ABSTRACT
On 23 April 2015, just a day before the official date for the centennial remembrance of victims of the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian Apostolic church canonised 1.5 million Armenians massacred in the eastern or Anatolian part of Ottoman Turkey (non-officially called Western Armenia by Armenians). The canonisation of the victims of the genocide marked a new era for Armenians all over the world and particularly for Armenia, as the scrupulously planned and implemented genocide of Armenians did not come to its end, but rather generations of Armenians survived and continue their struggle for official recognition of the genocide by the Turkish government. The Armenian Church identified the victims of the genocide as victims dying for their Christian faith and tried to prove the concept that Christianity is an integral part of Armenian ethnicity. Due to the centennial of Armenian genocide the number of different projects run by different civil society organisations (such as Eurasia Partnership foundation, Hrant Dink Foundation, etc) as well as by Armenian philanthropists (such as the ‘100 lives’ project) has only increased. The goal of many of such projects is to reconsider the genocide to centre upon Armenian identity, to promote the reconstruction of a new identity based on the concept of ‘failed genocide’ and to initiate a new discourse for finding new foundations for identity construction, especially in the Armenian diaspora.
