Anti-Armenian sentiment in Turkey

[8][9] The Ottoman Empire effectively treated Armenians and other non-Muslims as second-class citizens under Islamic rule, even after the nineteenth-century Tanzimat reforms intended to equalize their status.

[14][15][16] The Ottoman authorities denied any responsibility for these massacres, accusing Western powers of meddling and Armenians of provocation, while presenting Muslims as the main victims and failing to punish the perpetrators.

[22] Hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees fled to Anatolia as a result of the wars; many were resettled in the Armenian-populated eastern provinces and harbored resentment against Christians.

[34] The defense of Van served as a pretext for anti-Armenian actions at the time and remains a crucial element in works that seek to deny or justify the genocide.

[37] The leaders of the CUP ordered the deportations, with interior minister Talat Pasha, aware that he was sending the Armenians to their deaths, taking a leading role.

[48] The incident of The Twenty Classes was a policy used by the Turkish government to conscript the male non-Turkish minority population mainly consisting of Armenians, Greeks and Jews during World War II.

The prevailing and widespread point of view on the matter was that wishing to partake in the World War II, Turkey gathered in advance all unreliable non-Turkish men regarded as a “fifth column”.

On November 11, 1942, Turkey instaured the Varlık Vergisi, a tax mostly levied on non-Muslim citizens with the stated aim of raising funds for the country's defense in case of an eventual entry into World War II.

[61] It was a discriminatory measure which taxed non-Muslims up to ten times more heavily and resulted in a significant amount of wealth and property being transferred to Muslims.

[79][80][81][82] As a result, more than 1,400 assets (included churches, schools, residential buildings, hospitals, summer camps, cemeteries, and orphanages) of the Istanbul Armenian community since 1936 were retrospectively classified as illegal acquisitions and seized by the state.

[86] On 3 May 1984, a hit-team headed attack undertaken by Grey Wolves member[87] Abdullah Çatlı and paid for by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization.

[100][101][102] The mere notion that Gökçen could have been Armenian caused an uproar throughout Turkey as Dink himself even came under fire, most notably by newspaper columnists and Turkish ultra-nationalist groups, which labeled him a traitor.

[103][104][105] In March 2015, the mayor of Ankara, Melih Gökçek, filed a formal complaint on defamation charges against journalist Hayko Bağdat because he called him an Armenian.

[108] In September 2015, during the Kurdish–Turkish conflict, a video was released which captured police in Cizre announcing on a loudspeaker to the local Kurdish population that they were "Armenian bastards".

[117] In March 2016, a parade conducted in Aşkale, initially dedicated to Turkish martyrs of World War I, turned into "a hate show" and a "hate-filled propaganda against the Armenians.

[119] In April 2016, Barbaros Leylani, the head of the Turkish Worker's Union in Sweden, referred to Armenians as "dogs" in a public speech in Stockholm, and added: "Turks awaken!

(external link of speech (in Turkish))[120][121] Juridikfronten, a Swedish watchdog organization, filed a report to the police due to an "incitement to racial hatred".

"[126][127] He had also received numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists who viewed his "iconoclastic" journalism (particularly regarding the Armenian genocide) as an act of treachery.

[133] Through his Facebook profile, it was uncovered that he was a sympathizer of nationalist politician Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu and Turkish agent / contract killer Abdullah Çatlı, who himself had a history of anti-Armenian activity, such as the Armenian Genocide Memorial bombing in a Paris suburb in 1984.

"[137][138] On February 26, 2012, on the anniversary of the Khojaly Massacre, the Atsız Youth led a demonstration took place in Istanbul which contained hate speech and threats towards Armenia and Armenians.

"[139][140] In November, 2012 the ultra-nationalist ASIM-DER group (founded in 2002) had targeted Armenian schools, churches, foundations and individuals in Turkey as part of an anti-Armenian hate campaign.

"[152] On 20 February 2015, the Mayor of Bayburt Mete Memis called the deeds of Turkish soldiers who massacred Armenians a hundred years ago "heroism".

In practice, this means that the Turkish government is directly responsible for what textbooks are taught in all schools, even private education or those that are dedicated to ethnic minorities.

He found that Turkish history textbooks are filled with the message that Armenians are people "who are incited by foreigners, who aim to break apart the state and the country, and who murdered Turks and Muslims."

[160][161] Historian Tunç Aybak states, "These officially distributed educational material reconstruct the history in line with the denial policies of the government portraying the Armenians as the back stabbers and betrayers who are regarded as a threat to the sovereignty and identity of the modern Turkey.

[174] In April 2018, a graffiti reading “This homeland is ours” was inscribed on the wall and a pile of trash was also dumped in front of the Armenian Surp Takavor Church in Kadıköy district.

Kadıköy Municipality condemned and described the action as a “racist attack” in a Twitter post, saying the necessary work has been initiated to clear the writing and remove the trash.

[175] On 5 August 2014, then Prime Minister, now President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in a televised interview on NTV news network, remarked that being Armenian is "uglier" even than being Georgian, saying "You wouldn't believe the things they have said about me.

[181] The Ankara Chamber of Commerce included a documentary, accusing the Armenian people of slaughtering Turks, with its paid tourism advertisements in the June 6, 2005 edition of the magazine Time Europe.

[192][193][194] Historian Erik-Jan Zürcher argues that, since the Turkish nationalist movement dependent on the support of a broad coalition of actors that benefited from the genocide, it was impossible to break with the past.