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TRANSCRIPT: THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW: CONVERSATION WITH GEOFFREY ROBERTSON
The Charlie Rose Show
March 16, 2015 Monday
SHOW: THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW 11:00 PM EST
Conversation with Geoffrey Robertson
Charlie Rose, Ethan Bronner, Gayle King
GUESTS: Geoffrey Robertson
HIGHLIGHT: Geoffrey Robertson is a distinguished British barrister,
he`s argued many landmark cases in human rights as well as criminal
and media law; he`s currently part of the legal team representing
Armenia at the European Court of Human Rights, the case will
determine whether denying the genocide of Armenians under Ottoman
rule is a criminal offense rule in Switzerland, this year marks the
centennial of the mass killings during World War I. Vijay Iyer is a
jazz pianist, a composer, he`s also a professor of music at Harvard,
in February he released an album with his trio called "Break Stuff";
"The Guardian" calls it a dizzying pinnacle of contemporary jazz
multitasking. Arlene Alda is a photographer and author, her latest
book is called "Just Kids from the Bronx: Telling It the Way It Was";
Alan Alda is an award wing actor known for his roles in the television
series like MASH, "The West Wing" and most recently "The Blacklist",
in recent years, he`s become a visiting professor at the Alan Alda
Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University.
CHARLIE ROSE, PBS HOST: Welcome to the program.
Tonight Geoffrey Robertson. His new book is "An Inconvenient Genocide:
Who Now Remembers the Armenians?" Sitting in for me is Ethan Bronner,
managing editor of Bloomberg News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON, AUTHOR, "AN INCONVENIENT GENOCIDE": The reason we
were on the Anzac Beaches on Gallipoli and my great uncle was shot by
a Turkish sniper. I don`t remember him much because he volunteered to
fight. The Turkish sniper was lawfully defending his own position. But
it`s different with victims of an international crime.
That`s why I think this is not a tragedy as genocide deniers call it.
It was a crime, a crime of genocide as we now call it. Then it was
called a crime against humanity because they are victims of crime
and it`s been unrequited.
I think today there are 2,000 churches in Turkey that have been
expropriated by the Ottomans. They should be restored.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: We continue this evening with Vijay Iyer, the musician.
His new album is called "Break Stuff". Sitting in for me is Gayle
King of CBS News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VIJAY IYER, MUSICIAN: It`s a form of address, you know. I`m actually
reaching out to the listener to say you can be a part of this. And
that`s what music is, it`s about creating a bond or link with others.
That`s what it does for me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: We conclude this evening with Alan and Arlene Alda. Her
book is called "Just Kids from the Bronx: Telling it the way it was".
Sitting in for me is me.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: Mary Higgins Clark.
ARLENE ALDA, AUTHOR: Great --
ALAN ALDA, ACTOR: It`s a wonderful thing -- Mary Higgins Clark said.
ARLENE ALDA: I love what Mary Higgins Clark said. The Bronx, she said,
people just don`t get it. There are three places in the world that
have a "the" in front of their names -- The Vatican, The Hague and
The Bronx.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: Geoffrey Robertson, Vijay Iyer, Arlene Alda and Alan
Alda when we continue.
ANNOUNCER: From our studios in New York City, this is Charlie Rose.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ETHAN BRONNER, BLOOMBERG NEWS: Good evening, I`m Ethan Bronner. I`m
a managing editor at Bloomberg News. I`m filling in for Charlie Rose
who is on assignment.
Joining me now is Geoffrey Robertson, a distinguished British
barrister. He`s argued many landmark cases in human rights as well
as criminal and media law. He`s currently part of the legal team
representing Armenia at the European Court of Human Rights. The case
will determine whether denying the genocide of Armenians under Ottoman
rule is a criminal offense rule in Switzerland. This year marks the
centennial of the mass killings during World War I. Robertson is also
the author of the book "An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now remembers
the Armenians".
I`m pleased to have him here. Welcome.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Hi -- Ethan.
ETHAN BRONNER: So, you know what -- the topic, I want to divide it
into at least two parts. One is what happened and the other is how
we talk about it and why it matters. So why don`t we start with what
happened nearly 100 years ago.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Sure. In 1915, April 24, the Istanbul authorities,
Constantinople it was called then, rounded up the Armenian
intellectuals, the community leaders, took them off and killed them
and that was the beginning of a genocide which took over half the
Armenian race. The Turks now say we only killed about 800,000 but
probably over one million were killed. More than half the Armenian
people were rounded up.
They were -- the men were generally shot if they were over 12. The
women, the children and old men were put on 400, 500 mile marches
across the desert -- the places that we only know now because they`re
occupied by ISIS -- and they died. They died of typhus, they died of
dysentery. They were attacked, they were raped. The women were taken
off very often as converts and their property was expropriated. They
were forced to march, the laws there and then the abandoned property
laws because they weren`t coming back. This was genocide as we now
know it.
ETHAN BRONNER: OK. So it was a term that didn`t exist until the 1930s.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: It didn`t. It was invented a brilliant Polish
Jewish lawyer called Raphael Lemkin. And he was obsessed with what
happened to the Armenians -- the massacres, the ethnic cleansing --
ETHAN BRONNER: Because he was a Polish Jew in the 1930s.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Sure.
ETHAN BRONNER: Did he sense something would happen?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, he started -- in 1922 there was something
called Operation Nemesis that got the main perpetrator -- the guy who
was the Hitler, the Ottoman Hitler was shot, assassinated in Berlin
and put on trial. The assassin was acquitted after the jury heard
of the horror that he had gone through with his family being killed,
watching his mother being raped and so forth. And the evidence came
from the Lutheran missionaries, it came from German generals who had
been there horrified at what the Ottoman Turks were doing.
And Lemkin thought this is wrong. This is justice as the Armenians
saw it, Nemesis but this is no way for the world to go. We need a
law that can overleap the national sovereignty boundaries and say,
no matter how much you are ordered by your government to kill, a
particular race or a particular religion, there is an international
law that will eventually put you on trial.
ETHAN BRONNER: If a nation killed its own, there was no legal framework
to try it.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Not until Nuremberg.
ETHAN BRONNER: Right.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Nuremberg was the beginning of international
criminal law. I mean the British, when they won in 1918, took 68 of
the main perpetrators to Malta to put them on trial and realized they
couldn`t try them because there was this (INAUDIBLE) sovereignty idea
that no prince or head of state can be held liable for killing his
own people.
ETHAN BRONNER: So we have this irony which is this man invents this
term to apply to this event --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Exactly.
ETHAN BRONNER: -- and now the whole debate is whether this term
applies to this event.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: That`s right. And we had a genocide convention
in 1948, and Raphael Lemkin the author of it was inspired as I say by
the Armenian genocide. But now Turkey is neuralgic about the genocide
and makes certain sorts of threats.
ETHAN BRONNER: There is this question of freedom of speech and
expression in Europe versus the United States --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Sure.
ETHAN BRONNER: -- the fact that in these countries like in Switzerland
it`s illegal to deny genocide of Armenians or the Holocaust.
So let`s start with the Turks` view. Why are they so horrified by
this term?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: The g-word sends shivers down state spines
because it`s against international law. There`s a possibility of
compensation if you commit genocide. Ronald Reagan ratified the
genocide convention. Let`s remember, America doesn`t ratify many
international laws beyond this one. America was a bit nervous in
Rwanda, remember how America and Britain lied in the Security Council
to pretend that it wasn`t genocide when it was because they fear
they`d have to do something about it.
So Turkey has come up with this idea that it was military necessity
to deport all the Armenians.
ETHAN BRONNER: Well, at least they have asserted and others have
that it was in the middle of a war and it was complicated. People
died but it wasn`t the same thing as (INAUDIBLE) in World War II.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: They say it was military necessity to get rid of
a possible fifth column. But, you know, deporting women and children
and old men across the desert as they die isn`t necessary for any
military. If you`ve got anyone who is a possible traitor, you can
intern them, you can detain them, you can prosecute them but that`s
not what they were doing.
ETHAN BRONNER: But do you think Geoffrey that standards have changed?
In other words that because we live in a post Holocaust world today
we have much greater sensitivity toward what happened not that under
any circumstances by anyone`s description what happened was OK. But
the question is whether it was so unusual compared with today.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: I think Lemkin`s genius was to identify racial
and religious passion as particularly igniting. The Armenian genocide
is important to study. There was a Turkification campaign. There are
all sorts of nationalism. There was the changing of Christian names
to Muslim names and so forth.
And this is a pattern that we can see recurring in Bangladesh, in
Guatemala, with the Mayans (ph), with Rwanda and the Tutsis, the
gypsies. I could go on -- Indonesia in the 60s, the killing of the
Chinese and so on.
ETHAN BRONNER: In the Armenian case the fact that they were Christian,
do you think that was a very important --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Oh, a lot of them were killed --
ETHAN BRONNER: Precisely for their --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: -- to the Allah Akbar and the young Turkish
government had attained imam whom got they got to pronounce a fatwa
on Christians and so they realized they had to reach to the Germans,
because Germans were their allies.
ETHAN BRONNER: OK. So this happened. Now what does it mean for the
Turks to acknowledge and others when we say that compensation could
occur? Who makes that decision?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, it`s possibly a legal decision and it --
ETHAN BRONNER: Where?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: -- in Europe. The European Court of Human Rights
has already ordered Turkey to compensate those Greek Cypriots that
it threw out of Northern Cyprus. That was 50 years ago. There are
still living memories. I mean President Obama, a couple of years ago,
had tea with a genocide survivor who was 103. The world`s most famous
Armenian who is, of course, Kim Kardashian.
But that is -- it`s still for children, for grandchildren. These people
live it. And you know, I`m an Australian actually and we were --
the reason we were on Anzac beaches on Gallipoli and my great uncle
was shot by a Turkish sniper. I don`t remember him much because he
volunteered to fight. The Turkish sniper was lawfully defending his
own position but it`s different with victims of an international crime.
That`s why I think this is not a tragedy as genocide deniers call it.
It was a crime -- the crime of genocide as we now call it. Then it
was called a crime against humanity. And because they are victims
of crime and it`s been unrequited. I think today there are 2,000
churches in Turkey that had been expropriated by the Ottomans. They
should restored.
ETHAN BRONNER: So on the one hand we have the Turks, of course, and
they`re the ones being accused having done this. So they say no that`s
not what happened. And that`s an issue you need to deal with. But
there`s a geo-political issue which is the United States government
the British government have not in fact been willing to insist this
is what happened because of their relationship with Turkey. Why?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Because Turkey is more important. I mean President
Obama when he went campaigning in 2008 said I`m a lawyer. I know
it was genocide and I`m going to say it was when I`m president. He
doesn`t ever use the g-word. He uses Medz Yeghern which no one
understands. It`s Armenian for the great catastrophe.
Britain which was most active in denouncing these atrocities in 1915
suddenly when Turkey became important started saying the evidence
is not sufficiently unequivocal which was a beautiful British
Mandarin-crafted deceitful phrase. And I did a Freedom of Information
Act search and I found the memorandum explaining to ministers why
this formula had to be used.
And it actually said Turkey is neuralgic -- good word -- on this
subject. Our position is unethical but the strategic commercial
realities mean there`s no other option. Turkey just goes crazy and
we need Turkey. NATO needs Turkey at the time. It`s their bases and
its spy bases are being used.
ETHAN BRONNER: Can you imagine -- I mean just to question this --
can you imagine a need great enough to say that well maybe this is
not so important to use the g-word?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, I think that President Erdogan is faced with
a problem -- a lot of problems with his dispute with Armenia. Now he
doesn`t understand genocide. He says it couldn`t have been because
there are still Armenians living in Turkey.
ETHAN BRONNER: I see.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: People just don`t understand that genocide means
wiping out (AUDIO GAP) race as they did Srebrenica. That was genocide.
You don`t have to find an order. There was no order to kill the Jews.
What is fascinating is to look at the language that was used by
the Turks and the language that was used by Adolf Eichmann in his
Vanze (ph) memorandum. They weren`t deporting, they were relocating
or evacuating the Jews but that was based on the language that the
Ottomans used of the Armenians. They didn`t -- their laws of abandoned
property. Property wasn`t abandoned, they were forced out.
ETHAN BRONNER: Of course. No, I understand. These are all --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: The same euphemisms, the genocide euphemisms are
very much the same.
ETHAN BRONNER: So let`s assume for the next literature that you write
that this unquestionably was genocide and in fact there`s a lot of
reason to think that. The next question is why should it be against
the law to deny it? We are not used to that in the United States.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: No, of course you`re not. But you`ve never
been occupied by the Nazis. You never had part of your population
extinguished. In Europe, it`s a different matter. The French, the
Belgians were occupied. The Germans and Austrians did doing the
occupying and I mean that is why we have this peculiar European idea
where it can be wrong and against the law for people to deny the
existence of gas chambers and so forth. If you deny one genocide and
that`s against the law, why not if you deny another genocide should
that not be against the law?
So it was a difficult case for when this crazy nationalist Turk
who loves challenging genocide denial laws he goes throughout Europe
saying the Armenian genocide is a lie and oops to be convicted. And for
Amal Clooney and I who are brought up more in the American tradition,
which is still alive in Britain, where you draw the line is against
the guy who shouts fire in a crowded theatre.
So we argued as a basis for a sort of European-wide law that you should
only prosecute genocide deniers where they do real harm. Where there
is -- their intention is to vilify minority community. So that was
the distinction the court --
ETHAN BRONNER: And that what you`re -- that`s why you`re taking this
case against them.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, we are not taking the case. We are -- our
position on behalf of the Armenian government was to simply set a
standard. To say this is the standard and you apply it to the facts
of this case one way or the other. But the reason we had intervened
was that the first court decision was incredibly silly. It said well,
there may not have been an Armenian genocide because there were no
gas chambers. It wasn`t as well proven as the Holocaust.
But of course, there are photographs. There are laws, there`s the
deportation law, the abandoned property law. It is just as well.
ETHAN BRONNER: More about the Turks also because under Erdogan, there
has been a kind of liberalizing attitude towards -- attitudes toward
minorities, the Kurds and the Armenians.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Yes.
ETHAN BRONNER: He did sort of say a terrible thing happened by he
hasn`t apologized for it and he hasn`t called it genocide. Is that
right? And is it still --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: What he hasn`t said and this confounds every
genocide denier. You say to them all right if it wasn`t genocide it was
a crime against humanity. And they`ve got no answer because undoubtedly
it was and genocide is one genus of a crime against humanity.
ETHAN BRONNER: Turkey has not used that phrase either.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: I think what will, and Turkey`s entry to the
European Union may depend on this, if Erdogan can bring himself at
least to acknowledge that it was a crime against humanity, to give
back some of the churches and allow them to be used as Christian
churches. And maybe make some symbolic gesture -- I suggested Mount
Ararat which, of course, is the great mystical mountain, Noah`s
ark and so forth. And it would be -- it overshadows Yerevan which
is the Armenian capital and that would be a wonderful gesture of
reconciliation.
ETHAN BRONNER: And you`re saying that because you`re not saying --
you`re not calling for compensation yourself.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, I think there should be compensation for
those who can trace their property which was expropriated. Yes, if
you can trace it and some can, there`s already been some action over
insurance policies. And this would be --
ETHAN BRONNER: Tell me how active have the Turks been in trying to
deny this as they`ve been on an actual campaign?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: I think there`s been billions on it. I think
they`ve hired Dick Gephardt to -- before he was a lobbyist was a
congressman who was actually quite vocal in saying it was an Armenian
genocide. Now he`s being paid to set up propaganda exercise to say
that it wasn`t.
So as the centenary approaches on April 24th, there has been, there`s
actually the government is holding a diversification event. They are
trying to distract attention --
ETHAN BRONNER: Who`s having that --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: -- the Turkish government by having an
international celebration or commemoration of Gallipoli and they`re
getting the British, the Australian prime ministers, the New Zealand
prime minister where Gallipoli is sort of sacred. Even the young
Prince Charles I think is going and the young princess --
ETHAN BRONNER: But there are human rights groups that are setting
up some commemoration not just in Yerevan but also in Istanbul as I
understand it.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Yes, I think they --
ETHAN BRONNER: And they`re not getting in the way are they?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: No. I think there are human rights groups very
much focusing on the death of Hrant Dink. And of course there are
a lot of liberal Turks and they`re getting more courageous at Hrant
Dink`s funeral. A lot of young Turkish people held up banners saying
"We are all Armenians".
ETHAN BRONNER: And are there things that you`d recommend for people
to do to affect attitudes inside Turkey?
G: Well, I think that it is a matter for the Turkish leadership to
start explaining. Of course, you go back to the school textbooks
and to what kids are taught. At the moment they`re taught all the
arguments for refuting genocide. They are giving prizes for writing
essays that explains it wasn`t genocide. I think that`s got to stop.
And there has to be an element of truth telling.
Because even Ataturk apologized and described this as a shameful act
and I think that kind of information has to be allowed into Turkish
textbooks.
ETHAN BRONNER: Geoffrey Robertson, thank you very much. Thanks for
joining us.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Thank you.
The Charlie Rose Show
March 16, 2015 Monday
SHOW: THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW 11:00 PM EST
Conversation with Geoffrey Robertson
Charlie Rose, Ethan Bronner, Gayle King
GUESTS: Geoffrey Robertson
HIGHLIGHT: Geoffrey Robertson is a distinguished British barrister,
he`s argued many landmark cases in human rights as well as criminal
and media law; he`s currently part of the legal team representing
Armenia at the European Court of Human Rights, the case will
determine whether denying the genocide of Armenians under Ottoman
rule is a criminal offense rule in Switzerland, this year marks the
centennial of the mass killings during World War I. Vijay Iyer is a
jazz pianist, a composer, he`s also a professor of music at Harvard,
in February he released an album with his trio called "Break Stuff";
"The Guardian" calls it a dizzying pinnacle of contemporary jazz
multitasking. Arlene Alda is a photographer and author, her latest
book is called "Just Kids from the Bronx: Telling It the Way It Was";
Alan Alda is an award wing actor known for his roles in the television
series like MASH, "The West Wing" and most recently "The Blacklist",
in recent years, he`s become a visiting professor at the Alan Alda
Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University.
CHARLIE ROSE, PBS HOST: Welcome to the program.
Tonight Geoffrey Robertson. His new book is "An Inconvenient Genocide:
Who Now Remembers the Armenians?" Sitting in for me is Ethan Bronner,
managing editor of Bloomberg News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON, AUTHOR, "AN INCONVENIENT GENOCIDE": The reason we
were on the Anzac Beaches on Gallipoli and my great uncle was shot by
a Turkish sniper. I don`t remember him much because he volunteered to
fight. The Turkish sniper was lawfully defending his own position. But
it`s different with victims of an international crime.
That`s why I think this is not a tragedy as genocide deniers call it.
It was a crime, a crime of genocide as we now call it. Then it was
called a crime against humanity because they are victims of crime
and it`s been unrequited.
I think today there are 2,000 churches in Turkey that have been
expropriated by the Ottomans. They should be restored.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: We continue this evening with Vijay Iyer, the musician.
His new album is called "Break Stuff". Sitting in for me is Gayle
King of CBS News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VIJAY IYER, MUSICIAN: It`s a form of address, you know. I`m actually
reaching out to the listener to say you can be a part of this. And
that`s what music is, it`s about creating a bond or link with others.
That`s what it does for me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: We conclude this evening with Alan and Arlene Alda. Her
book is called "Just Kids from the Bronx: Telling it the way it was".
Sitting in for me is me.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: Mary Higgins Clark.
ARLENE ALDA, AUTHOR: Great --
ALAN ALDA, ACTOR: It`s a wonderful thing -- Mary Higgins Clark said.
ARLENE ALDA: I love what Mary Higgins Clark said. The Bronx, she said,
people just don`t get it. There are three places in the world that
have a "the" in front of their names -- The Vatican, The Hague and
The Bronx.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: Geoffrey Robertson, Vijay Iyer, Arlene Alda and Alan
Alda when we continue.
ANNOUNCER: From our studios in New York City, this is Charlie Rose.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ETHAN BRONNER, BLOOMBERG NEWS: Good evening, I`m Ethan Bronner. I`m
a managing editor at Bloomberg News. I`m filling in for Charlie Rose
who is on assignment.
Joining me now is Geoffrey Robertson, a distinguished British
barrister. He`s argued many landmark cases in human rights as well
as criminal and media law. He`s currently part of the legal team
representing Armenia at the European Court of Human Rights. The case
will determine whether denying the genocide of Armenians under Ottoman
rule is a criminal offense rule in Switzerland. This year marks the
centennial of the mass killings during World War I. Robertson is also
the author of the book "An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now remembers
the Armenians".
I`m pleased to have him here. Welcome.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Hi -- Ethan.
ETHAN BRONNER: So, you know what -- the topic, I want to divide it
into at least two parts. One is what happened and the other is how
we talk about it and why it matters. So why don`t we start with what
happened nearly 100 years ago.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Sure. In 1915, April 24, the Istanbul authorities,
Constantinople it was called then, rounded up the Armenian
intellectuals, the community leaders, took them off and killed them
and that was the beginning of a genocide which took over half the
Armenian race. The Turks now say we only killed about 800,000 but
probably over one million were killed. More than half the Armenian
people were rounded up.
They were -- the men were generally shot if they were over 12. The
women, the children and old men were put on 400, 500 mile marches
across the desert -- the places that we only know now because they`re
occupied by ISIS -- and they died. They died of typhus, they died of
dysentery. They were attacked, they were raped. The women were taken
off very often as converts and their property was expropriated. They
were forced to march, the laws there and then the abandoned property
laws because they weren`t coming back. This was genocide as we now
know it.
ETHAN BRONNER: OK. So it was a term that didn`t exist until the 1930s.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: It didn`t. It was invented a brilliant Polish
Jewish lawyer called Raphael Lemkin. And he was obsessed with what
happened to the Armenians -- the massacres, the ethnic cleansing --
ETHAN BRONNER: Because he was a Polish Jew in the 1930s.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Sure.
ETHAN BRONNER: Did he sense something would happen?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, he started -- in 1922 there was something
called Operation Nemesis that got the main perpetrator -- the guy who
was the Hitler, the Ottoman Hitler was shot, assassinated in Berlin
and put on trial. The assassin was acquitted after the jury heard
of the horror that he had gone through with his family being killed,
watching his mother being raped and so forth. And the evidence came
from the Lutheran missionaries, it came from German generals who had
been there horrified at what the Ottoman Turks were doing.
And Lemkin thought this is wrong. This is justice as the Armenians
saw it, Nemesis but this is no way for the world to go. We need a
law that can overleap the national sovereignty boundaries and say,
no matter how much you are ordered by your government to kill, a
particular race or a particular religion, there is an international
law that will eventually put you on trial.
ETHAN BRONNER: If a nation killed its own, there was no legal framework
to try it.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Not until Nuremberg.
ETHAN BRONNER: Right.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Nuremberg was the beginning of international
criminal law. I mean the British, when they won in 1918, took 68 of
the main perpetrators to Malta to put them on trial and realized they
couldn`t try them because there was this (INAUDIBLE) sovereignty idea
that no prince or head of state can be held liable for killing his
own people.
ETHAN BRONNER: So we have this irony which is this man invents this
term to apply to this event --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Exactly.
ETHAN BRONNER: -- and now the whole debate is whether this term
applies to this event.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: That`s right. And we had a genocide convention
in 1948, and Raphael Lemkin the author of it was inspired as I say by
the Armenian genocide. But now Turkey is neuralgic about the genocide
and makes certain sorts of threats.
ETHAN BRONNER: There is this question of freedom of speech and
expression in Europe versus the United States --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Sure.
ETHAN BRONNER: -- the fact that in these countries like in Switzerland
it`s illegal to deny genocide of Armenians or the Holocaust.
So let`s start with the Turks` view. Why are they so horrified by
this term?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: The g-word sends shivers down state spines
because it`s against international law. There`s a possibility of
compensation if you commit genocide. Ronald Reagan ratified the
genocide convention. Let`s remember, America doesn`t ratify many
international laws beyond this one. America was a bit nervous in
Rwanda, remember how America and Britain lied in the Security Council
to pretend that it wasn`t genocide when it was because they fear
they`d have to do something about it.
So Turkey has come up with this idea that it was military necessity
to deport all the Armenians.
ETHAN BRONNER: Well, at least they have asserted and others have
that it was in the middle of a war and it was complicated. People
died but it wasn`t the same thing as (INAUDIBLE) in World War II.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: They say it was military necessity to get rid of
a possible fifth column. But, you know, deporting women and children
and old men across the desert as they die isn`t necessary for any
military. If you`ve got anyone who is a possible traitor, you can
intern them, you can detain them, you can prosecute them but that`s
not what they were doing.
ETHAN BRONNER: But do you think Geoffrey that standards have changed?
In other words that because we live in a post Holocaust world today
we have much greater sensitivity toward what happened not that under
any circumstances by anyone`s description what happened was OK. But
the question is whether it was so unusual compared with today.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: I think Lemkin`s genius was to identify racial
and religious passion as particularly igniting. The Armenian genocide
is important to study. There was a Turkification campaign. There are
all sorts of nationalism. There was the changing of Christian names
to Muslim names and so forth.
And this is a pattern that we can see recurring in Bangladesh, in
Guatemala, with the Mayans (ph), with Rwanda and the Tutsis, the
gypsies. I could go on -- Indonesia in the 60s, the killing of the
Chinese and so on.
ETHAN BRONNER: In the Armenian case the fact that they were Christian,
do you think that was a very important --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Oh, a lot of them were killed --
ETHAN BRONNER: Precisely for their --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: -- to the Allah Akbar and the young Turkish
government had attained imam whom got they got to pronounce a fatwa
on Christians and so they realized they had to reach to the Germans,
because Germans were their allies.
ETHAN BRONNER: OK. So this happened. Now what does it mean for the
Turks to acknowledge and others when we say that compensation could
occur? Who makes that decision?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, it`s possibly a legal decision and it --
ETHAN BRONNER: Where?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: -- in Europe. The European Court of Human Rights
has already ordered Turkey to compensate those Greek Cypriots that
it threw out of Northern Cyprus. That was 50 years ago. There are
still living memories. I mean President Obama, a couple of years ago,
had tea with a genocide survivor who was 103. The world`s most famous
Armenian who is, of course, Kim Kardashian.
But that is -- it`s still for children, for grandchildren. These people
live it. And you know, I`m an Australian actually and we were --
the reason we were on Anzac beaches on Gallipoli and my great uncle
was shot by a Turkish sniper. I don`t remember him much because he
volunteered to fight. The Turkish sniper was lawfully defending his
own position but it`s different with victims of an international crime.
That`s why I think this is not a tragedy as genocide deniers call it.
It was a crime -- the crime of genocide as we now call it. Then it
was called a crime against humanity. And because they are victims
of crime and it`s been unrequited. I think today there are 2,000
churches in Turkey that had been expropriated by the Ottomans. They
should restored.
ETHAN BRONNER: So on the one hand we have the Turks, of course, and
they`re the ones being accused having done this. So they say no that`s
not what happened. And that`s an issue you need to deal with. But
there`s a geo-political issue which is the United States government
the British government have not in fact been willing to insist this
is what happened because of their relationship with Turkey. Why?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Because Turkey is more important. I mean President
Obama when he went campaigning in 2008 said I`m a lawyer. I know
it was genocide and I`m going to say it was when I`m president. He
doesn`t ever use the g-word. He uses Medz Yeghern which no one
understands. It`s Armenian for the great catastrophe.
Britain which was most active in denouncing these atrocities in 1915
suddenly when Turkey became important started saying the evidence
is not sufficiently unequivocal which was a beautiful British
Mandarin-crafted deceitful phrase. And I did a Freedom of Information
Act search and I found the memorandum explaining to ministers why
this formula had to be used.
And it actually said Turkey is neuralgic -- good word -- on this
subject. Our position is unethical but the strategic commercial
realities mean there`s no other option. Turkey just goes crazy and
we need Turkey. NATO needs Turkey at the time. It`s their bases and
its spy bases are being used.
ETHAN BRONNER: Can you imagine -- I mean just to question this --
can you imagine a need great enough to say that well maybe this is
not so important to use the g-word?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, I think that President Erdogan is faced with
a problem -- a lot of problems with his dispute with Armenia. Now he
doesn`t understand genocide. He says it couldn`t have been because
there are still Armenians living in Turkey.
ETHAN BRONNER: I see.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: People just don`t understand that genocide means
wiping out (AUDIO GAP) race as they did Srebrenica. That was genocide.
You don`t have to find an order. There was no order to kill the Jews.
What is fascinating is to look at the language that was used by
the Turks and the language that was used by Adolf Eichmann in his
Vanze (ph) memorandum. They weren`t deporting, they were relocating
or evacuating the Jews but that was based on the language that the
Ottomans used of the Armenians. They didn`t -- their laws of abandoned
property. Property wasn`t abandoned, they were forced out.
ETHAN BRONNER: Of course. No, I understand. These are all --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: The same euphemisms, the genocide euphemisms are
very much the same.
ETHAN BRONNER: So let`s assume for the next literature that you write
that this unquestionably was genocide and in fact there`s a lot of
reason to think that. The next question is why should it be against
the law to deny it? We are not used to that in the United States.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: No, of course you`re not. But you`ve never
been occupied by the Nazis. You never had part of your population
extinguished. In Europe, it`s a different matter. The French, the
Belgians were occupied. The Germans and Austrians did doing the
occupying and I mean that is why we have this peculiar European idea
where it can be wrong and against the law for people to deny the
existence of gas chambers and so forth. If you deny one genocide and
that`s against the law, why not if you deny another genocide should
that not be against the law?
So it was a difficult case for when this crazy nationalist Turk
who loves challenging genocide denial laws he goes throughout Europe
saying the Armenian genocide is a lie and oops to be convicted. And for
Amal Clooney and I who are brought up more in the American tradition,
which is still alive in Britain, where you draw the line is against
the guy who shouts fire in a crowded theatre.
So we argued as a basis for a sort of European-wide law that you should
only prosecute genocide deniers where they do real harm. Where there
is -- their intention is to vilify minority community. So that was
the distinction the court --
ETHAN BRONNER: And that what you`re -- that`s why you`re taking this
case against them.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, we are not taking the case. We are -- our
position on behalf of the Armenian government was to simply set a
standard. To say this is the standard and you apply it to the facts
of this case one way or the other. But the reason we had intervened
was that the first court decision was incredibly silly. It said well,
there may not have been an Armenian genocide because there were no
gas chambers. It wasn`t as well proven as the Holocaust.
But of course, there are photographs. There are laws, there`s the
deportation law, the abandoned property law. It is just as well.
ETHAN BRONNER: More about the Turks also because under Erdogan, there
has been a kind of liberalizing attitude towards -- attitudes toward
minorities, the Kurds and the Armenians.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Yes.
ETHAN BRONNER: He did sort of say a terrible thing happened by he
hasn`t apologized for it and he hasn`t called it genocide. Is that
right? And is it still --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: What he hasn`t said and this confounds every
genocide denier. You say to them all right if it wasn`t genocide it was
a crime against humanity. And they`ve got no answer because undoubtedly
it was and genocide is one genus of a crime against humanity.
ETHAN BRONNER: Turkey has not used that phrase either.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: I think what will, and Turkey`s entry to the
European Union may depend on this, if Erdogan can bring himself at
least to acknowledge that it was a crime against humanity, to give
back some of the churches and allow them to be used as Christian
churches. And maybe make some symbolic gesture -- I suggested Mount
Ararat which, of course, is the great mystical mountain, Noah`s
ark and so forth. And it would be -- it overshadows Yerevan which
is the Armenian capital and that would be a wonderful gesture of
reconciliation.
ETHAN BRONNER: And you`re saying that because you`re not saying --
you`re not calling for compensation yourself.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, I think there should be compensation for
those who can trace their property which was expropriated. Yes, if
you can trace it and some can, there`s already been some action over
insurance policies. And this would be --
ETHAN BRONNER: Tell me how active have the Turks been in trying to
deny this as they`ve been on an actual campaign?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: I think there`s been billions on it. I think
they`ve hired Dick Gephardt to -- before he was a lobbyist was a
congressman who was actually quite vocal in saying it was an Armenian
genocide. Now he`s being paid to set up propaganda exercise to say
that it wasn`t.
So as the centenary approaches on April 24th, there has been, there`s
actually the government is holding a diversification event. They are
trying to distract attention --
ETHAN BRONNER: Who`s having that --
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: -- the Turkish government by having an
international celebration or commemoration of Gallipoli and they`re
getting the British, the Australian prime ministers, the New Zealand
prime minister where Gallipoli is sort of sacred. Even the young
Prince Charles I think is going and the young princess --
ETHAN BRONNER: But there are human rights groups that are setting
up some commemoration not just in Yerevan but also in Istanbul as I
understand it.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Yes, I think they --
ETHAN BRONNER: And they`re not getting in the way are they?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: No. I think there are human rights groups very
much focusing on the death of Hrant Dink. And of course there are
a lot of liberal Turks and they`re getting more courageous at Hrant
Dink`s funeral. A lot of young Turkish people held up banners saying
"We are all Armenians".
ETHAN BRONNER: And are there things that you`d recommend for people
to do to affect attitudes inside Turkey?
G: Well, I think that it is a matter for the Turkish leadership to
start explaining. Of course, you go back to the school textbooks
and to what kids are taught. At the moment they`re taught all the
arguments for refuting genocide. They are giving prizes for writing
essays that explains it wasn`t genocide. I think that`s got to stop.
And there has to be an element of truth telling.
Because even Ataturk apologized and described this as a shameful act
and I think that kind of information has to be allowed into Turkish
textbooks.
ETHAN BRONNER: Geoffrey Robertson, thank you very much. Thanks for
joining us.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Thank you.