Preventing the Denial of the Armenian Genocide

The denial of genocide is a tragic aftermath of mass killing that affects the victims’ successors and society at large, particularly when the perpetrators go unpunished and unaccountable. In this article, we will examine whether the term “genocide” applies to what historian Arnold Toynbee referred to as “the murder of a nation.”

In 1915, the Ottoman government ordered the deportation of as many as two million Armenians from Anatolia and other Ottoman provinces. They were forced to march towards Syria, and along the way, hundreds of thousands perished from sickness, starvation, and brutal attacks. Additionally, that year Armenians were subjected to other atrocities merely because of their Christian religion and race, including the arrest of hundreds of intellectuals in Constantinople on April 24th.

Britain, France, and Russia jointly and formally accused the ‘Young Turk’ government of being responsible for what these governments called a “crime against humanity”[1]Joint Declaration of France, Great Britain and Russia, 28 May 1915. United Nations War Crimes Commission, London HMSO 1948, p 35.. These allies collectively agreed to bring the perpetrators to justice, and this commitment was included in the Treaty of Sèvres. The UK arrested 67 Turkish officials who were indicted for ordering these atrocities and put them on trial in Malta. However, they were eventually released for diplomatic reasons.

Before the Nuremberg Charter of 1946, there was no precedent in international criminal law or court for punishing political and military leaders of a sovereign state for the mass killing of their citizens on the basis of racial or religious reasons. The brutal elimination of a significant number of Armenians in Turkey led to the creation of a new crime called Genocide.

On 2 December 1948, the Sixth Committee of the UN General Assembly produced a new text that the General Assembly adopted a week later as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 

When recollecting his view at the time, Lloyd George, who was the Prime Minister, did not mince his words:

By these atrocities, almost unparalleled in the black record of Turkish rule, the Armenian population was reduced in numbers by well over one million … If we succeeded in defeating this inhuman empire, one essential condition of the peace we should impose was the redemption of the Armenian valleys forever from the bloody misrule with which they had been stained by the infamies of the Turk. [2]Lloyd George, Memoirs of the Peace Conference (Yale University Press, 1939), Vol 2, pp 811–12

Winston Churchill, who was a notable historian himself, saw it:

In 1915 the Turkish government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor … whole districts were blotted out in one administrative holocaust … there is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons. [3]Winston Churchill, The World Crisis: The Aftermath (Thornton Butter-worth, 1929) p 405.

The term “Genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin, who combined the Greek word “genos” (meaning people) and the Latin suffix “cida” (meaning to kill). However, even before the term “Genocide” was coined, the historian Arnold Toynbee had already condemned Turkey’s actions as “the murder of a nation.” It would take another generation before an international crime was defined to legally encompass what Toynbee had in mind.

It is interesting to note that some books report Winston Churchill, who was at war with Turkey at the time, used the Greek word “Holocaust” (originally meaning a sacrifice by fire) to refer to the reported burning of Armenians in a pit. [4]Michelle Elizabeth Tusan (2017). The British Empire and the Armenian genocide : humanitarianism and the imperial politics from Gladstone to Churchill. London ; New York, Ny: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. While the exact origins of the term “Holocaust” in relation to the Nazi genocide during World War II are not entirely clear, it is worth noting that the use of the term to describe mass atrocities has a longer history that predates the Holocaust itself.

There are three terms that describe what happened to Armenians at the beginning of the 20th century:

• Crime Against Humanity; ^[5]Joint declaration of France, Great Britain and Russia, 28 May 1915. United Nations War Crimes Commission, London HMSO 1948
• The murder of a nation; ^[6]Toynbee, A.J. (1915), Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation, Hodder & Stoughton, London & New York
• Genocide 

The denial of the genocide label that describes the brutality of what happened to the Armenians can be traced back to the Ottoman Empire, and is now inherited by Turkey.

Turkey tries to put forward a futile debate about whether or not the term “genocide” applies to the events of 1915-1917, inherited from the Ottoman Empire, which describe the brutality of what happened to the Armenians.

The question at hand is whether the term “genocide” is applicable to the forced deportation of approximately two million Armenians from Anatolia and other Ottoman provinces, alongside the mass executions of Armenians.

Despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary, the Turkish government persists in its pathological denial of the genocide and has adopted the following approaches to maintain its stance:

1. Genocide denial is the default position: unless there is a serious challenge.

2. Deny the facts, reject almost all of the evidence, and manipulate the count of victims.

3. Assume that the killings were not intentional.

4. Insist on the inherent uncertainty in determining the number of victims.

5. On the question of responsibility, the perpetrator is not responsible; it was the fault of the victims who brought it upon themselves by engaging in subversion, rebellion, or civil war.

6. Regardless of what happened and who is responsible, the concept of genocide is not applicable. The word genocide is a modern-day terminology. 

7. In general, it is claimed that those who were deported were treated well, and all necessary provisions were made for their safety, despite occasional breakdowns.

8. Minimize the number of dead and conceal the brutality, rape, and cultural destruction of the atrocities.

9. Engage ‘international’ fringe historians [8]Karlsson, Feigl, Lowry, Lewis, Lewy, McCarthy, and Ataöv – whose publications were funded by the Turkish state and institutions – by questioning the basic facts of the Armenian Genocide in well-financed initiatives to disseminate confusion and create doubt among scholarly circles.

[Note:] An example of this is the “Turkish Studies Project” at the University of Utah, which was funded by the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA). The project has M. Hakan Yavuz and Elekdağ serving on its advisory board, and the university press has published multiple books that deny the genocide. One such book is Guenter Lewy’s The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey (2006), which was rejected by eleven other publishers.

So was it Genocide?