10 Censorship, indiference, oblivion The Armenian genocide and its denial Vicken Cheterian The genocide of the Armenians is one of the major areas of twentieth-century world history that remains understudied. In spite of its importance as the frst modern genocide, which altered the demographic composition of the Middle East, put an end to the Ottoman Empire, and constituted precedence to future genocidal projects, its scholarly research started only recently. The explanation of this major omission is a difcult task. It is pos- sible to trace Turkish policies of censoring any debate or reference toward the fate of the Armenians, even the collaboration of certain Turkish and international institutions whether voluntarily or out of material interest in this efort. Yet the silence is broader and more complex: it nearly suc- ceeded in eliminating the genocide and its victims from living memory even in spaces outside the control of the post-Ottoman Turkish rulers. The aim of this chapter is to refect on the long oblivion to which the history of the Armenians was condemned, and on the silence before the debate on denialism emerged. This silence sheds light on the workings of political institutions, as well as intellectual and academic power centers, and poses existential questions that have long been ignored. The emergence of scholarly research on the extermination of the Ottoman Armenians dates only from the 1980s, when it was initially contested and rejected. It fnally intensifed in the 2000s and received increasing accept- ance within some sectors of academia. The frst time a Turkish scholar showed interest in the subject was in 1990—incidentally a year after the Ottoman archives were opened to researchers. For over seven decades, the frst modern genocide was considered to be insignifcant, not a worthy sub- ject of research in an established university setting. It was not only censored by the criminal state itself, but it was also ignored as unimportant by a large number of scholars, intellectuals, artists, and religious personalities. How is this possible? The crime The omission of an event of such magnitude cannot be coincidental, nor could it be without consequences. The scholarly debate has largely been