The Armenian Genocide
A Monograph
by
Dr Harry Hagopian, KSL-KOG
Doctor in Public International
Law
24 April 2002
to my father
The Armenian Genocide
Dr
Harry Hagopian, KSL-KOG
On 24 April 1915, prominent Armenian intellectuals of Constantinople were rounded up and massacred
A card at the Armenian
Museum, Armenian Orthodox Patriachate, Jerusalem
§
Twin Perceptions
For me, the Armenian genocide is a subject we covered
at school a long time ago. It is also something we remember and commemorate
every year on April 24th in our different countries.
I
went recently to Dzizernagapert [Genocide Memorial in Armenia] and what I could feel was how extremely
proud I was of my nation for surviving this gruesome ordeal. But I'm more
concerned about the Armenia of today. After the trip, I couldn't stop thinking
about Yerevan, and I'm even thinking of getting a little apartment to spend our
summer vacations there in the future. D is a travel agent I know, and I've been
eating his head off trying to convince him to take groups there - foreigners,
mind you, not Armenians.
Talking
about the genocide has been getting Armenians some sympathy but actual
financial compensation could also be quite useful, don't you think? People are starving there, or so they
say, and they seriously need help. Constantly reminding them about their
misfortunes and bad luck isn't going to do much for their morale now, is it? So
why dwell on this one horrific historical chapter to the exclusion of other
equally pressing and contemporary issues?
Individuals, nations, and cultures are the sum total
(cumulative effect) of their past experiences. However glorious or painful, it
is the experiences of our forebears that are the forming forces that weave the
very fabric of our identities.
No
individual / generation has the right to wipe the slate clean and start all
over again for the sake of expediency in the short term. By the same token we all have the
obligation to help each other out, celebrate our values, and pass on our
cultural identities - having made our contribution - to future generations. At
best we are stewards of our heritage.
We
can address questions of the Armenian character, purpose in, and contribution
to life by examining ideas that have shaped western thought through the lens of
our heritage. We should seek to reinvigorate our society and culture through
the transformation and renewal of its leaders. We could do well to remember
what Goethe said, 'He who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living
hand-to-mouth.'
The two statements represent
the perceptions of two Armenians living in the Diaspora. I had asked them both
for their reactions to the Armenian genocide, and they shared their insightful
thoughts with me on 3 January 2002.
In fact, the first response
is congruent with an article written on 22 April 2001 by the syndicated
columnist Eric Margolis. The second one comes closer to those views propounded
by Robert Fisk from the Independent on 5 August 2000. Just like my friends,
both Fisk and Margolis acknowledge the veracity of the genocide but then
diverge somewhat when history gives way to future orientations. Theirs is a
diversity of views that forms the sum-total of those realities surrounding us,
teaching us, developing us and infusing us with a set of core values and
beliefs.
In one sense, those twin perceptions are not only staking a claim to the pages of Armenian history. In their own ways, they are also lending themselves to definitions of national existentialism that are much closer to psychological modes of knowing than to metaphysical ones. Like the Cartesian theories of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and other like-minded philosophers, their perceptions - dissimilar and yet also similar - strive for self-discovery by placing the absolute in human freedom somewhere between the levels of existence and essence.
§
Prolegomena
But let me recap for just
one minute! Why did I decide to
write a short monograph on the Armenian genocide in time for the eighty-seventh
anniversary that falls on 24 April 2002?
Why did I canvass the opinions and experiences of a host of learned men
and women in Cyprus, England, Israel, France, Armenia, Poland, Turkey and the
USA?
It is my belief that the
horrendous events of 11 September 2001 in the USA introduced a sea change in
our global perception of world events. Until that fateful date, most countries
had attempted to treat the symptoms of conflicts by applying plasters to their
more visible manifestations. Ever since, the world democracies have begun
addressing the root causes of some of those festering conflicts. Plasters are
no longer effective tools of conflict resolution! The world has come to
acknowledge a new paradigm whereby injustices cannot simply be wiped away under
the carpet in the sanguine hope that they will fade away! Unless they are dealt with
conscientiously, those conflicts have a way of re-appearing time and again
until their underlying causes are dealt with methodically and equitably.
This global shift encouraged me to address the sad chapter in the narrative of my own people. After all, why should the British government attempt to exclude the Armenian genocide from the commemorative service of Holocaust Memorial Day? Why should those people who are loyal to the ethos of the Jewish Holocaust remain disloyal in equal measure to the ethos of the Armenian genocide? Should reconciliation and forgiveness not be anchored in justice? Do the Armenian massacres not fulfil the legal criterion of genocide under International law? How could I therefore sit back and accept that so many men and women are unable - or even unwilling - to move beyond their own set of truths, prejudices, memories, fears and dissimulation? This monograph represents my response to those questions.
In fact, some two months
ago, I watched former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic go on trial at the
Hague War Crimes Tribunal facing a total of sixty six counts on three
indictments for genocide and crimes against humanity in Croatia, Bosnia and
Kosovo. In her opening statement, Carla Del Ponte from the ICT prosecution team
said that in Milosevic the world ‘saw an almost mediaeval savagery and
calculated cruelty that went far beyond the boundaries of legitimate warfare,
scenes that the international community was shocked to witness. These were
crimes against humanity.’ It is my contention that the legal jurisprudence by
which Slobodan Milosevic is tried for genocide
in the unforgivable deaths of 130,000 men, women and children should apply in
equal measure to the multiple numbers of those victims who were killed during
the Armenian genocide.
Mind you, I am writing this
monograph not merely as a lawyer or an academic, but also as someone whose own
grandparents fled the genocide from different parts of Ottoman Turkey. My
maternal grandfather was one such young lad who witnessed five of his relatives
being slain before his very own eyes. He himself had a lucky escape and lived
in an orphanage before re-establishing himself as a thriving carpet merchant in
Jerusalem. My maternal grandmother witnessed a young relative jump into a well
during the forced desert march in order to escape further suffering and
humiliation. Unfortunately for her, she could not die since the well was
already brimming with dead bodies, and she had to climb out of the well and
re-join the march where she embraced death a week later.
So you can perhaps begin to understand why I decided to focus for a
moment on the mindset of the co-perpetrators of this genocide, as much as on the
nationalist emotions that fired up so much venom, violence, carnage and death.
A whole people were left bleeding their lives away, and their collective story
of suffering, sacrifice and pain needs to be admitted into its proper format.
And at no time can this attempt be more appropriate than today when the free
world is being urged to rid itself of the terror of hypocrisy.
However, let me also add a word of caution. Those human tragedies that
befell my own family - let alone countless other Armenian families too - and
impacted inevitably their thinking should not be allowed to hold the future
captive forever or to re-define its orientation in perpetuity. Personal,
painful and brutal though those tragedies were, they should be dealt with
dispassionately, in a sober setting that is devoid of emotional histrionics and
facile arguments.
Let me share with you a marking experience I had some two months
ago! I had been invited to speak
at a major colloquium in France on the topic of the Armenian genocide. As I had
anticipated, a few Turkish officials were also sitting in on my presentation.
During my whole delivery, they did not jot down one single word. However, once
I opened the floor for questions, out came the A4 papers from their briefcases
with a set of ‘ready-made’ questions. They were challenging me on the basis of
questions they had prepared before hearing me out on my thesis!
I fervently hope that the Armenian genocide can universally be recognised at long last so that it can help liberate the primal scream of so many long years and exorcise the ghosts of the past for Armenians and Turks alike.
§
Historical
Observations
It might surprise quite a
few people to discover that Armenians and Turks lived for centuries in relative
harmony in the Ottoman Empire. Armenians were known as the 'loyal millet', and
although they were not treated as equals by the Turkish establishment, their
lives were by and large manageable and decent.
However, this normalcy began
to alter when many ethnic groupings became increasingly self-conscious of their
political and cultural backgrounds, and when the Ottoman Empire - 'the sick man
of Europe' - started to crumble.
With other national minorities such as the Greeks and Assyrians vying
for - and gaining - independence, Armenians and Turks began having conflictive
views about the future. Armenians started calling for independence too, whilst
some Turks began to envision a pan-Turkic empire spreading all the way to the
Turkic-speaking parts of Central Asia.
In the last decades of the
19th century, the Armenian tendency to look toward Europe
antagonised Turkish officials and encouraged their view that Armenians were a
foreign and subversive element in the Sultan's realm. In fact, the more
European powers asked Turkey for assurances that Armenians get better
treatment, the more stringent became the response of the Turkish government. In
a twenty-year span, between 1875 and 1895, authoritative estimates put the
number of Armenians dead or massacred at anything between 150,000 and 300,000
dead. There were also some 150,000 forced conversions, as well as some 100,000
emigrants who were forced to flee their homes and towns.
However, a coup in 1908 by
the progressive Young Turks - supported at the time by Armenians - replaced
Sultan Abdul Hamid. Unfortunately, the reforms they had promised Armenians
never materialised, and the triumvirate of Turkish leaders - Enver, Jamal and
Talaat - took the reins of power and began orchestrating their pan-Turkic dream
through the conscious eradication of the Armenian identity in Turkey. To
achieve their goals, the First World War provided the Young Turks with a
fitting pretext. In the early stages of the War in 1915, the Russian armies
were advancing on Turkey from the north and the British were attempting an
invasion from the Mediterranean. Citing the threat of internal insurrections,
and the fact that some Armenians refused to fight against their fellow
Armenians on the Russian side of the frontier, the Turkish government ordered
large-scale roundups, deportations from many cities and towns and systematic
torture and murder of Armenians.
In fact, the Armenian
genocide began - much like the Russian and German destruction of Polish society
- with the killing of officers. Next, and on the night of 23 April 1915, eight
hundred Armenian leaders, writers, ministers and intellectuals were arrested in
Constantinople, deported to Anatolia and later killed. In May 1915, after mass
deportations had already begun, Talaat Pasha - the Turkish Minister of Internal
Affairs - claimed that the Armenians were in a state of imminent rebellion and
ordered ex post facto their
deportation from the war zones to relocation centres in the deserts of Syria
and Mesopotamia. The date - 24 April 1915 - is thereby etched in the collective
memory of Armenians worldwide as the commemorative anniversary of the Armenian
genocide.
It is also noteworthy - from
the many accounts I have read or heard - how meekly obliging were most of those
Armenians being led to their deaths. Those who were being killed had accepted
their fate with scant protest and much resignation! Was it perhaps because they did not know where they were
being taken to and had bought into the line that 'their' government was relocating
them for their own safety? And
those who had remained behind - primarily women and children, old and infirm -
were force-marched to Der el-Zor desert in northern Syria and left to die along
the banks of the Habur River. Thousands of those hapless victims were driven
into a complex of subterranean caves under the desert, and the Turks
subsequently lit bonfires at the mouths of those caves. The smoke was blown
into the caves and those trapped therein were asphyxiated - hence, an account
of the world's first gas chambers.
How many Armenian Turks were
massacred and ethnically cleansed during this period? It is quite true from
different accounts that some Armenians were helped along the way by
compassionate individuals - Arabs, Kurds or Turks - but most never survived the
march or else died upon their arrival at their 'destinations'. Archaeologists
are still digging out some of their skulls today! Estimates are not always the most reliable benchmark, but
learned sources today place the numbers between 600,000 to 1.5 million deaths.
The Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople estimated the Armenian population
in Turkey in early 1914 at 2.1 million. By 1917, toward the end of the war,
there were no more than 200,000 Armenians remaining in Turkey. Testimonials,
eyewitness accounts or despatches from European or American diplomats apart, my
question remains the same for those who deny the genocide. Where did those 1.9
million Armenians living in Turkey before 1915 all disappear to? Surely,
numbers recount their own story? It seems quite obvious that more than half the
Armenian population perished, and a large number of those who survived or
escaped death were forcibly driven from their ancestral homeland by the will of
the Turkish government.
§
Legal
Observations
1. Public International
Law
Pre-Convention
…
It is true that civilian
populations have often fallen victim to the brutality of invading armies,
bombing raids, lethal substances and other forms of indiscriminate killings. In
the Armenian case, however, the government of the Ottoman Empire - dominated by
the Committee of Union and Progress or Young Turk Party - turned against a
segment of its own population. It is a correct assumption that there were
certain accepted laws, norms and customs of war in international law at the
time that were aimed in some measure at protecting civilian populations. But
they did not cover domestic situations or the treatment by the government of
its own people. Only after WWII and the Jewish holocaust was that provision
included in the United Nations Genocide Convention.
The
Convention …
The definition of 'genocide'
in international law is largely reflected in the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (commonly referred to as the 1948
UNCG). Based on the declaration made by the UN General Assembly in its
resolution 96 (I) of 11 December 1946 that genocide is a crime under
international law, this Convention was adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the
United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948. Its 19 articles specify the
rights and responsibilities of the Contracting Parties.
A crucial text is Article II
of the Convention that defines the acts that can be qualified as genocide under
international law. It states, "In the present Convention, genocide means
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such (a) killing
members of the group, (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of
the group, (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, (d)
imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and (e) forcibly
transferring children of the group to another group."
The
Etymology …
The term 'genocide' is a
fairly recent derivative, and its etymology combines the Greek for group,
tribe-genos, with the Latin for
killing-cide. In 1933, at a time when
neither the extensiveness nor character of the barbarous practices subsequently
carried out under the auspices of the Third Reich could have been foreseen, the
Polish-born Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin submitted to the International
Conference for Unification of Criminal Law a proposal to declare a crime under
international law any destruction of racial, religious or social groups. In
1944, he published a monograph - Axis Rule in Occupied Europe - in which he
detailed the exterminatory practices and policies pursued by the Third Reich
and its allies. He went on to argue the case for the international regulation
of the 'practice of extermination of nations and ethnic groups', a practice
that he referred to now as genocide.
Lemkin was also instrumental in lobbying UN officials and representatives to
secure the passage of a resolution by the General Assembly affirming that
'genocide is a crime under international law which the civilised world
condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices are
punishable'. The matter was referred to the UN Economic and Social Council, and
culminated in the signing of the Convention in 1948.
Exclusions
& Weaknesses …
However, there remain
considerable disagreements among legal experts regarding the deficiencies of
this legal instrument. Such disagreements address themselves as much to the
definition of the groups that are covered under this convention as to whether a
specific set of acts merits the designation of 'genocide'. This is due to many
reasons, not least the critical applicability in the article of 'intent to
destroy' that can either be 'in whole or in part'. Many groups (that are not destroyed, but have their sizes
radically curtailed) could fall out of the ambit of the definition of the UNCG.
Similarly, those that have survived physically but have had their cultural
distinctiveness expunged by such acts could also fall foul of the 1948 UNCG.
For instance, policies implemented during the Third Reich against Jewish, Roma
and Sinti groups qualify as genocide since they show a clear intent to destroy
[them]. Conversely, instances of forced sterilisation in India in the 1960's
and 1970's let alone continuing restrictions in China would not constitute
genocide since there is an intention to restrict the size of a particular group
but not to destroy it.
The weaknesses of this
Convention arise from two basic premises. As with many other documents, this
legal instrument was the outcome of lengthy negotiations between parties with
different viewpoints. It therefore resulted in compromise and concomitant flux.
Further, the typology that Lemkin - and the draftees of the Convention - had in
mind was the destruction of European Jewry. Precisely because this particular genocide was so central to
the genesis of the UNCG, its application to other religious, national, ethnic
or racial groups became problematic. It is quite clear that the programmes
devised by the Nazi regime for the Final Solution [of the Jewish Question] lie
at the extreme of any continuum of types of mass violence. As such, this
'model' exhibits both similarities and differences with other 'genocides'.
Those include the Armenian pogroms, the Ukrainian famine in the 1930's, the
Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia from 1975 to 1978, the massacre of
Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, or even the destruction of the Tibetan culture by
China. Therefore, its correlation with other cases becomes less easy.
The
Context …
The Armenian genocide of
1915 constitutes one of the most abhorrent crimes against humanity. However, I
must also add that this genocide happened alongside other equally heinous
crimes against humanity. Those ranged from the deportation of Caucasian Muslims
during the period from 1827 to 1878 to the Jewish Holocaust during WWII.
However, another episode that the world community has forgetfully confined to
the dusty annals of history has been Stalin's Red holocaust in Eastern Europe
in the 1930’s and 1940’s against Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians,
Estonians, Tatars, Volga Germans, Kazaks, ethnic Germans of East Europe and the
Baltic people.
Popular
Definition …
It therefore becomes quite
thorny from a legal perspective to apply a lay definition to 'genocide' that
would ordinarily be understood as 'the government murder of people because of
their indelible ethnic membership'.
2. Post-War Treaties
The defeat of the Ottoman
Empire and its allies came about in 1918. At the Paris Peace Conference of 25
June 1919, it was declared that Turkey had officially accepted guilt for the
Armenian massacres. Subsequently, the Turkish government held criminal trials
and found the triumvirate guilty in
absentia. On 17 October 1919, the Supreme Council of the Allies, at the San
Remo Conference, proposed that the USA accept a mandate over Armenia.
In fact, the first peace
agreement with Turkey was the Treaty of Sèvres that was signed on 10 August
1920. In addition to the provisions dealing with violations of the laws and
customs of war {articles 226-228 corresponding to articles 228-230 of the
Treaty of Versailles}, the treaty contained a specific number of provisions
relating to Armenia. Article 88 of the treaty recognised Armenia as a free and
independent state. Article 89 stipulated that the borders between Turkey and
the newly-born Armenia in the vilayets [provinces] of Erzerum, Trebizond, Van
and Bitlis be determined by US President Woodrow Wilson - hence the 'Wilsonian
Armenia' plan in accordance with a commission that set the boundaries of
Armenia and gave it access to the Black Sea. According to the agreement,
Turkey also accepted its responsibility for crimes against Armenians during the
War, and undertook an obligation to compensate for the losses sustained by
them. In accordance with Article 230, the Turkish government further undertook
to hand over to the Allied Powers the persons responsible for the massacres
committed on Turkish territory during the war.
The provisions of Article
230 of the Treaty of Sèvres were obviously intended to cover offences that had
been committed on Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship -
albeit of Armenian or Greek ethnicity. It is my stipulation that this article
constitutes a precedent for Articles 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo
Charters, offering an example of one category of 'crimes against humanity' as
interpreted by its provisions.
The Treaty of Sèvres,
however, was never ratified, and did not come into force. A new peace agreement, the Treaty of
Lausanne, superseded it and was signed between the great Powers and the new
republic of Turkey on 24 July 1923. This substitute treaty did not contain any
provisions about Armenia or the punishment of war crimes. Appended to it was a
'Declaration of Amnesty' for all offences committed between 1 August 1914 and
20 November 1922.
Reflecting the chilling
actuality of realpolitik, Sir Winston
Churchill wrote, "In the Treaty of Lausanne, which re-establishes peace
between Turkey and its Allies, history will search in vain for the word
Armenia."
§
Political &
Psychological Observations
Milan Kundera, the exiled
Czech novelist who now lives in Paris, has written that 'the struggle of man
against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.' This single remark, in my view, sums up
the human predicament today and puts the onus of responsibility on scholars and
writers. National catastrophes can be survived if (and perhaps only if) those to
whom disaster happens can recover through knowing the truth of their suffering.
Great powers, on the other hand, would vanquish not only the peoples they
subjugate but also the cultural mechanisms that would sustain vital memory of
historical crimes.
When modern states make way
for geopolitical power plays, they are not above deleting everything - nations,
cultures, and homelands - in their paths. Great powers regularly demolish other
peoples' claims to dignity, time and space. Sometimes, the outcome is genocide.
In an epistemological sense, Kundera is correct in assuming that a cardinal
part of the engagement against historical crimes is the struggle of memory
against oblivion.
Although the successor
Turkish government helped to institute trials of a few of those responsible for
the pogroms at which they were found guilty, the present official Turkish
contention was that genocide did not take place despite the many casualties and
dispersals in the war. It further claimed that all evidence to the contrary was
forged, and that as many Turks as Armenians died during this gruesome period.
To my mind, this denial is a pernicious and sorry attempt at fudging the facts
that genocide was perpetrated with malice aforethought. An incisive analysis by
Professor Dominic Lieven of the London School of Economics attributes the
disintegration of Turkey to the inability of Ottoman rulers to strike a balance
between traditional imperialism and the xenophobic nationalism of the Young
Turks. He later describes the
Armenian genocide as ‘incomparable in its scale and horror’, and traces the
Turkish denial to the dread of losing their sole remaining Anatolian homeland.
The UN Sub-Commission on the
Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, part of the UN Economic
and Social Council Commission on Human Rights, referred to the genocide in its
Report of 2 July 1985. The Report stated that 'at least 1 million, and possibly
well over half the Armenian population, are reliably estimated to have been
killed or death marched by independent authorities and eyewitnesses. This is
corroborated by reports in US, German and British archives and of contemporary
diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its German ally.'
However, it is also my
contention that understanding the Armenian genocide helps appreciate the Jewish
holocaust. Although both tragedies have their distinguishing features, they
also exhibit striking parallels. These include the perpetration of genocide
under the cover of a major international conflict, conception of a plan by a
monolithic and xenophobic group in power, espousal of an ideology giving
justification to racism and intolerance, formation of extra-judicial forces to
execute the plan, provocation of public hostility toward the victim group and
certainty of the vulnerability of the target groups. This is why I am rather
bemused let alone disappointed that someone with such a prominent stature as
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was quoted last year in the Ankara
[Turkish] newspaper as saying, 'We reject attempts to create a similarity
between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the
Holocaust occurred. It is a tragedy what Armenians went through but not a
genocide.' Although his denial flew in the teeth of the truth, it curried
nonetheless immense favour with his Turkish hosts.
However, the rejoinder came
from no less a person than Professor Israel Charny, Executive Director of the
Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, and Editor-in-Chief of the
Encyclopaedia of Genocide. Professor Charny said in his letter addressed to MK
Shimon Peres on 12 April 2001, 'It seems that because of your wish to advance
very important relations with Turkey, you have been prepared to circumvent the
subject of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1920.' He added, 'For the record, in
2000, at a Conference on the Holocaust in Philadelphia, a large number of
researchers of the Holocaust, including Israeli historians, signed a public
declaration that the Armenian Genocide was factual.' Professor Charny's letter concluded, 'Even as I disagree
with you, it may be that in your broad perspective of the needs of the State of
Israel, it is your obligation to circumvent and desist from bringing up the
subject with Turkey. But as a Jew and an Israeli, I am ashamed of the extent to
which you have now entered into the range of actual denial of the Armenian
Genocide, comparable to denials of the Holocaust.'
On another level, Robert
Fisk is an investigative journalist who has covered Armenian issues over many
years. He considers it unacceptable that the evidence of European commissions
into the massacres, the eyewitness accounts of Western journalists at the
slaughter of Armenians as well as the denunciations of Morgenthau, Churchill
and other politicians can be dismissed as sheer misinformation. He cites
Smyrna, the present-day holiday resort of Izmir, as one example where
sunbathers today have no idea of the bloodbath that took place around their
beaches.
But this deliberate
'sublimation' of the Armenian genocide by some forces - in the form of those
denying the truth, apologising for its occurrence or justifying its
perpetration - is not due to a dearth of historical reasons. It is a result of
political considerations, vested interests and military expediencies that debar
its acknowledgement. This is why some countries - including the USA, the UK and
Germany - have been averse to riding into a political storm by antagonising
Turkey with recognition of the genocide. Every acknowledgement of the genocide
by one country or another has resulted in Turkish outrages and threats that
have been self-inculpating at best and perverted at worst.
However, it equally concerns
me when certain historians or politicians try to 'downgrade' the Armenian genocide
in order to 'upgrade' the Jewish holocaust. Norman Finklestein, in his angry
book on the 'Holocaust industry', says that the Jewish experience - both his
parents were extermination camp survivors - should not be allowed to reduct the
genocide committed against other ethnic groups in modern history. Indeed, it is
worrisome that some parties have painstakingly shaped a theology of the Jewish
holocaust that is exclusive of all other tragedies. It is undeniable that the
appalling barbarities of the Jewish holocaust are beyond description - let
alone contemplation. But to think of this holocaust in terms of a capital H
because of the six million deaths, and then hardly grant the genocide
recognition let alone quibble over whether it merits a capital G, underrates
the values that have made Judaism and Christianity compassionate religions. It
also sullies with humbug the premise upon which politicians ought to base their
decisions. It gives to Caesar what is irredeemably to God - and vice versa! To my mind, that is spurious if not
also deplorable.
Let me quote Lord Kinross,
author of several publications on the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, as he
described the method by which the organisers of the massacres exploited
religious sentiment. He writes about the early massacres:
'Their tactics were based on
the Sultan's principle of kindling religious fanaticism among the Muslim
population. Abdul Hamid briefed
agents, whom he sent to Armenia with specific instructions as to how they should
act. It became their normal routine first to assemble the Moslem population in
the largest mosque in a town, then to declare, in the name of the Sultan, that
the Armenians were in general revolt with the aim of striking at Islam. Their
Sultan enjoined them as good Moslems to defend their faith against infidel
rebels … Each operation, between the bugle calls, followed a similar
pattern. First into a town there
came the Turkish troops, for the purpose of massacres; then came the Kurdish irregulars
and tribesmen for the purpose of plunder. Finally came the holocaust, by fire
and destruction, which spread with the pursuit of fugitives and mopping-up
operations, throughout the lands and villages of the surrounding province. This
murderous winter thus saw the decimation of much of the Armenian population and
the devastation of their property in some 20 districts of eastern Turkey.'
This evocative account of
the massacres that took place at the time, and the seditious psychology that
manipulated them, are reminiscent as much of Otto von Bismarck's policy of divide et impera towards Austria in the
1800's. They are also reminiscent of the terrorist methods employed by some
governments or individuals today. But the democracies of the world can deflect
some accusations of double-talk or inconsistency by applying the same value
judgements and standards over past miscarriages of justice that they are
seemingly applying over the more recent ones. With the West having taken the
high moral ground by waging an open-ended war against such injustices, is it
not reasonable to assume that what applies to the goose today will have surely
applied to the gander yesterday?
Indeed, international
affirmation of the Armenian genocide is steadily growing within the executive,
legislative and local assemblies and organs of many countries - including inter alia France, the Holy See, Italy,
Sweden, Belgium, Cyprus, Russia, Canada, the USA, Argentina, Uruguay or
Lebanon. Moreover, a landmark vote by the European Parliament on 28 February
2002 also called out for a ‘humane act of moral rehabilitation towards the
Armenians’. It reaffirmed [by a majority vote of 391 against 96 with 15
abstentions] its opinion of 18 July 1987 that Turkey must recognise the
Armenian Genocide of 1915 before it can join the European Union. Furthermore,
there is a bipartisan campaign in the USA encouraging the House of
Representatives to sign a letter asking President Bush to appropriately
acknowledge the Armenian genocide. Launched by the Congressional Caucus on
Armenia on 5 March 2001 with 33 signatures, it now enjoys the ever-growing
backing of over 100 Representatives.
It is my contention that the
equivalent mindset and comparable action of those elements of mens rea and actus reus in criminal law are also active in the events that unfurled
against Armenians over many years in Turkey. Indeed, the adoption of executive
or legislative measures recognising the Armenian genocide by various countries
does not only carry historical, political or psychological weight. It also
carries legal weight since those affirmations incorporate themselves gradually
into international custom as one of the three primary sources of International
law.
§
Conclusion
The Armenian people hold the
dubious and grim distinction of being the first victims of genocide in the 20th
century. They suffered a heinous
crime brought about by a malignant combination of totalitarian brutality, evil
ideology and religious as well as racist hatred. But how can its after-effects be syncopated in the hearts of
Armenians today?
What remains an
indispensable Armenian sine qua non
for the healing and reconciliation processes to work is an unadulterated
recognition by Turkey of this genocide. Such recognition would then facilitate
the putting in place of appropriate, mutually acceptable and workable
mechanisms for the rehabilitation, restitution or compensation of the survivors
of those who lost their lives and livelihoods during this gruesome ordeal.
Turkish policy-makers carry
a huge redemptive responsibility. How does the Turkey of today relate to that
of the late 1800's or early 1900's? The Ataturkist regime must apologise for
the excesses of the past, extrude the atrocities perpetrated by its predecessor
regime 87 years ago and then establish itself as a peaceful neighbour of Armenia
within the comity of nations. Whether Turkey views itself as a new secular and
post-Islamic system of governance, or whether it projects itself as the heir to
the Ottoman regime, there are issues of State Responsibility arising from
International law that trigger a series of secondary legal obligations. The
International Law Commission 1949 deals in its draft articles with elements
ranging from wrongful acts or conduct to the regime of reparations and
sanctions.
Notwithstanding, I strongly
believe that one key factor for the Turkish resistance to accept their
incontrovertible responsibility for the Armenian genocide is a fear that such
recognition could well result in legal claims and class-action lawsuits for
financial compensation by those Armenian survivors of the genocide, their heirs
or families. After all, a legal precedent has already been set with the victims
/ survivors of the Jewish holocaust. [The Jewish Claims Conference has also
been working since 1951 on compensation and restitution issues.] And
incidentally, what I am suggesting here is no less and no more than what was
envisaged by the Treaty of Sèvres - had its provisions been applied rather than
being replaced by another agreement that left those issues pendente lite or unresolved.
It is natural that Armenians
should not forget or devalue the significance of the genocide in the history of
their own lives. However, they should also remember that a new and independent
Armenia has come into being again, and that they should assist in the
rebuilding of this 1700-year-old Christian nation whose infrastructure remains
much in shambles today. It is therefore incumbent upon Armenians to configure
their strategy toward the genocide in conjunction with the foreign policy
interests of the Republic itself. The two constituent wings of the Armenian
nation - those in Armenia and those in the Diaspora – should cohere into a
oneness that flaps together for the larger good.
It remains my opinion today that no Armenian could idly sit back and promote their identity or interpret their ethos solely through the exclusive lens of the genocide. Armenians have to act proactively for their national interest, and acting for the future today goes hand in hand with working for the past. In the words of the Italian humanist and writer Count Giovanni Picco della Mirandola, 'the past should marry with the future in the present'. I tend to believe it is important to commemorate the genocide and seek worldwide recognition for it without necessarily jeopardising the national interests of Armenia as a ten-year young independent republic. After all, the paramount strength of any people lies in its sense of solidarity and cohesion as much as in its institutions, parties or structures.
Let me conclude by quoting a
reminder from a classic statement of Athenian ideology! It is from the Funeral
Oration delivered by Pericles elegising those Hellenes who had died in battle.
Eloquent about the threats to ancient Athens at the height of its power, he
perorated, 'What I fear more than the strategies of our enemies is our own
mistakes'.
I hope that we Armenians do not recycle our misapprehensions in the belief that
they are good strategies, and that our
different perspectives of order, power and freedom do not impede the re-construction
of our one national identity.
As an Armenian, I am willing
to do more than my fair share of soul-searching in quest of the truth. Is
Turkey today willing to do at least its fair share of truthful soul-searching
too? After all, the process of reconciliation does not start in Yerevan, Beirut
and California as much as it does in Ankara - and very much more so!
And whoso degrades His dignity in the creature, degrades the Creator in his victim!
Franz Werfel, The Forty Days
of Musa Dagh
- Quotations
800.000
Armenian deportees were actually killed … by holding the guilty accountable,
the government is intent on cleansing the bloody past.
Kemal Pasha, in March 1915
Turkey
is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal
foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by
foreign intervention.
Talaat Pasha to the German
Ambassador, in June 1915
The
[Turkish] government is indeed pursuing its goal of exterminating the Armenian
race in the Ottoman Empire
Wangenheim, German
Ambassador, on 7 July 1915
The
massacres are the result of a policy which, as far as can be ascertained, has
been entertained for some considerable time by the gang of unscrupulous
adventurers who are now in possession of the Government of the Turkish
Empire. They hesitated to put it
in practice until they thought the favourable moment had come, and that moment
seems to have arrived about the month of April 1915.
British Viscount James
Bryce, on 6 October 1915
The
Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have
destroyed the former by the sword; we shall destroy the latter through
starvation.
Enver Pasha, on 19 May 1916
In
its attempt to carry out its purpose to resolve the Armenian question by the
destruction of the Armenian race, the Turkish government has refused to be
deterred neither by our representations, nor by those of the American Embassy,
nor by the delegate of the Pope, nor by the threats of the Allied Powers, nor
in deference to the public opinion of the West representing one-half of the
world.
Count Wolff-Metternich,
German Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, on 10 July 1916
…
The Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act
against Turkey is to condone it … the failure to deal radically with the
Turkish horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the
world is mischievous nonsense.
Theodore Roosevelt, on 11 May 1918
Surely
a few Armenians aided and abetted our enemy, and a few Armenian Deputies
committed crimes against the Turkish nation … It is incumbent upon a government
to pursue the guilty ones. Unfortunately, our wartime leaders, imbued with a
spirit of brigandage, carried out the law of deportation in a manner that could
surpass the proclivities of the most bloodthirsty bandits. They decided to
exterminate the Armenians, and they did exterminate them.
Mustafa Arif, Minister of
Interior, on 13 December 1918
What
on earth do you want? The question
is settled. There are no more Armenians.
Talaat Pasha to the German
Ambassador in 1918
When
the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were
merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well,
and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal
the fact … I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no
such horrible episode as this. The
great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when
compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915.
.
Henry Morgenthau, Sr, US
Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, in 1919
Mutilation,
violation, torture and death have left their haunting memories in a hundred
beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveller in that region is seldom free
from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all ages.
US General James G Harbord,
in 1919
These
leftovers from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been made to
account for the millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven
en masse, from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the
Republican rule.
Mustapha Ataturk Kemal, founder of modern-day Turkey, on 1 August 1926
Who,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?
Adolph Hitler, August 1939
The
association of Mount Ararat and Noah, the staunch Christians who were massacred
periodically by the Mohammedan Turks, and the Sunday School collections over
fifty years for alleviating their miseries – all cumulate to impress the name
Armenian on the front of the American mind.
Herbert Hoover Memoirs, in
1952
Mr
Speaker, with mixed emotions we mark the 50th anniversary of the
Turkish genocide of the Armenian people.
In taking notice of the shocking events of 1915, we observe this
anniversary with sorrow in recalling the massacres of Armenians and with pride
in saluting those brave patriots who survived to fight on the side of freedom
during WWI.
Gerald Ford, in April 1965
It
is generally not known in the world that, in the years preceding 1916, there
was a concerted effort made to eliminate all the Armenian people, probably one
of the greatest tragedies that ever befell any group. And there weren’t any Nuremberg trials.
Jimmy Carter, on 16 May 1976
Like
the genocide of the Armenians before it … the lessons of the Holocaust must
never be forgotten.
Ronald Reagan, on 22 April
1981
[We
join] Armenians around the world [as we remember] the terrible massacres
suffered in 1915-1923 at the hands of the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. The United States responded to this
crime against humanity by leading diplomatic and private relief efforts.
George Bush, Sr, on 20 April
1990
It
was not war. It was most certainly massacre and genocide, something the world
must remember … We will always reject any attempt to erase its record, even for
some political advantage.
Yossi Beilin, Israeli Deputy
Foreign Minister, on 27 April 1994
·
Suggested
Readings
The
greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge
Stephen Hawking
Artinian H (2001). The Godless and the Infidels. Writers
Club Press
Ataov T (1984). A Brief Glance at the ‘Armenian Question’.
Ankara, University Press
Auron Y (2001). The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and
the Armenian Genocide. Transaction Publishers
Bedoukian, K (1978). Some of us Survived. Farrar Straus Giroux, NY
Boyanian, D (1972). Armenia: The case for a forgotten genocide. Westwood, NJ – Educational Book
Crafters
Bryce J & Toynbee A.
(1916). The Treatment of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916. London, HMSO
Chaliand G & Ternon Y
(1980). Genocide
des Armeniens. Brussels, Complexe
Dadrian, V. The History of the Armenian Genocide.
Berghahn Books
Dadrian, V. German
Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide. Blue Crane Books
Dadrian, V. Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review.
Vol 2, Israel Charny, ed.
Goekjian, V (1984). The Turks before the Court of History. Rosekeer Press, NJ
Graber, G (1996). Caravans to oblivion: The Armenian Genocide. New York – John Wiley and Sons
Hovannisian, R (1980). The Armenian Holocaust: A bibliography
relating to the deportations, massacres and dispersion of the Armenian people,
1915-1923. Cambridge, Mass – Armenian Heritage Press
Hovannisian, R (Ed)
(1991). The Armenian genocide in
perspective. New Brunswick, NJ – Transaction Publishers
Housepian-Dobkin, M. Smyrna
1922: The Destruction of a City. Newmark Press, NY
Lepsius J (1921). Deutschland und Armenien. Postdam & Fayard (French edition)
Morgenthau H (1918). Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story. (New York,
Doubleday)
Simsir B & others
(1984). Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.
Istanbul, Bogazici University Press
Werfel, F (1933). The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Carroll
& Graf Publishers
·
Suggested
Web-Sites with Hyperlinks
© harry-bvH @ 27 March 2002
Map
of the 1915 Armenian Genocide
in the Turkish Empire
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