Erasure at Home, Erasure in the World: Armenian History in Turkey (and Beyond) and Non-Discourses on Modern Political Conflict

Abstract

On October 16, 2020, the Los Angeles Review of Books published a powerful letter about the war on Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh) that was signed by scholars who are considered to be among those most actively engaged in postcolonial theory and political activism, including Tariq Ali, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Noam Chomsky, Amitav Ghosh, and Cornel West. This letter read: Before the ravages brought in by World War I and the 20th century, Azeris and Armenians in the area lived in the kind of conflictual coexistence with which we are acquainted in the multiethnic parts of the world. We are asking now not only for an agreement to a ceasefire but an insistence on the preservation of that ceasefire and protection for the Armenian minority in its efforts toward self-determination. We hope, in the long run, with the participation of all international institutions of justice, that the democratic will of the ethnic Armenians of the area can be acknowledged.2Yet scholars who specialize in the history of Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, and the Middle East were remarkably silent about this war that will have long-term effects on the small Republic of Armenia (population three million) and the relationships it will be able to maintain with its neighbors, in particular the Republic of Azerbaijan (population ten million) and the Republic of Turkey (population eighty-four million). The latter two countries’ militaries jointly attacked the unilaterally recognized, independent Armenian enclave of Artsakh (population 150,000) during a global pandemic, with help from paid Syrian mercenaries and Turkish military technology.