Recognition vs. or and Repair: The Armenian Genocide Past and Present

Recognition is often viewed as abstract justice, pursued it not out of practical necessity but because it will validate victim group experiences. It is seen to function symbolically, without practical consequences.
That said, perpetrator groups just as often fear a link between recognition and repair. For Turkey, in addition to dependence of national identity on an impossibly purified history, Armenian Genocide recognition is resisted because of fear of its leading to reparations, including territorial. Victim groups and third-party observers often intentionally separate recognition and repair in order to alleviate perpetrator concerns. The life-and-death consequences of such a separation are clear in the contrast of US President Biden’s 2021 recognition of the Armenian Genocide to the allowing of Azerbaijan to destroy Armenian Artsakh from 2020 to 2023. That genocide did not cause the United States to change policy toward Turkey (or Azerbaijan) – for instance, by stopping military support – or prevent substantial Turkish participation in renewed mass violence against and expulsion of Armenians, shows the emptiness of recognition when not connected to meaningful repair, in this case, non-repetition.
This presentation applies a five-component concept of reparations to the Armenian case to tie recognition, a part of reparations, to other aspects of repair. The five components are (1) criminal justice, (2) territorial restoration, (3) material compensation, (4) recognition, apology, education, and commemoration, and (5) non-repetition and security guarantees. It argues for two main points. First, without concrete reparative measures, recognition (and apology) largely meaningless. Indeed, recognition (and apology) alone can be presented as an adequate response to a genocide and thus prevent a full reparative process. Second, the situation facing Armenians today requires that reparative process, including recognition. Azerbaijan and Turkey’s recent destruction of Armenian Artsakh is a direct result of the failure to address the harms done by the 1915 genocide and the benefits that accrued to Turkey and, to an extent, Azerbaijan. The dramatic demographic asymmetry of 90 to 3 million is the result of 1915, as is the relative wealth of Turkey and poverty of Armenia, as the Turkish Republic’s economy was built on expropriated Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian resources, and so on.
If Aliyev’s and Erdogan’s statements of genocidal intent and the violence by each state are understood correctly, they are an extension of the 1915 genocide. By reframing historical and current events in this way, an important additional dimension of material reparations following recognition emerges: reparative justice for the past would have had a preventative function. If we recognize the genocidal process against Armenians, which targets the Armenian Republic, as ongoing, rather than ended with the destruction of Armenian Artsakh, reparative justice for this latest destruction, including reestablishment of Armenian Artsakh with full return of expelled people and security guarantees including independence, criminal justice against human rights abusers on the ground and leaders of the destructive campaign, and so forth, will actually function to prevention extension of the genocidal process to the Republic itself.