ELEKDAÐ: ICJ INVOLVEMENT WILL DEAL A BLOW TO ARMENIAN THESIS

Today’s Zaman
Feb 5 2008
Turkey

It is time for Ankara to bring new perspective, organization and
dynamism to the Armenian issue, according to veteran Turkish diplomat
Þukru Elekdað.

Elekdað, a deputy for the main opposition Republican People’s Party
(CHP), insists that Ankara should take the first step in this new
direction by asking France to jointly take an almost decade-old French
parliamentary decision recognizing the controversial World War I-era
killings of Anatolian Armenians as genocide before the International
Court of Justice (ICJ) to determine whether the century-old incidents
can accurately be categorized as acts of genocide according to a
related UN convention.

Elekdað’s first remarks on the issue came last week in the French
capital following talks at the French parliament as part of a Turkish
parliamentary delegation.

The controversial decision bluntly stating that "France publicly
recognizes the Armenian genocide of 1915" was made in January 2001,
leading Ankara to lodge strong protests with Paris, including the
cancellation of a number of major projects with actual or potential
French involvement.

"We can go to the ICJ with France and ask whether the law adopted
in France in 2001 is in compliance with the agreement in 1948 and
whether the 1915 incidents constitute genocide," Elekdað was quoted
as saying by the Anatolia news agency, in an apparent reference to
the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide. He noted that the delegation had shared this view with
French lawmakers during their talks.

Armenians claim that up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered
in orchestrated killings during the last years of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey categorically rejects these claims, saying that 300,000
Armenians, along with at least as many Turks, died in civil strife
that emerged when the Armenians took up arms for independence in
eastern Anatolia and sided with the Russian troops who were invading
Ottoman territory.

Elekdað, a former Foreign Ministry undersecretary and also a former
ambassador to the US, speaking with Today’s Zaman on Monday, elaborated
on his remarks. First of all, he made clear that it was not possible to
try the Ottoman Empire under the 1948 UN Convention, since a convention
could not be implemented for incidents that took place prior to its
adoption and the controversial killings referred as the incidents of
1915 took place long before the adoption of the convention.

"What would the authorized court rule if we assume that the UN
Convention could be implemented retrospectively?" Elekdað asked. He
answered by referring to a ruling back in February 2007 in which the
ICJ exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for the mass slaughter
of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia,
but ruled that it failed to prevent a genocide. Key to the court’s
findings was its conclusion that no one in Serbia, or any official
organ of the state, could be shown to have had the deliberate intention
to "destroy in whole or in part" the Bosnian Muslim population —
a critical element in the 1948 Genocide Convention.

"According to this landmark ruling, a state cannot be held responsible
for genocide if it had used the means it had in hand to prevent the
genocide incident via showing the utmost effort and good will. … On
the other hand, the party that makes the genocide allegations must
prove with ‘absolute and undisputable’ evidence that the perpetrator
had not implemented necessary precautions with due diligence and that
it committed the crime with the specific intent [dolus specialis],"
Elekdað continued.

"In light of these facts, the French parliament’s decision in 2001
is a typical sample of execution without trial," he added.

What Turkey and France should ask the ICJ is whether the French
parliament has the authority to make a decision about the Ottoman
Empire according to the UN Convention and to ask whether the 1915
incidents constituted genocide according to the same convention,
he said.

"It is obvious that the court will rule that the French parliament
is not authorized to make such a decision, and it will also have to
announce that the UN Convention cannot be implemented retrospectively
due to the principle of legality. This means that the 1915 incidents
cannot be described as genocide. If the ICJ makes such a ruling, then
Armenia’s genocide allegation will entirely collapse," Elekdað said.

"If France avoids a joint application to the ICJ — which is a big
probability — then a heavy blow will be dealt to the political and
moral superiority of the Armenian thesis … in the international
arena. Such a development will also constitute a factor that will
prevent or at least make more difficult conviction of our citizens
on charges of denial of genocide and the making of parliamentary
decisions about the 1915 incidents."

–Boundary_(ID_h/9olUeHHp+jda4lK p1Q3g)–