Introduction Legal Avenues for Armenian Genocide Reparations

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Introduction

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Legal Avenues for Armenian Genocide Reparations

Henry C. Theriault Professor of Philosophy, Worcester State University, Worcester, MA, USA

1 The Emergence of the Issue

From 1915 to 1923, the Ottoman Empire and then Turkish Republican nationalist forces committed genocide against its Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek minori- ties. In what is typically termed ‘the Armenian Genocide’, 1.5 million Armenians out of a population of about 2.5 million are believed to have been killed through the perpetrators’ genocidal actions.1 In addition, eyewitness accounts indicate many tens of thousands of women and girls were forced directly or by circumstances into sexual servitude, domestic servitude, or ‘marriage’, which included forced or coerced conversion to Islam. Similarly, tens of thousands or more children were ‘adopted’ by Turks or other Muslims, or placed in Turkish- run orphanages, stripped of their Armenian identity, and forcibly Turkified.2

* PhD. Co-editor, Genocide Studies and Prevention (University of Toronto Press/International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies); co-editor, Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review series (Transaction Publishers). 1 See, for example, Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Causasus, 3d rev. ed. (Berghahn Books, Providence, RI, 1997); Richard G. Hovannisian, ‘The Historical Dimensions of the Armenian Question, 1878- 1923’, in Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.), The Armenian Genocide in Perspective (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ, 1986) pp. 19-41. 2 See, for instance, Katharine Derderian, ‘Common Fate, Different Experience: Gender-Specific Aspects of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917’, 19 Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2005) 1-25; Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993).

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As eyewitness accounts tell us, rape and torture were pervasive and continuous.3 Beyond this violence, the genocide functioned as a mass expropriation of the movable and immovable property of Armenians.4 Indeed, one can say that expropriation was an important motive for the genocide itself5 and that the national economy of the Turkish Republic was built on the wealth expropri- ated from the Ottoman Armenian population.6 After trials of a few perpetrators in 1919 which ultimately resulted in little punishment, no criminal or civil actions have addressed the harms of the Armenian Genocide. While of course, with more than 90 years having passed from the end of the process of mass murder, there is no longer any question of criminal prosecutions for the genocide itself, that does not preclude non- criminal legal processes, most notably suit for reparations for at least some of the damage done by the genocide. But the subsequent Turkish state and society, much more powerful than the residual, globally-dispersed Armenian population, have steadfastly refused any accountability for the genocide. The primary means of defense against responsibility has been the organized, heavily-funded, politically-driven denial campaign waged by the Turkish gov- ernment and other governments, organizations, and individuals seeking its favour or aligned politically or ideologically with Turkey.7 By manipulating a

3 See, for example, Ara Sarafian (ed.), United States Official Records on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917 (Taderon Press, Reading, 2004). 4 One particularly important recent treatment of this issue is Uğur Ümit Üngör and Mehmet Polatel, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (Continuum, London, 2011). 5 Temel Demirer, remarks delivered as part of the ‘“Armenian Issue”: What Is and How It Is to Be Done?’ panel, ‘1915 Within Its Pre- and Post- Historical Periods: Denial and Confrontation’ symposium (24-25 April 2010), Ankara, Turkey, 25 April 2010. 6 Taner Akçam, Dialogue Across an International Divide: Essays towards a Turkish-Armenian Dialogue (Zoryan Institute, Toronto, 2001) pp. 93-94. 7 For treatments of various aspects of the Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide, see Roger W. Smith, ‘Genocide and Denial: The Armenian Case and Its Implications’, 42 Armenian Review (1989) 1-38; Richard G. Hovannisian, ‘The Armenian Genocide and Patterns of Denial’, in Hovannisian (ed.), supra note 1, pp. 111-133; Israel W. Charny, ‘A Contribution to the Psychology of Denial of Genocide’, 4 Journal of Armenian Studies (1992) 289-306; Israel W. Charny and Daphna Fromer, ‘Denying the Armenian Genocide: Patterns of Thinking as Defense-Mechanisms’, 32 Patterns of Prejudice (1998) 39-49; Terrence Des Pres, ‘On Governing Narratives: The Turkish-Armenian Case’, 75 Yale Review (1986) 517–31; Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton, ‘Professional Ethics and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide’, 9 Holocaust and Genocide Studies (1995) 1-22; Hank Theriault, ‘Universal Social Theory and the Denial of Genocide: Norman Itzkowitz Revisited’, 3 Journal

international criminal law review 14 (2014) 219-231