In Turkey, the wall of denial of the Armenian Genocide is becoming cracked

[This interview was originally published in REPAIR, an Armeno-Turkish web platform on October 8, 2015. Link]

In this article, Murat Paker comes back on the notion of trauma, including the one called “social trauma” that is suited to the armenian victims of the Genocide in 1915 but also to Kurds and Alevis. He also stresses the importance of the general socio-political context which, according to him, is decisive in the appearance of traumas. The psychotherapist then profiles the perpetrators. He also addresses the reasons why the Ottoman elites commited a genocide and analyzes the causes of its denial which is at the foundation of the creation of the Turkish Republic. Finally, coming back to the consequences of state-sponsored denial set up by the different regimes in Turkey, Murat Paker notes that some leading works of academics has led to the wall of denial to crack. A very slow process which must go along with the resolution of the Turkish-Kurdish question, the sine qua non condition, according to the author, for the advent of a new Turkey.

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