The anniversary of the 1915 events in Armenia has generated more public debate on both sides of the issue than ever before. The impassioned disagreement over the semantics of the matter has assumed what to many seem absurd proportions. The Turkish authorities are ready to settle for the term ‘massacre’; the Armenian diaspora insists on the use of ‘genocide´. Index on Censorship reports (18-OCT-05)
For almost the first time in 90 years, Turks are speaking out on the events of 1915: the death of up to 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Turkish military during World War II. It’s not easy and the conservative, nationalist backlash is fierce. The publisher Ragip Zarakoglu and the author of the highly acclaimed Snow, Orhan Pamuk both face charges for raising the issue publicly. Despite this, the anniversary year has seen more public debate in the media and elsewhere on both sides of the issue than ever before.
In the course of this, the impassioned disagreement over the semantics of the matter has assumed what to many seem absurd proportions. The Turkish authorities are ready to settle for the term ‘massacre’; the Armenian diaspora insists on the use of ‘genocide.
Destruction of a nation or collateral damage?
It is not disputed that between 1890 and 1923, a large number of Armenians were killed. That is where the agreement ends. Turkey and Armenia cannot even agree on a figure to put on the number of dead. The Turkish government put forward a figure of between 200,000 and 600,000, while Armenia (and most of the western world, and the majority of scholars on the subject) asserts a figure of approximately 1.2million. The Armenians argue that the killings constituted genocide: that the Turks operated under the cover of World War I, instituting policies with the intention of destroying the Armenian nation. The Turks maintain that the killings were not aimed at wiping out Armenia or Armenians, but were akin to ‘collateral damage’ of World War I, that they were an inevitable consequence of the War, dying of exhaustion and exposure following a necessary deportation to Syria, and that there were mass killings on both sides. The Armenian government and diaspora campaign relentlessly for the killings to be formally recognised as genocide, but the Turks strongly oppose the use of this term. However, after years of closed border relations and no diplomatic activity between the two countries, it appears that each side is now more amenable to opening discussions with its neighbour. Currently the strength of feeling (on both sides) in relation to the use of a single word appears to be holding back progress in international relations not only between Turkey and Armenia, but also involving third countries favouring one argument over the other. Turkey’s desire to join the European Union may provide the perfect catalyst for finally resolving this dispute. Although other reasons why Turkey should not be permitted to join the EU have been put forward by existing member states, the spectre of the Armenian Genocide has been raised by France. It is no secret that Turkey is desperate to join the EU, or that Erdogan’s government will do whatever it takes in order to achieve this. In December 2004, Michel Barnier (French Foreign Minister) insisted that Turkey must officially recognise the 1915 genocide before it joins the EU. However, backing away from such strong language more recently, President Chirac said Turkey ‘needed to acknowledge and allow free discussion of’ the mass slaughter prior to joining the EU. Notably he did not use the term genocide, and it was not expressed as being a condition of entry. However, it is clear that the French (with the largest Armenian immigrant community in Europe) intend to pursue the point. With all that is at stake, is the argument worth perpetuating, or are mere semantics preventing reconciliation of the two nations?
All in a word?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘massacre’ refers to the ‘brutal slaughter of a large number of people’, while ‘genocide’ is ‘the deliberate killing of a very large number of people from a particular group or origin’. But definitions of genocide differ according to context (legal, moral, political, common speech) and have evolved over time.
The word ‘genocide’ was first used by Professor Raphael Lemkin in his 1944 work ‘Axis Rule in Occupied Europe’, in an attempt to name ‘the crime with no name’ following the Holocaust. He sought a generic term to be applied to the circumstances where there was an attempt to exterminate other human beings based only on their ‘nationality’. His focus appeared to be on the biological destruction of a ‘national’ group. Lemkin specifically cited the Armenian killings as an example of what he had in mind . Although it is not clear when Armenians first referred to the killings as ‘genocide’, it must have been following Lemkin’s 1944 publication. Lemkin’s campaign to have the crime recognised in international law led directly to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide 1948 (‘the Convention’).
As is the case with all UN Conventions, the final definition was influenced by political pressures and the relative power of the member states, and subject to intense negotiation. Consequently, the definition of genocide now accepted as international law is somewhat different from Lemkin’s proposal.
There is no requirement of state action or of death, and it is sufficient that the intent be to destroy only part of the group. The definition is wider than Lemkin’s, in that it includes ethnic, racial or religious groups. There is argument around whether the definition is too wide or too narrow, but nonetheless the definition exists in law. It was incorporated as Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 1998. The vital component of genocide appears to be harming an individual with the intention that the group to which they belong is destroyed or undermined. An examination of the legal consequences of declaring that the Armenian killings were genocide may shed some light on the importance of the word to both sides.
Genocide and the law
Genocide is considered illegal under Customary International Law ie even without a state-ratified document. However, CIL is vague, and its binding force difficult to establish and apply with any certainty. It is therefore preferable to try and fit the Armenian killings within codified international law. If a situation satisfies the legal definition of genocide, signatory states have a Convention obligation to ‘prevent and punish’ the action. In the Armenian context it is doubtful such an obligation exists, since the Convention appears not to apply retrospectively, and the events took place prior to the Convention’s entry into force. The presumption in international law (not to mention natural justice) is that laws do not apply retrospectively unless there is a clear statement either in the written document itself (which the Genocide Convention lacks), or by the framers of the document that there is an intention that the provisions apply retrospectively. In the case of the Genocide Convention, the ITCJ concludes, there is no such clear evidence. The path to the ICC is blocked on the same grounds, although here it is because the Rome Statute specifically excludes retrospective application.
An Armenian tribunal?
An alternative could be to set up a special tribunal using a UN Security Council resolution, as has been done for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The definition could be lifted verbatim from the Convention, and the issue of retrospective application overcome. The Rwandan tribunal is run under its own individual Statute, and the Convention definition is inserted as Article 2. There has been a campaign to set up a similar tribunal for the Cambodian genocide, but progress appears to have stalled due to lack of finances and political will. One suspects that any attempt to set up an Armenian tribunal would suffer the same fate, given that the Armenian government reacted angrily to a proposal by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to set up an inquiry to establish what happened all those years ago.
The International Court of Justice could theoretically decide the case, but it would require both Turkey and Armenia to submit to its jurisdiction. Given the strength of feeling on both sides and the risk of loss, this seems unlikely.
A further practical consideration is that because the events took place so long ago, all of the perpetrators are now dead. Who is to be punished for the crimes of their predecessors?
Despite the legal complexities and the practical problems of bringing a successful action in the Armenian context, it remains the case that a legal definition of genocide exists in international law. Perhaps Turkey refuses to use the word genocide because it fears being tarred with the brush of having committed the ultimate crime, with no forum in which to be tried or to formally defend itself from such allegations. In this situation, the assumption could be made that Turkey had acknowledged its crime but not faced the consequences or made reparations. Even if finding a legal obligation upon which to pin a legal requirement to force Turkey to make reparations is difficult, the use of the word genocide may give rise to powerful moral arguments that Turkey should attempt to make good the damage.
Moral and ethical legacices
It is not just the legal consequences of the use of the word genocide that matter; the word has tremendous moral and ethical significance. The motivation behind the act of genocide distinguishes it from other killings or harm. Committing genocide requires the denial of the humanity and equality of a group of individuals. Deny a person their individuality and reduce them to a set of characteristics, and you deny the very thing that makes them human. The use of the word genocide therefore attempts to define the most awful of crimes against humanity, constitutes the ultimate verbal stigma, and retains a sort of ‘shock’ status. There is a danger that incorrect use (and over-use) of the word may dilute its meaning. Thus, the word has been used to describe slavery in the United States, and the practice of abortion, though neither of these things can properly be considered genocide (other evils, certainly, in the case of slavery, but not genocide). The word ‘genocide’ should be saved for events that truly fit the definition (whichever one you choose): the problem in the Armenian context is that one side says the events do fit the word, the other says not. Now might be the window of opportunity the Armenian campaign has been searching for, as the Turkish government begins to feel the pressure of international politics.
