Gunduz Aktan: Comparable genocides (I)
TDN
Saturday, May 7, 2005
OPINIONS
Gunduz AKTAN
The war in Yugoslavia began in June 1991 when Slovenia and Croatia
declared independence. The Serbian army and militiamen waged an ethnic
cleansing campaign against those Croatians who were living on Croatian
lands that had a Serbian community as well. During the campaign, these
Croatians were driven out of the areas in question. The campaign was
aimed at annexing these areas to Serbia.
In September 1991 the U.N. Security Council imposed an arms embargo
on Yugoslavia (Resolution No. 713) and in February 1992 a U.N. “peace
force” (UNPROFOR), consisting mainly of British and French troops,
was sent to Yugoslavia. Obviously, the war was Europe’s problem.
After Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence (on March 3, 1992)
the fighting concentrated in that country. From the very beginning,
Turkey assessed that there was a case of ethnic cleansing rather
than a war. Serbs were calling the Bosniacs “Turks” as they destroyed
and burned the Bosniac settlements, staged massacres and vandalized
historical and cultural works in the region. The racial hatred they
displayed against the Turks constituted the “motive” behind the
“intent to destroy” cited in Article 2 of the Genocide Convention. In
other words, the Bosniacs were being killed not only because they
were seen as political/military rivals but also as a substitute for
the much-hated “Turk.” That indicated that Serbian aggression might
have been genocidal.
At its historic first (May 1992) special session on the issue
the U.N. Human Rights Commission appointed a special rapporteur
to deal with this. On the basis of the first report presented by
the rapporteur, the commission held a second special session at the
instigation of Turkey in December 1992 and, with the decision taken
during that session, defined the situation as ethnic cleansing. The
commission identified the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign as
a crime against humanity and pointed out that the incidents might
amount to genocide.
In June 1993 the World Human Rights Conference in Vienna adopted
a resolution describing the incidents in Bosnia-Herzegovina as
genocide. Somehow, the resolution got lost and when it was later
recovered, however, it was not put into effect by the U.N. Security
Council. The West was not ready to immediately “prevent and punish
genocide” according to Article 1 of the Genocide Convention.
Thus, the Bosniacs were subjected to genocide in full view of
the international community. Due to the arms embargo imposed under
Resolution No. 713 they were deprived of the means to defend themselves
in the face of the genocidal attacks. And, according to Article 51 of
the U.N. Charter, they should have been protected by the UNPROFOR. They
were not protected as 2 million people were deported, 250,000 civilians
killed and 50,000 women raped.
In Srebrenica, a town UNPROFOR abandoned to the Serbian forces,
8,000 young Muslim males were massacred in July 1995. A month later,
the Serbs were finally halted through a U.S.-led NATO operation. The
European Union policy had gone bankrupt.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
established in The Hague considered as “crimes against humanity”
the acts of ethnic cleansing committed by the Serbs. On April 19,
2004 it meted out a sentence to Gen. Krstic for committing the crime
of genocide.
That decision is highly important for us. The Turks/Muslims in the
Balkans and the Caucasus had been subjected to ethnic cleansing for
100 years (between 1821 and 1922) and they had been massacred. The
court decision has made it apparent that the aforementioned acts of
ethnic cleansing constitute crimes against humanity in general and
that the massacres committed in that context constitute genocide. In
other words, the court has put on record that the massacres staged
with the motive of “racial hatred” constitute genocide.
The genocide staged in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place before the very
eyes of the international community and organizations such as the U.N.,
NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
— less than 50 years after the Holocaust. Imagine the predicament
of the Turks that were faced with tragic incidents at a time when
today’s international mechanisms of protection (however imperfectly
functional they may be) did not exist. A comparative approach shows
us the massacre of 30,000 women, children and elderly (in addition to
the males) in Tripoliche (Mora) during the Greek rebellion of 1821
constitutes genocide. Such massacres occurred again and again —
and on a larger scale — during the 1877-1878 Ottoman-Russian War
and during the Balkan Wars.
The second consequence of that decision is that it has shown the crime
of genocide can be committed not exclusively by states or majorities
but by minorities as well. Accordingly, the way that Armenian bands
massacred 30,000 Turkish and Kurdish civilians in Van prior to the
relocation decision was genocide.
Together with the Serbian army, the Serbian militiamen took part in the
ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia-Herzegovina. There is no difference
between the Armenian Dashnak and Hinchaks on the one hand, and the
chetniks, hajduks, klephts and the “Revolutionary Secret Societies”
that subjected the Turks to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. To be
able to understand what these groups have done, it would be enough to
look at the activities of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). That,
in turn, is another consequence of the court decision.