ANSA English Media Service
April 23, 2005
ARMENIAN MASSACRE: ANKARA REFUSES TO SPEAK OF GENOCIDE
ANKARA
By Lucio Leante
(ANSA) – ANKARA, April 22 – Was the deportation and
massacre in 1915 of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by the
last Ottoman governments a premeditated attempt at genocide?
This is the question asked every year with the coming of April
24, the official beginning of the deportation and massacres, to
which Turkey has always responded “no” resisting to the
insistent requests by Armenia.
Turkey admits the deaths of between 300,000 and 500,000
Armenians due to privation, diseases and attacks by Kurds,
According to Armenia the victims were 1.3 million people.
An objective answer to this question is expected from historians
or international tribunals since it seems impossible that the
two countries’ governments can agree as they do not have normal
diplomatic ties and the borders between them are closed.
Yet, despite the numerous studies of the issue historians are
deeply divided also because a documental proof for genocide has
never been found.
It is known for certain that the groups of deported Armenians
were often attacked by gangs of Kurds from East Anatolia related
to the Ottoman government. It is unknown to what extent the
attacks were premeditated and what the effect was of ancient
feud resulting from religious differences between Muslim Kurds
and Christian Armenians.
Turkish historians and politicians say that the orders for
deportation in April 1915 were result from the hostility of the
Armenians towards the Ottoman government and that Armenian gangs
had started attacks against the Turkish population since 1910.
Last week they published documents showing that between 1910 and
1922 at least 523,000 Turkish people were killed by these gangs.
The Turks recalled that many Armenian leaders had formed an
alliance at the time with the Sublime Porte’s biggest enemy,
tsarist Russia, which thanks to them managed to occupy a part of
the Ottoman territory.
According to Ankara, the deportation was then a necessity in
order to protect the Armenian population from probable
repressions on the part of the Turkish population in the area.
If historians are unable to give a clear answer international
tribunals should be able to do that on the basis of the Genocide
Convention.
However, the convention was signed in 1951 and can not be
applied backdate.
In any case international jurists completely exclude the
possibility for Armenia to claim land or compensations in case
Turkey formally recognises genocide.
Ankara has said many times that it would not trade recognition
of the genocide for Armenia’s giving up territorial and
compensation claims.
However, Ankara has to take into consideration the fact that 15
parliaments throughout the world, including the European
parliament, have already recognised the genocide.
Turkey knows that not only the European parliament but also the
European Commission and the European Council although not
relating it to the beginning of Turkey’s EU accession
negotiations might remind of the condition of normalising the
relations between Turkey and Armenia on the insistence of France
where some 250,000 Armenians live.
If Yerevan conditions the normalisation of the relations on the
recognition of the genocide the EU might press Turkey to admit
to it.
However, it seems that Ankara has neither possibility nor
willingness to do it in the near future. (ANSA)