and difficult process which continues even today, and this (a) procedural character, (b) continuous effort, and (c) difficulty may also be an intrinsic and indeed precious feature of any such dramatic revision of one’s own past behavior and acknowledgment of injustice. Second, obviously the constellation about Germany was well-suited for an acknowledgment of past misdeeds: the horrendousness of the crimes and the wide consensus they were unjustifiable, the inability to deny the accountability of the Nazi regime (with more discussions about the accountability of the German people, but such discussions are an essential point in recognition), Germany’s being a conquered and occupied country after World War II, leaving it thus more prone to foreign pressure—it is hard to imagine how denial of guilt could reasonably be sustained (even though some circles apparently still manage to…). Third, the assertion Germany’s status would be different had it not acknowledged the Shoah is obviously highly speculative. Just consider the official policy of denial maintained by the Republic of Austria for decades, and the international respect it nevertheless enjoyed over all these years.
- 47.
Of course the role granted to morality in politics varies a great deal, reaching from an explicit aspiration of an “international moral community” (Elder (1998): 161) to others who would rather keep it at bay as far as possible—yet the last position appears a bit like disavowal, at least if the assumption is accepted that all actions are guided by certain values anyway.
- 48.
Walzer (2004): 4.
- 49.
See also Walzer (1977): 20, 291.
- 50.
Guroian (1988): 141, emphasis in original.
- 51.
See Branscombe et al. (2004) who examine in various empirical studies how negative events in the past threaten the moral status of a group. However, as this group status is by way of social identity intertwined with personal identity, this results in a threat to the personal identity of these individuals.
- 52.
Following a distinction by Fein (1993: 33) between material and symbolic conflicts.
- 53.
Walzer (1977): xv. This is not to diminish or undermine Walzer’s work, only to stress that I am basing my own paper here on some unexpressed and probably coarse social norms.
- 54.
Quoted in Hoppe (1993): 80.
- 55.
Under these personal reasons I would subsume for instance my specific interest in the Republic of Turkey and its potential accession to the European Union, which led me to this topic in the first place. Another, somewhat less intentional reason originated in my initial ignorance about this topic (which is in itself already another interesting point), making it more appealing to reflect and by consequence almost unavoidably criticize the position of the perpetrator of the evil; doing the same to the victim seemed far more delicate to begin with, not so much because it raised the chances of opposition by whoever I argued with, but because it posed a threat to my own moral identity.
- 56.
See Doosje et al. (2004): 112f.
- 57.
Akçam (2004): 250f.
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Schrodt, N. (2014). Research Design. In: Modern Turkey and the Armenian Genocide. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04927-4_3
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