The following interview with Ümit Kurt tackles how the
physical annihilation of the Armenians paralleled the confiscation and
appropriation of their properties in 1915. By citing the various laws and
decrees that orchestrated the confiscation process, Kurt places our
understanding of the genocide within a legal context.
The Confiscation
of Armenian Properties: An Interview with Ümit Kurt Umit Kurt
Ümit Kurt is a native of Aintab, Turkey, and holds a
bachelor of science degree in political science and public administration from
Middle East Technical University, and a master’s degree from Sabancı
University’s department of European studies. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate
in the department of history at Clark University and an instructor at Sabancı
University. He is the author of several books, including Kanunların Ruhu:
Emval-i Metruke Kanunlarında Soykırımın İzlerini Aramak (The Spirit of Laws:
Seeking the Traces of Armenian Genocide in the Laws of Abandoned Property,
2012) with Taner Akçam. His main area of interest is the confiscation of
Armenian properties and the role of local elites/notables in Aintab during the
genocide. Below is the full text of the interview Kurt granted The Armenian
Weekly earlier this month.
***
Varak Ketsemanian: What were the laws and regulations
that governed the confiscation of Armenian properties during the genocide?
Ümit Kurt: A series of laws and decrees, known as the
Abandoned Properties Laws (Emval-i Metruke Kanunları), were issued in the
Ottoman and Turkish Republican periods concerning the administration of the
belongings left behind by the Ottoman Armenians who were deported in 1915. The
best-known regulation on the topic is the comprehensive Council of Ministers
Decree, dated May 30, 1915. The Directorate of Tribal and Immigrant Settlement
of the Interior Ministry (İskan-ı Aşâir ve Muhacirin Müdiriyeti) sent it the
following day to relevant provinces organized in 15 articles. It provided the
basic principles in accordance with which all deportations and resettlements
would be conducted, and began with listing the reasons for the Armenian
deportations. The most important provision concerning Armenian properties was
the principle that their equivalent value was going to be provided to the
deportees.
The importance of the decree of May 30 and the regulation
of May 31 lie in the following: The publication of a series of laws and decrees
were necessary in order to implement the general principles that were announced
in connection with the settlement of the Armenians and the provision of the
equivalent values of their goods. This never happened. Instead, laws and
decrees began to deal with only one topic: the confiscation of the properties
left behind by the Armenians.
umit book 199x300 The Confiscation of Armenian
Properties: An Interview with Ümit Kurt The cover of ‘The Spirit of Laws’
Another regulation was carried out on June 10, 1915. This
34-article ordinance regulated in a detailed manner how the property and goods
the Armenians left behind would be impounded by the state. The June 10, 1915
regulation was the basis for the creation of a legal system suitable for the
elimination of the material living conditions of the Armenians, as it took away
from the Armenians any right of disposal of their own properties. Article 1 of
the June 10, 1915 regulation announced that “committees formed in a special
manner” were going to be created for the administration of the “immovable
property, possessions, and lands being left belonging to Armenians who are
being transported to other places, and other matters.”
The most important of these committees were the Abandoned
Properties Commissions (Emval-i Metruke Komisyonları). These commissions and
their powers were regulated by Articles 23 and 24. The commissions were each
going to be comprised of three people, a specially appointed chairman, an
administrator, and a treasury official, and would work directly under to the
Ministry of the Interior.
The most important steps toward the appropriation of
Armenian cultural and economic wealth were the Sept. 26, 1915 law of 11
articles, and the 25-article regulation of Nov. 8, 1915 on how the
aforementioned law would be implemented.
Many matters were covered in a detailed fashion in the
law and the regulation, including the creation of two different types of
commissions with different tasks called the Committees and Liquidation
Commissions (Heyetler ve Tasfiye Komisyonları); the manner in which these commissions
were to be formed; the conditions of work, including wages; the distribution of
positions and powers among these commissions and various departments of
ministries and the state; the documents necessary for applications by creditors
to whom Armenians owed money; aspects of the relevant courts; the rules to be
followed during the process of liquidation of properties; the different ledgers
to be kept, and how they were to be kept; and examples of relevant ledgers.
This characteristic of the aforementioned law and regulation is the most
important indication of the desire not to return to the Armenians their
properties or their equivalent value.
The Temporary Law of Sept. 26, 1915 is also known as the
Liquidation Law (Tasfiye Kanunu). Its chief goal was the liquidation of
Armenian properties. According to its first article, commissions were to be
established to conduct the liquidation. These commissions were to prepare
separate reports for each person about the properties, receivable accounts, and
debts “abandoned by actual and juridical persons who are being transported to
other places.” The liquidation would be conducted by courts on the basis of
these reports.
The temporary law also declared that a regulation would
be promulgated about the formation of the commissions and how the provisions of
the law would be applied. This regulation, which was agreed upon on Nov. 8,
1915, regulated in a detailed fashion the protection of the movable and
immovable property of Armenians who were being deported, the creation of new
committees for liquidation issues, and the working principles of the
commissions. The two-part regulation with 25 articles moreover included
explanatory information on what had to be included in the record books to be
kept during the liquidation process, and how these record books were to be
used.
In brief, these were the major legal rules and
regulations in 1915.
VK: How did the Ottoman government deal with the property
of Armenians living in Istanbul, since no actual massacres took place in the
capital? Were there laws for them, too?
UK: It is very important to note that these laws and
statutes were known as the Abandoned Properties Laws, which was the official
euphemism and an established term in the CUP propaganda to characterize the expropriation
of the Armenians, and were merely applied to deported Armenians. Movable and
immovable properties of Armenians who were not deported were not subjected to
the Abandoned Properties Laws. As known, there were some Armenians deported
from Istanbul—of course, very limited compared to Western Armenia—and
properties of those deported Armenians in Istanbul also went through this
process of confiscation, expropriation, and liquidation of their properties.
VK: How does the concept of confiscation and destruction
of property help us understand the broader picture of the genocide?
UK: Actually, a new group of critical genocide scholars
has started to come up with a new definition of genocide by taking into
consideration the confiscation and destruction of property and wealth of the
victim groups. In doing so, these critical genocide scholars have brought
Raphael Lemkin’s original definition of genocide to the attention of existing
genocide scholarship.
I see Raphael Lemkin as the founding father of genocide
literature. Lemkin introduced the concept of genocide for the first time in
1944 in his book entitled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. The book consists of a
compilation of 334 laws, decrees, and regulations connected with the
administration of 17 different regions and states under Nazi occupation between
March 13, 1938 and Nov. 13, 1942. That is to say, Lemkin did not introduce the
concept of genocide together with the barbaric practices like torture,
oppression, burning, destruction, and mass killing observed in all genocides,
but through a book quoting and analyzing legal texts. Could this be a
coincidence?
Given its importance, it is necessary to stress this one
more time: In the year that Lemkin completed the writing of his book (1943), he
already knew of all the crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germany. However, he did not
present the concept of genocide in a framework elucidated by these crimes. On
the contrary, he introduced it through some laws and decrees that were
published on how to administer occupied territories and that perhaps in the
logic of war might be considered “normal.” We cannot say that this situation
accords well with our present way of understanding genocide. In the general
perception, genocide is the collapse of a normally functioning legal system; it
is the product of the deviation of the system from the “normal” path. According
to this point of view, genocide means that the institutions of “civilization”
are not working and are replaced by barbarism. Lemkin, however, seems to be saying
the complete opposite of this, that genocide is hidden in ordinary legal texts.
By doing this, it is as if he is telling us not to look for the traces of
genocide as barbaric manifestations that can be defined as inhuman, but to
follow their trail in legal texts.
Genocide as a phenomenon fits inside the legal
system—this is an interesting definition. And this definition is one of the
central theses of our book. The Armenian Genocide does not just exist in the
displays of barbarity carried out against the Armenians. It is at the same time
hidden in a series of ordinary legal texts.
What we wish to say in our book is that genocide does not
only mean physical annihilation. Going even further, we can assert that we are
faced with a phenomenon in which whether the Armenians were physically
annihilated or not, is but a detail. How many Armenians died during the course
of the deportations/destruction or how many remained alive is just a secondary
issue from a definitional point of view; what is important is the complete
erasure of the traces of the Armenians from their ancient homeland.
The total destruction of the Armenians marked the fact
that a government tried to eliminate a particular group of its own citizens in
an effort to settle a perceived political problem. Between 1895 and 1922,
Ottoman Armenians suffered massive loss of life and property as a result of
pogroms, massacres, and other forms of mass violence. The 1915 Armenian
Genocide can be seen as the pinnacle of this process of decline and destruction.
It consisted of a series of genocidal strategies: the mass executions of
elites, categorical deportations, forced assimilation, destruction of material
culture, and collective dispossession. The state-orchestrated plunder of
Armenian property immediately impoverished its victims; this was simultaneously
a condition for and a consequence of the genocide. The seizure of the Armenian
property was not just a byproduct of the CUP’s genocidal policies, but an
integral part of the murder process, reinforcing and accelerating the intended
destruction. The expropriation and plunder of deported Armenians’ movable and
immovable properties was an essential component of the destruction process of
Armenians.
As Martin Dean argues in Robbing the Jews: The
Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933-1945, ethnic cleansing
and genocide usually have a “powerful materialist component: seizure of
property, looting of the victims, and their economic displacement are
intertwined with other motives for racial and interethnic violence and
intensify their devastating effects.” In the same vein, the radicalization of
CUP policies against the Armenian population from 1914 onward was closely
linked to a full-scale assault on their property.
Thus, the institutionalization of the elimination of the
Christian-Armenian presence was basically realized, along with many other
things, through the Abandoned Properties Laws. These laws are structural
components of the Armenian Genocide and one of the elements connected to the
basis of the legal system of the Republican period. It is for this reason that
we say that the Republic adopted this genocide as its structural foundation.
This reminds us that we must take a fresh look at the relationship between the
Republic as a legal system and the Armenian Genocide.
The Abandoned Properties Laws are perceived as “normal
and ordinary” laws in Turkey. Their existence has never been questioned in this
connection. Their consideration as natural is also an answer as to why the
Armenian Genocide was ignored throughout the history of the Republic. This
“normality” is equivalent to the consideration of a question as non-existent.
Turkey is founded on the transformation of a presence—Christian in general,
Armenian in particular—into an absence.
This picture also shows us a significant aspect of
genocide as Lemkin pointed out. Genocide is not only a process of destruction
but also that of construction. By the time genocide perpetrators are destroying
one group, they are also constructing another group or identity. Confiscation
is an indispensable and one of the most effective mechanisms for perpetrators
to realize the aforementioned process of destruction and construction.
VK: What happened to the property after it was seized
from the Armenians?
UK: Most of the Armenians properties were distributed to
Muslim refugees from the Balkans and Caucasia at that time. Central and local
politicians and bureaucrats of the Union and Progress Party also made use of
Armenian properties.
The exhaustive process of administering and selling the
property usually involved considerable administrative efforts, employing
hundreds of local staff. Economic discrimination and plunder contributed
directly to the CUP’s process of destruction in a variety of ways. At the direct
level of implementation, the prospect of booty helped to motivate the local
collaborators in various massacres and the deportation orchestrated by the CUP
security forces in Anatolia in general.
The CUP cadres were quite aware that the retention of the
Armenian property would give the local people a material stake in the
deportation of the Armenians. In many cities of Anatolia, especially local
notables and provincial elites who had close connections with the CUP obtained
and owned most of the properties and wealth of Armenians. This process was
realized in Aintab, Diyarbekir, Adana, Maras, Kilis, and other cities in the
whole Anatolia. For my Ph.D. dissertation project, I am exploring how Armenians
properties and wealth changed hands and were taken over by local elites of the
city during the genocide.
Similar to the policy of Nazi leaders regarding the
“Aryan”ization of Jewish property in the Holocaust, the CUP aimed to have
complete control over the confiscation and expropriation of Armenian properties
for the economic interests of the state, but could not prevent incidents of
corruption from taking place.
It should be emphasized that corruption was fairly rift
among bureaucrats and officers of the Abandoned Properties Commissions and
Liquidation Commissions who were the responsible actors for administering and
confiscating Armenian properties under the supervision and for the advantage of
the state, as did happen in the “Aryan”ization of Jewish property.
Despite the widespread incidence of private plunder and
corruption, there is no doubt that the seizure of Armenian property in the
Ottoman Empire was primarily a state-directed process linked closely to the
development of the Armenian Genocide. However, the widespread participation of
the local population as beneficiaries of the Armenian property served to spread
complicity, and also legitimize the CUP’s measures against the Armenians.
A number of leading members of the Central Committee of
the Union and Progress Party, as well as CUP-oriented governors and
mutasarrıfs, seized a great deal of property, especially those belonging to
affluent Armenians in many vilayets. In addition, according to one argument,
CUP leaders also utilized Armenian property and wealth to meet the deportation
expenses.
Also, it is worth mentioning an important detail on the
National Tax Obligations (Tekâlif-i Milliye) orders. This topic is important to
show the Nationalist movement’s viewpoint concerning the Armenians, and also
Greeks and the properties they left behind. The National Tax Obligations Orders
were issued by command of Mustafa Kemal, the head of the Grand National
Assembly and commander-in-chief of the Turkish Nationalist army, to finance the
War of Independence against Greece. The abandoned properties of Armenians were
also seen as an important source of financing for the war between 1919 and
1922.
After the establishment of the Turkish Republic, in 1926,
Turkish Grand National Assembly passed a law. This law was promulgated and
enforced on June 27, 1926. According to this law, Turkish governmental
officers, politicians, and bureaucrats who were executed as a result of their
roles in the Armenian deportations or who were murdered by Dashnaks were
declared “national heroes,” and so-called Abandoned Properties of Armenians
were given to their families.
And finally in 1928, the Turkish Republic introduced a
new regulation that granted muhacirs or Muslim refugees who were using Armenian
properties the right to have the title deeds of those properties, which
included houses, lands, field crops, and shops.
As you can see, a variety of actors and institutions
seized properties and wealth that the deported Armenians were forced to leave
behind.
VK: What did this entire process of confiscation and
appropriation represent, on the one hand to the Ottoman Elite, and on the other
to the average Turk? Was it an ideological principle or a mere motivating
element for further destruction?
UK: We should be very cautious when giving a proper
answer to this question. Also, in my view, this aspect of the Armenian Genocide
should be compared with the “Aryan”ization of Jewish properties in the
Holocaust. We can see palpable resemblances between these two dispossession
processes.
It is obvious that the material stake for the average
Turkey played a significant role in his/her participation in the destruction
process of Armenians. Economic motivation was always present and enabled CUP
central actors to carry out their ultra-nationalist ideological policies
against Armenians in terms of gaining the support and consent of average
Turkish-Muslim people.
To have a better appreciation of the motivation of the
average Turk, one should look at what happened at the local level—which means
we need more local and micro studies in order to understand how the deportation
and genocide alongside the plunder and pillage of Armenian properties took
place in various localities in Anatolia.
The process of genocide and deportation directed at the
Armenians was, in fact, put into practice by local notables and provincial
elites. These local actors prospered through the acquisition of Armenians’
property and wealth, transforming them into the new wealthy social stratum. In
this respect, the Union and Progress Party’s genocide and deportation decree on
May 27, 1915 had a certain social basis through the practice of effective
power, control, and support mechanism(s) at local levels. Therefore, a more
accentuated focus on the local picture or the periphery deserves closer
examination.
The function of the stolen Armenian assets in the
Turkification process makes the confiscation of Armenian properties a social
matter. In this respect, the wide variety of participants and the dynamic
self-radicalization of the CUP and state institutions at the local level need
to be examined. Although the CUP was involved throughout the confiscation
process and was fully in charge of it, the collaboration of local institutions
and officers also played a considerable role. The local institutions and
offices could not operate in complete isolation from their respective societies
and the prevailing attitudes in them.
The expropriation of the Armenians, therefore, was not
limited simply to the implementation of the CUP orders, but was also linked to
the attitude of local societies towards the Armenians, that is, to the
different forms of Armenian hatred. As in the empire, the corruptive influence
that spread with the enrichment from Armenian properties in Anatolia could also
have led to various forms of accommodation of CUP policies. The robbery of the
property is also a useful barometer to assess the relations of various local
populations toward the CUP, to the CUP central and local authorities, and also
toward the Armenian population in each city.
With regard to the widespread collaboration of parts of
the local populace in measures taken against the Armenians, the distribution of
a great amount of the Armenian property provided a useful incentive that
reinforced hatred for the local Armenians as well as other political and personal
motives.
One should keep in mind the fact that the participation
of local people is a necessary condition to ensure the effectiveness of
genocidal policies. Planned extermination of all members of a given category of
people is impossible without the involvement of their neighbors—the only ones
who know who is who in a local community.
Therefore, the entire process of confiscation can be
evaluated and construed as both an ideological principle and economic
motivation. These two aspects cannot be separated from each other in our
analysis. In my view, the ideological principle was hugely supported and
complemented by economic motivation and material stakes. In some instances,
ideology played a more significant role than economic motivation, and in other
instances economic interests came into prominence vis-à-vis ideology. Yet, in
any case, these two parameters were on the ground and constituted effective
mechanisms and dynamic in the confiscation, plunder, and seizure of Armenian
material wealth.
Related Articles:
The Armenian district of Adana in ruins (Source: The
Armenian Genocide Museum Institute)A History of Destruction: The Fate of
Armenian Church Properties in Adana [i] Armenian Weekly editor Khatchig
Mouradian.Mouradian to Discuss Turkey’s Confiscation of Christian Churches at
Armenian Cause 2.0 A 1918 photo of the Armenian church in Trabzon, which was
used as a depot and distribution center for confiscated property. (Photo from
Raymond Kévorkian and Paul Paboudjian's book "Les Arméniens à la veille du
génocide."Confiscation and Colonization: The Young Turk Seizure of
Armenian Property
Sassounian: Federal Judge Wrongfully Dismisses Lawsuit on
Armenian Properties in Turkey
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About Varak Ketsemanian
Varak Ketsemanian recently received his Bachelor of Arts
in Philosophy (with a minor in History) from the American University of Beirut
(AUB). His articles have appeared in the Lebanese Armenian Aztag Daily and
AUB’s Outlook. He is currently interning at the Armenian Weekly offices in
Boston. More Posts
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