Choosing silence: the United States, Turkey, and The Armenian Genocide

My work is a comparative/ historical analysis of the Armenian Genocide, and how the denial and treatment of this genocide by Turkey and the United States has affected the social psychological wellbeing of succeeding generations of Armenians. I explore the literature that documents Turkey's denial of the Armenian Genocide, and I also consider the United State's political stance (or lack there of) on the denial. I use historical sources (i.e. books, videotapes, scholarly journals, etc.) to compare the Armenian Genocide with other genocides (i.e. Jewish Holocaust, Rwanda, etc.), and I look specifically at the reasons behind the state-sponsored killings, methods of murder, and who were the killers. The majority of my thesis covers the Armenian Genocide, detailing what happened, how it happened and why it is denied. I draw on genocide studies and literature of the Armenian genocide. I use literature on collective memory/ collective identity in order to theoretically demonstrate ways in which collective knowledge and identities are formed. One Purpose of my thesis is to concisely draw together literature that recognize the reality and effects of the Armenian genocide. The International community is faced with overwhelming evidence proving the Armenian Genocide happened and was in fact State-sponsored under the Ottoman Empire's Turkish government. Even in the face of hundreds, if not thousands of survivor testimonies, archival photographs, documentation of first-hand eyewitness accounts by diplomats, missionaries, and reporters, there is still political and academic silence around discussion of the Armenian Genocide. The second purpose is to join my personal biography as a second generation Armenian American with the sociological imagination in order to shed light on Turkey and the United States' shared role in the distortion of history. Lastly, I draw on social movement literature in order to briefly document the developing international effort calling for the Turkish government's recognition of the Armenian Genocide.