Perceived Group Threats as a Driving Force of Negative Descriptions of Armenians in Turkish Parliamentary Debates

Abstract

To what extent perceived threats explain negative descriptions of minorities in politics? This study addresses this ever-significant inquiry by scrutinizing all mentions of Armenians in Turkish parliamentary proceedings between 1983 and 2018. Building on group position theory, it proposes that perceived threats influence the perception of Armenians in Turkish politics. The paper relies on quantitative content analysis to test this premise. The findings demonstrate that being a member of a right-wing political party and discussing security and diplomatic threats predict politicians' negative descriptions of Armenians. The study concludes that perceived threats to national security and international standing of Turkey contribute to the negative perception of Armenians in Turkish mainstream politics.

Full text

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“This is an Original Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on 06/05/2021, available at
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2021.1924051”
Perceived Group Threats as a Driving Force of Negative Descriptions of Armenians in
Turkish Parliamentary Debates (1983–2018)
Abstract: To what extent perceived threats explain negative descriptions of minorities in
politics? This study addresses this ever-significant inquiry by scrutinizing all mentions of
Armenians in Turkish parliamentary proceedings between 1983 and 2018. Building on group
position theory, it proposes that perceived threats influence the perception of Armenians in
Turkish politics. The paper relies on quantitative content analysis to test this premise. The
findings demonstrate that being a member of a right-wing political party and discussing
security and diplomatic threats predict politicians' negative descriptions of Armenians. The
study concludes that perceived threats to national security and international standing of Turkey
contribute to the negative perception of Armenians in Turkish mainstream politics.
Keywords: group position theory, intergroup hostility, quantitative content analysis,
parliamentary records, Turkish-Armenian relations.
Introduction
Political parties shape official policies about minorities all around the world. It is imperative to
scrutinise the factors associated with political parties’ negative descriptions of minorities. One
substantial sociological perspective that could help is group position theory (Blumer 1958;
Bobo 1999; Olzak 1993). The approach posits that dominant groups’ perceptions of threats to
their prerogatives underlie their hostility towards minority groups. Most of the studies
confirming this theoretical approach explores socio-political reasons of prejudice in developed
Western countries (Biggs and Knauss 2012; Carter and Lippard 2015; Denis 2015; Kusow and
DeLisi 2020; Schneider 2008; Weitzer and Tuch 2005). Bringing together group position
theory and the academic literature on non-Muslim minorities in Turkey, this study suggests
that perceived threats contribute to political parties’ negative descriptions of Armenians in
Turkish politics between 1983 and 2018. In so doing, it helps to fill the lack of analyses from
non-Western contexts in group position theory and the gap of a systematic analysis of the
perception of Armenians in contemporary Turkish politics.
The history of Armenian–Turkish relations provides a background to the discussion. In the
Ottoman Empire, the Armenian Gregorian community along with the Jewish and Greek
Orthodox minorities lived under the millet system (Barkey 2008). They had religious,
educational, juridical and fiscal autonomy (Icduygu and Soner 2006) and were governed by
their religious leaderships (Melson 1982). In return, they paid higher taxes than the Muslim
Ottomans and could not serve as state officers or in the military (Zürcher 2004). This system
gradually collapsed between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries during the fall of
the Ottoman Empire. The collapse period witnessed intercommunal violence with particularly

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horrendous results for the Ottoman minorities (Bloxham 2011; Dyer 1976; Levene 1998). The
most notorious was the 1915–1917 deportations referred to as the Armenian genocide (Göçek
2014). There is a highly charged international debate about the Armenian genocide recognition
which is beyond the scope of this paper.
The Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of the First World War (1914–1918). The subsequent
Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 imposed heavy conditions, such as the allocation of most of the
imperial territory to the Allies. This triggered the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1923),
which ended with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne. The second treaty led to the
establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. The new-born republic granted equal rights
to all Turkish citizens. However, various events and policies in modern Turkey imply that this
was an unfulfilled promise for non-Muslim citizens. Üngör (2011) argues that the Turkish
population policies aimed at ethnically homogenizing the Eastern region of Turkey between
1913 and 1950 using genocide, deportation, spatial planning, forced assimilation, and memory
politics. Moreover, the Wealth Tax of 1942 forced non-Muslims to pay very high taxes or sent
them to “work camps” in Eastern Anatolia under tough labour conditions (Neyzi 2002). On
September 6–7, 1955, there was xenophobic violence against all non-Muslim minorities in
Istanbul in which minorities' shops were looted, but the Turkish state did not provide enough
compensation afterward (Kuyucu 2005). In addition, the modern Turkish state strived to
prevent the international recognition of the 1915–1917 deportation of Armenians as genocide
since its establishment (Gürpınar 2016; Zürcher 2011), which is still viewed as an offensive
allegation in Turkey and contributes to the negative perception of Armenians. The murders of
Turkish diplomats and their families by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of
Armenia (ASALA) in the 1970s and 1980s also increased the prevalence of the negative image
of Armenians in Turkey (Gunter 2007). Furthermore, in the ongoing Nagorno–Karabakh
military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey stands against Armenia (Dixon
2010). Despite the tumultuous history between Turks and Armenians, the 85th Patriarch of
Turkey’s Armenians, Mr. Sahak Mashalian, estimated that they currently are the largest non-
Muslim community in Turkey with a population of around 60,000 (Özbey 2020).
Academic studies on the non-Muslim minorities in modern Turkey underline the prevalence
and significance of exclusionary practices (e.g., Bali 2001, 2004, 2011; Göl 2005; Toktas
2005). While some afford valuable insights about the experience of Armenians in modern
Turkey (Ekmekçioğlu 2014, 2016; Suciyan 2016), the scholarship tends to emphasise specific
events, predominantly the debates about the international recognition of the Armenian
genocide (Açar and Rüma 2007; Avedian 2013; Bilali 2013; Gürpınar 2016). Thus, the
academic literature could benefit from a theory that could give a generic explanation of the
perception of Armenians in contemporary Turkish politics and society. To that end, this study
employs group position theory and focuses on the period between 1983 and 2018. It is a very
interesting context, as it involves various milestones of the modern Turkish-Armenian
relations: the genocide debate, different phases of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the ASALA
attacks and the 2009 Zurich Protocols signed by Armenia and Turkey to normalise their
relations. This paper analyses Turkish political parties’ descriptions of Armenians in the

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parliamentary debates about these and other topics. Below, while developing its hypotheses,
the paper introduces group position theory and its relevance to the Turkish perception of
Armenians. Subsequently, it outlines the data, method and research procedures. Finally, the
study presents the findings and discusses their implications.
Academic literature and hypotheses
The main premise of group position theory is that prejudice emerges from dominant group
members’ perception of outgroups as a threat. According to Blumer (1958), people have a sense
of where their social group ought to belong concerning others. This includes opinions about
deserved standings of other groups that lay the basis of people’s hostile attitudes: whenever
people feel that their group’s position is challenged by other groups, they react through
prejudice. In other words, prejudice is a defensive response against perceived threats from
others to maintain the dominance of ones' group. In this view, four feelings lead dominant
group members to prejudice: (1) dominant group’s natural superiority, which involves
attributing negative characteristics to others, such as laziness and dishonesty, (2) inherent
differences between other groups and a dominant group that are natural and cannot be
overcome, (3) proprietary claims of privilege, such as the right to high-paying occupations, and
(4) an apprehension about other groups’ desire for and design to obtain the advantages of a
dominant group, which incline dominant group members to be watchful about the designs of
subordinate groups. These afford dominant group members to a cognitive map of society with
an assumedly ‘natural’ hierarchy to be protected. Furthermore, Bobo and Hutchings (1996)
extend the group position perspective to subordinate groups. They argue that subordinate group
members too would be likely to feel alienated and threatened due to their positions and
recommend the scholarship to look into perceived threats of the disadvantaged too.
Blumer (1958) explains that people’s beliefs about the deserved dominance of their group are
collectively and historically rooted. Therefore, reasons for prejudice cannot be reduced to the
contemporary material conditions of individuals. Dominant groups define and redefine their
relationship with subordinate groups in various ways including political speeches, everyday
conversations, historical accounts and tales, which function to normalise their feelings of the
rightful hierarchical order between the dominant and subordinate groups. In parallel, Blumer
(1958) states that historically constructed ideas on intergroup relationships would decline if
untouched. When people do not define situations in which both groups come to equal contact
as perceived threats to the natural order of the society, then the sense of deserved dominance
would gradually withdraw. Despite the importance of history, Quillian (1995, 1996) notes an
important lack of studies on the historical and cultural components of dominant groups’
negative attitudes.
The historical background is also a very decisive factor in contemporary Turkish-Armenian
relations. The conflicts in the Ottoman period seem to have contributed to drawing boundaries
between the Turkish and Armenian communities as the dominant and subordinate groups in
modern Turkey. Suciyan (2018) argues that the Armenian minority was a silenced and

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repressed community forced to echo the Turkish state’s official position with regards to the
Armenian persecution in the Ottoman Empire and concludes that the remaining members of
the community continued to experience this persecution in modern Turkey. In parallel,
Ekmekçioğlu (2016) states that despite that modern Turkey promised equal citizenship to the
Armenian minority, they maintained the boundaries between the community and the majority.
She describes three layers of the Armenian community: (1) families and homes as the in -side,
(2) the community institutions, such as schools and churches, as the mid -side through which
the Armenian minority had contact with the Turkish state by law, (3) the general public space
in Turkey as the out -side. These observations are in line with the group position perspective,
as they point at the significance of the historical constructions that helped to construe social
boundaries between a dominant and subordinate group.
The academic literature on Turkey confirms group position theory's insight into the
construction and maintenance of intergroup relations in the case of Turkish-Armenian
relations. Various studies on the Turkish perception of the non-Muslim minorities illustrate
exclusionary policies and practices against these communities (Aviv 2017; Bali 1998, 2001,
2004; Brink-Danan 2012; Haker 2003; Toktas 2005). They highlight Turkish nationalism’s
role in justifying the exclusionary attitude through marking the boundaries between dominant
and subordinate groups in modern Turkey. Indeed, Ziya Gökalp (1968), one of the founding
fathers of Turkish sociology and nationalism, posits that the dismemberment of the Ottoman
Empire was a result of cultural dissonance between different ethnic and religious communities.
Accordingly, relying on Emile Durkheim’s sociological approach, he formulated a program of
Turkish nationalism that portrays Hanafi Muslim culture in Turkey as the foundation of the
Turkish culture (Gökalp 1968). That is to say, his nationalism excluded the non-Muslim
minorities as outgroups in modern Turkey. In parallel, Ünlü (2014) argues that Turkishness is
constructed as the dominant culture and associated with self-righteousness, selective
knowledge and apathy about minority cultures and religions. This positioning of the dominant
group includes avoidance of subjects related to the Turkish maltreatment and violence against
the Armenians in the Ottoman period. Members of the dominant group would continue to enjoy
privileges unless they breach the Turkishness contract (Ünlü 2014).
Accordingly, this study suggests that political parties’ threat perception would be an important
factor that influences their negative descriptions of Armenians in Turkish politics. These
descriptions should be more common among the political actors from the Turkish right-wing,
whose ideological orientations are Turkish nationalists and political Islamists. Since their
political views are relatively more congruent with the Turkish nationalist description of Hanafi
Turks as the dominant group in Turkey than other ideological orientations, they would be more
likely to perceive Armenians as threats and portray them negatively in their speeches. In
addition, the paper looks into the debates on national politics and international politics
separately to provide a thorough account and expects that the debates related to perceived
security and diplomatic threats would make politicians more inclined to portray Armenians
unfavourably. Indeed, the relevant academic literature underlines the importance of the
perceived threat in both national and international affairs. According to Göl (2005), the state’s

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perceived threats about Armenian claims on its territory feed the exclusionary policies about
the minority. With regards to international relations, Zarakol (2010) argues that the perceived
threats about the recognition of the Armenian genocide to the global image of the Turks in the
world are an important factor leading Turks to denial. Taken together, these insights converge
on the following interrelated hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: Right-wing politicians would be more likely to describe Armenians negatively.
Hypothesis 2: Talking about threat-related topics would make politicians more likely to
describe Armenians negatively.
Data and method
This study relies on content analysis, ‘a research technique for making replicable and valid
inferences from data to their context’ (Krippendorf 1989, 403). In particular, it uses quantitative
content analysis, a deductive method that codes data into variables and then statistically
examines the relationship between those variables to test hypotheses (White and Marsh 2006).
To that end, the study analyses all Turkish parliamentary speeches that mentioned the word
Armenian (Ermeni) between 1983 and 2018. It draws on total population sampling, which
enables a thorough perspective on the descriptions of Armenians in Turkish parliamentary
politics. The research scrutinises the parliamentary records in the following steps: (1) collecting
the speeches that contain the word Armenian, (2) reading the speeches and generating a coding
scheme, (3) two researchers coding the data and calculating the intercoder reliability and (4)
analyzing the data quantitatively.
As Table 1 below demonstrates, the study creates a binary dependent variable: politicians’
negative and non-negative comments about Armenians. The unit of analysis is a speech of a
member of the parliament (MP). Each coder had to assess whether the overall description in a
talk was negative or not by paying attention to how central the negative and non-negative
comments are to the speech and considering the latent and manifest meanings. To ensure
reliability, the Author and a research assistant (RA) compared their codes and calculated the
percentage of coding agreement for the perception of Armenians. The RA only coded a sample
of the speeches, which contained every twentieth speech starting from the first, totaling 102 in
the population of 2024 speeches. The simple agreement between two coders was 96% (.96),
and Cohen's Kappa was .88, which could be interpreted as a strong intercoder agreement
(McHugh 2012). Besides, Neuendorf (2002) considers simple agreement levels of 80% or
higher is acceptable. The high agreement rate might be related to having a simple, binary
variable (Lacy et al. 2015). The independent variables, the ideological orientation of the
political party and debate topics, are based on information that could be collected from the
official parliamentary records and political party documents. For example, there is an index for
each parliamentary sitting that briefly describes the debate topic. Therefore, the study did not
need inter-coding measures for these variables.

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Table 1. Codebook
Perception
NEGATIVE: Description of Armenians’ identity, existence, or actions in
unfavorable terms, which includes defending an unfavorable treatment or
perception of Armenians.
NON-NEGATIVE: Description of Armenians’ identity, existence, or actions
using values-free or favorable terms, which includes criticizing an unfavorable
treatment or perception of Armenians.
Debate
topic
National
Affairs
Threat-related: Armenian genocide recognition, Karabakh
conflict
Others: International relations with Armenia, International
relations with other countries, the Armenian diaspora
International
Affairs
Threat-related: National security threats, the Turkish War of
Independence
Others: Minority life in Turkey, Economy, Culture, Turkish
citizenship law, Local politics, Geography
Ideological
orientation
Right: Speaker is a member of a Turkish nationalist or political Islamist party
Centre-right: Speaker is a member of a liberal democratic party
Centre-left: Speaker is a member of a social democratic party
Left: Speaker is a member of a socialist or Kurdish-rights movement party
The study analyses how politicians portray Armenians during different types of debates to test
the relationship between perceived threats and negative perceptions. First, it distinguishes
between debates that concern international and national politics to provide a comprehensive
analysis, as political parties’ approaches and perceived threats about Armenians might differ
between national and international issues. Indeed, there is a statistically significant association
between the perception of Armenians (negative or non-negative) and whether a political debate
was nationally or internationally oriented (Pearson’s chi-square χ2(1) = 157.037, p < .000).
International affairs debates are about the international presence and relations of Turkey. The
speeches on the international recognition of the Armenian genocide and the Karabakh conflict
between Azerbaijan and Armenia are related to perceived threats. The former is generally seen
as a diplomatic threat and unjust accusation by nearly all political parties and the general public
in Turkey. The Karabakh conflict (1988-2020) involves an ethnically Turkic community,
Azerbaijan, seen as a natural and eternal ally, and therefore, it is taken as a topic of perceived
threat. Indeed, some reports declare that Turkey took an active part in the latest military
confrontation in the Karabakh region (Gabuev 2020). The rest of the international debate topics
are about relations with various countries and the Armenian diaspora (please see Table 1
above). The talks about the national security threats posed by the PKK (Partiya Karkerên
Kurdistanê – Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for the
Liberation of Armenia) and the Turkish War of Independence period (1919-1923) are classified
as threat-related. The former reflects on different phases of the Turkey-PKK conflict and the
ASALA terror attacks between 1975 and 1990. The speeches on the Turkish War of

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Independence period refer to a past national security threat. The rest of the discussions are on
the living conditions and problems of minorities, local matters of cities, Turkish citizenship
law, Turkish geography, economy and culture that includes artefacts as well as social norms
and regulations as shown in Table 1 above.
Another key variable is ideological orientation. Table 2 below ideologically taxonomises the
political parties in the dataset. It is based on an approximation of positions of the political
parties informed by the relevant scholarship (Carkoglu 2007). In so doing, the study does not
account for the minor shifts in time and the differences in the profiles of individual politicians.
In the taxonomy, the right-wing political parties are the followers of Turkish nationalist and
political Islamist ideologies. The latter came from the Millî Görüş (National Vision)
movement. The center-right political parties are the liberals, and social-democratic political
parties constitute the centre-left. The left-wing political parties in the Turkish parliament in this
period are the socialist and the pro-Kurdish movement. Four members of the parliament were
independent at the time of their speeches. The study ideologically placed the independents by
considering their biographies, previous and subsequent political party affiliations and speeches:
three on the centre-right (Mr. Mesut Yilmaz, Ms. Ummet Kandogan, Mr. Mehmet Kemal Agar)
and one on the centre-left (Mr. Kamer Genc). Last, it should be acknowledged that the left-
right distinction in Turkey does not exactly correspond to that in Western democracies.
Aydogan and Slapin (2015) find that the center-left employs more populist rhetoric than the
center-left in the West.
Table 2. Ideological orientations of political parties
Right-wing
Centre-right
Centre-left
Left-wing
Welfare Party (RP)
Motherland Party
(ANAP)
Populist Party (HP)
People’s Labour
Party (HEP)
Virtue Party (FP)
True Path Party
(DYP)
Social Democratic
People's Party
(SHP)
Democratic Society
Party (DTP)
Felicity Party (SP)
Justice and
Development Party
(AKP)
Republican
People’s Party
(CHP)
Peace and
Democracy Party
(BDP)
Nationalist Democracy
Party (MDP)
Nation Party (MP)
Democratic Left
Party (DSP)
People’s Democratic
Party (HDP)
National Action Party
(MHP)
Democrat Turkey
Party (DTP)
Freedom and
Solidarity Party
(ODP)
Great Unity Party
(BBP)

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Findings
Descriptions of Armenians in discussions about international relations
The dataset contains 1281 talks on international affairs. Table 3 below illustrates that the
discussions of the international relations that mentioned Armenians were more often on threat-
related topics: the Armenian Genocide recognition debate and the Karabakh conflict. It was
followed by international relations with Armenia and other countries and the Armenian
diaspora in the Western countries.
Table 3. Descriptions of Armenians in debates about international relations
Non-negative
description
Negative
description
Total
Debate
Genocide recognition
43
548
591
Karabakh conflict
35
429
464
Relations with Armenia
44
131
175
Relations with other countries
22
27
49
The Armenian diaspora
2
0
2
Total
146
1135
1281
Besides, the frequency of the referrals to Armenians is similar among the political parties of
the right, centre-right and centre-left as seen in Table 4 below. The left-wing-leaning political
parties mentioned the word Armenian in the foreign affairs debates relatively less than the
others.
Table 4. Descriptions of Armenians and ideological orientation in debates about international
relations
Non-negative
description
Negative
description
Total
Ideology
Right
7
396
403
Centre-right
45
415
460
Centre-left
39
322
361
Left
55
2
57
Total
146
1135
1281
Table 5 below demonstrates that ideological orientation is a significant predictor of the negative
descriptions of Armenians (p<.001). The odds of Armenians being described negatively is
approximately 6 (1 to .163) to 1000 (1 to .000) times higher when Armenians are mentioned
by a speaker from a right-wing political party relative to a member of a political party from a
different ideological orientation. Model 1b includes the threat-related topics and presents a
statistically significant relationship (p<.001). It shows that the odds of Armenians being
described negatively is 4 times higher in a discussion about the Karabakh conflict than the other

9
international relations debates. The odds of Armenians being described negatively is 10 times
higher in a discussion on the Armenian genocide recognition relative to the mentions in the
other debates of foreign affairs. Nagelkerke’s R-squared in both models indicates a relationship
between prediction and grouping. The analysis confirms the main hypotheses by showing that
the ideological orientation and topics of security are reliable predictors for the negative remarks
about Armenians in the parliamentary debates about international relations.
Table 5. Logistic regression models of the descriptions of Armenians in international relations
Variable
Model 1a
Model 1b
Ideology
B (SE)
Odds
B (SE)
Odds
Centre-right
-1.814*** (.412)
.163
-2.262*** (.424)
.104
Centre-left
-1.925*** (.417)
.146
-2.184*** (.426)
.113
Left
-7.350*** (.815)
.001
-7.930*** (.848)
.000
Debate topic
-
-
-
-
Genocide recognition
-
-
2.322*** (.299)
10.194
Karabakh conflict
-
-
1.394*** (.270)
4.031
Constant
4.036*** (.381)
56.571
2.984*** (.399)
19.766
Model χ2 (df)
279.044*** (3)
344.745*** (5)
Pseudo R2 (Nagelkerke)
.385
.464
N
1281
1281
Note: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Reference category for ideology: right-wing.
Reference categories for debate topics: talking about other topics of foreign relations.
Descriptions of Armenians in discussions about national affairs
The dataset contains 743 speeches t that concerned national matters. As seen in Table 6 below,
the discussions were more frequently on general living conditions of minorities in Turkey and
the threat-related topics of national security threats and the period of the Turkish War of
Independence. This was followed by culture, local matters, economy, the Turkish citizenship
law and geography.

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Table 6. Descriptions of Armenians in debates about national affairs
Non-negative
description
Negative
description
Total
Debate
National security threats
7
233
240
The Turkish War of
Independence
18
148
166
Minorities in Turkey
206
56
262
Economy
5
13
18
Local issues
3
20
23
Geography
0
3
3
Citizenship law
1
7
8
Culture
16
7
23
Total
256
487
743
Table 7 below outlines that with regards to national affairs the distribution of the frequency of
the mentions of Armenians is more homogenous the political parties of different ideological
orientations: most often by the centre-right followed by the right, centre-left and left.
Table 7. Descriptions of Armenians and ideological orientation in debates about national affairs
Non-negative
description
Negative
description
Total
Ideology
Right
18
181
199
Centre-right
62
208
270
Centre-left
47
97
144
Left
129
1
130
Total
256
487
743
Table 8 below shows that ideological orientation is a significant predictor of the negative
descriptions (p<.001). The odds of Armenians being described negatively is approximately 3
(1 to .334) to 1000 (1 to .000) times higher when they are mentioned by a speaker from a right-
wing political party compared to a member of a political party from a different ideological
orientation. Model 2b includes the threat-related topics and shows a statistically significant
relationship (p<.001). It illustrates that the odds of Armenians being described negatively is 16
times higher in a discussion about the Turkish War of Independence relative to when mentioned
in the other debate topics of national affairs. The odds of Armenians being described negatively
is 165 times higher in a discussion on the national security threats than the other debates on
internal politics. Nagelkerke’s R-squared in both models indicates a relationship between
prediction and grouping. The analysis confirms the hypotheses by showing that the ideological
orientation and reflecting on perceived threats are reliable predictors of the negative remarks
about Armenians in the parliamentary debates about national matters.

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Table 8. Logistic regression models of the descriptions of Armenians in national affairs
Variable
Model 2a
Model 2b
Ideology
B (SE)
Odds
B (SE)
Odds
Centre-right
-1.098*** (.286)
.334
-1.750*** (.342)
.174
Centre-left
-1.584*** (.304)
.205
-1.491*** (.349)
.225
Left
-7.168*** (1.034)
.001
-8.070*** (1.230)
.000
Debate topic
-
-
-
-
National security threats
-
-
5.106*** (.737)
165.030
War of Independence
-
-
2.785*** (.346)
16.205
Constant
2.308*** (.247)
10.056
1.093*** (.271)
2.983
Model χ2 (df)
351.575*** (3)
570.875*** (5)
Pseudo R2 (Nagelkerke)
.521
.740
N
743
743
Note: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Reference category for ideology: right-wing.
Reference categories for debate topics: talking about other topics of national affairs.
Overall perception
To delineate the full picture of the relationship between the descriptions of Armenians and the
ideological orientation of the speakers’ political parties and threat-related debate topics, the
study ran a binary logistic regression of the entire dataset (N=2024). Table 9 below points at
the significance of the ideological orientation (p<.001) and the impact of the right-wing
ideology. The odds of Armenians being described negatively is approximately 4 (1 to .252) to
1000 (1 to .000) times higher by a speaker from a right-wing political party than a politician
from a different ideological orientation. Model 3b adds the threat-related topics and shows a
statistically significant relationship (p<.001). The odds of Armenians being described
negatively is 83 times higher in a discussion on the national security threats and 9 times higher
in a discussion on the Turkish War of Independence period relative to when they are mentioned
in the other discussions. Moreover, the odds of Armenians being described negatively is 22
times higher in a discussion about the genocide recognition and 9 times in a debate on the
Karabakh conflict than the odds of Armenians being described negatively when they are
mentioned in the other discussions. Nagelkerke’s R-squared in both models indicates a
relationship between prediction and grouping. The analysis supports the hypotheses by
demonstrating that the ideological orientation and perceived threats are significant predictors
of the negative remarks about Armenians in the Turkish parliamentary debates.

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Table 9. Logistic regression models of the descriptions of Armenians in all discussions
Variable
Model 3a
Model 3b
Ideology
B (SE)
Odds
B (SE)
Odds
Centre-right
-1.377*** (.230)
.252
-1.983*** (.251)
.138
Centre-left
-1.555*** (.236)
.211
-1.772*** (.254)
.170
Left
-7.255*** (.617)
.001
-7.858*** (.682)
.000
Debate topic
-
-
-
-
National security threats
-
-
4.425*** (.631)
83.530
War of Independence
-
-
2.223*** (.325)
9.231
Genocide recognition
-
-
3.128*** (.256)
22.839
Karabakh conflict
-
-
2.208*** (.221)
9.093
Constant
3.139*** (.204)
23.080
1.875*** (.216)
6.522
Model χ2 (df)
709.744*** (3)
1027.796*** (7)
Pseudo R2 (Nagelkerke)
.469
.631
N
2024
2024
Note: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Reference category for ideology: right-wing.
Reference categories for debate topics: talking about other topics.
Discussion and conclusion
This paper has reported two major findings that support the research hypotheses. First, it
presents a strong statistical relationship between ideological orientation and describing
Armenians negatively in the parliamentary speeches between 1983 and 2018. In particular,
being a member of a right-wing political party, defined as Turkish nationalist or political
Islamist, increases the odds of making negative comments exponentially. The odds gradually
decrease among politicians of the centre-left, centre-right and left in this hierarchical order.
The finding that the centre-right seems to be more liberal towards Armenians than the centre-
left is in line with the argument that they tend to act in reverse order in Turkish politics
(Aydogan and Slapin 2015). Second, the study demonstrates that the debates which are related
to perceived national security and diplomatic threats are strong predictors of the negative
comments. In other words, the odds of describing Armenians negatively for politicians are
significantly higher when they speak about past and present threats. These debate topics in the
order of their impact are national security threats posed by the PKK and ASALA, the
international debate on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, the period of the Turkish
War of Independence and the Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
These findings are in line with group position theory in two main ways. To start with, the right-
wing political parties underline the importance of the Turkish ethnic identity and Islam. In other
words, they place Muslim Turks as the dominant group, and therefore, they would be more
inclined to position the non-Muslim minorities as outsiders and potential sources of threats to
the dominant group. This seems to make them lenient towards negative comments about

13
Armenians. Besides, the data shows that the left-wing political parties, consists of
predominantly pro-Kurdish and pro-minority movement politicians, tend to have a reverse
trend relative to the right-wing. It seems to highlight that they position themselves along with
Armenians as outgroups and act in line with their perceived interests. Second, parallel to the
group position perspective's predictions, the study highlights that talking about the perceived
threats increases the probability of making negative comments about Armenians in Turkish
politics. That is to say, perceived threats seem to trigger a prejudiced attitude towards
Armenians in both national and international affairs of the country.
The significance of the perceived threats in the negative perception confirms various arguments
from the relevant scholarships. Most generally, it supports group position theory by showing
the implications of the historically rooted boundaries of the dominant and subordinate groups
and perceived threats in the perceptions of Armenians in modern Turkish politics. Also, pro-
Kurdish movement political parties' tendency to avoid negatively describing Armenians
compared to other political parties might be viewed as evidence of empathy and solidarity
among non-dominant minority groups. This interpretation is in line with Bobo and Hutchings’
(1996) emphasis that subordinate group members could also act according to the feelings of
alienation and threats caused by their disadvantaged positions. In other words, feelings of
subordinate position could also inform perceptions of minorities. Furthermore, the paper’s
findings are parallel to Göl’s (2005) argument that the Turkish state’s perceived threats about
the Armenian territorial claims contribute to the negative state policies and Zarakol’s (2010)
view that perceived diplomatic threats to the global image of Turkey associated with accepting
the Armenian genocide contribute to the strong denial and negative perceptions of Armenians.
Last, the findings support the academic literature’s view of the non-Muslims as an excluded
category, an outgroup, such as Aktürk’s (2009) claim that in modern Turkey the definition of
the nation only included Muslim citizens and reproduced the exclusionary rationale of the
Ottoman millet system. Ekmekçioğlu (2014) insightfully terms the exclusion of the non-
Muslims as step-citizenship.
All in all, the pertinency of group position theory to explain the negative descriptions of
Armenians in Turkish politics between 1983 and 2018 implies that Armenians are generally
seen as an outgroup and perceived threats present a challenge to democracy and human rights
by contributing to trigger intolerance towards minorities. Indeed, a recent report on Turkish
media found that Armenians were the group most frequently targeted by hate speech in 2019
and labelled as an enemy community posing a threat to Turkey, both currently as well as during
the period of the Turkish Independence War, and also to Azerbaijan in the Nagorno–Karabakh
conflict in Turkish media (Dink Foundation 2020). Deveci and Binbuğa Kınık (2019) claim
that Turkish nationalism biases the legal process concerning hate speech, and the state
generally does not punish hate speech targeting minorities. Accordingly, Turkish society and
politics could benefit from more effective management of perceived security threats, stricter
punishments of hate speech to become more inclusive. This might help people to avoid defining
intergroup relationships in the framework of perceived threats and rightful privileges of a

14
dominant group. In so doing, they could create conditions for decline of the intergroup hostility
as mentioned by Blumer (1958).
Future studies could test the validity of group position theory for explaining perceptions of the
other minorities in Turkey. In so doing, they would not only contribute to filling the research
gaps in the literature on Turkish politics but also test the validity of group position theory in
non-Western contexts. The paper also recommends that the Turkish parliamentary proceedings
afford very rich evidence base on the perception of minorities in mainstream politics. Future
research could easily exploit the easy online access to these official documents on a variety of
topics. This would enable a new approach to prejudice and how it informs important policy
decisions. Draege (2019) also claims that parliamentary debates are very useful resources to
analyse political decision-making, as they contain comprehensive evidence. It could also allow
international comparisons of ethnoreligious hostility by exploring parliamentary proceedings
in different contexts.
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