Turkey on Europe's Memory Edge: State-Led Genocide Denial and Challenges from below

Turkey's official state-led denial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide began with the establishment of the Republic in 1923 by Mustapha Kemel Ataturk and continues until the present day.  In this manner, and many others, Turkey appears to be largely out of step with many of the members of the European Union, an organization and community it officially wishes to join.  I will write this paper about Turkey in the context of a larger comparative study I am conducting on collective memory formation, which also includes Germany, Spain, Yugoslavia, and Japan. 

In comparison to these other cases, what helps to explain the continued official, state denial and the very widespread unease in Turkish society of dealing with this history?  Second, what impact, if any, has Turkey's application for EU membership had on how the state and society deal with this history.  In one important way, Turkey is very much like the other four cases in this research in that the demand for more memory and a confrontation with Turkey's violent history against its minority populations is coming from the side of the society, and not the state.

I will look at different attempts by filmmakers, artists, authors, journalists and scholars to begin pushing Turkish society toward a fuller understanding of the country's history and the state's attempts to frustrate and diminish these initiatives.  Unfortunately, the comparative research also shows that only relatively stable democratic societies and states are successful in these attempts to deal with the past.