New Statesman, UK
Oct 12 2007
Time to recognise the Armenian genocide
Vahe Gabrielyan
Published 12 October 2007
The Armenian ambassador to Britain on why he believes, nearly a
century on, Turkey should admit to a genocide
Throughout the twentieth century to the present day there has not
been any substantiated doubt about the character of the mass
deportations, expropriation, abduction, torture, starvation and
killings of millions of Armenians throughout Ottoman Turkey that
started on a large scale in 1915 and carried onto 1923.
Centrally planned by the government of the day and meticulously
executed by the huge machine of the state bureaucracy, army, police,
hired gangs and – specially released for that purpose – criminals
from prisons, the campaign had one clear aim expressly stated by the
government in secret directives: to rid Anatolia of its indigenous
Armenian population and settle the so -called `Armenian question’ for
good.
An entire nation and its Christian culture were eliminated to secure
a homogenous Turkish state on territories where Armenians had lived
for many centuries.
Terms such as `genocide’ or `ethnic cleansing’ were not in
circulation then, so Winston Churchill later referred to the 1915
massacre of 1.5 million Armenians as an `administrative holocaust’.
The Turkish authorities made no secret of the aim once it was
achieved and other governments and nations have known the truth
since. One of the early accounts of Armenian Genocide was published
in 1916 in Britain.
The British Government at the time commissioned James Bryce and
Arnold Toynbee to compile evidence on the events in Armenia. The
subsequent report was printed in the British Parliamentary Blue Book
series `The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916′.
The report leaves no doubt about what was taking place.
In 1915, thirty-three years before UN Genocide Convention was
adopted, the Armenian Genocide was condemned by the international
community as a crime against humanity. It is well acknowledged that
Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, when he coined the term genocide in
1944, cited the Turkish extermination of the Armenians and the Nazi
extermination of the Jews as defining examples of what he meant by
genocide.
Amidst huge international pressure, the Turkish Government succeeding
the Young Turks had not only to recognize the scale and vehemence of
the atrocities but also to try the perpetrators in military tribunals
and sentence the leaders to death.
However, the sentences were not carried out and with the passage of
time moods changed not only in Turkey but also in some countries,
such as the UK, where Turkey is nowadays seen as a key alley. Still,
even in countries that have not yet for some reason recognized the
Genocide scholars have no doubts about the character of the events:
they point out that there is no scholarly issue, only one of
political expediency.
Armenians throughout the world insist that there be an international
recognition and condemnation of what is often called the first
genocide of the twentieth century. We are past the stage of scholarly
discussion since a very few challenge the fact. To dispel any doubt,
126 leading scholars of the Holocaust placed a statement in the New
York Times in June 2000 declaring the "incontestable fact of the
Armenian Genocide" and urging western democracies to acknowledge it.
In 2005 the International Association of Genocide Scholars addressed
an open letter to Turkey’s Prime Minister R. Erdogan calling upon him
to recognize the truth. The evidence is so overwhelming that the only
question remaining is how to help the two nations close that shameful
page of the history, reconcile and move forward.
However, despite the affirmation of the Armenian Genocide by the
overwhelming majority of historians, academic institutions on
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, increasingly more parliaments and
governments around the world, and by more and more Turkish scholars
and intellectuals, the Turkish government still actively denies the
fact. So long as they do that, Armenians have no choice but to
struggle for wider international recognition.
This is however not an end in itself. It is important that Turkey
recognizes the Genocide, apologizes and condemns it. When the Germans
have apologized for the sufferings they had caused to the Jews, the
British for slavery, the Americans for their treatment of native
Americans etc, Turkey’s continuing denial, moreover, increasing
efforts and resources spent on the denial are alarming signs,
aggravated by their insistence not to establish diplomatic relations
with neighbouring Armenia and by maintaining a blockade on all ground
communication. Armenia does not even set the recognition of the
Genocide as a prerequisite for normalizing relations and calls for
establishing diplomatic relations and opening of the border without
any preconditions.
As the killing this January of Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian
editor of the Agos bilingual periodical demonstrates, international
community cannot stand aside and watch. Hrant was persecuted under
the infamous 301 article for `insulting Turkish identity’ and the
hysteria around someone daring to speak the truth created the fertile
soil for the hatred that killed him. His case was shamefully still
open even after his assassination and in a demonstration of absolute
absence of morality, Turkish courts yesterday sentenced Hrant’s son,
as well as another of Agos’s current staff to a year of imprisonment
under the same accusations, for simply daring to re-print Hrant’s
words.
This is why the world should not yield to Turkish threats that are
outright blackmailing. The resolutions in various legislatures across
the world, and recently in the US House of Representative Foreign
Relations Committee are not merely the result of Armenian Diaspora’s
– which by the way, was created in the first place because of the
genocide in Turkey – influence. It is because there are more people
who believe in values and in putting the wrongs right.
A number of British MPs have tabled an EDM (Early Day Motion), to
raise the awareness about the Armenian Genocide and calling on
British Government to recognize it as such. Currently, around 170 MPs
across the party lines have signed an EDM which reads `That this
House believes that the killing of over a million Armenians in 1915
was an act of genocide; calls upon the UK Government to recognize it
as such; and believes that it would be in Turkey’s long-term
interests to do the same.’
Their number grows steadily. It is time the British Government
followed many others and re-affirmed the UK’s place among the
standard-bearers of democracy and human rights.
It is worth repeating that international recognition of the Genocide
cannot do harm to Turkish-Armenian relations since they simply do not
exist. It does not prevent a dialogue, on the contrary, creates the
necessary conditions to start a frank one. By recognizing the
historic truth and helping open the last closed border in Europe, the
international community can facilitate long-lasting stability and
prosperity in our region. And it is also probably time to show that
the human race’s evolution into the 21st century is evolution of
ideals, principles and a code of behaviour that should take
precedence over political expediency or sheer commercial interest.
Vahe Gabrielyan
Armenia’s Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s
Vahe Gabrielyan is the Armenian ambassador to Britain. Born in 1965
he was educated in Armenia, Austria and the United States. He was
awarded a PHD in the Theory of Linguistics in 1994
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress