YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. It would definitely not be easier for Turkey to recognize the genocide. “Armenpress” News Agency introduces an interview with prominent Turkish historian, Professor at the Holocaust and Genocide Studies centre Dr. Uğur Ümit Üngör.

- Turkey makes huge efforts to block the process of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Turkey gives strict response to the statements of representatives of various countries on the Armenian Genocide. Don’t You think that it would be easier for Turkey to face with history and recognize the Armenian Genocide?

- It would definitely not be easier for Turkey to recognize the genocide. How do you explain to your population that you've been lying to them for 99 years? On the other hand, if Abdullah Gül or Recep Tayyip Erdogan would fly to Yerevan, lay a wreath at Tsitsernakapert, and make a kneefall (like Willy Brandt), they would certainly get a Nobel Prize for Peace. So even if the incentives are strong, the internal pressures are too high for Turkish politicians to recognize the genocide.

- Do you think that Turkey’s denialism policy can be changed? And if yes, when and how can it happen?

- Good question, but this is about the future; as a historian, I hardly feel qualified to answer it.

- Do You think that Turkey’s denialism policy is only a matter of politics or it has economic motives as well, as the Armenians were deprived of their property in the result of the Genocide?

- The Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide can be interpreted through at least six prisms: politics, sociology, psychology, economics, gender, and mnemonics. Politically, it seems rather obvious that the Turkish government, through cold Machiavellian calculation, has reached the conclusion that acknowledging the genocide would generate a net power loss. Nationalist and populist opposition politicians would capitalize on any expressions of acknowledgement or apology. Sociologically, the denial of the genocide is fortified through peer pressure in the Turkish academic culture. Disagreeing with denialist arguments in the public sphere or denouncing anti-Armenian publications requires a strong, independent will to withstand group conformism. Psychologically, genocide acknowledgement would have to overcome the barrier of ordinary Turks’ guilty conscience. Acknowledgement of the crime as a huge injustice would involve a moral restructuring so fundamental that the mind resists it out of self-preservation.  Third, the logical extension of the political argument is economic self-interest. Acknowledgement would most certainly entail restitution, reparation, and compensation to the few survivors and their descendants. The Turkish government most likely perceives this as a risky Pandora’s box.

- Do You have new works on the Armenian Genocide?

- Not really. I feel I have done my bit for the study of the Armenian genocide, and I have now moved on to a broader research project on perpetrators in mass violence.

Interview by Araks Kasyan