Three shades of dismemberment anxiety about Armenians in Turkish politics

Abstract

This article explores the significance of perceived threats about dismemberment in Turkish politics, also called the Sèvres syndrome. Relying on a qualitative content analysis of Turkish parliamentary records, it scrutinises how the syndrome influences the debates about Armenians between 1983 and 2018. It demonstrates that Turkish politicians refer to the syndrome in three manners: (1) Armenians had tried to dismember; (2) Armenians could create conditions to dismember again and (3) Armenians are actively attempting to dismember. The study concludes that the syndrome presents an obstacle to a peaceful Turkish–Armenian relationship by recalling Turkish victimhood in the past and relating it to contemporary contexts.

Speculative Undergrounds

“…17 Yet the Lausanne Conference saw Sèvres overturned and, on July 24, 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, designating the sovereign borders and territorial unity of modern Turkey. 18 In the Turkish nationalist imaginary, Sèvres, became a historical event encapsulating the anxieties of territorial dismemberment in present-day Turkey (Bilgin 2012;Nefes 2021). 19 What international relations scholars refer to as "the Sèvres Syndrome" continues to foster the paranoia that Turkey is in imminent danger of the imposition of Sèvres, and thus, partition (Guida 2008;Gürpınar 2019).…”