As outlined in Geoffrey Robertson's book An Inconvenient Genocide, the core belief behind the Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide lies in the motives for the killings. Turkish Officials don't deny that Ottoman military personnel killed Armenians; they dispute the amount (they claim 300 000, while the most commonly referred to number is 1.5 million) and the reasoning behind it.

Robertson cites the Turkish "official" numbers of Armenians living in Turkey at the time as a reason that 1.5 million Armenians couldn't have been killed: "[Turkish] demographic studies prove that prior to World War I, fewer than 1.5 million Armenians lived in the entire Ottoman Empire. Thus, allegations that more than 1.5 million Armenians from eastern Anatolia died must be false."

(It's noteworthy that Robertson counters this with evidence from the Armenian Church, who claim that 2.1 million Armenians were living in Anatolia at that time.)

On the intention, Article II of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Genocide outlines that, in order for a sanctioned killing to be classified as a genocide, there must be "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group...". Turkish officials today claim that the killings were performed because Armenians "rose up" against the Ottoman government in support of Russia, hoping that in victory they would claim their independence. To support this, in 2007 Turkish counsellor Orhan Tung wrote in the New Statesman (an opinion that the government mirrors to this day) that "credible evidence" for the intention to commit genocide has never been concretely found. This is obviously disputed, because as opposed to the Holocaust or the Bosnian War, there are no reported documents that are widely internationally recognized as showing intent for genocide.

(Again, its worth noting that Armenian historian Ara Sarafian reported to Mediamax that Talaat Pasha's Report on the Armenian Genocide, which was published by the Gomidas Institute in April 2011, as a proper Ottoman government document showcasing this exact intent.)

tl;dr: The Turkish government doesn't belief that an Armenian genocide happened, but refer to it as politically motivated killings, because of the definition of "genocide" by the United Nations.

Okay, this is a hard question, because it is a very loaded one. You assume that current Turkish state does not see itself as the continuation of Ottoman Empire, but it does. I think an easier question to answer would be "why and how Turkey denies the Armenian genocide".

There are different levels of genocide denial in Turkey, I will explain some of them and source them.

1st level: "There was no killings, therefore there was no genocide." This is NOT the most popular version of the denial in Turkey. Most Turks accept that there were killings. Defenders of this version are commonly the Neo-Ottomanists in Turkey. Their argument is that Armenians were called as "sadik millet" or "millet-i sadika" ("loyal nation") in the empire, then they betrayed Ottomans and sided with Russians. Started gangs and mass killed Turkish people and Ottomans had to exile them. This version of history totally dismisses all the evidence of mass killings, by using conspiracy theories. As an example of this theory you can look at an example, which defends that Armenian genocide was invented to slander Ottoman empire:

Ermeni Sorunu: Büyük Oyun (Armenian Problem: Grand Game) by Adem Suad

2nd level: According to this, there were mass killings on both sides, but this was not a genocide. This is by far the most commonly believed version in Turkey. They mix truth with conspiracy theories and say that accepting genocide will have serious consequences for Turkey so we should not do that. They describe Ottoman Empire at the time as weak, they say that as the empire could not protect its citizens, it had to use force against Armenians. As Armenian gangs terrorized Turkish villages, Turkish people started arming themselves and attacked Armenians for revenge and Ottoman Empire could not stop them.

There are many different versions but they are all around denying responsibility in some manner. They say that for it to be counted as genocide, it has to be systematic, government has to round up all Armenians and kill all of them. As Ottoman Empire exiled the Armenians and some of them died on the road due to climate, starving etc. it is not a genocide. Founder of Turkey Mustafa Kemal Ataturk himself described the events by using the word "fecaat" ("disaster"). But he would not see it as a genocide as well. The defenders of this theory overlook events where government killed people just because they were Armenians as particular mistakes. They say that "there is no written general plans of genocide".

Some examples of Turkish historians, politicians and generals defending this theory:

Sürgünden Soykırıma: Ermeni İddaları ("From Exile to Genocide: Armenian Claims) by Yusuf Halaçoğlu (historian)

Ermeni Suçlamaları ve Gerçekler ("Armenian Accusations and Truths") by İlker Başbuğ (ex army chief of Turkey)

Ermeni Sorununda Strateji ve Siyaset (Strategy and Politics in Armenian Problem) by Doğu Perinçek (far-right politician)

3rd level: It was a genocide, but it was committed by the Kurds. This is a last resort defense and has some truth to it, but again only partly. Ottoman Empire armed Muslim Kurds against Christians during 1890-1908, they are named as Hamidiye corps. After 1908, Ottoman Empire continued to support Kurdish aşirets (tribes? clans?) against Christians, especially Armenians. So some people claim that genocide happened, but it was the Kurds. Again, dismissing how Armenians in other parts of the empire were killed as well.

Source:

Hamidiye Alayları Ağrı Kürt Direnişi Ve Zilan Katliamı ("Hamidiye Corps, Agri Kurdish Resistance and Zilan Massacre") by Kemal Süphandağ.

All of these are very controversial. Especially in Turkey. But I hope I gave you some idea at least. Sorry if I made mistakes, English is not my native language.

Edit: There are also many other versions that I did not list. For example some people claim that it was the will of Germany and not the Ottoman Empire. A source for that:

Ermeni Tehcirinde Almanya Etkisi ("German Influence at Armenian Exile") by Bülent Keçik

You may wish to read /u/yodatsracist's comment on this thread which addresses this question.

Finally one I can chime in on!

A lot of people in this thread have commented on the reasons the Turkish government itself believes there was no genocide. But, I feel that these answers are more based in how the Turkish government denies the Genocide and not why. In her paper, Reading Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the Armenian Genocide Fatma Ulgen argues that denialism is a core facet in the foundational ideology of the Turkish Republic.

Many of other other posters here have correctly stated that the narrative that there were massacres on both sides, Turkish and Armenian, is the state posited and state approved version. Fatma Ulgen argues that this state doctrine of denialism directly stems from Ataturk. It is necessary to know that Ataturk had a major hand in writing the history of Turkey and the Turks and the development of the national culture of Turkey. He had such a hand in these processes that Ulgen calls him the "ideological mastermind of Turkey." Further, that the memory of Ataturk, to the present day, embodies and defines 'Turkishness' that "any criticism of him that deviates from the official ideology" can drive one out of 'Turkishness'.

Knowing this one can fully understand the argument that Ulgen makes. A national identity of Turkey was lacking at the outset of the Republic, given that the Ottoman Empire was a multi-ethnic, empire and had not sufficiently transitioned over to the idea and practice of a nation-state even in the Young Turks time. Ataturk was concerned with building a national identity, and one method to building a national identity is to create myths out of real, historical events. Myths necessitate revision and omission/addition of detail, in the telling of the events which occurred to the Armenians in 1915, Ataturk was building a foundational myth of the Turkish Republic as whole. So what did Ataturk have to say about the Armenian Genocide?

Well...nothing good. Ulgen utilizes speeches, telegrams, and documents Ataturk wrote to analyze his stance on the issue and his actual contribution to the denialism which, up until recently, was the de facto narrative of the Turkish Republic. During the War of Resistance in the 1920s most of Ataturk's texts on the Armenian issue tend to portray Armenians in an extensively negative light: On the eastern front, where the Armenians were fighting in a war of independence with the aim of setting up the first republic of Armenia, Ataturk calls much of the Armenian actions a "policy of extermination", "murder and savagery" of the Muslim inhabitants. In regards to the south Ataturk reframed the Maras massacres, in which thousands of Christians were slaughtered, into an event which portrayed Greeks and Armenians as the "old murders" and the Muslims as an "oppressed people wandering in the Anatolian territory in misery." Already, before even the establishment of the Turkish Republic the narrative has placed the Armenians as a the negative actors in the war and the Muslims as those oppressed. While, not explicitly denialism, it sets up a myth of the Turks being oppressed and brutalized by Christian elements(the largest of these within Anatolia before the Genocide being the Armenians) which sought to take Turkish land away from them. This is an important thing to understand because it sets up the undertone for the actual denial of the genocide found within the Nutuk, a gigantic speech/history of Turkey given by Ataturk.

The Nutuk a 600 page document, given over 6 days discusses the Armenian genocide literally within the first few pages of the speech, which goes to show the underlying necessity of addressing the "Armenian question" and the Armenian "deportations" in Ataturk's mind. Given that the Nutuk essentially sets up and directs all later Turkish state historiography and history, this is extremely important to the conception of the Turks as a national community. So, what does Ataturk say? He stresses that the deportation of the Armenians and the cruelties they faced were only committed by "instigators and agitators" and that "the people"(millet) had no part in the "mistreatment". Within the first few pages of the Nutuk, which is probably the most important document to modern Turkey, the "Deportations" are played down by Ataturk, the actual horror of the events completely minimized and placed on faceless instigators and actors. Later he states that "the report of Armenian massacre was a 'calumny' perpetuated by those who wanted to prove the Armenians in the majority in the Eastern provinces" and that they were trying to "mislead the public into believing that the Muslim population 'was composed of savages whose chief occupation was to massacre Armenians.'" The other Armenian references within the Nutuk was much of the same content: the portrayal of Armenians as a the true perpetrators of the savagery in the East and in the South against the Muslim population.

The demonizing of the Armenian population, Ulgen argues, is an attempt by Ataturk to portray the Turkish people in a light of innocence and victimhood. So that, in effect, the destruction of the Armenian population is both denied and seems implausible to the eyes of anyone educated by the Turkish state educational system. Knowing now, that Ataturk through the Nutuk set up the foundational history and ideology of the Turkish state, central to which, as evidenced by the early addressing and the staunch support found within the document, is denialism. The reason the Turkish Republic denies the Genocide so vehemently is not because of reparations they would need to pay, but because the denial of the genocide is a foundational aspect of the Turkish identity and 'Turkishness' in general and thus acceptance of the genocide is a threat to the survival of the Turkish identity as a whole.

There is some debate over whether the modern Republic of Turkey was the continuing state to the Ottoman Empire or a successor. The two entities fought on opposing sides in the Turkish War of Independence (1919–22), and even briefly co-existed as separate administrative units each claiming authority (whilst at war with one another): Turkey with its capital in Ankara and the Ottoman Empire from Istanbul. The nationalist faction, led by Mustafa Kemal who defected from the Ottoman army, established the modern republic as a nation state by defeating the opposing Ottoman elements in the independence war.

The Treaty of Lausanne (between UK, France, Italy, and Japan (world powers at the time) of 24 July 1923 led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the newly formed "Republic of Turkey" as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire.

Successor states choose to successor states so they can inherit the treaties and claims of the previous state, and in this case inherited the responsibility of the greco-muslim and armenian-turkish migrations.

I would like to ask a related question: was Turkey so worried about Armenians because the Seljuk Turks are not native to Anatolia; thus, they are sensitive about uprisings by 'native' pre-Turkic Anatolians?

Hello everyone,

In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, including many asking about the deleted comments, which merely compounds the issue. As such, they were removed by the mod-team. Please, before you attempt to answer the question, keep in mind our rules concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed, and posters who break the rules of the subreddit admonished as applicable.

This thread is trending high in the subreddit, but those upvotes represent interest in the question itself, and it can often take time for a good answer to be written. We know that it can be frustrating to come in here from your front page and see only [removed] and this post, but we ask for your patience and understanding. If you are looking for some interesting content in the mean time, we hope you will check out our Twitter, the Sunday Digest, or the Monthly "Best Of" feature. It is very rare that a decent answer doesn't result in due time, so please do come check into the thread in a few hours. A Private Message to the Remind Me bot is a good way to remember.

Additionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to modmail, or a META thread. Thank you!