Geoffrey Robertson
In 1915 Britain was determined to expose the Armenian
genocide, so why have we since downgraded it to a ‘tragedy’? Just before the invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler urged his
generals to show no mercy towards its people – there would be no retribution,
because “after all, who now remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?” As
the centenary of the Armenian genocide approaches – it began on 24 April 1915,
with the rounding up and subsequent “disappearance” of intellectuals and
community leaders in Constantinople – remembrance of the destruction of more
than half of the Armenian people is more important than ever. (Armenians mark the anniversary of the massacre of their people, in 2014. Photograph: Karen Minasyan/Getty Images)
The “Young Turks” who ran the Ottoman government did not use
gas ovens, but they did massacre the men, and sent the women, children and
elders on death marches through the desert to places we only hear of now
because they are overrun by Isis. They died en route in their hundreds of
thousands from starvation or attack, and many survivors died of typhus in
concentration camps at the end of the line. The government ordered these forced
deportations in 1915, and then passed laws to seize their lands and homes and
churches on the pretext that they had been “abandoned”.
The destruction of more than 1 million Armenians was
declared a “crime against humanity” by Britain, France and Russia in 1915, and
these allies formally promised punishment for what a US inquiry at the end of
the war described as “a colossal crime – the wholesale attempt on a race”. But
the Treaty of Sèvres, designed to punish the Young Turks for this “colossal
crime” – now called “genocide” – was never implemented. Modern Turkey
reportedly funds a massive genocide denial campaign, claiming that the death
marches were merely “relocations” required by military necessity and that the
massacres (the Euphrates was so packed with bodies that it altered its course)
were the work of a few “unruly’ officials. In Turkey, today, you can go to jail
– and some do – for affirming that there was a genocide in 1915; this counts as
the crime of “insulting Turkishness” under Section 301 of its criminal code.
Conversely, in some European countries, it counts as a crime
to deny the Armenian genocide. The parliaments of many democracies – France,
Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Russia, Greece and Canada, for example,
recognise it explicitly, as do 43 states of the US. The problem is that Turkey
– “neuralgic” on the subject (the word used privately by the British Foreign
Office to describe its attitude) – has threatened reprisals and is too
important geopolitically to provoke by affirming the genocide, lest it carry
out threats to close its airbases to Nato and its borders to refugees. Thus
Barack Obama, who roundly condemned the Armenian genocide in 2008 and promised
to do so when elected president, dares not utter the “g” word. Instead, he
calls it Meds Yeghern (Armenian for “the great crime”) and asserts that his
opinion has not changed, although you must Google his 2008 campaign speech to
discover his opinion that it was genocide.
As for Britain, the story is even stranger. No nation, in
1915, was more determined to expose and punish what it termed a “crime against
humanity”. The evidence of the atrocities collected in Arnold Toynbee’s Blue
Book, although published by the government for propaganda purposes, has
withstood all attempts to discredit it. Winston Churchill condemned the
“infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians … in one administrative
Holocaust”, and Britain even attempted to put some of the perpetrators on trial
in Malta, only to find that there was no international criminal law at the time
to punish government officials for killing their own people. However, in recent
years, the FCO has briefed ministers to call the events a “tragedy” but to deny
genocide because “the evidence is not sufficiently unequivocal” – an oxymoronic
term (something is either unequivocal or it is not).
The FCO certainly knew that this “genocide equivocation” was
dodgy: one internal memo obtained under the Freedom of Information Act admits
that “HMG is open to criticism in terms of the ethical dimension. But given the
importance of our relations (political, strategic and commercial) with Turkey …
the current line is the only feasible option.” Ministers were also advised to
avoid attendance at any commemoration of the Armenian genocide, and to avoid
any mention of it at Holocaust Day memorials.
This position could not hold, especially after the
International Court of Justice declared the Bosnian Serbs guilty of genocide at
Srebrenica, for killing 8,000 men and deporting up to 25,000 women and
children. The claim that the evidence is “not sufficiently unequivocal” was
then abandoned by the FCO (although the Turkish government website claims that
this is still the UK’s position), and the search began for a formula that could
answer the question: “Will HMG recognise the Armenian genocide?” without
answering the question.
Now, the FCO claims to empathise with the “suffering” of the
Armenian people in the “tragedy” of 1915, and says it is not for governments to
decide a “complex legal question”. It has thus moved the “line” from genocide
equivocation to genocide avoidance – a move slightly in the right direction.
Last year there was even talk at the FCO of giving to the Armenian Genocide
Museum copies of some files in the National Archives attesting to the Ottoman
atrocities: this was turned down, ostensibly because the photocopying costs of
£431.20 could not be afforded, but probably because the Turks would go
ballistic.
The FCO files recently recorded ministerial approval for
“more active participation” in centenary events, but there has, as yet, been no
lifting of the ban on reference to the Armenian genocide on Holocaust Memorial
Day. The real test of this government’s willingness to accept historical truth
will be whether it sends a senior minister – or any minister at all – to the
genocide commemoration in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, on 24 April. Ministers
will be present at Gallipoli for the centenary of the ill-fated British-Anzac
Dardanelles landing on 25 April, and it would be simple for them to fly there
from Yerevan, were it not for the certainty that Turkey would deny them entry.
The Dardanelles landings were in fact the trigger for the
commencement of the genocide, and (together with Russian military activity on
Turkey’s eastern front) were used as an excuse for the destruction of the
Armenians, on the pretext that they might support the allied invasion. But the
evidence of the government’s genocidal intent is overwhelming, coming as it
does from appalled German and Italian diplomats and neutral Americans, to whom
the Young Turk leaders admitted that they were going to eliminate “the Armenian
problem” by eliminating the Armenians.
There can never be justification for genocide. This was
understood by Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who coined the word and worked
tirelessly to have the annihilation of the Armenians recognised as an
international crime. In 1948 the UN’s Genocide Convention achieved Lemkin’s
objective. Its definition of the crime includes the destruction of part of a
racial or religious group by, for example, inflicting on it life-threatening
conditions (such as death marches). Applied to 1915, this produces a verdict of
guilt, beyond reasonable doubt.
It was, of course, a century ago: does it still matter? A
century is just within living memory: last year a 103-year-old woman, once a
small child carried by her mother across burning sands, took tea with Obama and
the world’s most famous Armenian descendant (Kim Kardashian!). The mental scars
and psychological trauma for the children and grandchildren of survivors
throughout the diaspora will continue until Turkey acknowledges the crime, and
offers an apology.
International law may provide some assistance: there are
assets expropriated in 1915 that can still be traced, and many ruined churches
that can be restored and returned. Armenians want restoration of their historic
lands in eastern Turkey, which is asking too much (although I have suggested
that the majestic Mount Ararat, overlooking Yerevan, might be handed over by
Turkey as an act of reconciliation). But what they want most is what they are
plainly entitled to have: an acknowledgment from Turkey, and for that matter
from the UK, that what happened to their people in 1915 was not a tragedy but a
crime. A crime against humanity – as Britain said in 1915, and should, in 2015,
repeat.
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