The Dual Reality of Destruction: The Dissimulation and Simulation of the Armenian-Assyrian Genocide

Abstract

The paper examines the denial of the Armenian-Assyrian genocide of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, situating it within a broader discussion on state-sponsored historical manipulation and genocide denial. The Turkish state's politics of denial strategically exploits ambiguities in the legal definition of genocide and is simultaneously embedded in the Turkish national identity. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's concept of the organized lie, I argue that Turkish genocide denial operates as a propagandistic myth. This propagandistic lie dissimulates historical facts and simulates alternative facts, an alternative history, through denial of factual evidence, censorship, school curricula, and even scholarly research that lacks intellectual integrity.

Within this denialist narrative, the Assyrian genocide plays a disruptive role. The Assyrian genocide took place at the time of the Armenian genocide but is remembered differently and is largely transmitted through oral history. This difference in remembrance and transmission disrupts the coherence of the Turkish denialist narrative, exposing its contradictions. Far from being a marginal manifestation of the concept of genocide, the Assyrian Genocide transcends something local and uncovers something structural about genocide and truth. The Assyrian genocide reveals the internal mechanism of the genocidal machine, demonstrating how denial is an extension of the genocidal process itself.

This disruptive role opens a broader reflection on genocide. Building on Marc Nichanian, Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze, I conceptualize genocide as a limitless, absolute destruction that operates on different levels; the physical extermination of the group, the erasure of the genocidal event and the undermining of the fact itself. The absence of evidence can paradoxically serve as evidence, while traces such as oral transmission and suppressed memories, can function as signs that compel interrogation of the denialist narrative. Genocide is rooted in material reality but necessarily exceeds it, and must be understood both as fact and as sign.