Turkish Daily News
March 12 2005
Gündüz Aktan: A few points involving the Armenian issue
Saturday, March 12, 2005
The suggestion Mr. Sükrü Elekdað has made regarding the ~SBlue Book~T
in order to counter the Armenian genocide claims, is quite right. At
the instigation of Turkey~Rs main opposition party and with the
support of the Turkish government a joint call will be issued to the
British Parliament
Gündüz AKTAN
The suggestion Mr. Sükrü Elekdað has made regarding the ~SBlue Book~T
in order to counter the Armenian genocide claims, is quite right. At
the instigation of Turkey’s main opposition party and with the
support of the Turkish government a joint call will be issued to the
British Parliament. The latter will be urged to declare as
~Spropaganda material~T the Blue Book in question. Britain, who was an
invading power at the end of World War I, is the country that knows
about the facts better than anybody else. Westminster has not, until
now, accepted the argument that the Armenian incidents had been
genocide. In fact, in a press release the British Embassy in Ankara
made it clear two years ago that the genocide claims were groundless.
On the other hand, the Armenian foreign minister has promptly
rejected the proposal for creation of a commission — consisting of
Turkish and Armenian historians or, to put it differently, academics
— to look into the genocide claims. The Armenians are saying that
all historical-and-archive work has been completed; that the outcome
has been accepted by the world; and that the problem stems from
Turkey’s ~Sdenial of the genocide.~T
If the Armenians’ sole aim is to disseminate anti-Turkey propaganda
this is an understandable attitude. However, they must not think they
can make the EU or America, pressure us into accepting the genocide
claims — whereas Turkey would, naturally, accept the outcome of a
joint initiative.
The U.N. is not a suitable place for such a task. Those who, with
good intentions, suggest the U.N., are not well acquainted with the
U.N. The U.N. Security Council may tackle only those issues that
constitute ~Sa threat to international peace and security.~T The
incidents of 90 years ago are not within that scope. The Whitaker
Report debated in 1985 shows how inadequate the U.N. human rights
system is in this respect. And we know that UNESCO and the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe are not eager to
tackle this issue. Under the circumstances, we must keep striving to
pave the way for the creation of a common working premise. However,
we must know that this issue is more technical than it seems. So we
must not promptly voice any proposal that seems reasonable at first
sight.
Now let us come to the ~Smea culpa~T front. In the course of an
interview that appeared in the March 7 issue of daily Milliyet,
Professor Halil Berktay claimed that the Armenians had been subjected
to a forced relocation ~Sonly because they were Armenian.~T He argued
that forced relocation amounted to ethnic cleansing and that ethnic
cleansing is considered genocide in our day. He said that the secret
orders (concerning the massacres) were more important than the
documents available in the archives.
As far as I know Berktay has no published work on the historical
aspect of the incidents. More gravely, he is not familiar with the
genocide law, that does not keep him from making a legal assessment.
According to Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, acts committed
with the intent to destroy a group only because of that group’s
identity (that is, without any ground fall into the genocide
category. For example, Jews were destroyed without any other reason,
that is, only because they were Jews. Armenians, on the other hand,
were relocated because they had rebelled, because they had cooperated
with the invading Russian army and because they had attacked the
Turkish and Muslim population, with the aim of setting up their own
state in eastern Anatolia. If, in the course of that process, the two
sides massacred groups of civilians, that would fall into another
category of crimes.
The concept of ~Sethnic cleansing~T emerged during the incidents in
Bosnia-Herzegovina. That is not a legal term. It is being used when
describing such actions as the destruction of civilian targets and
the killing and raping of defenseless civilians — acts perpetrated
during the attacks staged by armed groups with the aim of driving out
from their homes the resident population of a given area. The Former
Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague treats this kind of ethnic cleansing
as ~Swar crimes~T or ~Scrimes against humanity.~T The only exception was
the Krstic case. But that was quite different. Ethnic cleansing is
similar to the way Turks were driven out of the Balkans and the
Caucasus in the 19th century rather than to the relocation of
Armenians which was largely carried out in an orderly manner.
Article 7 of the ICC’s Rome Statute (1998) considers forced
transfer of people a ~Scrime against humanity.~T However, according to
Article 17 of Protocol 2 additional to the Geneva Conventions,
relocation is not a crime if carried out due to ~Smilitary
imperative.~T
On the other hand, it is strange that Berktay does not know that
almost all archive documents involving the Armenian incidents are
~Ssecret~T documents anyway, that is, they are encoded.
And, finally, one can only wish that the ~Seminent~T members of our
press — which we increasingly realize are beyond criticism — who
seem to be dying to take part in the genocide debate, would be
willing to study this issue at least a little.
–Boundary_(ID_dpedlcioDc37mNOdOO99EQ)–