By Henry
Theriault, Ph.D.Professor and Chair of Philosophy Worcester State University
USA
A contemporary discussion of the
Armenian Genocide in a Turkish context is well-served by certain prefatory
remarks. First, the recent movement in
Turkey to engage thoughtfully the legacy of the Armenian Genocide can be seen
as an attempt to keep the heretofore unfulfilled promise of 1908. In 1908 some members of the Young Turk
movement, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and other Turks, Armenians,
Jews, Kurds, Greeks, and Assyrians embraced a new vision for the Ottoman
Empire.
For a short time, they began
developing a multinational liberal democracy and civil rights for all members
regardless of religion or ethnicity. At
that moment, there was the possibility that the Ottoman Empire would become a
beacon of change in the world, passing such societies as the United States with
its segregrationist oppression of African Americans. This dream, unfortunately, collapsed into
authoritarianism and genocide, a tragedy first and foremost for Armenians,
Assyrians, and Greeks,[2]
but also eventually for Kurds, Turks, and all others in the Ottoman
Empire. After nearly a century of
ultra-nationalist exclusivism, oppression of minorities, and militarism, those
in Turkey pushing for change have rekindled the possibility of 1908. We are at a special point in history. Even if the direct damage of genocide can
never be undone, its long-term effects can at least be mitigated by active
engagement, and the perpetrator society can rework itself by rediscovering and
reopening positive historical trajectories that would not have led to genocide.
Second, one of the unfortunate
side-effects of the culture of denial in Turkey is that even progressive
scholars tend to look at the Armenian issue in isolation rather than in its
broader historical context. This is, of
course, laudable, as they refuse to engage in the denialist tactic of
refocusing attention away from their own history to that of other societies to
undermine attention to the Armenian Genocide.
The unfortunate truth about human history, however, is that genocide, mass
rape, slavery, apartheid, colonial domination, and aggressive war have been so
prevalent that one could tell our whole history through the sequence of these
horrors. Genocide has been a constant in
human history, from the destruction of Melos by the Athenian democracy
proclaimed as the font of Western culture to Sudan today. The past 520 years have seen a level of
bloodshed and societal destruction that belies trite Western claims of modern
social, political, cultural, and ethical progress. For instance, through the genocidal acts of
Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and most if not all
“post-colonial” states in the Western Hemisphere, led by the United States, the
pre-Columbian population of indigenous Americans went from approximately 100
million, with advanced and stable societies, to less than 10 million today,
with many in abject poverty and facing great human rights abuse and even
genocide still. The indigenous
population of the continental United States was reduced from 10 million prior
to European conquest to less than 250,000 by 1900, a destruction rate of
approximately 97 percent.[3]
We can add to the genocide and
related mass killing roll-call the Europe-wide Holocaust driven by the Nazis of
Germany but also Germany’s 1904-07 genocide of the Herero in Southwest Africa,
Britain and Australia’s genocides of the Tasmanians and the Aboriginal people,
Japan’s Nanjing Massacre, the mass killing in Britain’s colonial exploits in
Africa and South Asia, the Great Famine in Ireland, France in Algeria, Stalin’s
Ukraine Famine and other mass killings, Communist China’s destruction of
millions of political enemies, Indonesia’s 1965 genocide of 500,000 opposition
political activists, the Belgians in the Congo, the Russians in Chechnya, and the
genocides in Bangladesh, Cambodia, East Timor, Guatemala, Bosnia, and Rwanda,
to name just some from the past two centuries alone.[4] University of Hawai’i political scientist R.
J. Rummel estimates that from 1900 to 1987 governments murdered “almost 170
million [innocent, non-combatant] men, women, and children.” They “were shot, beaten, tortured, knifed,
burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned,
hanged, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have
inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners.” “Depending on whether one uses high or more
conservative estimates, the [death count from this period] could conceivably be
nearly 360 million people.”[5]
Recognizing the Armenian Genocide as
part of this broader problem of genocide and other mass violence is crucial to
understanding how it can be properly and productively confronted in Turkey
today. Genocide is a crime against
humanity and each individual genocide has its role in an overall destruction of
humanity. With this in mind, while part
of what motivates this paper are family experiences of grandparents who led the
Kaiseri area after pre-Genocide violence and during the Genocide, an equal
share is driven by the firm commitment of a U. S. citizen to recognize and make
amends for the great crimes of that country and society, the genocide of Native
Americans; slavery and apartheid against people from Africa and their progeny;
imperialist conquest of large, rich parts of Mexico; direct and indirect
actions and roles in genocides, massacres, coups, slavish exploitation, and
other mass human rights violations in the states and societies of Central and
South America; decisive support for the Shah of Iran against the
democratically-elected leadership in the 1950s; immoral imperialist aggression
against Vietnam that entailed the deaths of 2 million people, countless rapes
of girls and women by U. S. soldiers, and the purposeful introduction of toxins
into the ecosystem that still causes suffering today; human rights violations
against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan; and other such acts.
It is in this that those engaging
the Armenian Genocide and all these other cases have our solidarity, as
citizens of countries who deny the genocides,
wars of aggression, colonial conquests, and/or other human rights
violations in our histories while our governments and societies refuse to
confront them in honest and morally responsible ways. We stand in solidarity with those in Turkey,
the United States, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, Pakistan, France, Britain,
Germany, Spain, Portugal, Japan, China, Serbia, Rwanda, Cambodia, and
unfortunately many other societies around the world who have committed
themselves to an honest, unflinching, responsible, and just engagement with
their society’s past and present toward a better, truer, righteous future.
The road toward that future is a
challenging one. What is that road for
Turkey?
Much has been made of the recent
Armenia-Turkey protocols for normalizing relations between the two
countries. Is this the road toward a
morally responsible resolution of the Armenian Genocide issue?
There are two points in the
protocols with particularly important implications for the Armenian Genocide
issue. First, the agreement commits both
countries to a joint “historical commission” to determine what happened in
1915. Those who have studied the
decades-long global denial campaign by the Turkish government recognize this
for what it is, a rear-guard action attempting to undo the failure of the
denial campaign in the past decade. The
Armenian Genocide is no longer a legitimately contested issue, as the
overwhelming historical evidence has finally been taken seriously in academic,
political, and even corporate circles around the world. The Turkish government is pretending that the
past 30 years of developing clarity on the Armenian Genocide did not happen in
order to justify ignoring the vast amount of evidence available. It hopes to reinsert uncertainty into a
process that has already been settled, in order to forestall confronting
historical reality.
Second, the protocols include recognition of the
current border between Armenia and Turkey.
The Turkish government’s attempt to prevent land reparations for the
Armenian Genocide is part of a broader refusal to countenance reparations at
all. This is the major obstacle to
resolution of the Armenian Genocide issue and truly positive Armenian-Turkish
relations. To understand why, it is
necessary to examine closely at the nature of Turkish-Armenian relations in
their historical context.
Recent diplomatic initiatives to
improve the Armenian-Turkish relationship approach it as a tension generated by
rival nationalisms with attitudes of anger, prejudice, and distrust on both
sides resulting from a “difficult history” that remains a source of
disagreement. Resolution is pursued
through negotiative dialogue with the goal of reaching agreement or accord,
that is, statements from both parties stipulating that attitudes have changed
and there is no longer a tension. Even
if on both sides such statements will reflect a change in attitudes and
willingness to normalize relations and include acknowledgment of the Armenian
Genocide, no merely rhetorical shift such as this can address the legacy of the
Armenian Genocide, a material event with concrete and demonstrable political,
economic, social, cultural, familial, and military impacts that remain strong
today and are fundamental to the current relationship between the Armenian and
Turkish republics and Armenians and Turks inside and outside of these states.
The kind of purely discursive
approach that has been advocated by some within the Turkish, Armenian, and
other communities – and has been pushed by the U.S. government in particular –
is based on and fosters a complete misunderstanding of the actual nature of the
Turkish-Armenian relationship. This
approach misconstrues that relationship as an ongoing encounter between
interlocutors who negotiate freely with each other. It assumes that they function as equal
participants in a shared dynamic, each able to make free decisions in the
process, mutually affecting and affected by the other to an equal degree. But the relationship between Turkey and
Armenia and Turks and Armenians is an asymmetrical domination relation.[6] The Armenian Genocide was not an aberration
in the history of their relationship, fixed and bounded in history and thus
separable from the current situation. It
was the point at which the Committee of Union and Progress maximized the
asymmetry. That maximized domination has
persisted since the end of the direct killing of the Genocide because nothing
has been done to mitigate that domination, that is, the consequences of the
Genocide.
Perceptions of the Armenian-Turkish
relationship are skewed and inaccurate because the status and power imbalance
is ignored. This is possible because the
Armenian Genocide and its impacts are excluded from a meaningful structuring
role in the recent negotiative approach:
in no way is the Genocide-exacerbated status and power differential
addressed in a manner that would support a truly mutual interaction between
Turkey and Armenia and Turks and Armenians.
This is clear in the way that the range of Armenian nationalisms that
have their origins in the pre-Genocide struggle to protect Armenians from
violence and oppression[7]
is equated with the aggressive, racist, genocidal ultra-nationalism that drove
the Genocide and that persists in its current denial and the anti-Armenian
attitudes that continue to be present in Turkish politics and society. Quite different from extreme versions of
Turkish nationalism,[8] the
main Armenian nationalisms,[9]
however imperfect, realistically respond to the continuing post-Genocide
oppression and danger of Turkish anti-Armenianism and promote not the harm of
other groups or superiority of Armenians to others, but rather the simple
fundamental right of Armenians to exist as free, equal, and self-determining
with basic security of life. If both are
kinds of nationalism, they are fundamentally different kinds. Why should Armenian political efforts be
condemned and even vilified because of an inaccurate association with the
genocidal sins of Turkish, German, and other extremist nationalisms?
The Armenian-Turkish relationship actually
began centuries ago with the Turkish military conquest of Armenians. That conquest was then frozen into the
hierarchy of the millet system, the structure of the Ottoman state. The millet system made permanent the initial
imperial conquest, such that it reasserted that conquest as the core of the
Armenian-Turkish relationship. The
Genocide did not change this relationship but, rather, reinvigorated the
conquest by pushing it from a state of static oppression to full-scale
destruction, that is, an attempt to complete the conquest in the most brutal
manner possible.
Even those admitting the facts of the Genocide itself
frequently see the end of the Genocide as the breaking of this destruction
relation. But this is incorrect. The Genocide ended because the perpetrators’
goals were largely met – an end to the substantial presence of Armenians and
their political, social, and cultural impact on what was perceived through
nationalist extremism as Turkish territory and expropriation of almost all of
the land and other resources of the victims.
The post-Genocide relation has two
salient features. First, to the extent
that Armenians still exist and pose a conceptual and political problem for a
Turkish state based on an exclusivist Turkish nationalism, by resisting
subjugation, that is, by insisting on their basic equality and rights,
including the right to bear witness to their history, they are met with an
aggressive denial campaign that is the continuation of the Genocide by other
means. Second, in so far as the
relationship has been one of disengagement by Turkey, this disengagement
actually supports the Genocide by freezing the gains made through it. Even if Turkey ends its denial and other
political acts against Armenians, this will merely prevent further harm from
being done. It will not mitigate the
already accomplished damage done through the 1915 Genocide nor the status and
power asymmetry based on it.
The problem with the negotiative
approach to Armenian-Turkish governmental dialogue can now come into
focus. To succeed, negotiative dialogue
depends on the equality of the participants.
In negotiations between significantly unequal parties, as Armenians and
Turks are in terms of not just of economic resources, military strength,
territorial size, political support, geopolitical position, identity security,
psychological comfort, and more, but also in terms of just treatment and the
impact of history, the result is not a decrease in the level of domination and
inequality, but quite the contrary. In
the case of a status and power asymmetry, without any break on or balancing of
the dominant power, the negotiation process almost inevitably functions to
increase the power and advantage of the dominant party. This is especially true where the dominant
party is unrepentant about its past use of mass violence and aggression in
dealings with the weaker. U.S. President
Obama’s apparently progressive choice to leave Armenians and Turks free from
outside influence to work out their problems – a bitter pill for Armenians to
swallow after so many years of U.S. interference on behalf of Turkey and
crucial U.S. role in increasing Turkish power – leaves the weaker at the mercy
of the stronger.
To say that the outcome of the
present Armenian-Turkish mediation effort will place Armenians in a markedly
worse position compared to maintaining the status quo by not engaging in
negotiation from a position of dramatic disadvantage and relative weakness is
not to say that Armenians would protest the negative outcome of the
negotiation. Pressured by the
international community, Armenian leadership that is incapable and of dubious
moral character, and Turkish power and diplomatic prowess into a no-win
situation, Armenians might well feel compelled to give their approval to Turkey’s
consolidation of the benefits from the Armenian Genocide, in terms of land,
wealth, political status, and more, which could well represent the culmination
and final victory of the 1915 Genocide.
To describe fully the disadvantage
of Armenians today relative to the Turkish state and society, it is crucial to
consider the specific losses suffered by Armenians through the Genocide and the
corresponding Turkish benefits.
Irreversible harms include the Armenians killed as well as Armenians
coerced by the situation into committing suicide to avoid rape or other forms
of hyper-violence[10];
Armenian fetuses prevented from birth through direct violence or the killing of
women carrying them; the vast number of potential Armenians who would have been
born had those who would have been their parents, grandparents, or
great-grandparents not been murdered or otherwise physically or psychologically
limited in child-bearing ability; victims’ physical suffering from rape and
other tortures, starvation, thirst, disease, and so on; the pain and suffering
of psychological trauma for those who died and those who lived at the violence,
profound degradation, and torment they experienced and that they witnessed
loved ones, community members, and total strangers experiencing; losses of
family and community members, including children; and losses of social and
family networks, personal security, and religious and cultural identity. Material damages include loss of land,
buildings, businesses, products, crops and animals, money, valuables, household
goods, clothes, and so on – virtually every public and private possession of
Armenians.[11] Structural losses include social, political,
religious, and cultural formations and institutions as well as economic
networks and systems. A further loss is
all that would have been built with the labor of those who were killed,
enslaved, disabled, and/or never born.
On top of all these material damages are the passive increases in the
values of the stolen land, jewelry, etc., and the active losses of all that
would have been produced with the expropriated land and other resources and
through the functioning of businesses, political structures, and so on. Finally, there is the on-going economic,
political, social, cultural, and religious harm done to the residual Armenian
community in Turkey through oppressive policies and practices and the
anti-Armenian attitudes of the Turkish state and society.
Resulting from these losses have
been greatly reduced Armenian political status, stability, and economic
presence. As Richard Hovannisian once
commented, even if the Genocide had occurred but the first Armenian Republic
had not been subjected to conquest, renewed killings, and long-term subjugation
by Kemalist forces, there might exist today a secure, economically vibrant
regional power with a population of on the order of 20 million people.
These losses for Armenians were and
are mirrored by Turkish gains and benefits, in terms of territory, political
consolidation and status, military power, global and regional relevance,
security and prominence of national existence and identity, cultural cohesion
and internal dominance, and more. One
can argue in fact that contemporary Turkey is built more than anything else on
the material, political, military, and other gains made through the Armenian
Genocide and continues to benefit from the dramatically reduced size, status,
and power of the neighboring Armenian state.
Regardless of their effect on the
Armenian-Turkish relationship, reparations for the harms to Armenians are
clearly morally justified. While of
course nothing can ever make up for the killings, rapes, and other tortures or
the cultural, social, and other such losses, certainly something can be done,
something significant.
A specific set of reparations for
the Armenian Genocide might include the following. First is return of or compensation for
expropriated land and other wealth, when that wealth has been preserved. It should also compensate for (1) all
destroyed property and wealth that is otherwise no longer accessible, (2) the
interest that can be calculated on the original material losses, (3) slave
labor, (4) the pain and suffering of those who died and all who survived, (5)
the loss of 1.5 million people in general and as specific family and community
members, and (6) the loss of cultural, religious, and educational institutions
and opportunities. Second, Turkey must
take active steps to support the redevelopment in the Armenian Republic as well
as Genocide-produced Diaspora of Armenian social, political, economic, etc.,
structures, institutions, and capacities toward fuller reconstruction of the
victim group than has been possible under the pressure of Turkish domination
and given uncompensated Armenian losses.
This should include economic support, in the forms of investment and
trade. Third, the Turkish government
must fully admit all aspects of the Genocide, ensure meaningful knowledge of
and engagement with that history by the Turkish population, and promote broad
global awareness and understanding of the Armenian Genocide. Fourth, the Turkish state and society must go
through a rehabilitative process – which will be aided by the giving of
material reparations to Armenians – finally to extirpate all elements of
genocidal ideology, institutional practices, traditions, and forms, and to
transform prejudicial Turkish attitudes toward Armenians, including elements of
the dominant Turkish national identity built on a sense of entitled imperial
superiority to Armenians and other groups.
This process should address domination over and violence against women
universally in connection to the rape and sexual enslavement central to the
Armenian Genocide, which must be seen as having targeted Armenian women as
women as well as Armenians.
But reparations, beyond being
justified in themselves, are also crucial for meaningfully improved
Armenian-Turkish relations. While there
are many particular ethical arguments supporting reparations for the Armenian
Genocide and answering standard objections, the remainder of this paper will
focus on the ways in which reparations support a positive transformation of the
Turkish-Armenian relationship.
Some argue that democratization of
Turkey is the key to transformation of the Armenian-Turkish relationship. While democratization could be helpful in
creating the possibility of meaningful engagement with the Armenian Genocide,
in itself, however, it is not sufficient to produce this transformation. Democracy is, indeed, fully consistent with
the violation of the rights of minorities or outside groups and societies. As just one example, for more than seven
decades the democratic United States maintained a system of slavery of people
of African descent and then a segregationist system for a century after the end
of slavery. Discrimination against
minorities is still prevalent in the United States, even after more than two
centuries of supposed progress. It is
important to stress that the laws justifying enslavement of African-Americans
and segregation were enacted through democratic processes. Democratic principles apply only to those
considered full citizens of a democracy, not to those denied full human status
within and outside a democracy’s borders.
Democratic institutions must be grounded on a strong ethical commitment
to human and civil rights shared by the population and government to exclude
the possibility of oppression of minority groups and/or outsiders. If the majority of a population subscribe to
prejudicial views, then those will tend to determine legal, political,
economic, and social arrangements within the society, despite any
constitutional safeguards that would appear to militate against such
domination. As the foregoing analysis of
the Armenian-Turkish power dynamic implies, a genuine change in the attitudes
of the Turkish government or society toward Armenians requires material change
in that dynamic, which depends on a reparative engagement with the Armenian
Genocide. Only in that way can a broad
ethical commitment to human rights, including the rights of Armenians, be
coupled to democracy. Engagement of the
Armenian Genocide as a focus and because it is morally right is necessary to
any process of democratization in Turkey.
This means that engagement itself is not sufficient, as it is too easy
to treat the Armenian issue instrumentally, that is, to put engagement with it
into service of a specifically Turkish agenda that need not ultimately address
Armenians.
One typical objection to reparations
is that Turkish people today did not perpetrate the Genocide and so it is
unfair to require them to give up land they might have purchased long after the
Genocide with hard-earned money and, directly or indirectly, to pay
compensation for other damages. There
are two points of response that should be considered. First, today’s Turkey and many Turks derive
great material benefit from the Genocide, including continuing to profit from
land, businesses, and other property seized through the Genocide. These are things they would not otherwise have
if not for the Genocide and which thus cannot be said to be rightfully theirs
even today.[12] Second, even if this first point is not
accepted or in cases in which, for instance, a person has not derived
demonstrable benefit from the Genocide, it is crucial to analyze the unfairness
of the situation further. If one holds
that payment of reparations will be unfair for some contemporary Turks, the
cause of that unfairness is not Armenians, but the perpetrators of the Armenian
Genocide who created the situation that exists today. It is their own ancestors who have forced
contemporary Turks into this situation.
What is more, Armenians have borne and continue to bear an inestimably greater
burden of genocidal consequences. The
past unfairly forces these burdens on Armenians today, who have no choice in
the matter. Even if Turkey gives the
fullest possible reparation package, contemporary Turks will still bear only a
fraction of the burden forced on today’s Armenians. By taking that burden on, Turkish people will
demonstrate their willingness to share at least part of the tremendous impact
of the Genocide. This will signal an
important shift in mainstream Turkish attitudes. Far beyond a rhetorical act of Genocide
acknowledgment without material consequences, reparations will mean that
Turkish people are ready to share the reality of the post-Genocide experience
in order to create the foundation for a new relationship built on mutual
respect, truth, and responsibility.
Another objection is that pushing
for reparations will alienate many well-intentioned Turks and thereby undermine
potential improvements in Armenian-Turkish relations. It is even likely to produce a backlash of
resentment against Armenians for their perceived taking advantage of Turks or
intent to undermine the “territorial integrity” of Turkey as misperceived
through the prism of the dominant Turkish nationalism. But if reparations (1) are objectively right
and fair and (2) should be embraced by Turks truly committed to doing the right
thing and respecting Armenian rights, then this kind of resistance would
actually show that those resisting hold deep anti-Armenian attitudes and
approve of the Genocide implicitly if not explicitly. If good relations with Turks depend on
Armenians not asking for basic justice and respect for their rights, then this
means that nothing will have changed in the Turkish-Armenian domination
relationship. Armenian-Turkish dialogue
will hide and leave intact the anti-Armenian prejudice present in Turkish
culture and politics. As long as
Armenians defer to Turkish interests, power, and insecurities, there will be no
tensions, but as soon as Armenians expect to be treated as real human beings
with respected rights, the anti-Armenianism lurking beneath the surface of Turkish
society will emerge,[13]
as it did in the assassination of Hrant Dink, whether a calculated message to
Armenians or a spontaneous assertion of destructiveness and dominance.
Only when there is no Turkish
resentment regarding reparations but recognition of their moral correctness
will genuine progress in Armenian-Turkish relations be evident. Reparations will represent a material
sacrifice by Turks that will show genuine good faith toward Armenians and
confirm that changed rhetoric corresponds to real transformation of underlying
attitudes and practices. Reparations
will also alter the material situation of Armenians and create the necessary
material foundation for a more balanced Armenian-Turkish status and power
dynamic. Even if the giving of reparations
does produce negative reactions among Turks, this will be a positive part of
the dialogue process by exposing the deep-seated negative attitudes embedded in
aspects of Turkish culture and institutions so that Turkish people can honestly
confront them.
The refusal by most Turks to
entertain the notion of land reparations is a particularly telling example of
the persisting attitudes that are the true obstacle to meaningful progress in
Turkish-Armenian relations. Those who
hold the view that Turkish “territorial integrity” is sacrosanct such that even
lands taken from Armenians through genocide are now perceived to be inherently
and inalienably Turkish in fact maintain the same genocidal ideology that
motivated and justified violent Turkification of these lands. To view Armenian lands as Turkish is to
embrace the results of the Genocide; responsible engagement requires rejecting
the fruits of genocide.
As asserted already, reparations
will also mitigate the concrete material inequality and domination that are
mirrored in the attitudes just discussed.
While of course reparations will not make Armenia and Turkey and
Armenians and Turks materially equal, they will mitigate the material
inequality while also guaranteeing the material security of Armenians. What is more, they will be coupled with an
attitude change that will represent a commitment by most Turks against the
status and power asymmetry, which will further mitigate its effects.
This brings the issue back to the
initial discussion of the global context of the Armenian issue. What makes pursuit of reparations for the
Genocide not just not a naïve hope but a genuine political possibility is the
new global reparations movement that has coalesced in recent years, with
various groups participating, from African Americans and Native Americans to
former Comfort Women victimized as sexual slaves by Japan during the Pacific
War and South Africans victimized by Apartheid.
Reparations for genocide, colonialism, slavery, mass rape, corporate
harm and exploitation, and more could well be one of the central global
political issues of the 21st Century and the movement for reparative
justice one of the more significant political forces in this century. The global reparations movement is the
cornerstone of a new vision of social, political, and economic progress and
justice emerging today. Armenian
reparation efforts can and should be considered part of this global movement.
[1] This paper largely follows “Restorative
Justice and Alleviating the Consequences of Genocide,” in The Armenian Genocide and International Law, edited by Antranik
Dakessian (in English, forthcoming 2012), which in turn is based on remarks
presented in Ankara, Turkey, on 25 April 2010 as part of the “Ermeni
Meselesi: Ne ve Nasil Yapmali?” panel at
the “1915 Within Its Pre- and Post-historical Periods: Denial and Confrontation” Symposium, 24-25
April 2010, and “Restorative Justice and Alleviating the Consequences of
Genocide,” a paper presented on 4 September 2009 at the “Armenian Genocide and
International Law” Symposium held in Beirut, Lebanon, 2-4 September 2009.
The present paper is dedicated to
Dennis Brutus, a great South African human rights activist and poet who lived
his life as an endless inspiration for those struggling against Apartheid in
South Africa and violence and oppression around the globe. Dennis passed away in December 2009 at the
age of 85. His papers form the Dennis
Brutus Collection, housed at Worcester State University.
[2] My work focuses on reparations for the
Armenian Genocide. While claims of the
progeny of Ottoman Greeks and Assyrians are just as important, I lack the case
expertise necessary to a full treatment of them and, because I am not a member
of either group, do not have the political legitimacy to formulate claims about
reparations on behalf of members of those groups. I do hope, however, that a reparative
dialogue between the Turkish government and these groups develops.
[3] See, for example, Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of
Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the
Americas, 1492 to the Present (San
Francisco: City Lights, 1997), and Gerard
Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be
Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age
of Oil (New York: Harper Collins,
1995).
[4] On the history of genocide and many of the
cases that are part of it, see Israel Charny, editor, The Encyclopedia of Genocide, Vols. 1 and 2 (Santa Barbara,
CA: ABC-Clio, 1999), Frank Chalk and
Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology
of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1990), and Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons, editors, Century of Genocide: Critical
Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, 3rd edition (New York: Routledge, 2009).
[5] R. J. Rummel, “The New Concept of
Democide,” in The Encyclopedia of
Genocide, Vol. 1, edited by Israel Charny (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1999), pp. 18-23.
[6] I introduced this approach in “Toward a
New Conceptual Framework for Resolution: The Necessity of Recognizing the
Perpetrator-Victim Dominance Relation in the Aftermath of Genocide,” panel
paper, International Association of Genocide Scholars 6th Biennial Conference, Boca
Raton, FL, June 7, 2005. For more
detailed analyses of elements of this issue, see “Rethinking Dehumanization in
Genocide,” in The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, edited by
Richard Hovannisian (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Press, 2007), pp. 27-40; “Post-Genocide Imperial
Domination,” in Controversy and
Debate: Special Armenian Genocide Insert
of the Armenian Weekly, April 24, 2007, pp. 6-8, 26; and “From Past
Genocide to Present Perpetrator-Victim Group Relations,” in Commemorating Genocide: Images, Perspectives, Research: Special Armenian Genocide issue of the Armenian
Weekly, April 26, 2008, pp. 2-6.
In the present article, I have gone
from “power asymmetry” to “status and power asymmetry” to capture an additional
dimension of the problem, that genocide not only has direct material impacts on
the power and viability of the victim group, but it also alters the status of
that group in political and other terms that are in part dependent on the
lesser value accorded the victims even by non-perpetrator group members. Even where there is great sympathy for
victims, this appears always coupled with a sense of their inferiority. Indeed, the very fact that they need sympathy
grounds this inferiorizing devaluation.
[7] See Richard G. Hovannisian, “The
Historical Dimensions of the Armenian Question, 1978-1923,” in The Armenian Genocide in Perspective,
edited by Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1986), pp. 19-41.
[8] It is crucial to recognize that not all
Turkish nationalisms are these kinds of ultra-nationalism. For instance, those alternative forms that
promote human rights are not.
[9] This includes the views typical of the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation, for instance, however much these are
demonized in certain Turkish and, in the past, Armenian circles. It does not, however, extend to the
ideologies of such groups as the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of
Armenia (ASALA), the program of which included the use of terrorism.
[10] See, for instance, Donald E. Miller and
Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An
Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp.
103-05.
[11] A noteworthy example of the extensive
evidence of these material losses is Grigoris Balakian, Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of
the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918, translated by Peter Balakian with Aris
Sevag (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009),
especially Chapter 22, “Confessions of a Slayer Captain,” pp. 139-50. In “The Economic Aspect of the Armenian
Genocide in the Diyarbaker Region” (public lecture, Haigazian University,
Beirut, Lebanon, September 4, 2009), Uğur Ümit Üngör presented ground-breaking
new research on one portion of these losses.
[12] See, for instance, Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New
York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 150-53.
[13] This follows the line of analysis
regarding racism against African Americans in the United States made by Kibibi
Tyehimba in the paper she gave as part of the “Reparations as Justice Panel” of
the “Armenians and the Left Conference,” City University of New York Graduate
Center, April 7-8, 2006, on April 8.
Gönderen:
Sait Çetinoğlu
[cetinoglus@gmail.com]
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder
Not: Yalnızca bu blogun üyesi yorum gönderebilir.