The ‘Turkish Denial’ of the Armenian genocide is a topic that is frequently talked about, but hardly ever studied systematically. In this paper I address the following questions: What accounts for the mainly denialist discourse in Turkey when it comes to the forced deportation of the Ottoman Armenians by the Young Turk Regime? What role do cultural and political factors play? Is the dominant denial discourse a) a matter of national identity imperatives, b) the geostrategic bargaining assets of Turkey against international genocide acknowledgement or the lack of effective international pressure on Turkey respectively to come to terms with the past or c) a combination of cultural needs and political power? I explore the denial phenomenon by analysing the societal and political reactions and defense patterns with regard to the Armenian genocide during “critical discourse moments” (Chilton 1987) between 1973 and 2005. The contribution of this approach to scholarly work on denial and Armenian-Turkish relations is twofold: with an in-depth analysis of decisive discourse moments during a period of over 30 years and looking on both – the public discursive coping patterns with the past and the Turkish state’s past politics – and systematically embedding these into the context of Turkey’s foreign relations I trace the development of the denial in Turkey and empirically located changes and continuties. So far scholars have either looked at Turkish state politics and practices (Hovanissian 1999; Dadrian 1999; Kaiser 2003) or at the civil-society’s increasing interest and openness for alternative readings of the history of 1915 (Göcek 2003, Altinay 2006, Kieser 2005). This separation of state and society, I argue, reduces the denial phenomenon to the Turkish state’s past politics. It also implies that the coming to terms with the past of the Turkish society takes place outside the framework of the denial discourse which is by and large equated with the Turkish state’s political practices and defense mechanisms against international genocide charges. However, prioritising the Turkish state as the key actor of the denial discourse overlooks the power that rests in the discourse itself and neglects its pervasiveness in different social and political settings. In order to reveal this pervasiveness, I follow a discourse-oriented approach that links texts (denial frames as identifiable in public debate), context and political practices (the politics of the Turkish state with regard to the history of 1915, international debates about the genocidal character of 1915 and official acknowledgements etc.).