Ontological (In)security and State Denial of Historical Crimes: Turkey and Japan

Abstract

This article joins the growing scholarship on the ontological security needs of states. By focusing on state denial of historical crimes, the article will address the main point of contention among scholars who study ontological security, i.e. the question of whether identity pressures on states are mostly endogenously or exogenously generated. Through a study of the Turkish state’s reluctance to apologize for the Armenian genocide, and the Japanese discomfort over the WWII atrocities, I argue that we can avoid tautology in our generalizations by introducing temporal and spatial dimensions to the argument. Inter-subjective pressures matter more at times when traditional routines defining the self are broken and are more likely to create ontological insecurity outside the West. The review of the Turkish and Japanese cases demonstrate that both social and individualistic approaches to ontological security are partly right, but also incomplete because neither takes into account the uneven expansion of international society or the effect this expansion has had on the identity of outsider states who were incorporated into the system at a later date.