The Funeral of “Parisian Uncle”

Abstract This piece ethnographically situates the funeral of elderly Armenian photographer Osep Minasoğlu—also known as “Parisian Uncle” in queer political circles—and analyzes the fragmented solidarities that emerged during the funeral as symptoms of the Turkish state’s denialism. It conceptualizes Turkey as a post-genocidal society founded on the denial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, framing this denial as central to the state’s futurity. It discusses how denialism emerges as an encompassing form of pervasive minority governance and examines its enduring impact on the state apparatus in mundane domains. By relating Osep Minasoğlu’s funeral to the gendered afterlives of genocide, such as forced religious conversion, family displacement, and the abduction of Armenian children and women, it argues that queer political community in Turkey often fails to address the larger structures of violence and domination, and how these dynamics are shaped by the state’s ongoing practices of racialization, nationalism, and minoritization. Rather than simply critiquing the queer movement’s recognition claims and liberal politics, it offers mundane, affective, and intersectional engagements with pervasive forms of denialism, while also contemplating how to establish ethical ways of reckoning with the past and holding feminist futures.