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Today's Zaman, Turkey
Jan 8 2012
Armenian deportation should not be deemed genocide, analysts say
8 January 2012 / GÃ-ZDE NUR DONAT , Ä°STANBUL
Amid controversy over a bill accepted last month in the French
National Assembly that penalized denial of the `Armenian genocide,' a
circle of academics have suggested that the Ottoman Empire's acts
against the Armenian community in Eastern Anatolia cannot be
considered `genocide' due to a lack of intention on the part of the
Ottoman Empire to destroy the community.
After the lower house of the French parliament accepted the bill
despite strong protests from Turkey, debates over Armenian claims of
genocide were sparked in a number of countries, including Israel, a
country that was formed after millions of European Jews were killed
during the Holocaust at the hands of Nazi Germany in the lead up to
and during World War II. The Knesset Education, Culture and Sports
Committee held a public debate on the genocide claims days after the
French move but no decision was made in the end.
The Holocaust was the first internationally accepted case of genocide,
on the basis of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. The
definition of genocide used in the convention was the one that was
first coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish
descent, as `acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.' Whether what
happened to the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia during the final years
of the Ottoman Empire was an act of `genocide,' like the Holocaust,
has been a matter of debate for decades. Middle East Critique, a
US-based journal that publishes historical and contemporary political,
social and historical research every four months, devoted the last
issue of 2011 to this debate.
Tal Buenos, one of the contributors and an Israeli PhD candidate
studying genocide issues at the University of Utah, refutes any
similarity between the Holocaust and the Ottoman Empire's actions
against the Armenian community, which he says were carried out as a
self-defense measure under conditions of war, although this does not
mean these actions did not have catastrophic results, including the
deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians. Nevertheless he admitted
that the death of so many Armenians was not the result of deliberate
killings by the Ottoman administration, but a consequence of the
circumstances of war or unlawful attacks by groups that were not under
the direct control of Ottoman administration; such as armed Kurdish
units that `wanted to keep Armenians in their subservient political
position,' as well as brigands and irregulars.The Committee of Union
and Progress (CUP), which was then ruling the Ottoman Empire,
organized the deportation of Armenians to Russia and remote areas of
eastern Anatolia after an Armenian rebellion broke out in Van
province, playing into hands of Russian army which was then invading
eastern Anatolia. Saying that Ottomans lacked the intention to destroy
the Armenian community, Buenos wrote in the journal that in that the
Ottoman Empire's territorial integrity was at stake and that the
deportation was taken as a military measure for the country's
survival, which sets it apart from the Holocaust in Nazi Germany,
which systematically killed the Jewish community for the sake of
racial purity.
Armenian populated provinces including Erzurum, ElazıÄ?, Urfa, Van and
Diyarbakır, were situated on lines of communications that were vital
to the Ottoman armies fighting the Russians on the Caucasian frontier
of the empire and the British in Mesopotamia and Palestine. Ottoman
armies on these three fronts were self-sufficient in neither food,
ammunition or medical supplies and were therefore dependent on the
roads leading to western Turkey for these supplies. Armed Armenian
revolutionary committees, Dashnaks and Hunchaks, established in the
late nineteenth century, which were in control of these cities, began
to attack and cut these lines of communications in 1915, taking
financial help and weapons from Russia, France and the United Kingdom,
all invaders of Ottoman territories during World War I. The Ottoman
decision to relocate Armenians in those cities was a counterinsurgency
policy developed in response to attacks by Armenian groups that were
committed to violent action in order to establish an independent
Armenian state, carving out eastern Anatolia from the Ottoman Empire.
`As long as the Ottomans had military forces available, they were
never forced to use the strategies of population removal...' asserted
Edward Jay Erickson, another writer in the special edition of the
journal, who is a former regular US Army officer at the Marine Corps
University and is an eminent and leading authority on the Ottoman Army
during World War I. He claims that deportation was employed for the
first time in 1915 by the Ottomans, who he says dealt with many
rebellions of minorities aspiring for independence between 1890 and
1914. Claiming that sending large armies to subdue the rebels was
impossible in 1915, `as the interior of the empire had been stripped
of regular forces and the gendarmerie.' He argues that relocation was
an effective strategy borne of military weakness rather than strength.
In addition, Erickson states that the important precedents of
relocation as a counterinsurgency strategy came from the Western
world, including Spain in Cuba in 1893, the United States in the
Philippines in 1900-1902 and Britain in South Africa in 1899-1901,
which included a subjugation of guerillas by separating them from
friendly civilian populations. Maintaining that relocation strategy is
the only option for Ottoman leaders given the contemporary conditions
of war, they adopted this low-cost strategy that had successfully
worked for their Spanish, American and British counterparts. `With
respect to the question of whether the relocation was necessary for
Ottoman imperial security in World War I, the answer is clearly yes,'
Erickson wrote. However, he goes on to argue that military necessity
cannot be accepted as an excuse for crimes committed during these
deportations.
Historical sources show that arbitrary killings of Armenians by
bandits attacking deportation convoys took place, as well as the
usurpation of properties belonging to the community, as cited by
academics contributing to the edition. However, Yusuf Sarınay,
Director General of the Office of the State Archives, documents some
official decrees ruling against abuses during the relocations by a
Cabinet Resolution from the government of the CUP on May 1915, stating
that `¦the lives and property of the relocated Armenians were to be
protected during the relocation and if there were any instance of
abuse, the civil servants and gendarmes who were responsible for the
mishandling of the relocated were to be dismissed immediately from
public service and referred to courts martial.' He proved, agreeing
with two other writers, a lack of `intention' by the state to destroy
the Armenian community, an aspect of aggressive action which must
exist in order to name an act `genocide,' according to the commonly
accepted definition of the term.The fact that the Holocaust was
motivated by racial hatred against the Jews and included preplanned
mass killings, while the Armenian deportation is considered by some to
be a national security measure, sets the two cases apart from each
other, while other genocide scholars focus on similarities between the
two events, particularly in terms of their consequences. Hakan Yavuz,
an assistant professor in the political science department of the
University of Utah and the chief guest editor of the edition,
criticized the approach of defining genocide only in terms of the
outcome as being `constantly searching for a victim and victimizer'
and ignoring the diversities between the contexts in which
catastrophic events are realized. As a result, he calls for a
`humanizing' approach that evaluates the incidents in their historical
contexts.
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-267924-armenian-deportation--should-not-be-deemed--genocide-analysts-say.html
Jan 8 2012
Armenian deportation should not be deemed genocide, analysts say
8 January 2012 / GÃ-ZDE NUR DONAT , Ä°STANBUL
Amid controversy over a bill accepted last month in the French
National Assembly that penalized denial of the `Armenian genocide,' a
circle of academics have suggested that the Ottoman Empire's acts
against the Armenian community in Eastern Anatolia cannot be
considered `genocide' due to a lack of intention on the part of the
Ottoman Empire to destroy the community.
After the lower house of the French parliament accepted the bill
despite strong protests from Turkey, debates over Armenian claims of
genocide were sparked in a number of countries, including Israel, a
country that was formed after millions of European Jews were killed
during the Holocaust at the hands of Nazi Germany in the lead up to
and during World War II. The Knesset Education, Culture and Sports
Committee held a public debate on the genocide claims days after the
French move but no decision was made in the end.
The Holocaust was the first internationally accepted case of genocide,
on the basis of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. The
definition of genocide used in the convention was the one that was
first coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish
descent, as `acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.' Whether what
happened to the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia during the final years
of the Ottoman Empire was an act of `genocide,' like the Holocaust,
has been a matter of debate for decades. Middle East Critique, a
US-based journal that publishes historical and contemporary political,
social and historical research every four months, devoted the last
issue of 2011 to this debate.
Tal Buenos, one of the contributors and an Israeli PhD candidate
studying genocide issues at the University of Utah, refutes any
similarity between the Holocaust and the Ottoman Empire's actions
against the Armenian community, which he says were carried out as a
self-defense measure under conditions of war, although this does not
mean these actions did not have catastrophic results, including the
deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians. Nevertheless he admitted
that the death of so many Armenians was not the result of deliberate
killings by the Ottoman administration, but a consequence of the
circumstances of war or unlawful attacks by groups that were not under
the direct control of Ottoman administration; such as armed Kurdish
units that `wanted to keep Armenians in their subservient political
position,' as well as brigands and irregulars.The Committee of Union
and Progress (CUP), which was then ruling the Ottoman Empire,
organized the deportation of Armenians to Russia and remote areas of
eastern Anatolia after an Armenian rebellion broke out in Van
province, playing into hands of Russian army which was then invading
eastern Anatolia. Saying that Ottomans lacked the intention to destroy
the Armenian community, Buenos wrote in the journal that in that the
Ottoman Empire's territorial integrity was at stake and that the
deportation was taken as a military measure for the country's
survival, which sets it apart from the Holocaust in Nazi Germany,
which systematically killed the Jewish community for the sake of
racial purity.
Armenian populated provinces including Erzurum, ElazıÄ?, Urfa, Van and
Diyarbakır, were situated on lines of communications that were vital
to the Ottoman armies fighting the Russians on the Caucasian frontier
of the empire and the British in Mesopotamia and Palestine. Ottoman
armies on these three fronts were self-sufficient in neither food,
ammunition or medical supplies and were therefore dependent on the
roads leading to western Turkey for these supplies. Armed Armenian
revolutionary committees, Dashnaks and Hunchaks, established in the
late nineteenth century, which were in control of these cities, began
to attack and cut these lines of communications in 1915, taking
financial help and weapons from Russia, France and the United Kingdom,
all invaders of Ottoman territories during World War I. The Ottoman
decision to relocate Armenians in those cities was a counterinsurgency
policy developed in response to attacks by Armenian groups that were
committed to violent action in order to establish an independent
Armenian state, carving out eastern Anatolia from the Ottoman Empire.
`As long as the Ottomans had military forces available, they were
never forced to use the strategies of population removal...' asserted
Edward Jay Erickson, another writer in the special edition of the
journal, who is a former regular US Army officer at the Marine Corps
University and is an eminent and leading authority on the Ottoman Army
during World War I. He claims that deportation was employed for the
first time in 1915 by the Ottomans, who he says dealt with many
rebellions of minorities aspiring for independence between 1890 and
1914. Claiming that sending large armies to subdue the rebels was
impossible in 1915, `as the interior of the empire had been stripped
of regular forces and the gendarmerie.' He argues that relocation was
an effective strategy borne of military weakness rather than strength.
In addition, Erickson states that the important precedents of
relocation as a counterinsurgency strategy came from the Western
world, including Spain in Cuba in 1893, the United States in the
Philippines in 1900-1902 and Britain in South Africa in 1899-1901,
which included a subjugation of guerillas by separating them from
friendly civilian populations. Maintaining that relocation strategy is
the only option for Ottoman leaders given the contemporary conditions
of war, they adopted this low-cost strategy that had successfully
worked for their Spanish, American and British counterparts. `With
respect to the question of whether the relocation was necessary for
Ottoman imperial security in World War I, the answer is clearly yes,'
Erickson wrote. However, he goes on to argue that military necessity
cannot be accepted as an excuse for crimes committed during these
deportations.
Historical sources show that arbitrary killings of Armenians by
bandits attacking deportation convoys took place, as well as the
usurpation of properties belonging to the community, as cited by
academics contributing to the edition. However, Yusuf Sarınay,
Director General of the Office of the State Archives, documents some
official decrees ruling against abuses during the relocations by a
Cabinet Resolution from the government of the CUP on May 1915, stating
that `¦the lives and property of the relocated Armenians were to be
protected during the relocation and if there were any instance of
abuse, the civil servants and gendarmes who were responsible for the
mishandling of the relocated were to be dismissed immediately from
public service and referred to courts martial.' He proved, agreeing
with two other writers, a lack of `intention' by the state to destroy
the Armenian community, an aspect of aggressive action which must
exist in order to name an act `genocide,' according to the commonly
accepted definition of the term.The fact that the Holocaust was
motivated by racial hatred against the Jews and included preplanned
mass killings, while the Armenian deportation is considered by some to
be a national security measure, sets the two cases apart from each
other, while other genocide scholars focus on similarities between the
two events, particularly in terms of their consequences. Hakan Yavuz,
an assistant professor in the political science department of the
University of Utah and the chief guest editor of the edition,
criticized the approach of defining genocide only in terms of the
outcome as being `constantly searching for a victim and victimizer'
and ignoring the diversities between the contexts in which
catastrophic events are realized. As a result, he calls for a
`humanizing' approach that evaluates the incidents in their historical
contexts.
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-267924-armenian-deportation--should-not-be-deemed--genocide-analysts-say.html