IPS (Latin America)
October 17, 2007 Wednesday
US recognises as genocide the massive killings of Armenians in
Turkey;
TURKEY: Armenian Ghosts Refuse To Go Away
by Jacques N. Couvas
The sign has been on the wall for some time, as U.S. Armenians have
been trying for the last two decades to get an official condemnation
of Ottoman Turks for the atrocities perpetrated nine decades ago.
Armenians, a Christian minority community which together with the
Greeks and Jews formed the economic backbone of the Ottoman Empire
for many centuries, were from time to time subject to pogroms, often
encouraged by the state. Persecution became systematic towards the
end of the 19th century, and large-scale massacres took place in
1894-1896 and in 1909.
Following his defeat January 1915 by the Russians in a World War I
battle at Sarikemish, Ottoman minister of war Enver Pasha blamed the
Armenians for 'fifth column' activities that had advantaged
the enemy. In that battle in the Caucasian plateau, 85 percent of the
100,000 strong Ottoman force perished, chiefly because of Pasha’s
inexperience as military commander.
But it is also true that, as Russian forces were advancing into
Turkey from the East, Armenian factions had supported them, hoping to
gain independence for their ethnic group after the war.
In spring 1915, Enver and minister of interior Talaat Pasha rolled
out a programme to deter Armenian villages from collaborating with
the Allies. The Ottoman Empire fought World War I on the side of the
Germans and Austro-Hungarians.
On April 24 of that year, 250 Armenian intellectuals and community
leaders were rounded up, jailed and executed. In May, a deportation
law was passed, authorising massive displacements of Armenian
populations and confiscation of their property. Conscripts, serving
in the Ottoman army, were summarily dismissed and used as hamals,
low-ranking manual labour in worker battalions. Most of those who
survived mistreatment and famine were executed or disappeared.
Atrocities against Armenians in the countryside, particularly the
east, continued through the following year. Reports from the dozens
of British, German and U.S. consulates and missions spread throughout
Turkey at that time alerted the West about the violence taking place.
Henry Morgenthau Sr., U.S. ambassador to Constantinople, capital of
the Ottoman Empire, today’s Istanbul, reported extensively to
Washington on the situation and pleaded to Enver and Talaat to use
restraint, to no avail. The United States remained neutral in the war
until 1917.
Meanwhile, adventurer and author Gertrude Bell, on mission in the
region for the British intelligence services, persuaded the British
and their allies to protest to the Turkish government.
Morgenthau’s and Bell’s claims have been used by Western historians
to assess the extent of the massacre, and it seems they have been
corroborated by records of German diplomats and senior military staff
posted in the Middle East during the Great War.
According to Western historians, up to 1.5 million Armenians,
representing the majority of the ethnic group’s population at the
time, were driven to a long march through Mesopotamia in extremely
harsh conditions.
A large number, the exact magnitude of which has never been
established, died. Survivors escaped to neighbouring countries and to
the West. Kurdish tribes, enrolled as special gendarmes by the
Ottomans, were at the forefront in raping, torturing and slaughtering
the deportees.
The Turkish version of the events differs widely from that of the
foreign historians and the descendants of the Armenian diaspora.
Ankara has consistently minimised the gravity and size of the events,
describing them as an 'Armenian incident'. The number of
victims has periodically been revised downwards now to around
300,000. Turkey considers that this number is practically equal to
that of Muslims who died during the same period as a result of
intercultural clashes in that part of the country.
It is a fact that Armenians too stained their hands with enemy blood
during the 1918 riots at Baku in Azerbaijan, following earlier
massacres of Armenians by the Azeri population, which was allied to
the Turkish cause in World War I. Scholars of the Great War period in
the east tend to agree that the conflict brought out the worst of
human behaviour in all factions.
To minimise the damage to the image formed by international public
opinion, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has in recent years played
a realpolitik card, admitting that atrocities, even massacres, were
perpetrated under Ottoman rule, but that they were no longer
relevant.
In a pre-emptive move, following repeated attempts in 2000 and 2005
by the U.S. Congress to pass a resolution using the term genocide, it
has proposed that a mixed panel of Turkish and international
academics search official records and jointly present their findings.
'It is a matter for historians, not politicians,' is the
official view.
Foreign historians have not been forthcoming, as it is known that the
Ottoman administration was frugal in keeping meaningful records of
population displacements or measures affecting religious minorities.
The U.S. has been hesitant over the past 90 years to take a firm
position on the issue. Forty of the states in the U.S. have already
passed legislation or proclamations qualifying the events as
genocide, but only two presidents, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan,
have used this term in public. All U.S. presidents, including now
George Bush, have, however, used the Armenian-proposed figure of 1.5
million as the toll in victims.
Twenty countries and transnational organisations, including the
European Parliament and the European Council, have acknowledged the
genocide. The term was coined in 1943 by Prof. Raphael Lemkin, who
was motivated by the slaughters of Assyrians by Iraqis in 1933, the
Armenian massacres of World War I, and the Nazi extermination of
European Jews during World War II.
Retaliation by the Turkish government has been selective. Canadian
and Italian companies enjoy good business from the public sector,
although their respective countries have recognised the genocide.
France and Switzerland, on the other hand, have frequently been
excluded from such dealings because of their parliaments’ decisions
on the subject.
In 2006, French products were boycotted after legislators passed a
law forbidding denial of the Armenian genocide. France hosts the
second largest Armenian community after the U.S. It is estimated that
there are eight to 10 million Armenians living outside of their
country.
At the same time, reference to the Armenian genocide in Turkey is
taboo, and can lead to legal prosecution. Nobel Prize novelist Orhan
Pamuk and editor-in-chief Hrank Dink were brought to trial and faced
jail sentences for doing so. The latter was shot dead last year by a
Turkish nationalist.
The World War I killings encouraged the Allies to grant Armenians
their own land in 1918. The young Democratic Republic of Armenia
(DRA) had a short existence. Turkish troops invaded a large part of
the country in 1920, but a swift attack by the Bolsheviks from Russia
threw them back. In 1922 the DRA joined the Soviet Union until 1991,
when it recovered its independence from Moscow.
Armenia staged a protracted war against neighbouring Georgia in the
1990s and occupied the Nagorno Karabakh province, home of 150,000
Armenians. In retaliation Turkey closed its border with Armenia, a
diplomatic status still in effect. Isolation from its western flank
has, however, not affected Armenian trade. The country’s gross
domestic product per capita is 4,250 dollars, behind Turkey’s (5,400
dollars) but not all that bad by regional standards.
It is estimated that 40,000 to 70,000 Armenians live in Turkey today.
Many are clandestine workers. Proposals by Turkish politicians after
the U.S. House Committee resolution include expelling such
individuals.