Forget Me Not: The Drama of Building an Identity on the Centennial of the Genocide of the Armenians

Abstract:April 2015 marked the 100th anniversary of the massacres perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against its Armenian subjects. Nevertheless, the Empire's most important heir, the Turkish state, still refuses to recognize these acts as genocide. For this occasion, thousands of Armenians from all over the world came to Yerevan to pay homage to the victims of such violence. This paper proposes an analysis of those tributes in order to understand their relevance for Armenians, both in Armenia and in the diaspora. Based on the considerations developed by Victor Turner, for whom social processes experienced by populations might be seen as social dramas, I will try to interpret the symbolic meaning behind the ceremonies performed at that time and the special preparations undertaken by the city to host them.