Can Davutoglu’s ‘Just Memory’ Concept Bring Justice?

 Andranik Israyelyan

Turkey’s Ahmet Davutoğlu has proposed to solve the Armenian Genocide question by creating a “just memory.” The assessment of the concept reveals why it is simply a denialist tactic.

In 2011, then-foreign minister of Turkey Ahmet Davutoğlu called on Armenians to address the Genocide question through a concept he termed “just memory.” It is “unjust” to place these traumatic events at the center of everything, Davutoğlu noted in the Turkish Policy Quarterly article. A Guardian article later insisted that Armenians (and indeed Christians) were not the only ones to have suffered during this period. “While much of western history tells of the suffering of the dispossessed and dead Ottoman Christians, the colossal sufferings of Ottoman Muslims remains largely unknown outside of Turkey.” The author went on to insist that Turkey had proposed a joint commission in an effort to allow the emergence of a so-called “just memory.”

Turkey needs new approach for 1915

Ömer Taşpinar

It is sad to see that Turkey is squandering yet another opportunity to discuss what happened to Armenian communities of  Anatolia in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire.  The  "Just Memory" initiative launched by Ahmet Davutoglu a few years ago is partly to blame for this failure.