Swedish Parliament's Recognition of the "Genocide Resolution" and its Impact on the Turkish Community in Sweden

During recent decades, “diasporas” have become one of the most popular topics for researchers and have steadily gained greater recognition in the academic world. Definitions have a tendency to connect diaspora mobilization with a certain kind of trauma and experience of exile. Many have argued that a diaspora “consciousness” occurs as a result of the traumatic migration from the homeland. However this type of definition tends to ignore the existence of many other migrant groups that act as diasporas or define themselves as such. This paper argues that a “traumatic” experience might also occur in the host country and lead to a “diasporic turn” in a transnational migrant community. In this paper, the aim is to offer a case study which shows the “diasporic turn” which a migrant group may experience as an accelerative factor for diaspora mobilization. Here, Sweden is chosen as the host country and Turkish migrants are the case study. The Swedish parliament recently approved a resolution recognizing the mass killing in 1915 of Armenians in Turkey as genocide. Turkish associations organized various protests; issued journals specifically on this issue; and, recently, formed lobby groups in order to make an impact on the politics of their host country. In this paper, I firstly try to show how a politically-passive immigrant community is gradually in transition towards forming a diasporic identity. Secondly, this case study also helps to illustrate what the implications are for a host country when it becomes involved in the contentious politics of its migrant groups