On June 28, 2026, Euronews published an article announcing that the Israeli government had approved a proposal recognizing the Armenian Genocide. The headline read: “Israel formally recognises Armenian World War I ‘genocide.’” The word genocide appeared in quotation marks.
The punctuation was repeated in the body of the article:
“The Armenian ‘genocide’ refers to the systematic elimination and deportation of Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman Empire from spring 1915 to autumn 1916.”
Of course, in reporting on genocide, quotation marks are not innocent. When used around an established term, they communicate skepticism or reluctance to accept the term as accurate.
The Modern Language Association’s discussion of “scare quotes” explains that quotation marks used in this manner can signal an “ironic, skeptical, or even derisive stance” toward the enclosed word [1]. Placing genocide in quotation marks therefore distances Euronews from the term itself. It tells the reader that genocide may be somebody else’s characterization: a contested label rather than the accepted description of a historically documented crime.
In an article reporting the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Euronews managed to do the opposite. It reported recognition while withholding its own. A news organization may explain that a state denies a historical crime. It should not make the denying state’s uncertainty its own. There is a very big difference between writing, “Turkey denies that the Armenian Genocide constituted genocide,” and writing, “the Armenian ‘genocide.’”
The Armenian Genocide Is Not an Unresolved Allegation
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the Armenian Genocide as the physical destruction of the Armenian Christian population of the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1916 [2]. It estimates that as many as 1.2 million Armenians died through massacres, deportations, systematic mistreatment, exposure and starvation (Editor’s note: The Armenian National Institute estimates that up to a million and a half Armenians perished at the hands of Ottoman and Turkish military and paramilitary forces through 1923. The Ottoman Armenian population prior to the genocide was reported to be at about two million [3])
The same institution also talks about Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who coined the word genocide in 1944 and campaigned for its codification in international law, who repeatedly identified the Armenian case as one of the atrocities that shaped his thinking.
The Armenian Genocide has also been officially recognized by numerous national governments and international institutions. While historical evidence is what makes the event a genocide, the recognitions show that the term is a mainstream consensus and not an Armenian belief.
Turkey continues to reject the genocide, describing the deaths as part of wartime disorder. Azerbaijan has adopted a similar position. News organizations very often cover subjects that governments deny. Journalists do not need to put quote marks around established facts (like torture, election fraud or genocide) just because a guilty government denies them.
Letting politicians dictate when to use quotes gives the most powerful liars total control over how news is reported.
Citing an Authority, Then Contradicting It
Euronews actually cites the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s casualty estimate, stating that between 664,000 and 1.2 million Armenians died. Yet the museum page from which that estimate comes consistently calls the event the Armenian Genocide. It describes deportations, systematic killings, starvation and the destruction of the Ottoman Armenian population. It does not place genocide in quotation marks.
Euronews therefore borrowed the institution’s numerical authority and then rejected its terminology through punctuation. You cannot cherry-pick the facts. If a museum is reliable enough to count the victims, it is reliable enough to name the crime. Publications can challenge an institution’s historical classification, but they must use evidence to do so. Scare quotes are not an argument.
Morality vs Opportunism
For decades, the Israeli government avoided formal recognition to protect relationships with Turkey and Azerbaijan. The 2026 initiative came amid a severe deterioration in Israeli-Turkish relations, with the Associated Press noting the move occurred against the backdrop of the Gaza conflict.
It is reasonable to scrutinize Israel’s motives here; a state’s recognition of a genocide can be morally correct and politically opportunistic at the same time. A government might acknowledge a historical crime because the evidence compels it, because domestic politics shifted or, in this case, simply to punish a rival. We should not avoid that discussion, nor should recognizing Armenian suffering be used as protection or shield for Israel to hide from the scrutiny over its treatment toward Palestinians.
However, a government’s opportunistic use of politics does not make a genocide less real. The proper journalistic response is to investigate the political motives and accurately name the historical crime. Scare quotes contribute nothing except insinuation.
Denialist Language
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the recognition and referred to the “so-called ‘Armenian genocide.’”According to the Jerusalem Post’s report on the statement, the Azerbaijani government called recognition a distortion of historical facts and claimed that the classification lacked legal and scholarly foundations [4].
Denial is not really declaring that no Armenians died. Contemporary denial often happens through qualification and minimization: alleged, so-called, claims of, events of 1915, or quotation marks around genocide.
While Euronews did not go as far as using “so-called,” its chosen phrasing that said “what it called a genocide” achieved a very similar distancing effect.
Euronews and Azerbaijan
In 2025, Euronews opened an office in Baku just as Azerbaijan was escalating a severe crackdown on independent journalism. As OC Media noted at the time, dozens of Azerbaijani journalists had been arrested since late 2023 on politically motivated charges [5]. Euronews’s expansion stood in contrast to the regime’s broader repression of independent and international media.
Beyond its physical presence, Euronews maintains a large special section dedicated to Azerbaijan. Numerous articles are explicitly labeled “In partnership with Azpromo” (the state’s export and investment agency), while others are produced alongside the Ministry of Culture. This sponsored content covers everything from energy diplomacy and investment to tourism and sports.
Such deep financial and institutional relationships create an obligation for transparency. When a news outlet partners extensively with state-connected bodies, its independent coverage of issues central to that government’s political narrative must be careful and consistent.
Azerbaijan opposes international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, aligning with Turkey’s denialist stance. Therefore, when Euronews places the word genocide in quotation marks, readers are entirely justified in asking how that editorial decision was made and whether that standard is applied consistently to comparable historical crimes.
Editorial Decisions
Every noun, verb and quotation mark shapes how readers understand an event.
The Armenian Genocide does not become historically uncertain simply because Turkey and Azerbaijan deny it. It also does not make scare quotes just only because Israel’s recognition is politically motivated.
The Armenian historical record is constantly acknowledged in one way and destabilized in the next. The victims are counted, the deportations are detailed and the systematic destruction is summarized, but the name of the crime itself is held at arm’s length. More than a century later, denial survives through precisely this kind of rhetorical “hesitation”.
And sometimes, it appears as a pair of quotation marks. Enough to turn recognition into doubt.
Links:
- https://style.mla.org/scare-quotes-origins/
- https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-armenian-genocide-1915-16-overview
- https://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocide.html
- https://www.jpost.com/international/article-900776
- https://oc-media.org/euronews-opens-office-in-baku-despite-crackdown-on-local-and-international-media/
- https://www.euronews.com/special/azerbaijan
