Difficult past, cultural trauma and national identity: The commemorations of the Armenian Genocide in Istanbul

Abstract

In Turkey, for at least three decades, a plurality of actors has been producing counter narratives of the Armenian Genocide. These have challenged the official discourse, revealing the old taboo that underpinned the national republican identity and reconceiving it as a contested history that interrogates the country's democratic status. Here, it is argued that this recent history of counter narratives has constituted a trauma process aimed at transforming public memory and national identity. In particular, various commemoration ceremonies were held in Istanbul between 2005 and 2023, with counter ceremonies and a revised official narrative expressed through ceremony that was developed in response. Given that these commemorations occupy a marginal space in the literature on the Armenian question and the Genocide, the first aim of this article is to reconstruct them through the perspective of cultural performance. Then, it is argued that the commemorations not only have an opaque status in the cultural trauma literature but also contribute to the trauma process through their creation of specific trauma narratives of the Genocide. Finally, the paper uses the example of commemorative performances in Istanbul to contribute to the debate on the reasons for the success or failure of a trauma process. Methodologically, an analysis of journal archives and materials produced by carrier groups is extended by ten in‐depth interviews and notes taken during participant observation in Istanbul between 2010 and 2022.