GENOCIDE

Intro: Genocide is a highly emotive word and shouldn’t be confused with other mass killings

A century ago, in 1915, Ottoman officials seized upon and rounded up Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul, most of whom were later murdered. Events which followed are still bitterly contested. The official Turkish version says that some 500,000 Armenians died, which included those fighting alongside the invading Russians against Ottoman forces. Others were also slayed as a regrettable side-effect of deportations that were perhaps understandable in the context of the times. However, many scholars say that up to 1.5m Armenians died, and imply that their deaths were a result of a deliberate and orchestrated campaign to eliminate the Ottoman empire’s only sizeable Christian population. Pressingly, given this account of events, members of the Armenian diaspora want events recognised as genocide.

Genocide is a highly emotive word and shouldn’t be confused with other mass killings; use of terminology and language matters as to which word should be used.

In 1948 the United Nations adopted a convention aimed at preventing and punishing acts of genocide, which it defined as the ‘deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnical, racial, religious or national group’. Agreement on the text involved a number of compromises. For example, targeting victims because of their class was not classed as genocide: Stalin would hardly have signed it if it meant being held to account for his mass slaughter of ‘middle peasants’. In the past century, the world has witnessed many mass slaughters, including some which have been acknowledged as genocide and some that do not fit within the UN’s definition. The genocidal nature of the slaughter of Rwanda’s minority Tutsis by majority Hutus militias, for instance, is not in question. Pol Pot’s reign of terror in Cambodia, however, does not strictly qualify, since the Khmers Rouges targeted no particular group.

Genocide as a word has considerable power. If mass slaughter is recognised as genocide when it is happening, it will be much harder for outside forces to sit idly by. When capitulation is over, an official declaration that it was genocide can give any survivors some grim satisfaction. But when that recognition is withheld, because of a technicality or due to political expediency, it will feel like the final insult. And the ‘crime of crimes’ tag that genocide has been given has led to some human rights activists and legal scholars expressing concern that this status sometimes overshadows the horror of other crimes against humanity.

Pope Francis and the European Parliament have very publicly described the Armenian massacres as genocide: the pontiff at a mass on April 12th attended by Armenia’s president, and the European Parliament in a plebiscite three days later commending the pope’s words and calling on Turkey, too, to recognise the killings as genocide. The Turkish government reacted with outrage and fury, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying: ‘It is not possible for Turkey to accept such a crime, such a sin.’ Mr Erdogan’s foreign minister claimed Pope Francis had fallen for propaganda disseminated by the Armenians who ostensibly control the press in his homeland of Argentina. The irony, though, is that Mr Erdogan has done more than any previous Turkish leader to acknowledge the suffering and pain of Armenians under the Ottoman empire, such as when he offered his condolences last year on April 24th. But unquestionably, there are limits to the willingness of the Turkish government in facing up to, and naming, the crimes of his country’s past.