The Uses and Abuses of History: Genocide and the Making of the Karabakh Conflict

Vicken Cheterian

Europe-Asia Studies, 2018, vol. 70, issue 6, 884-903

Abstract: Did the 1915 genocide of the Ottoman Armenians play a role in the genesis of the Karabakh war? In the early phase of the conflict, many Armenian activists and politicians drew parallels between the evolving struggles of the present and the traumatic events of 1915. This essay explores the ways in which Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey have referred to the events of 1915 to formulate their policies towards the conflict. The essay argues that the largely suppressed past trauma was present in the mass psychology of the conflicting parties, although in radically different ways, and that it shaped developing events. After depoliticising genocide commemorations in the early years of its independence, Armenia has recently witnessed an increase in references to the genocide in political discourse. The same also applies, somewhat paradoxically, to Azerbaijan, which has developed its own state-sponsored discourse of genocide, vehemently denying that the genocide took place while portraying Azerbaijan as a victim of genocide itself. This exchange of roles clearly needs further explanation.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09668136.2018.1489634 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ceasxx:v:70:y:2018:i:6:p:884-903

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ceas20

DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2018.1489634

Access Statistics for this article

Europe-Asia Studies is currently edited by Terry Cox

More articles in Europe-Asia Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().