In all of the hubbub recently I missed this great article from Open Democracy. A more open and ethical understanding of the fate of the Armenians is absolutely essential for Turkey’s democratic future.

How to make sense of the current state of Turkish public opinion? What can it tell us about the power of national imaginations vis-à-vis the past on the future of democracy?

There are four reasons why Turkish public opinion cannot swallow the term “genocide”.

First, Turks do not believe that the “Turkish nation” is capable of committing such unspeakable atrocities.

Second, the extermination of the Armenians has been shrouded in the claims of a civil war: “if we killed some of them, they also killed many of us” is the usual reaction of ordinary Turks. It is not uncommon for the Turkish media to show newly discovered mass graves full of Turks killed by Armenian militias in eastern Turkey, or to publish memoirs of old Turks who witnessed Armenian atrocities. Turkish public opinion is stirred up by the perception that Armenians exclusively monopolise the status of victim.

Third, it is an open secret that without the annihilation of Armenians, Turkey’s eastern borders would look quite different.

Fourth, the extreme politicisation of the issue in the international arena and western pressure on the Turkish government to recognise the Armenian genocide have strongly contribute to widespread Turkish feelings of unfairness, exploitation, and inferiority vis-à-vis the west. In this connection, the passivity of western governments during the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, to cite the most recent cases, hardly helps their claims to serve as arbiters of justice.