[Read the critical response by Dr. Tessa Hofmann at the end of the text]By Michael Radu
March 2007
The European Union has told Turkey that in order to become a ?true democracy? worth joining it, it must acknowledge responsibility for the 1915 Armenian ?genocide,? even if the Republic of Turkey as such did not exist until 1923 (1).
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has now decided to bring to a vote a non-binding resolution declaring the events of 1915 in Eastern Anatolia a ?genocide.? Despite its moralistic claims, this is a dangerous?indeed, in the present circumstances, a highly irresponsible?assault on U.S. national interests in Iraq and elsewhere.
The issue is both clear in terms of whose interests are at stake and complex as to the events themselves. For many Armenians in the U.S. (concentrated in California?Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., was the bill?s sponsor), the issue is hate for everything Turkish and an attempt to rewrite history for emotional fulfillment. For Armenians in Armenia, it is the hoped-for beginning of a process leading to compensation, including financial, from Ankara, and a welcome diversion from their domestic difficulties (2).
Central to the issue is the definition of events during World War I in the Ottoman Empire. A few key facts are clear. One is that many hundreds of thousands (over a million, according to the Armenian lobby) Armenians in Eastern Anatolia died at that time, of exhaustion and famine as well as killed by Kurdish villagers and Ottoman soldiers. It is also a fact that the Armenian community and its leadership in Anatolia at the time took arms against the Ottomans, in open alliance with the latter?s traditional enemy, Russia. Invading Russian troops and Armenian irregulars, whose occupation of the city of Van was the immediate cause of the deportation of Armenians, also engaged in indiscriminate violence, albeit on a smaller scale, against the mostly Kurdish population of the area; and all that during a war in which the very fate of the Ottoman Empire was being decided (3).
Whether the Ottoman authorities were guilty of ?genocide? in a legal sense is doubtful, since the term itself did not exist in international law until after World War II; in a moral sense, doubts could also be raised, since if ?genocide? means intentional destruction of a specific group because of its nationality, religion, race, etc., the survival of the Armenian community of Istanbul, outside the conflict area, is hard to explain (4). But leaving all this aside, there is one reality that cannot be ignored. That is that whatever happened in 1915 happened under the Ottoman Empire, not under the Turkish Republic, established in 1923. Thus contemporary Turkey is no more responsible for the events of 1915 than Russia is for Stalin?s annexation of the Baltic states or the Federal Republic of Germany for the pre-1914 colonial abuses of the Wilhelmine Empire (5).
In regional terms, any form of open American support for Armenian claims against Turkey would only encourage Yerevan to persist in its destabilizing role (6).
Not only does Armenia continue to occupy a large part of Azerbaijan?s territory, much beyond its admittedly legitimate claims to the Nagorno-Karabakh region, but is serves as the cat?s paw of Moscow, the former colonial power in the Caucasus and still the main threat to its stability (7).
The main problem, however, is still Turkey. Turkish nationalism, on the rise as it is and now with a disturbing new element of anti-Americanism, reaches hysterical levels when the Armenian issue is mentioned (8). Although most elites may not share it yet, it is unlikely that they could control a wave of anti-Americanism if the U.S. House of Representatives considers the proposed resolution. And it cost the French billions in lost or cancelled contracts with Turkey when the lower house of their parliament passed a resolution last year making it a crime to deny that genocide occurred (9).
France had no strategic interests in Turkey, nor is Paris known for its traditional pro-Turkish sympathies. The United States, however, has a vital interest in a friendly Turkey, a NATO ally of long standing, Israel?s only friend in the region, and a neighbor of Iran, Syria, and Iraq. The latter is particularly important now.
As it is, Ankara has a legitimate complaint against our main Iraqi allies, the Kurds, for their inaction or implicit tolerance of the terrorist PKK organization, which is safely ensconced in Iraqi Kurdistan. So far, the Turks have demonstrated, most of the time, an admirable patience with PKK terrorist attacks across the border, but a less than friendly Turkish military could not be counted on to continue on that path. Nor could Ankara be expected, if it is insulted by Washington, to stand by if Kirkuk, with its large Turkoman minority, is annexed by the Iraqi Kurds. Are those likely consequences worth paying for the sake of the emotional satisfaction of the Armenian lobby?
The answer is clearly negative, which is why Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and now George W. Bush all opposed such attempts. The House leadership does not seem to mind doing damage to our relations with the only democratic and secular Muslim state in the region at a crucial time. Although the intended measure is non-binding, and thus it avoids a presidential veto, that does not make it harmless or intelligent (10).
Michael Radu, Ph.D., is Co-Chair of Foreign Policy Research Institute?s (FPRI) Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security. He is currently at work on a book on Islamism in Europe.
Source: Website of the Foreign Policy Research Institute
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200703.radu.armeniangenocide.html
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200703.radu.armeniangenocide.html
Critical response by Dr. Tessa Hofmann (1) Not true! The European Parliament has called on Turkey since 1987 to recognize the genocide against the Armenians as a historic fact, emphasising however that ?the recent Turkish regime cannot be held responsible for the drama which the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire un-derwent?; ?neither political nor legal nor material claims towards present Turkey can be con-cluded? from ?the acknowledgment of these historic events as a genocide.?
(2) How did the author determine hate and emotional fulfilment? As to official Armenia, no compensation claims have been tabled. As to unofficial Armenia, a remarkable Armenian-Turkish survey in 2003 on the mutual perception of both nations, funded by the US Center for Global Peace concludes:
?Undoubtedly, the most sensitive issue between two countries is the evaluation of the events of 1915. According to respondents the main problem between Armenia and Turkey is the Armenian Question/genocide, with a proportion of 82% in Armenia, and 19% in Turkey stat-ing this as the key issue. As far as the differences between the levels of prejudices and the important role of ?1915? and ?otherness? in the construction of national identities are con-cerned, the possibility of an attempt from Turkey seems more realistic. The reason for that lies in the fact Armenians have experienced 1915 as a deep rooted historical trauma and hence would expect Turks to make the first steps to respect this memory and provide psychological empathy. (?) For Armenians there is a historically experienced suffering which cannot be forgotten. An attitude of respect from Turks toward Armenians and their history will be nec-essary in order to resolve the difficulties in the long run.?
Genocide scholars consider the denial of genocide as an integral part and the last phase of that crime. The Armenian insistence on the recognition of their sufferings originates in the wish to end this lasting trauma.
(3) The author presents the official Turkish version of a ?reactive deportation?, ignoring the fact that deportations of Christian ethnic-groups were conducted as early as 1913/14. They were an integral part of attempted ethnic homogenization of the multiethnic and multi-religious Ottoman state, achieved by assimilation, dispersion, expulsion and physical annihilation.
Even under the international law of those days deportation was a crime against humanity. The specifics of deportations of Christians during WW1 were described by European and Ameri-can eyewitnesses as death-marches and a tool of destruction by marching women, children and old people for hundreds of kilometres, over mountains and through deserts, either in the heat of summer or in winter cold, without food and shelter, robbing and raping the defence-less en route and eventually killing the survivors.
There are numerous reports by German diplomats about the genocidal intent of the ruling re-gime of Young Turks or Ittihatists. In the context of deportations of the Pontos Greeks German Consul Kuckhoff telegraphed on July 16, 1916 from Samsun: ?(?) In Turkish the terms deportation and destruction have the same meaning, for in most cases those who are not killed fall victim to deceases or starvation.?
German Ambassador Hans von Wangenheim rejected the Turkish explanation for the deportation of Armenians, emphasising its implementation also in areas not affected by the war: ?This situation and the way in which the relocation is being carried out shows that the government is indeed pursuing its purpose of eradicating the Armenian race from the Turkish Empire.?
Elizabeth Freeman Barrows Ussher, an American missionary at Van, noted in her diary on April 20, 1915: ?The Turks began the struggle by attacking an orphan girl (?). This occurred in front of the gate of the German compound, so many were eye-witnesses that the trouble was initiated by the Turks.
Although the Vali (governor) calls it a rebellion, it is really an effort to protect the lives and homes of the Armenians.?
(4) Raphael Lemkin, the author of the UN genocide convention (1948), was convinced that the annihilation of the Ottoman Armenians during WW1 and the Shoah of WW2 were prototypes of genocide. Then a jurist of the League of Nation, he attempted as early as 1933 to introduce an international law project against the destruction of whole ethnic and/or religious groups but failed due to the influence of the delegation from Nazi Germany at an international confer-ence in Madrid.
Article II of the UN Convention reads: ?(?) genocide means any of the following acts com-mitted with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group?? Even if a part of a victim group is exempted, the genocide definition is applicable.
The estimation of the German Embassy of October 4, 1916, based on polls among the deportees, mentions 1.5 million victims of a pre-War population of 2.5 millions in the Ottoman Empire ? three fifths of the entire Armenian population. Article III of the UN Convention defines not only genocide (the physical destruction) as punishable act, but also the conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempted genocide and complicity in genocide.
A semi-official Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission requested that the International Center for Transitional Justice (New York) facilitate an independent legal study on the applicability of the 1948 Genocide Convention to events which occurred during the early twentieth century. On February 4, 2003, the International Center for Transitional Justice provided a legal analysis on the subject, which confirms the applicability of the definition of the UN Genocide Convention to the massacres and deportations of 1915/16.
(5) Yes. This is precisely the legal question.
(6) Armenia has never expressed claims towards Turkey. With its entry to the OSCE in 1992 it acknowledged the existing borders with its neighbours.
Armenian attempts to enter unconditionally into diplomatic relations with Turkey have so far been rejected by Turkey.
With regards to domestic and regional stability, the European Parliament has explained on various occasions, that Turkey?s acknowledgment of the historic truth can only help to improve her domestic situation through democratization and the regional stability by confidence building. The suppression of the historic truth by means of a Penal Law that violates the freedom of opinion, research and the media, to the contrary, can only work against stability. More than 90 citizens of Turkey are currently charged under the notorious number 301 and others. The assassinated Armenian editor Hrant Dink, Turkish writers Elif Safak and Orhan Pamuk are among the prominent victims.
(7) Despite earlier promises and against the fact that more than 90 percent of its population were ethnic Armenians, the Bolsheviks separated Nagorno Karabakh from Armenia in 1921 and attached it to Azerbaijan, not least to please Kemalist Turkey. Protests against the arbitrary division were suppressed and mass petitions to Moscow were rejected, even during Gorbachev?s reform era. When post-Soviet Azerbaijan tried to re-conquer Karabakh, the Armenian Karabakhis and volunteers from Armenia and the Diaspora successfully resisted. But the po-litically unsolved conflict remains admittedly a burden, first of all for the internationally iso-lated Karabakhis and for hundred of thousands people displaced by a never officially declared war (1991-1994).
Compared with the two other frozen conflicts in the South Caucasus ? South Ossetia and Abkhazia -, Russian influence is lesser in the Nagorna Karabakh conflict, which therefore and for other reasons seems easier solvable:
Compared with the two other frozen conflicts in the South Caucasus ? South Ossetia and Abkhazia -, Russian influence is lesser in the Nagorna Karabakh conflict, which therefore and for other reasons seems easier solvable:
Nagorno Karabakh is a precisely defined territory with a clear ethnic majority. In addition, this conflict involves just two sides ? the Karabakh-Armenian majority and Azerbaijan (Armenia considers itself an interested, but not a party to the conflict) ? whereas the two other conflicts include two unequal states and a break-away sub-state entity each: Russia, neighbouring South Ossetia and Abkhazia vs. Georgia. In all three cases an internationalisation took place, with the UN, the OSCE and increasingly the European Union being involved as mediators. All these bodies are interested in the regional political and economic stabilization of the region, albeit for different reasons. Provided that alternative safeguards exist and that its independence and freedom are respected, Karabakh can be convinced to end its occupation of the surrounding ?safety zone? (with the exception of the corridor linking it with Armenia).
(8) Yes, Turkish nationalism (and anti-Semitism) is a threat, most of all for Turkey herself, for her dwindling minorities, her liberal minded citizens and for her neighbours, among them Armenia. Giving in to chauvinist threats would give precisely the wrong signal.
(9) Acknowledging the Armenian genocide as a historic fact cannot be more costly for the USA than for Canada or those eleven EU member states that took similar resolutions: Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, and Sweden.
(10) The media report that Turkey?s FO Minister G?l and Chief Commander Yasar B?y?kanit during their February visits to the USA tried to pressure on their American partners. In March Abdullah G?l added: ?The consequences of such a step (the recognition by the US-Congress) will surpass the imaginable and have long-term effects.? How reliable and friendly can a blackmailing partner be who insists on trading strategic issues for ethic values?
How stable is a country whose political and military elites are just in the middle of re-positioning? A Turkish comment: ?It would be a grave mistake to think that the Kemalists are still proponents of a Western-oriented Turkey or foreign policy line. They openly express their great disappointment with modern political values like democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Many Kemalists question the wisdom and virtue of a democracy that has brought a ?pro-Islamist? party to power. They are also not content with the idea of human rights that is ?exploited? by the Kurdish separatists and are uncomfortable with the notion of the rule of law that limits their freedom of (unlawful) action.?
As a German, who was born after WW2 I am grateful for the insistence of the Western Allies on (West) Germany?s democratization after WW2. This democratization, however, would not have worked without the Germans? commitment to come to terms with their criminal and genocidal past. I hope for a similar development in Turkey. Recognizing the Armenian geno-cide as a historic fact, the US Congress will not act against, but in favour of Turkey.
Dr. Tessa Hofmann works as a researcher of sociology at the Institute for East European Stud-ies (Free University Berlin); she is also a scholar of genocide studies and author of numerous books on Armenia; among others, she is co-Author of the forthcoming book ?Portraits of Hope. Armenians in the Contemporary World?. Edited by Huberta von Voss. With a Preface by Yehuda Bauer. Berghahn Books: New York/Oxford May 2007, 400 pages.
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