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Cihan News Agency (CNA)
March 6, 2015 Friday
British jurist highlights German role in mass deportation of Armenians
Aydın Albayrak, The Hague
Ä°STANBUL (CÄ°HAN)- A leading British jurist well-versed in human rights
cases has implicated Germany in the forced relocation of Armenians by
the Ottomans during World War I, a move which led to mass killings
that Armenians describe as genocide.
It was Germans who suggested that Armenians be relocated, Geoffrey
Robertson, who also served as an appeals judge with the UN Special
Court for Sierra Leone from 2002 to 2007, said Friday at a conference
titled "The Armenian Genocide Legacy: 100 Years on."
Robertson, who was one of the panelists on the first day of the
conference in The Hague, Netherlands, maintained that Germans advised
Ottoman Turks to settle the Armenian question based on Germany's
practice of ethnic cleansing in southwest Africa back in 1905.
"Germans were in complicity with the Turks," he added. The Ottoman
Empire and Germany were allies in World War I.
In response to a rebellion by native people against German colonial
rule in the area corresponding to today's Namibia, the German army
allegedly let the native people who fled the violence die from
starvation and thirst by preventing them from leaving the Namibian
dessert. The number of victims is estimated to be in the tens of
thousands.
"This is the first genocide of the 20th century," said Robertson, who
also described the suffering Ottoman Armenians experienced during
their relocation as genocide.
In contrast to the opinions voiced at the panel, Turkey denies claims
that the forced relocation of Armenians, which mainly took place in
1915, amount to genocide, arguing that the relocation was a necessity,
as some of the Armenians in eastern Anatolia collaborated with Russian
forces against the Ottoman army during fighting that took place
several months before the relocation began.
The two-day conference, organized ahead of the centennial
commemoration of the forced relocation of Ottoman Armenians, was held
at the Hague Institute for Global Justice.
In an interview in January with the state-run Turkish Radio and
Television Corporation (TRT), President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an
criticized the Armenian diaspora for exploiting the mass killings of
Armenians in 1915 and said Turkey would not acknowledge the 1915
events as "genocide" just because others push Turkey to recognize them
as such.
Every year on April 24, Armenians around the world commemorate the
Armenian victims who died during the forced relocation, which
officially began in June 1915.
As the 100th anniversary of the forced relocation approaches, Armenia
and the Armenian diaspora have increased their efforts to have the
suffering of the Armenians be recognized as genocide, as well as
seeking ways to demand reparations from the Turkish Republic, the heir
to the Ottoman Empire, for the Armenian properties seized by the state
following the relocation.
In an interview with the TRT, ErdoÄ?an said on Thursday that the
Armenian diaspora is pushing for acknowledgement that the events at
the end of World War l constituted "genocide" and is trying to create
pressure on Turkey, but that this issue needs to be handled by
historians.
Robertson, who is also the author of a book titled "An Inconvenient
Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians?" lashed out at the European
Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a verdict which concluded that
denying what Armenians suffered is "genocide" does not constitute a
crime.
In December 2013, the lower court of the ECtHR ruled by five votes to
two that Switzerland violated the right to freedom of speech by
convicting DoÄ?u Perinçek, chairman of the Turkish Workers' Party (Ä°P),
for having publicly denied that a genocide took place against the
Armenian people.
Perinçek declared that the events that befell the Armenians under
Ottoman rule in 1915 are an "international lie."
Maintaining that the ECtHR decided that this was not genocide because
there were no gas chambers involved, as was the case during the
Holocaust, Robertson said: "This was stupid."
The court's decision regarding Perinçek set a precedent that it is
counter to the freedom of expression to charge individuals for
expressing views different than the officially accepted ones
concerning issues under public debate.
Ronald Suny, a professor of history at the University of Michigan,
said "genocide" might have been avoided if the rulers of the Ottoman
Empire had granted rights to minorities in the Ottoman state, instead
of seeing them as existential threats to the state.
They took a path that led to destruction, said Suny, who was the
keynote speaker of the conference.
Suny said estimates of the number of Armenians who lost their lives
during the relocation range from 600,000 to over 1 million. But some
Turkish sources maintain that the figure is much less.
Referring to what Aboriginal Australians, the continent's indigenous
people, and Native Americans lived through in the past, Suny also
underlined that all states should make an effort to come to terms with
their history.
March 6, 2015 Friday
British jurist highlights German role in mass deportation of Armenians
Aydın Albayrak, The Hague
Ä°STANBUL (CÄ°HAN)- A leading British jurist well-versed in human rights
cases has implicated Germany in the forced relocation of Armenians by
the Ottomans during World War I, a move which led to mass killings
that Armenians describe as genocide.
It was Germans who suggested that Armenians be relocated, Geoffrey
Robertson, who also served as an appeals judge with the UN Special
Court for Sierra Leone from 2002 to 2007, said Friday at a conference
titled "The Armenian Genocide Legacy: 100 Years on."
Robertson, who was one of the panelists on the first day of the
conference in The Hague, Netherlands, maintained that Germans advised
Ottoman Turks to settle the Armenian question based on Germany's
practice of ethnic cleansing in southwest Africa back in 1905.
"Germans were in complicity with the Turks," he added. The Ottoman
Empire and Germany were allies in World War I.
In response to a rebellion by native people against German colonial
rule in the area corresponding to today's Namibia, the German army
allegedly let the native people who fled the violence die from
starvation and thirst by preventing them from leaving the Namibian
dessert. The number of victims is estimated to be in the tens of
thousands.
"This is the first genocide of the 20th century," said Robertson, who
also described the suffering Ottoman Armenians experienced during
their relocation as genocide.
In contrast to the opinions voiced at the panel, Turkey denies claims
that the forced relocation of Armenians, which mainly took place in
1915, amount to genocide, arguing that the relocation was a necessity,
as some of the Armenians in eastern Anatolia collaborated with Russian
forces against the Ottoman army during fighting that took place
several months before the relocation began.
The two-day conference, organized ahead of the centennial
commemoration of the forced relocation of Ottoman Armenians, was held
at the Hague Institute for Global Justice.
In an interview in January with the state-run Turkish Radio and
Television Corporation (TRT), President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an
criticized the Armenian diaspora for exploiting the mass killings of
Armenians in 1915 and said Turkey would not acknowledge the 1915
events as "genocide" just because others push Turkey to recognize them
as such.
Every year on April 24, Armenians around the world commemorate the
Armenian victims who died during the forced relocation, which
officially began in June 1915.
As the 100th anniversary of the forced relocation approaches, Armenia
and the Armenian diaspora have increased their efforts to have the
suffering of the Armenians be recognized as genocide, as well as
seeking ways to demand reparations from the Turkish Republic, the heir
to the Ottoman Empire, for the Armenian properties seized by the state
following the relocation.
In an interview with the TRT, ErdoÄ?an said on Thursday that the
Armenian diaspora is pushing for acknowledgement that the events at
the end of World War l constituted "genocide" and is trying to create
pressure on Turkey, but that this issue needs to be handled by
historians.
Robertson, who is also the author of a book titled "An Inconvenient
Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians?" lashed out at the European
Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a verdict which concluded that
denying what Armenians suffered is "genocide" does not constitute a
crime.
In December 2013, the lower court of the ECtHR ruled by five votes to
two that Switzerland violated the right to freedom of speech by
convicting DoÄ?u Perinçek, chairman of the Turkish Workers' Party (Ä°P),
for having publicly denied that a genocide took place against the
Armenian people.
Perinçek declared that the events that befell the Armenians under
Ottoman rule in 1915 are an "international lie."
Maintaining that the ECtHR decided that this was not genocide because
there were no gas chambers involved, as was the case during the
Holocaust, Robertson said: "This was stupid."
The court's decision regarding Perinçek set a precedent that it is
counter to the freedom of expression to charge individuals for
expressing views different than the officially accepted ones
concerning issues under public debate.
Ronald Suny, a professor of history at the University of Michigan,
said "genocide" might have been avoided if the rulers of the Ottoman
Empire had granted rights to minorities in the Ottoman state, instead
of seeing them as existential threats to the state.
They took a path that led to destruction, said Suny, who was the
keynote speaker of the conference.
Suny said estimates of the number of Armenians who lost their lives
during the relocation range from 600,000 to over 1 million. But some
Turkish sources maintain that the figure is much less.
Referring to what Aboriginal Australians, the continent's indigenous
people, and Native Americans lived through in the past, Suny also
underlined that all states should make an effort to come to terms with
their history.