Clio with one eye: a new book on the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey

Abstract

In a magisterial article in Middle Eastern Studies of January 1976 Dr Gwynne Dyer wrote “The majority of Turkish and Armenian historians remain frozen on this issue (the events of 1915–16) in the attitudes their predecessors had already adopted by 1916 … The barrage of accusation and counter-accusation rolls on … Most of the historiography on this subject is biased and unreliable”. Eleven years have passed since that was published but matters have hardly improved. The continued production of works of advocacy rather than history is the more disappointing because the broad pattern of Turkish-Armenian relations is hardly in doubt.