OBAMA, ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CLAIMS AND HISTORICAL FACTS
By Cenap Cakmak
Today’s Zaman
Nov 4 2008
Turkey
American presidential candidate Barack Obama recently reaffirmed his
commitment to the recognition of the alleged Armenian genocide.
The message came after a reminder by Professor Ahmet Davudoglu, foreign
policy adviser to the Turkish prime minister, indicating that such
a move would be detrimental to bilateral relations between Turkey
and the US. In this message, Obama argued that whether Armenians
were subjected to a campaign of genocide by Turkey is undisputable,
adding that the genocide claims were substantiated by historical facts.
But a thorough and integrated review of historical data will show that
the deaths were actually part of inter-communal conflicts, which were
common in other war zones during World War I. Therefore, pro-genocide
historians are actually wrong because of their limited focus on the
deaths of Armenians while ignoring deaths of the Turks in the same
period of time. An integrated approach that will take the latter in
consideration will reveal that hundreds of thousands of Turks were
also killed by Armenians during the period where a large number of
Armenians died of famine, diseases, revengeful acts or killings.
Do historical facts support genocide claims?
Those who allege that Ottoman Turks committed crimes of genocide
against the Armenians in the early 20th century believe that a verdict
by an international tribunal is not needed to confirm their allegations
simply because there is plenty of historical evidence. Mostly for
this reason, promoters of the alleged Armenian genocide take care to
keep the issue away from the adjudication of an international court.
But it should be noted that their over-reliance on historical findings
to make their point is also groundless because while they consider
the facts or evidence supporting their claims, they fail to take the
stories of the other side into account. Assessing the whole story from
the perspective of murdered Armenians would be misleading because there
were many Turks killed by Armenians in various parts of the empire,
but their stories were ignored by the supporters of the Armenian
genocide claims.
More importantly, historical findings and facts should be rechecked to
determine whether these would suffice to call the deaths of Armenians
in the early 20th century "genocide." Two particular and important
criteria of genocide should be taken into consideration; otherwise,
it would not be appropriate to describe the deaths as genocide just
because many Armenians were slaughtered or massacred.
Central to reaching a decision as to whether a set of actions
constitute the crime of genocide is whether the actions took place
as part of a well-defined plan drafted by the state or state
authorities. To this end, in order to speak of the presence of
genocide, there should be a state policy in place for the specific
purpose of destroying a religious, national, racial or ethnic group
and this policy should be actually implemented and result in whole
or partial destruction of the targeted group.
In our case, there is no undisputable evidence suggesting that the
Ottoman state or statesmen had drafted a plan to annihilate Armenians
in the territory of the Ottoman Empire. More importantly, there
is also no evidence indicating that such a policy — if drafted —
was implemented to wipe out the Armenian population.
Supporters of the genocide claims often cite Ottoman authorities’
decision to deport Armenians as an indication of their decisiveness to
coercively send them on a deadly journey. They assert that deportation
or displacement of such a large population would mean nothing but
death for hundreds of thousands of people because of the conditions
prevalent at that time.
This explanation seems a bit logical and reasonable given that most of
the casualties were due to this journey, which became a deadly walk
for many Armenians. But the Ottoman state or the state authorities
may not be accused of devising a plan of genocide to exterminate the
Armenian population just because they made such a decision. This might
have been a terribly wrong decision, but this does not necessarily
mean that it could be taken as clear evidence for the intention to
destroy Armenians in whole or in part.
This was a decision that state authorities at the time considered
would be the best solution to the ongoing problems in regions with
a substantial Armenian population. Many Armenians suffered from
this decision, but that does not make state authorities liable for
preparing a great plot to eliminate all Armenians.
Reference points in history
Those who allege that Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign
by the Turks also make reference to the trials and conviction
in Ottoman courts of several Ottoman officers, who were executed
because of crimes committed against Armenians. True, some military
and administrative officers were tried and executed in connection
with offenses against civilian Armenians, but this does not suggest
that they were guilty of the crime of genocide. There are a variety
of war crimes other than genocide, and these trials might be relevant
to such offenses.
More importantly, that such trials were held by the Ottoman state
should actually prove that there was no centrally devised plan to
annihilate the entire Armenian population. If there had been such
a plan, the state should not have held its own officers responsible
for these offenses.
It should also be noted that Armenians and Turks coexisted peacefully
for centuries in Ottoman territories. That is to say, there has
never been a culture of hatred or enmity held by Turks against
Armenians. Even though there was some sort of hidden or indirect
hostility between the Greeks and the Jews, most sub-identities were
tolerant to each other. Among these sub-identities, Armenians were the
closest to the Turks in terms of cultural and lifestyle similarities. A
foreigner would have difficulty discerning an Armenian from a Turk
even as late as the 19th century.
In return, Armenians never considered rioting against the
administration mostly held by Turks. For this reason, they were
referred to as "loyal nation" (millet-i sadıka). Considering this
loyalty, the late Ottoman sultans appointed some high-level Armenians
to influential posts. Even Abdulhamid II, who is abhorred by the
Armenian diaspora, had an affinity for Armenians and reserved crucial
positions for leading Armenian figures. Despite an assassination
attempt plotted by Armenian terrorists against him, Abdulhamid II
never considered wiping out the entire Armenian population nor did
he remove influential Armenian figures from government posts.
Of course, this cannot be taken as an assurance that Turks would never
commit the crime of genocide against Armenians. But this crucial fact
implies that historians should consider the nature of relations between
the Turkish and Armenian communities in the Ottoman Empire when making
generalizations about the Armenian genocide claims. If there was no
source of conflict or tension for centuries between these communities,
then there should a reason for the breakout of a deadly conflict that
left millions of dead people behind.
At this point, recalling tensions between conflicting communities
in the two most important and legally confirmed genocides will be
illustrative. In regards to the Holocaust, it could be said that
the Jewry suffered from certain stereotypes held by a substantial
number of Germans and that there had been no peace between these two
communities. Hitler successfully mobilized anti-Semitic sentiments to
ignite a genocidal campaign against the Jewish population. Likewise,
in Rwanda, Hutu extremists exploited the long-standing tension with
the Tutsi minority and justified an extremely violent campaign by
which they aimed to wipe out the Tutsi identity. Extremists made
particular references to the alleged abuse by Tutsis, whose identity
was formerly promoted by colonial Belgians.
But in the case of Armenian deaths, there was no such motive that could
be used by the Turks and the Ottoman authorities. What happened was
a conflict between the parties because of the war conditions and the
subsequent deportation of a large Armenian population, which resulted
in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians. Again, almost an
equal number of Turks were slaughtered by Armenians in hopes of having
an independent state of their own, which was encouraged by Russia,
which occupied a substantial part of eastern Ottoman territories.
Most historians are prone to focus on what happened to the Armenians
during the early 20th century because their minds are set to
investigate the facts about the alleged Armenian genocide. This is a
legitimate yet insufficient inquiry because it misses the details of
the other side of the story. A brief survey of what happened to Turks
in the same period and of crimes committed by the Armenians against the
Muslim population will prove that the killings were not genocide but
a wholesale conflict that left many Muslims and Armenians dead in the
war zone. The fact that nothing harmful done to the Armenians living
in other parts of the Ottoman state confirms this, as there was no such
conflict in Istanbul or other provinces in the Marmara or Ege regions.
An integrated historical approach should consider the whole picture to
have a more accurate depiction of what happened. Supporters of Armenian
genocide claims often fail to take the war conditions into account
and the fact that the Ottoman state lost authority in the eastern
and southeastern parts of the country, where most of the massacres
took place. It should be noted once more that these atrocities were
committed by both sides; considering that the death toll was growing
and was not likely to stop any time soon, the Ottoman state decided
— for better or worse — to relocate the Armenian population in an
attempt to put an end to the clashes.
The process of relocation was unfortunately deadly, leaving countless
sad stories behind. Famine, excessive heat and revenge attacks by armed
Kurds, who chased the deportees, caught many Armenians defenseless
on their way to another place to live.
*Dr. Cenap Cakmak is an instructor at Mugla University and a senior
researcher at the Wise Men Center for Strategic Research (BÄ°LGESAM).
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