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The Armenian Genocide

  • Chapter
The Historiography of Genocide

Abstract

In September 2005, Turkish scholars and intellectuals critical of the Turkish official historiography on the Armenian deportations and massacres of 1915 convened a conference in Istanbul to analyze and discuss the fate of the Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire. Among the many discussions held, one in particular was noteworthy in that it focused on those individuals who produce the Turkish official historiography. It had so transpired that immediately before the conference, the nationalist opponents to the conference had employed the Social Science Citation Index, a measure indicating one’s degree of influence in the international scholarly community, to criticize — albeit unsuccessfully — the international intellectual standing of the conference conveners. As one of the conveners, the historian Halil Berktay, discussed and criticized this tactic during the conference, he noted that he himself had conducted a similar citation check on the individuals who produced the Turkish official historiography only to find out that in opposition to the dozens and even hundreds of citations of conference conveners, there was not a single citation of the works of any of the major proponents of the official Turkish historiography such as Yusuf Halacoglu and Hikmet Ozdemir. Yet, even though these official proponents never get cited in the international scholarly community, they are extremely influential within Turkey where the Turkish official historiography still reigns triumphant.

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Donald Bloxham
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  2. Fatma Müge Göçek
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

    Dan Stone (Professor of Modern History) (Professor of Modern History)

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© 2008 Donald Bloxham and Fatma Müge Göçek

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Bloxham, D., Göçek, F.M. (2008). The Armenian Genocide. In: Stone, D. (eds) The Historiography of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297784_14

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