ABSTRACT
Encouraged by the fact that a new generation of Turkish and Armenian scholars was already benefiting from the possibilities of archival research in Turkey and Armenia, the organizers of what became the Workshop on Armenian-Turkish Scholarship (WATS) felt a sense of urgency to begin a dialogue between scholars of various generations and of various nationalities to discuss the advances in research and thinking about the late Ottoman period in a constructive and intimate forum like a workshop. Given the official position of the Turkish government that no genocide had taken place and with laws in place that insults to the Turkish state were punishable by imprisonment, it was quite extraordinary that scholars from Turkey were willing, even eager, to participate in our first and subsequent workshops. A new synthesis began to emerge from WATS that questioned both the denialist view and the standard Manichaean Armenian narrative as well – innocent Armenian victims passively cut down by the “Terrible Turk”.
