Turkish–Armenian Relations: Is a “Just Memory” Possible?, Spring 2014

The greatest injustice that has been visited on both history and to any two nations is to set aside their previous rich centuries of shared history and to begin instead with traumatic events like war and conflict, or to reconstruct the previous centuries by making traumatic events the center of everything. The “unjust memory” created around the events of 1915 constitutes the most important example of this phenomenon as it mortgages the shared past and future of the Turks and Armenians. The initiative that Turkey launched with Armenia in 2009 is premised on eradicating this sort of mentality. The “just memory” concept that we have frequently employed during this process is critically important as it highlights the necessity of not viewing history with a one-sided memory.