Denial of the Armenian genocide in American and French politics

The dissertation seeks to address three sets of questions: Why have the United \nStates and France become involved in the issue of the Armenian genocide several \ndecades after the genocide? How and why do the American and French debates have \ndifferent outcomes? What conclusions can be drawn from these differences? It \nexamines how the unresolved conflict between the competing Turkish narrative of \ndenial and the Armenian narrative affirming the reality of the genocide has led the \nArmenian diaspora and the Turkish state to influence political actors in the United \nStates and France to support their arguments for and against the reality of the \ngenocide. This thesis focuses on the debates in the United States in 2007 and 2010 \non a Congressional Resolution to recognise the genocide. It also traces the progress \nof French legislation from French official recognition of the genocide in 2001 to the \npassage of legislation to criminalise denial of the Armenian genocide in 2012, \nultimately ruled unconstitutional by the French Constitutional Council. The \ncontribution to knowledge this thesis makes is to demonstrate that recognition of \ngenocide is a political question that involves more than the perpetrators and victims. \nJust as genocide does not only involve these two actors, recognition of genocide also \ninvolves other states and societies. Just as bystander states have to think about what \nthey do when a genocide is being perpetrated when it comes to recognition they have \nto evaluate what to do, particularly when they have been involved from the outset.