Institutional denialism as public policy: using films as a tool to deny the Armenian genocide in Turkey

• Published in: Ethnic and racial studies Vol. 46; no. 12; pp. 2677 - 2697
• Main Author: Seckinelgin, Hakan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Routledge 10-09-2023; Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: Actors; belonging; denial; Denialism; Deployment; Empires; ethnicity; Genocide; knowledge; Memory; Motion pictures; Narratives; Otherness; Public policy; Tactics; violence
• ISSN: 0141-9870; 1466-4356
• DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2023.2176249

This article focuses on how films are used as part of public policy to reproduce institutional denialism, normalizing denialist narratives in the public understanding of what happened to Ottoman Armenians in 1915-1918. I analyse the deployment in Turkey of two films that reimagine the events of 1915: 120 (2008) and The Ottoman Lieutenant (Osmanlı Subayı, 2017). The films seek to educate the public regarding how to understand and remember events that international actors have "unjustly" depicted as genocide. The films are thus "defensive tactics" to protect the institutional denialist architecture. This article highlights an evolving public policy strategy that uses denialist representations to bolster public belief. The analysis shows how such policies strengthen an "us/them" logic, where "us" indicates a "rightness" framed by ethnoreligious othering that underpins "our" narratives of belonging in contemporary Turkey.