New Anatolian, Turkey
April 7 2007
If only she says something…
Gunduz Aktan
07 April 2007
The judgment of the International Court of Justice dated February 26
once again showed that the Armenians have no legal thesis. In its
decision, the Court applied the genocide definition in the Article 2
of the Genocide Convention without broadening its scope. For the
commission of genocide, it made a condition that there should be a
"special intent to destroy" one group "as such," in other words
killing or wounding the group members for no reason other than they
belong to that group. And it excluded the crimes perpetrated within
the framework of ethnic cleansing from the scope of genocide.
Even though Turkey knew that such was the law, it advocated the
genocide thesis in 1992 in order to protect the Bosnians who were
then abandoned by the international community and to make pressure on
the Serbians. However, we soon discovered that the Serbs were killing
the Bosnians not only for ethnic cleansing. While massacring them the
Serbs were accusing the Bosnians of being "Ottomans or Turks." This
racist hatred constituted the motive behind the special intent to
destroy, necessary for genocide. In other words, the Serbs were
committing genocide. The Bosnians did not use this argument at the
Court and they lost the case.
In his article in Yeni Safak on March 7, Kursat Bumin criticizes the
information I had given in my previous columns as comments based
solely on "raison d’etat." How can a judgment of the court, whose
judges come from states, who try the states, according to the laws
made by the states be interpreted in another way?
If Mr. Bumin wants to abstract the Armenian incidents from state
affairs and approach the problem purely from the humanitarian
standpoint, then he should exclude the Ottoman State from his
comments and include the Turks who were massacred by the Armenians.
Is he ready for this?
In the book entitled "Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey" written
by the great genocide scholar Guenter Lewy and in Lieutenant Colonel
Edward J. Erickson’s research entitled "Enemies Within," it is proven
in details that the Special Organization (Teskilat-i Mahsusa) was not
involved "as a state organ" in the relocation of the Armenians. The
objection Mr. Bumin makes to this point means that he implicitly
recognizes the Armenian genocide.
In her article in Radikal Ýki newspaper on March 11, Ms Ayse Hur
claims that the parts I’ve translated from the famous book of Prof.
William Shabas on genocide and international law is inaccurate.
The legal aspect is the weak point in the Armenian allegations. Ms.
Hur is trying to bolster the morale of the genocide supporters with
the tactics of saying "something," even if not substantive.
It is good that Ms Hur included my Turkish translation from Shabas
and the original text in English in her article. Even a cursory look
at the texts reveals that there is no mistake in the translation. The
additions in brackets of course belong to me. Using brackets to this
end is a regular practice.
The Armenian genocide defenders who read Shabas for the first time
are pleased that the author qualifies the 1915 incidents as genocide.
This is natural since Shabas received all information concerning the
issue from the books by Dadrian. He has not read even one book from
the Turkish side. Ironically, the legal analyses of Shabas show that
these incidents are not genocide.
The references made by Ms Hur to Lemkin aim at defending the Armenian
genocide thesis. Lemkin also described the Armenian incidents as
genocide. However, Lemkin listed many genocide types such as
economic, cultural etc. The UN negotiating committee made a rigorous
definition on genocide. Despite all the objections by Lemkin, it
excluded the "political" groups, which struggle for political aims,
from the definition in article 2 and inserted the term "as such" to
express racist motive behind the intent to destroy a group. In order
to understand what I say, the records of the "travaux preparatoires"
should be read.
At the panel of the Turkish Bars’ Union, which was also mentioned by
Ms Hur, Shabas said in his reply to my question that neither the
prosecutors nor the lawyers used the racial hatred as the necessary
motive for special intent to destroy at the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
During the joint studies which we have conducted under the guidance
of Prof. Vamik Volkan at the Virginia University in 1991, we came to
know that racism was the force behind the special intent to destroy.
We did not need to wait for the book by Shabas.
This view on racism as motive, which we have been defending for
years, is now elaborated by philosophers such as Raimond Gaita
(Genocide and Human Rights, edited by John K. Roth, Palgrave, 2005).
Those who, like Ayse Hur, allege the Armenian incidents of 1915-16 to
be genocide according to law remain silent when it comes to the
solution through adjudication or arbitration. I wonder why?