The Holocaust and Armenian Case
By Dr. Ibrahim KAYA
Turks.US
Saturday, May 21 2005
Similarities do not make two things same. However, if two things
are so similar they can be grouped in the same category. Common
rules would apply to all the things in the same category. Therefore,
similarities and abstraction are extremely important not only from
academic but also from legal point of view.
Surely if the things had nothing in common, or similarities are very
low, they are different. Different things do not fall within the same
category and are subject to different treatment and rules.
With the increasing awareness of the Holocaust around the world,
the concept of Holocaust gained currency as a most horrendous
crime. Therefore, the charge of Holocaust became a weapon and many
have tried to draw some parallels between the Holocaust and their
cases. The supporters of the so-called Armenian genocide are no
exception, frequently using the term “Armenian Holocaust”. The efforts
for drawing some, considerable, parallels between the fates of the
European Jews and Armenians of the Ottoman Empire aim to expand the
recognition of the 1915 incidents as genocide. Because the Holocaust is
the most inhuman treatment of man to man and anything similar, or the
same, deserves to be condemned and, consequently, punished. However,
the calamity befell upon the Jews is so grave and it is not easy to
call every instance of great human losses the Holocaust. Therefore, it
is worth noting that Armenian historians tend to distinguish both the
Armenian experience and the Holocaust from all other instances of great
human losses. If they manage to make the 1915 incidents recognized as
Holocaust, first simply to the public and later to the legislatures of
various countries, laws of these countries prohibiting even academic
criticism of the Holocaust would also apply to the Armenian case.
A significant portion of Armenian efforts has been devoted to
establishing a linkage between their own historical experiences and
those of European Jewry during the World War II. The cornerstone in
these efforts has long been the infamous Hitler quote: “Who, after
all, speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?”. The aim is
to prove that Hitler was encouraged by the lack of reaction to the
fate of the Armenians. As examined in great detail and convincingly
proved by Lowry, there is no historical basis for attributing such
a statement to Hitler. Yet, a comparative analysis of the Holocaust
and Armenian case is worthwhile.
The aim of this paper is to examine the Holocaust and 1915 incidents
with a view exploring the differences, and of course similarities,
between the two. If they have much in common, both deserves to be
treated same. If not, the categorization applicable to one would
not fit the other one. Firstly brief features of the Holocaust will
be given to the attention of the reader. This will be followed by a
comparative analysis of the Holocaust and 1915 incidents.
Since the author comes from a legal profession, analysis of the
legal elements of both incidents will also be emphasized throughout
the paper. The sources on the 1915 incidents used in this article
will be the sources of Armenian origin and official legal material
the authenticity of which cannot be denied. To give a full record of
1915 incidents is clearly out of scope of this work which will only
make an attempt to analyze the differences and similarities between
the Holocaust and what the Armenians experienced in and around 1915.
The Holocaust: Evil for the Evil’s Sake
There has been so much cruelty, hatred, and killing in the history
of mankind.
It is also a fact that various communities have tried to exterminate
other communities which were different from theirs in terms of race,
ethnicity, religion, language. The most recent examples of this are
obviously the Rwanda and former Yugoslavia cases. However, none of
previous campaigns is in a position to challenge the uniqueness of
the Nazi Holocaust. It is significant not merely because its victims
were the Jews. Throughout the history the Jews were made the victims
of mass murder campaigns, but none of them was called the Holocaust.
The Holocaust is generally regarded as the systematic slaughter of
not only 6 million Jews, (two-thirds of the total European Jewish
population), the primary victims, but also 5 million others, wiped
off the Earth by the Nazis and their collaborators. 11 million people
were killed because of racism and hate, all in a period of 11 years
between 1933-1945.
The most important feature of the Holocaust is, possibly, that it is
evil for the evil’s sake. In this respect it differs from all other
mass murder incidents. There is no ground upon which the conditions
imposed upon the Jews of Europe by the Nazis could be explained. The
Jews neither cooperated with Russians against Germany nor stabbed
the German army from the back. They even did not form any armed
organization to defend themselves, let alone terrorist groups to
rebel against the legitimate government of the country where they live.
The Holocaust was brought into being because it had meaning to its
perpetrators. Anti-Semitism is the key point. It had its roots in the
Middle Ages. According to the Christian belief of the Middle Ages,
it was the Jews who killed Jesus Christ. Therefore, they were to be
hated and punished. Every Jew was individually responsible for this
crime and sin. On their way to Jerusalem, the Crusaders slaughtered the
‘infidel’ irrespective whether he was a Muslim or Jew. The Jews were
required to live in the ghettos in the Middle Ages of Europe. They
were also subject to some discriminative procedures like bearing
certain signs and following certain dress code in many places. Thereby
the Jews were differenced from the rest of the society, becoming the
‘other’. It is also a fact that with the Enlightenment an amelioration
of the situation of the Jews was seen, since the equality of all
mankind was a pillar of the Enlightenment.
While the Napoleonic armies marched in Europe, the more Jews became
free as the equalitarian principles spread. The hard-working and
talented Jews became part and often the leading part of the social,
cultural, economic, and scientific life of Europe in the end of
the nineteenth century. Their success was also partly because of the
solidarity among the Jews. On the other hand, the anti-Semitism was not
buried, but this time instead of religious intolerance it was grounded
on the so-called scientific knowledge. Nazi propaganda identified
them as a “race” and an inferior one. To create a powerful nation
inferior ones should be eliminated according to the Nazi scientists.
The Nazis picked out and specifically targeted the Jews, and they did
this from the very beginning — the Nazi Party Program of February
1920 to the very end Hitler’s Testament of April 29, 1945.
The Nazis harassed and brutalized the Jews throughout the 1920s during
the “struggle for power.” Speech after speech painted the Jews as
Germany’s “misfortune” and prophesied a time of reckoning.
The Nazis came to power in 1933 and the Jews were their very first
target. The infamous boycott against Jewish businesses took place
in April 1933 and the first laws against the Jews were enacted on 7
April 1933. Jews were progressively erased from almost every facet of
German life. The Nuremberg Laws, passed in 1935, deprived the Jews
of almost every remaining right and freedom. The “Nuremberg Laws”
proclaimed Jews second-class citizens.
Furthermore one’s Jewishness, according to the Nuremberg Laws, was
dependent on that of a person’s grandparents, not that person’s beliefs
or identity. More laws passed between 1937 and 1939 exacerbated the
problem further: Jews were more and more segregated and life was
made much harder. Jews could not go to public schools, theaters,
cinemas, or resorts, and furthermore, they were banned from living,
or sometimes even walking, in certain parts of Germany.
This culminated in the bloodiest pogrom to date the Kristallnacht
(Night of Broken Glass) in November 1938. Over 100 Jews were murdered
and a “fine” was levied against the Jews in excess of 1 billion Mark.
Approximately half the Jewish population of Germany fled along with
more than two thirds of the Austrian Jewry. Emigration took them to
Palestine, the United States, Latin America, along with eastern and
western Europe. The Jews who remained in Nazi Germany were either
unwilling to leave or unable to obtain visas. Some could not get
sponsors in host countries, or were simply too poor to be able
to afford the trip. Many foreign countries made it even harder to
get out due to strict emigration policies designed to thwart large
amounts of refugees from entering, particularly in the wake of the
Depression. The United States, Britain, Canada, and France were among
these. Thirty eight countries met at Evian, France to discuss the
treatment of the Jews in Germany, but no real help was offered.
By the outbreak of World War II, actions taken against the Jews
included marking them and ghettoizing them. Jews were forced to label
all exterior clothing with a yellow Star of David with the word Jude
(Jew). By the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941,
the decision had been taken to kill the eastern European Jews by
shooting them where they were found and by the end of that year,
the decision was taken to kill all European Jews.
Communists, homosexuals, Gypsies, prisoners of war, Russians, Poles,
Catholic priests, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others were more or less
systematically murdered as the Holocaust continued. By the end of the
war, as many as 6 million of these people had been killed, along with
between 5 and 6 million Jews.
Einsatzgruppen carried out these murders at improvised sites throughout
the Soviet Union, following behind the advancing German army. It
was between 1942 and 1944 that the Germans decided to eliminate the
ghettos and deport the ghetto populations to “extermination camps,”
killing centers equipped with gassing facilities in Poland. This was
known as “the final solution to the Jewish question,” implemented
after a meeting of senior German officials in late January 1942 at a
villa in Wannsee (a suburb of Berlin). It was official state policy,
the first ever to advocate the murder of an entire people.
Six killing sites were chosen according to their closeness to rail
lines (essential for shipping the victims) and for their location
in semi-rural areas. The locations were: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka,
Chelmno, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The SS operated the killing
centers, and their methods were similar in each location. Railroad
freight cars and passenger trains would bring in victims. Men were
immediately separated from women. Prisoners were stripped and their
valuables confiscated. They then were forced naked into the gas
chambers, disguised as showers, where carbon monoxide or Zyklon B
asphyxiated them. The bodies were then stripped of hair, gold fillings
and teeth, and burned in crematoria, or buried in enormous mass
graves. They also were often used for medical experiments and subject
to extreme brutality on the part of the guards. Many died as a result.
With the tide of the war turned and the Allied armies liberated the
German occupied soil an international tribunal for the prosecution of
those who were responsible for the Holocaust was formed. the Nuremberg
Tribunal condemned twelve to death by hanging.
The Turks and Armenians
Having briefly reviewed the Jewish question in Europe and the
constituent elements of the Holocaust, now its time to turn to the
comparative analysis of this with the Turkish-Armenian relations,
including and especially what the Armenians experienced in 1915 under
the World War I circumstances.
Status of the Jews of Europe and Armenians of the Ottoman Empire
It has been clear from the above examination that the Jews of Europe
had lived in unfavorable, at best, conditions in Middle ages and
the Nazi period in Europe, in terms of social and legal status as a
predictable result of anti-Semitism. It would be wise to examine the
legal status of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire to reach a sound
conclusion on the comparison.
The principles upon which non-Muslims were governed have their roots
in the earlier traditions of Persian and Roman rule and Islamic
norms. Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians had a special place in
Islam. They are all called “People of Book” and allowed to live in a
country governed by Muslims as long as they accepted the Muslim rule
and paid special taxes. There are two important categories of taxes
that must be agreed to be paid by non-Muslims living under Islamic
rule: namely cizye, a special pool tax and harac, the land tribute.
The Ottoman society, being a multi ethnic and religious entity,
was divided into various communities along religious lines. Each
group or individual belonged to one or the other millet according to
religious affiliation. Each millet established and maintained its
own laws and institutions to regulate conduct and conflict under
its own leaders. The leader of each millet was called millet bashi
(head of millet). The Greek and Armenian millets were each headed
by a patriarch and the Jews by a grand rabbi. In addition to their
spiritual authority over their own ecclesiastical subordinates
and coreligionists the millet bashis had a fairly extensive civil
authority in the internal administration of their millets. Some
taxes also collected by the heads of the millets. In the fifteenth
century Sultan Mehmet II established the millet system to facilitate
coexistence between the different ethnic and religious groups. After
his conquest of Istanbul (Constantinople) in 1453, Mehmet II vested
the new Greek patriarch, Gennadius, with ecclesiastical and civil
authority over his coreligionists of the Empire and invited Bishop
Yovakim, the Armenian primate of Bursa, to Istanbul in 1461 and
conferred upon the title of “patrik” , thus placing him on the same
footing as the patriarch of the Greek community. The authority of the
Greek patriarch extended over the Serbs, Bulgarians, Wallachians,
Moldavians and Melkites while the non-Orthodox Christian subjects,
comprising the Syrian Jacobite, Ethiopian, Georgian, Chaldean and the
Coptic communities were placed under the authority of the Armenian
patriarch. This shows that the millet system was based on the religious
affiliation not that of ethnical. By implementing the millet system,
the Ottomans restored peace and order in the classical period.
The Ottoman Empire reached its height in the sixteenth century. The
decline also started in this century, becoming more apparent in the
following centuries. The Ottoman Empire did not fully experience
the Renaissance. The decline of the Empire brought corruption and
oppression to all subjects, irrespective whether they were Muslims
and non-Muslims. Most striking of all was the armed forces. In some
provinces they became oppressive, taking without payment whatever they
wanted from the population, again notwithstanding whether it was Muslim
and non-Muslim. The Ottoman system still included some men of integrity
and of ability who proposed reforms for the survival of the country.
In 1839 a reform edict was issued in Gülhane in the name of the
sultan. The principle of equality of persons of all religions is
recognized by the edict.
However, in practice, it is not to be supposed that the immediate
equality for all Ottoman subject was to be secured, for mainly two
reasons. Firstly the transformation of traditional structure of any
society takes some, important, time and secondly the state had not
enough power to implement this policy.
Therefore, in 1856 another reform edict renewed the commitments of
1839; guaranteeing free exercise of religion, charge of their own
belongings, access to public employment, equal taxation and equality
before the law. In 1876, constitutional monarchy was proclaimed
and the parliament convened. The constitution granted all subjects
equal rights and liberties. As a result, between 1876-1915 twenty
nine Armenians served in the highest governmental rank of pasha;
twenty two served as ministers, including the ministers of foreign
affairs, finance, trade and post; thirty three served as members
of the parliament; seven served as ambassadors; eleven served as
consuls-general, eleven served as university professors; and forty
one served as other officials of high ranks.
To conclude this part, it could be conveniently suggested that the
legal status of Armenians under the Ottoman rule does not accept any
kind of comparison to that of the European Jewry. It is equally clear
that the anti-Armenianism, as the counterpart of the anti-Semitism-
the motive behind the Holocaust, has never existed among the Turks.
Genesis of the Armenian Question
The Jews of Europe had never tried to get sovereignty over a certain
part of the European territory, never got armed and committed attacks
against government officials and civilians of other ethnicities
and religions. No foreign state intervened the affairs of a Jewish
population living under the jurisdiction of any other state and no
state tried to rescue the European Jews from prosecution, with the
exception of the Turks who welcomed the Jews expelled from Spain in
1492 and the Republic of Turkey provided a safe haven for the Jews
who had to flee from the Nazis.
Without adequately examining the roots and nature of the Armenian
question, dealing only with the 1915 events from only one point of view
would lead illusions. Therefore, being a part of the continuous process
of the Armenian question the 1915 events would only the examined
adequately by going to the roots of the Armenian question. This
examination would also provide material that makes things easier in
the comparison of the Holocaust and Armenian issue.
The Armenian issue goes as back as the Eastern Question. Unity in the
Ottoman Empire deteriorated as nationalism spread to the Empire. Many
Christian nations of the Ottoman Empire gained their independence
in the following years of the Great French Revolution, as a result
of the nationalist philosophies inspired from the Revolution. Among
them were the Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs. It must be noted that the
Western Powers helped these nations to gain their independence.
However, the Armenian nation which was widely dispersed geographically
did not form majority in any place. The Great Powers perceived
themselves as the protectors of the non-Muslims living in the Ottoman
territory. Therefore, the Great Powers had a free hand to intervene
the domestic matters of the Empire.
Russia became the protectorate of the Armenians by an international
treaty, the Treaty of St. Stefanos of 1878. Other Great Powers also
gained the same status with respect to the Armenians by the Treaty
of Berlin in 1878. Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin, signed on 13
July 1878, provided:
The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without further delay,
the amelioration and reforms demanded by local requirements in the
provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security
against the Circassians and Kurds. It will make known periodically
the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, who will superintend
their application.
With these treaties the Ottomans had to accept the international
dimension of the Armenian issue officially. The Ottomans promised
some reforms for the Armenians by the Tanzimat and Islahat edicts in
1839 and 1856 respectively and an Armenian National Constitution was
approved in 1863. These efforts never satisfied the revolutionary
fractions within the Armenian community.
There are also internal reasons for the Armenian issue to rise. Wealthy
Armenians sent their sons to Europe for education. The first
Ottoman Armenians who received advanced western education were
sent to Italy. Others went to various European capitals. In Europe
most of these young men were given the opportunity to acquaint
themselves with constitutional political systems and progressive
ideas, including positivism and materialism. Many Turkish Ottoman
students in Europe experienced the same. They compared their
falling country’s conditions with those of European ones and came
to the conclusion that nationalism was the essential element for
development. The first Armenian societies were non-political, aiming
at especially expanding education among the members of the Armenian
millet. For example, on 27 April 1849 the Young Armenians formed
the Ararat Society in Paris, which brought together almost all the
Armenian students in the French capital. They declared that “… the
happiness of a nation can only come through education…The
Ararat Society is to bring progress to the Armenian nation
and to provide for all its needs” in their society’s program. Most
of the European-educated students took important posts in the civil
service of the Ottomans. However, not all Armenian organizations had
this kind of innocent aims. Especially towards end of the nineteenth
century, many revolutionary organizations with armed sections were
formed. The Union of Salvation and the Black Cross were created in
Van in 1872 and 1878 respectively. The Protectors of Fatherland was
formed in Erzurum in 1881. The first non-local Armenian revolutionary
party was the Armenekan, founded in Van in 1885. The Armenekan
expanded to Muş, Bitlis, Trabzon, Istanbul and even Russia and
Iran. The Armenekan bought and smuggled arms and engaged terrorist
activities. This was followed by the Revolutionary Hunchak Party,
created in 1887 in Geneva, and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(commonly called by the name of the Dashnak Party) formed in 1890
in Tiflis. Although all were called parties, what they had common
was their military wings which carried out many armed activities,
or as called today terrorist activities. The flag of the Dashnaks
which had on one side five stars encircling the number sixty one and
on the other side the slogan “vengeance, vengeance” and a skeleton
makes the aim and the method of the ‘party’ clear.
As most of the Armenian organizations formed outside of the Ottoman
territory, their leadership took decisions on the activities,
including rioting, in the European capitals. To cite an example,
when the Armenian committees which had their leadership in Brussels,
Paris and London prepared for battle in July 1996, Theodor Herzl,
in the words of Yair Auron “the founder of political Zionism and
“prophet” of the modern Jewish state”, tried to organize a ceasefire
and persuade them to delay this for a month.
Since the places where the Armenian committees claimed independence
were inhabited overwhelmingly in numbers by Muslims from different
ethnic origins, including the Kurds and Circassians who were
expelled from their historical homeland in the Caucasus where
the Armenians were settled by the Russians, the activities of the
Armenian independence caused a civil disturbance and clashes between
Muslims and the Armenians, harming many civilians alongside with
the fighting elements. These intercommunal clashes were presented as
the slaughter of the Armenians by the Muslims in the European press
with the influence of the Armenian leadership based in the European
capitals. Again Theodor Herzl points out on this as follows:
I did not visit Constantinapole without investigating the question of
the subject peoples of the Turkish Empire, and I truly believe that
people in England have not been entirely fair toward the Sultan. He
personally abhors brutality, and he honestly yearns to live in peace
with all of his subjects. In a recent discussion of this question,
he made a particularly apt comment. ‘My subjects’ he said, ‘are like
the children of different wives. They argue amongst themselves but
they can have no quarrel with me because I am their father’.
The scope of the this work does not permit a detailed discussion
of the activities carried out by the terrorist groups organized by
the Armenians. Yet, it seems that one difference between the Jewish
case and Armenian issue is that the Jewish case had one side full of
power, Nazis, to carry out whatever they wanted to do and defenseless
civilian victims, whereas in the Armenian issue some heavily armed
Armenian terrorist bands were in an armed conflict with the official
state forces and Muslim civilian elements.
The Jews in WWII and Armenians in WWI
The Jewish Holocaust is a result of an intended and well planned
state activity carried out by the Nazi officials as explained
above. Anti-Semitism and Nazism provided an ideological base for
the annihilation of the European Jewry during the World War II. The
innocent, defenseless and unarmed civilian Jews were the victims. In
this part of the paper the Armenians in the World War I and especially
the 1915 relocation of the Armenians will be examined to find out the
differences and similarities of the Holocaust and what the Armenians
experienced in the World War I. To this end, the most important
material is the legal documents of the Ottoman archives that help
us to reach sound conclusions on the perception of the relocation by
the Ottoman state.
It is clearly accepted even by the Armenian nationalist historians that
the Armenians tried to use the entry of the Ottoman Empire in the World
War I. For example Nalbandian pointed out that this was regarded by
the Armenian revolutionary committees as “the most opportune time to
begin a general uprising to achieve their goals”. Apart from a general
uprising, it must also be pointed out that with the start of the World
War I some Armenians fought for the Allies, in particular for the
Russians, against the Ottoman Empire. French Premier Clemenceaus’s
letter of 14 July 1918 to an Armenian leader points out this fact
in saying:
The spirit of self-abnegation of the Armenians, their loyalty towards
the Allies, their contributions to the Foreign Legion, to the Caucasus
front, to the Legion d’Orient, have strengthened the ties that connect
them with France.
On the one hand, the Ottoman army fought against the Allied forces
supported also by the Ottoman Armenians and, on the other, the
Armenians revolted, posing threat to the domestic order of the
Ottomans in many provinces. In Van province, for example, although
initially local Van Armenians, especially those who lived in urban
areas, had no intention of rebelling, as a result of the activities of
revolutionary committees with the help of the Russians, the Armenians
were armed in anticipation of a widespread rebellion. In early April
1915 the Armenian uprising began. Coupled with the Russian advance,
the government ordered their own Muslim population to evacuate the
city. Many Muslims suffered and lost their lives during the process of
evacuation. It is clear that it was the bloody Armenian rebellion in
Van that left no alternative to the Ottoman government but relocate
those citizens deemed disloyal and rebellious in other parts of the
Ottoman territory. Enver Pasa, the Deputy Commander-in-Chief, send
the following dispatch to the Interior Minister Talat Bey (later Pasa)
on 2 May 1915:
According to information provided by the Commander of the Third
Army, the Russians, on April the 20th, began expelling their Muslim
population, by pushing them without their belongings across our
borders. It is necessary, in response to this action.either to
expel the Armenians in question to Russia or to relocate them and
their families in other regions of Anatolia. I request that the most
suitable of these alternatives be chosen and implemented. If there is
no objection, I would prefer to expel the creators of these centers
of rebellion and their families outside our borders, and to replace
them with the Muslim refugees pushed across our borders.
To comment on the dispatch, it is obvious that there was no intent to
annihilate the Armenian population of Anatolia and it was the security
needs of the Empire that dictated to taking measures. Moreover,
the Deputy Commander-in-Chief’s dispatch suggested two alternatives
of which the expulsion of the Armenians from Anatolia to Russia
was favored by the Deputy. Obviously suggesting some alternatives
other than the extermination of the population shows the absence
of any intention to annihilate the Armenians. After giving a full
consideration the Interior Ministry chosen the alternative of the
relocation of the local Armenian population in other parts of the
country.
Although the Interior Ministry did not give reasons why the Ministry
preferred this to the expulsion of the Armenians, it could be suggested
that the expulsion would have caused detrimental harm to the Armenian
population.
Because they would have passed through a war zone between the Ottoman
and Russian armies and the soldiers on both sides would have attacked
the relocated for various reasons like vengeance and looting. Moreover,
they would have been attacked by the Muslim population expelled
from the Caucausus by the Russians when their contact on their route
was inevitable.
On 27 May 1915, the Ottoman Empire passed a law for the resettlement
of the people who posed security threat to the Ottoman Army. This
obviously included especially the Armenians who were engaged in
rebellious activities. The relocation was painful because displacing
thousands of people and resettling them was not an easy task. The
year 1915 witnessed the killing of some Armenians by some elements
of the local Muslim population for revenge on their route to their
new settlements. Some government officials also contributed to this
campaign. However, Talat Bey made it clear that the relocation of
the Armenians was not aimed at massacring them. In a coded telegram
of 19 August 1915 to the highest ranking officers of the places from
where the Armenians were forced to immigrate and the places to which
they were relocated, Talat Bey explained the aim of the relocation
as follows:
The objective sought by the government in evicting the Armenians from
their resettlement and moving them to the areas marked for resettlement
is rendering this ethnic element unable in engaging in anti-government
activities and prevent them from pursuing their national aim of
founding an Armenian government. The annihilation of these people is,
not only out of question, but also the authorities should ensure their
safety during their movement and see to it that they are properly
fed, making the necessary expenditures from the Refugee Fund. Apart
from those evicted and moved, the Armenians allowed to stay should be
exempt from further evictions. As communicated earlier, the Government
has taken a firm decision not to move families of soldiers sufficient
number of artisans as well as Protestant and Catholic Armenians.
Firm measures should be taken against those who attacked the moving
parties or any gendarmes or officials who instigate such attacks. These
people should be immediately expelled and court-martialed. Provinces
and sandjaqs will be held responsible for the recurrence of any
such events.
Compared with the decisions taken at the Wansee meeting, it is clear
from the position taken by the government that the extermination of
the Armenians was not the objective of the 1915 Relocation. Equally
true that many Armenians lost their lives during the relocation. The
number of the Armenians and how they lost their live does not fall
within the scope of this paper which compares the features of the
official Nazi and Ottoman positions here.
It also becomes clear from the above quotation that not all the
Armenians but some of them were relocated in contrast with the Nazis
who tried to exterminate all the Jews wherever they were found. The
Nazis also tried to exterminate other ethnicities like the Gypsies,
Poles, Slavs and all political opponents and homosexuals. As
explained in the relevant section of this paper, the aim of the
Nazis was to create a Europe with no inferior races. However, the
Armenian relocation of 1915 contradicts with this total campaign,
as an infamous Armenian author accepts that sometimes the Armenian
Catholics and Protestants as well as the Armenians of Istanbul and
Izmir (Smyrna) were exempted from the deportation decrees. As pointed
out by Halaçoğlu, of course, when some those allowed to stay
were seen engaged in harmful activities, they, too, were relocated
irrelevant of their creed.
Aftermath of the World Wars and Justice
A special international tribunal was formed for the prosecution of
those who committed war crimes in the Nazi era. The Nuremberg Tribunal
condemned twelve to death by hanging. It is striking that only twelve
people were responsible for the extermination of six million Jews and
others. By prosecuting twelve was supposed to bring justice. Justice
has been a key word with regard to the Armenian case as well.
As the relocation was beginning, the Allies issued a joint declaration
on 24 May 1915. They alluded to the “assistance of Ottoman authorities”
in harming the Armenians and announced that “they will hold personally
responsible … all members of the Ottoman government and those of
their agents who are implicated in such massacres”. This declaration is
a result of the wide coverage by the European press of the relocation
which was presented as an attempt to massacre of the Armenians by the
Armenian committees and some Allies that wanted the American entrance
in the World War I on their side. However, the Americans maintained
their neutrality towards Turkey.
When the Armistice was signed on 30 October 1918, Turkey lay at the
mercy of the European Allies. As they announced, they had to punish all
those who were responsible for the alleged Armenian massacre. Justice,
however, required appropriate jurisdiction, legal evidence, and the
machinery to administer the applicable laws. There were two different
mechanisms with regard to the Armenian case, one is domestic and the
other one is international, to punish the alleged criminals. By the end
of the war, the ruling party’s leading figures fled from the country
and a new government with strong opposition, if not hostility to, the
former ruling party was installed by the sultan. The new government
formed a special Court Martial whose statutes were set forth on 8
May 1915. The principal task of the tribunal was the investigation of
the alleged “massacres and unlawful personal profiteering” as well as
the charge of “overthrow of the government”. The second charge makes
it clear that the tribunal directly involved in politics and the
punishment of those associated with the former governing party. The
political considerations of the special tribunal were reflected on
its composition and decisions as well as the way it operated. It was
composed of non-professionals of law, composed of Armenian members
who may have not been completely unbiased, operated under pressure,
sometimes with intervention, of the government and Allies which
occupied Istanbul, relied on the testimonies of the people who had
never been to the places where the massacres allegedly taken place
and testimonies of the children who were even under the age of five as
eye-witnesses. Since the criminals of the Holocaust were not punished
by the domestic tribunals, but by an international tribunal, there
is no need to go deeper in the Turkish Court Martial formed after
the World War I.
The first attempt to form an international tribunal was made by the
Ottoman government which requested two lawyers each from Denmark,
Spain, Sweden and Holland “to participate in the international
committee to be formed to investigate if any injustices were made
during relocation”. The delegates of the international committee
were to visit places where the alleged massacres occurred to make
investigations and to establish the facts which would have led to
prosecution of alleged criminals. However, the attempt failed since
the mentioned neutral countries were reluctant to participate.
The inevitable biased decisions of the Turkish ‘special’ tribunals
under the circumstances touched upon above caused disappointment in
the Turkish population, often reflected in the Istanbul press. This
prompted the British to initiate measures for the transfer of the
detainees, who were arbitrarily arrested by the new government in
Istanbul, often, by the directives of the occupying Allied forces,
to British custody in Malta. The total number of the Malta deportees
were more than one hundred and forty. The prominent members of the
Turkish society, like the former Grand Vizier, speaker of parliament,
chief of general staff, ministers, members of parliament, senators,
army commanders, governors, university professors, editors, journalists
composed the deported.
On 4 August 1920, the British Cabinet decided that “The list of the
deportees be carefully revised by the Attorney General with a view
to selecting the names of those it was proposed to prosecute, so that
those against whom no proceedings were contemplated should be released
at the first convenient opportunity.” And the Attorney General wrote
to the Foreign Office that the “British High Commissioner at Istanbul
should be asked to prepare the evidence against those interned Turks
whom he recommends for prosecution on charge of cruelty to native
Christians. ”
Sir Harry Lamb, the political-legal officer of the British High
Commission at Istanbul, stated on the issue of evidence of the
alleged massacre: “No one of the deportees was arrested on any
evidence in the legal sense…The whole case of the deportees is not
satisfactory…There are no dossiers in any legal sense. In many cases
we have statements by Armenians of differing values…The Americans
must be in possession of a mass of invaluable material…”
Then, the British Foreign Office decided to ask the assistance of
the US State Department. On 31 March 1921, Lord Curzon telegraphed
to Sir A. Gedes, the British Ambassador in Washington, the following:
“There are in hands of His Majesty’s Government at Malta a number of
Turks arrested for alleged complicity in the Armenian massacre…There
is considerable difficulty in establishing proofs of guilt…Please
ascertain if United States Government are in possession of any evidence
that would be of value for purposes of prosecution.”
The Embassy returned the following reply:
“I regret to inform Your Lordship that there was nothing therein which
could be used as evidence against the Turks who are being detained
for trial at Malta.
The reports seen…made mention of only two names of the Turkish
officials in question and in these case were confined to personal
opinions of these officials on the part of the writer, no concrete
facts being given which could constitute satisfactory incriminating
evidence…I have the honour to add that officials at the Department
of State expressed the wish that no information supplied by them in
this connection should be employed in a court of law…Having regard
to this stipulation and the fact that the reports in the possession
of the Department of State do not appear in any case to contain
evidence against these Turks…, I fear that nothing is to be hoped
from addressing any further enquiries to the United States Government
in this matter.”
The Attorney-General’s Department returned the following reply:
“…It seems improbable that the charges made against the accused
will be capable of legal proof in a Court of Law…Until more precise
information is available as to the nature of the evidence which will
be forthcoming at the trials, the Attorney-General does not feel
that he is in a position to express any opinion as to the prospect
of success in any of the cases submitted for his consideration.”
Upon the receipt of this reply, W.S. Edmonds, Under-Secretary in the
Eastern Department of the Foreign Office, minuted:
“From this letter it appears that the changes of obtaining convictions
are almost nil… It is regrettable that the Turks have confined as
long without charges being formulated against them…”
Sir H. Rumbold, the High Commissioner in Istanbul, wrote: “Failing
the possibility of obtaining proper evidence against these Turks
which would satisfy a British Court of Law, we would seem to be
continuing an act of technical injustice in further detaining the
Turks in question. In order, therefore, to avoid as far as possible
losing face, in this matter, I consider that all the Turks… should
be made available for exchange purposes.”
>> From now on, the Turkish detainees at Malta were not considered as
“offenders” for prosecution, but rather as “hostages” for exchange
against British prisoners in Anatolia. Subsequently all Turkish
deportees at Malta were exchanged with the British prisoners of
war. The Law Officers of the Crown abstained from accusing anyone
of Turkish deportees of massacre of the Armenians and all Turkish
deportees were released and repatriated without being brought before
a tribunal. The findings of the British obviously contradicts what
the Tribunal found in the Holocaust trials.
Conclusion
This paper examined the main differences of the Holocaust and
Armenian case. It has become clear that they had not much in
common. Anti-Semitism and Nazism provided the ideological background
for the Holocaust. There is no doubt that without anti-Semitism
and racist ideology, the laws discriminating Jews would not have
passed. The Holocaust was the intentional and planned organized crime
as expressed by the Wansee Conference. Not only the Jews but also
other ‘inferior races’ became the victims of the Nazis. Moreover, no
victim involved in any activity against the Nazis. The perpetrators
were brought before the justice after the World War II.
The Armenian case greatly, if not completely, differs from
the Holocaust. No anti-Turk or anti-Muslim element, let alone
anti-Armenism, existed in the Ottoman legal and social system. In
contrast with the victims of the Nazis, the Armenians formed
revolutionary organizations and carried out activities to terrorize
the civilian population of both Muslim and non-Muslim. The Armenians’
corroborations with Russians, hostile of the Ottomans, in the World
War I left the government with no alternative but to relocate those
who posed security threats to other parts of the Empire. It is
unfortunate that during the relocation lost their lives. But there
is no evidence that the casualties were intentional. On contrary,
official legal documents provides that the casualties were to be kept
minimum. Although the Western press widely covered the relocation and
told the stories of massacres as a apart of the war-time propaganda,
the alleged criminals were released even without charges being
formulated against them before an international tribunal, because
neither Britain nor the USA was able to provide any evidence capable
of legal proof in any court of law.
The following quotation from a Nobel Prize winning Israeli statesman,
Shimon Peres, closes the discussion:
“We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust
and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust
occurred. It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through but not a
genocide…Israel should not determine a historical or philosophical
position on the Armenian issue. If we have to determine a position,
it should be done with great care not to distort the historical
realities.”
–Boundary_(ID_H8aRuQiEnBHR5qPpvZE3/A)–