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Identity Conflicts? The Sense of ‘Victimhood’ and the Enemy Images of Turkey and Azerbaijan in the Foreign Policy Discourse of Armenia
Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society (KS), Department of Global Political Studies (GPS). Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society (KS), Russia and the Caucasus Regional Research (RUCARR).
2018 (English)In: Slovak Journal of Political Sciences, ISSN 1335-9096, Vol. 18, no 2, p. 155-179Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Students of Armenia’s foreign policy have broadly treated the troubled relations with neighboring Azerbaijan and Turkey as an unsurprising consequence of the long-standing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It is taken for granted that the volatile geopolitics of the South Caucasus region is the core rationale behind the perpetual confrontations and hostilities (Melander, 2001; Shaffer, 2009). However, this line of thinking tends to overlook the ideational landscape of the turbulence . This article argues that modern Armenia’s political identity has been characterized by an acute sense of ‘victimhood’ arising from the memory of the Armenian Genocide, and that Turkey plays an important role as an ‘Other’, which enhances Armenia’s self-image as a ‘victim’. It suggests that negative images of Turkey and its ally Azerbaijan are deeply embedded, rather than being a product of manipulation. Yet the ruling elite has consistently appealed to the enemy images in attempts to assert Armenia’s ‘victimhood’, divert attention from complex problems and legitimate its power by presenting country’s plight as ‘structurally inevitable’ in its ‘dog-eat-dog’ neighborhood. Furthermore, it argues that Armenia’s self-image of a ‘victim’ has significantly affected the treatment of Russia as an indispensable security ally.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
University of Saint Cyril and Metodius in Trnava , 2018. Vol. 18, no 2, p. 155-179
Keywords [en]
‘Self’-‘Other’, Armenian-Turkish, Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, Victim, Enemy
National Category
Social Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-1649Local ID: 27239OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-1649DiVA, id: diva2:1398380
Available from: 2020-02-27 Created: 2020-02-27 Last updated: 2020-05-26Bibliographically approved

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http://sjps.fsvucm.sk/index.php/sjps/article/view/76
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Department of Global Political Studies (GPS)Russia and the Caucasus Regional Research (RUCARR)
Social Sciences

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CiteExportLink to record
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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
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  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
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  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
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  • asciidoc
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