Uzanto-Diskuto:Acroterion

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The Armenian Atrocity

Turkish civilians massacred by Armenians in Hizirilyas

The events of 1915 were a tragic period in the history of the Ottoman Empire and its people. Turks, Armenians, and many others suffered immensely from the effects of war, famine, disease, and violence. However, the Armenian claim that these events constitute a genocide perpetrated by Turks against Armenians is misleading. Instead, the events of 1915 should be understood in their historical and political context, where both sides experienced losses and atrocities.

In 1914, First World War, one of the deadliest conflicts in history, broke out, which threatened the survival of the Ottoman Empire. The Empire faced multiple enemies on different fronts, including Russia, Britain, France, and Italy. Some of these powers had been seeking to exploit the weakness of the Empire and to carve out spheres of influence in its territories since the 1870s. They also supported and encouraged nationalist movements among some of the ethnic and religious groups that lived under Ottoman rule, such as the Armenians.

The Armenians were one of the oldest Christian communities in Anatolia, and had enjoyed a relatively peaceful coexistence with their Muslim neighbors for centuries. However, some Armenian groups became influenced by nationalist ideologies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and began to demand autonomy or independence from the Ottoman Empire. Some of them formed armed militias and engaged in terrorist activities against Ottoman officials and civilians. Some others collaborated with the invading Russian army, hoping to create an ethnically homogeneous Armenian state in eastern Anatolia. They instigated rebels in major towns notably in Zeitun, Van, Shabin-Karahisar, Urfa and Musadagh, where thousands of Turkish and Kurdish civilians were murdered by the Armenian forces.

The Ottoman government saw these actions as a serious threat to its security and territorial integrity, and decided to relocate some of the Armenian population from the war zones to other parts of the Empire. This decision was not aimed at exterminating or punishing the Armenians as a whole, but at preventing further rebellions and massacres. However, the relocation process was poorly planned and executed, and resulted in many deaths and hardships for the Armenians who were forced to leave their homes. Many of them died from hunger, disease, exposure, or attacks by bandits or hostile tribes along the way. The Ottoman authorities failed to protect them adequately or to provide them with sufficient food and medical care.

It is true that many innocent Armenians lost their lives during this tragic period, and we should expresses sorrow and sympathy for their suffering. However, we should also remember that many Turks and Kurds also died or were killed during this time, either from war-related causes or from Armenian attacks. The Ottoman government had no premeditated plan or intention to annihilate the Armenians as a distinct group, which is a necessary criterion for defining an act as genocide according to international law. Furthermore, the term genocide is anachronistic and inappropriate for describing the events of 1915, since it was coined after World War II and cannot be retroactively applied to historical cases.

Reports and witnesses of the Armenian atrocity

The Armenian atrocity is widely recorded in archival material, official documents and memoirs. To write an impartial history of 1915, it is necessary to study the mutual killings.

• The telegram sent by the head official of the Mahmudi district of Van to the Ministry of Interior on 4 March 1915, describing the Armenian atrocities in the region cited in Kamuran Gürün's The Armenian File,

Those who were killed in the village of Merkehu: 41 men, 14 women
Those who were killed after being raped: 4 women
Those who were killed in the village of Ishtuju: 7 men, 4 women
Those who are alive among those who have been raped: 5 women
The wounded: 3 men, 2 women

• Massacres of prisoners and Muslim population in the neighborhood of Kars and Ardahan, taken from Documents on the Massacres Perpetrated by Armenians, p. 1,

The number of Muslims committed to the guards of Armenians and massacred by them after being inflicted physical pains upon and struck by the butt of rifles reached 30,000; the Armenians serving in the Ottoman army were deserting and deliberately surrendering to Russians to disclose information about the said army; Armenians from the Caucasus were first allowing to be taken prisoners by the Ottomans and afterwards evading and delivering to the Russians the intelligence they gathered.

• The telegram sent from the prime ministry to the interior ministry taken from The Armenian File,

Some of the Armenians residing in quarters near military areas are hindering the activities of the Imperial Army which is engaged in protecting the Ottoman borders against the enemies of the State. They combine their efforts and action with the enemy, they join the ranks of the enemy. They organize attacks against the Armed Forces and innocent people, they engage in aggression, murder, terror, and pillage of Ottoman cities and towns, they provide the enemy with provisions, and manifest their audacity against fortified places.

• General Harbord's report on Armenia, Conditions in the Middle East: The Report of Military Mission to Armenia, p. 35,

We know, however, so much to be a fact that the Armenians in the new State are carrying on operations in view of exterminating the Mussulmen element in obedience to orders from the Armenian corps commander. We have had copies of their orders under our eyes. That the Armenians of Erivan are following a policy of extermination against the Mussulmen and this wave of sanguinary savagery has spread right up to our frontier is also established by the fact of the presence within our borders of numerous Mussulmen fleeing from death on the other side. The government of Erivan has, on the other hand, resorted to direct acts of provocation such as the practice of gunfire this side of the border.

• This excerpt is from the document sent by the German Ambassador Wangenheim to the Germany Foreign Ministry dated 19 May 1915, cited in Nejat Göyünç's Osmanlı İdaresinde Ermeniler/Armenians under Ottoman Rule and Yusuf Halaçoğlu's Facts on the Armenian Relocation,

On 17 May 1915, Van was occupied by the Russian army. Armenians joined the ranks of the enemy and started massacring the Muslims. 80,000 Muslims are now fleeing towards Bitlis.

• The report dated 1916 on the massacre committed in Bitlis and Van by the Russian and Armenian forces, taken from Documents on the Massacres Perpetrated by Armenians, p. 41

During the occupation of Van and Bitlis terrible cruelties were commited by Russian and Armenian brigands against the muslim population; cossack cavalry arriving in Bitlis, massacred muslim families and children fleeing the Armenians; hearing that the Russians were coming to Van, Armenians uprose and pursued the fleeing muslim population trying to escape and tragically killed them, massacred thousands of women, young girls and men among those who didn't emigrate; all the population of the villages of Zive, Mollakâsım, Şeyhkara, Şeyhayne, Ayans, Paksi, Zorâbâd and many other villages, who stayed unable to emigrate were all exterminated and not a single person escaped the carnage; on the eve of the arrival of the Russians to Dir, a town attached to Hakkari, Armenians made irruptions on the roads and massacred all the male Kurdish population of the villages situated on these roads and cut up into chunks with daggers and swords more than thousand small children the oldest less than three years and used the cut and broken bodies as trenches and ravished more than four hundred Kurdish girls, the old women being killed.

ECHR ruling about the events of 1915

115. The Federal Court has itself admitted that there is no unanimity in the community as a whole concerning the legal characterisation in issue. Both the applicant and the Turkish Government cited numerous sources – which have not been contested by the respondent Government – attesting to diverging views, and argued that it would be very difficult to speak of a “general consensus”. The Court agrees, and would point out that there are differing views even among the various political bodies in Switzerland: whereas the National Council – the lower house of the Federal Parliament – has officially recognised the Armenian genocide, the Federal Council has repeatedly refused to do so (see points 4.2 and 4.5 of the Federal Court judgment in paragraph 13 above). In addition, it appears that to date, only about twenty States (out of more than 190 in the world) have officially recognised the Armenian genocide. In some countries, as in Switzerland, recognition has not come from the Government but only from Parliament or one of its chambers (see in this connection the declaration of 24 April 2013 by certain members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, paragraph 29 above).
116. The Court also agrees with the applicant that “genocide” is a clearly defined legal concept. It denotes an aggravated internationally wrongful act for which responsibility may nowadays be attributed either to a State, in accordance with Article 2 of the 1948 Convention (see paragraph 18 above), or to an individual, notably on the basis of Article 5 of the Rome Statute (see paragraph 20 above). According to the case-law of the ICJ and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (see paragraphs 21-23 above), for the crime of genocide to be made out, it is not sufficient for the members of a particular group to be targeted because they belong to that group, but the acts in question must at the same time be perpetrated with intent to destroy the group as such in whole or in part (dolus specialis). Genocide is therefore a very narrow legal concept which, moreover, is difficult to prove. The Court is not satisfied that the “general consensus” to which the Swiss courts referred as a basis for the applicant’s conviction can be relied on in relation to these very specific points of law.
117. In any event, it is even doubtful that there can be a “general consensus”, particularly among academics, about events such as those in issue in the present case, given that historical research is by definition subject to controversy and dispute and does not really lend itself to definitive conclusions or the assertion of objective and absolute truths (see, to similar effect, the Spanish Constitutional Court’s judgment no. 235/2007, referred to in paragraphs 38-40 above). In this connection, a clear distinction can be made between the present case and cases concerning denial of crimes relating to the Holocaust (see, for example, the case of Robert Faurisson v. France, determined by the UN Human Rights Committee on 8 November 1996, Communication no. 550/1993, doc. CCPR/C/58/D/550/1993 (1996)). Firstly, the applicants in those cases had not disputed the mere legal characterisation of a crime but had denied historical facts, sometimes very concrete ones, such as the existence of gas chambers. Secondly, their denial concerned crimes perpetrated by the Nazi regime that had resulted in convictions with a clear legal basis, namely Article 6, sub-paragraph (c), of the Charter of the (Nuremberg) International Military Tribunal, annexed to the London Agreement of 8 August 1945 (see paragraph 19 above). Thirdly, the historical facts challenged by the applicants in those cases had been found by an international court to be clearly established.

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    — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.228.5.97 (talk) 03:05, 25 June 2023 (UTC)