lewy 1205.qxp 11/7/2005 12:42 PM Page 47
The First Genocide of the 20th Century? Guenter Lewy
he term “genocide,” coined in 1944 by the historians, including, most notably, Bernard Lewis, T Polish-Jewish émigré lawyer Raphael the dean of American Orientalists and an expert on Lemkin, was meant to describe Hitler’s then-on- Turkey. going campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Against this view is the great tide of world opin- But Lemkin’s interest in this most heinous of ion, from the official proclamations of various gov- crimes—what he and others would define as the ernments and religious bodies to the declared con- planned effort to destroy an entire people or eth- sensus of the International Association of Geno- nic group—long predated the rise of the Nazis. cide Scholars. Indeed, so strong is sentiment on The atrocities that first drew him to the issue this question that even now, nearly a century after emerged from a different world war and a different the fact, the issue continues to color Turkey’s deal- context. They were the vicious actions not of Ger- ings with other nations. On September 29, the Eu- mans against Jews in the early 1940’s but of Ot- ropean parliament in Strasbourg adopted a resolu- toman Turks against Turkey’s Armenian minority tion demanding that, as a condition of admission to in 1915-16. the European Union, Turkey acknowledge the Today, however, the Armenian case remains con- mass killing of its Armenians during World War I troversial in a way that the Holocaust, outside the as an instance of genocide. And even beyond the fevered confines of the Arab world, does not. Like issue of what happened in 1915-16 and its rele- every one of its predecessors since the rise of mod- vance to Turkey’s political situation today, the Ar- ern Turkey, the current government in Ankara ve- menian case continues to occupy a place of prece- hemently rejects the charge of genocide, and has dence in the litany of all subsequent instances of exerted strong diplomatic pressure against any at- mass murder and “ethnic cleansing,” including tempt by outsiders to place the events of World most recently the killings in Bosnia, Kosovo, and War I in a class with Hitler’s Final Solution. In this, Rwanda in the 1990’s and those in Sudan today. the Turks have been seconded not just by pro- No one, it should be stressed, disputes the extent Turkish apologists but by a number of respected of Armenian suffering at the hands of the Turks. With little or no notice, the Ottoman government Guenter Lewy is the author of, among other works, The Catholic Church & Nazi Germany, Religion & Revolu- forced Armenian men, women, and children to tion, America in Vietnam, and The Cause that Failed: leave their historic communities; during the subse- Communism in American Political Life. His new book, The quent harrowing trek over mountains and through Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed deserts, large numbers of them died of starvation Genocide, is forthcoming from the University of Utah Press. and disease, or were murdered. Although the ab-
[47] lewy 1205.qxp 11/7/2005 12:42 PM Page 48
Commentary December 2005
sence of good statistics on the size of the pre-war naks declared an end to their fighting. But the Armenian population in Turkey makes it impossi- truce did not last. With Turkey’s entry into World ble to establish the true extent of the loss of life, re- War I on the side of Germany and against Russia, liable estimates put the number of deaths at more the Armenians’ traditional ally, the Dashnaks re- than 650,000, or around 40 percent of a total Ar- sumed their armed resistance. By April 1915, Ar- menian population of 1.75 million. menian guerrilla activities had picked up momen- The historical question at issue is premedita- tum. Roads and communication lines were cut. tion—that is, whether the Turkish regime inten- Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador in tionally organized the annihilation of its Armenian Constantinople, reported to Washington on May minority. According to the Genocide Convention 25 that nobody put the Armenian guerrillas “at less of 1948, such an intent to destroy a group is a nec- than 10,000, and 25,000 is probably closer to the essary condition of genocide; most other defini- truth.” tions of this crime of crimes similarly insist upon Meanwhile, the Russian branch of the Dashnaks the centrality of malicious intent. Hence the cru- was organizing volunteers to fight the Turks on the cial problem to be addressed is not the huge loss of Caucasus front. Most of these volunteers—num- life in and of itself but rather whether the Turkish bering 15,000, according to one Armenian government deliberately sought the deaths that we source—were themselves Russian subjects, exempt know to have occurred. from military service, but some of them were Turk- ish Armenians who had crossed the border to join he Armenians have lived in the southern the volunteer units. Offers of help also poured in T Caucasus, between the Black Sea and the from the Armenian diaspora, from as far away as Caspian Sea, since ancient times. In the early 4th Western Europe and the U.S. century c.e., they were the first nation to adopt In March 1915, the Dashnak organization in Christianity as a state religion. Much of their long Sofia, Bulgaria, proposed to land 20,000 volunteers history, however, has been spent under foreign on the Turkish coast in the Armenian stronghold rule. The last independent Armenian state (before of Cilicia. That same month, the Boston-based Ar- the present-day, post-Soviet Republic of Armenia) menian National Defense Committee of America fell in 1375, and by the early 16th century most Ar- informed the British foreign secretary that it was menians were subjects of the Ottoman Empire. making “preparations for the purpose of sending Under the millet system instituted by Sultan Mo- hammed II (1451-1481), they enjoyed religious, volunteers to Cilicia, where a large section of the cultural, and social autonomy as a “loyal commu- Armenian population will unfurl the banner of in- nity,” a status that lasted well into the 19th century. surrection against Turkish rule.” It was hoped that Though large numbers of Armenians settled in the British and French governments would supply Constantinople and in other Ottoman towns, them with ammunition and artillery. where they prospered as merchants, bankers, and Turkish fears of an internal revolt were exacer- artisans, the majority continued to live as peasants bated the following month by an uprising that took in eastern Anatolia. During the autocratic rule of place in the city of Van. Close to the Russian bor- Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909), the lot of the Arme- der and in the heartland of historic Armenia, Van nians deteriorated, and nationalistic sentiment had long been a center of nationalist agitation. On began to emerge. In June 1890, Armenian students April 24, 1915, the Turkish governor reported that in the Russian-controlled area of the Caucasus or- 4,000 Armenian fighters had opened fire on the ganized the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. police stations, burned down Muslim houses, and Demanding the political and economic emancipa- barricaded themselves in the Armenian quarter. tion of Turkish Armenia, the Dashnaks (as they About 15,000 refugees from the countryside even- were known) waged guerrilla warfare against Turk- tually joined the now-besieged rebels. Less than a ish army units, gendarmerie posts, and Kurdish vil- month later, the insurgents were saved by the ad- lages involved in attacks on Armenians. They op- vancing Russian army, forcing the Turkish garrison erated from bases in the Caucasus and Persia and to retreat. Whether the Van uprising was a rebel- took advantage of eastern Anatolia’s mountainous lion designed and timed to facilitate the advance of terrain. the Russians or a defensive action aimed at pre- When, in 1908, the nationalist, modernizing venting the already planned deportation of the Ar- movement known as the Young Turks seized power menian community remains one of the points of in Constantinople in a bloodless coup, the Dash- fierce contention in the historiography of the time.
[48] lewy 1205.qxp 11/7/2005 12:42 PM Page 49
The First Genocide of the 20th Century?
hen not tying down Turkish army units, in the Caucasus after the Russians dropped out of W the Dashnaks were of significant help to the war in 1917. As Nubar would tell the peace the Russian army itself (leaving aside the 150,000 conference on March 8, 1919, the Turks had dev- Armenian subjects of the czar who served in its astated the Armenians “in retaliation for our un- ranks). Deeply familiar with the rugged mountains flagging devotion to the cause of the Allies.” of eastern Anatolia, the Armenian volunteers were By means of such rhetoric Nubar was obviously invaluable scouts and guides. In one famous hoping to win the support of the peace conference episode, the legendary Armenian military leader for an independent Armenia. But, the essential Andranik Ozanian met with General Mishlayevsky, facts were correct as he stated them: the Armeni- commander of the czar’s forces in the Caucasus, ans had indeed supported the Allies in a variety of late in the summer of 1914, pointing out the routes ways. Ignoring warnings from many quarters, large through which the Russian army could advance on numbers of them had fought the Turks, and the Turkey. government, with its back to the wall, reacted res- Thus, as the Turks saw it, the Armenian people olutely and viciously. Although none of this can the world over had thrown in their lot with the Al- serve to justify what the Turks did to them, it pro- lied cause and were arrayed against them in a fate- vides indispensable historical context for the ful struggle. Having come to consider the Armeni- human catastrophe that ensued. ans a fifth column, the Ottoman regime decided to take decisive measures to put an end to their trea- here is no denying the dimensions of that sonable actions. As Morgenthau reported to Wash- T catastrophe. The harsher methods employed ington in July 1915: “[B]ecause Armenian volun- by the Young Turks included the killing of Armen- teers, many of them Russian subjects, have joined ian notables in Constantinople and the eastern the Russian army in the Caucasus and because provinces. As for Armenian civilians, perhaps as some have been implicated in armed revolutionary many as 1 million were turned out of their homes. movements and others have been helpful to Rus- On a journey through the most inhospitable ter- sians in their invasion of the Van district, terrible rain, they routinely lacked shelter and food and vengeance is being taken.” were often subjected to the murderous violence of In the eyes of the Young Turks, however, the their government-provided escorts and the Kur- issue was not so much vengeance as national sur- dish tribesmen who occupied the route southward vival in a situation of extreme danger caused by se- to Ottoman-controlled Syria. Massive numbers rious military setbacks. The British had taken died along the way. Basra in Mesopotamia and were moving toward Can we account for this tragedy without the hy- Baghdad. The Allies had launched their assaults on pothesis of a genocidal plan on the part of the the Dardanelles. Fearing the fall of the capital, the Young Turks? Most authors supporting the Ar- Turks were making preparations to evacuate the menian cause answer in the negative. They cite sultan and the treasury from Constantinople. foreign diplomats on the scene who, in the face of Meanwhile, Russian troops were advancing into the large number of deaths, concluded that so ter- eastern Anatolia, and Armenian guerrillas were ac- rible a loss of life could only be an intended out- tive in the rear of the Turkish army, threatening come of the deportations. And yet such a conclu- the very lifelines of the empire. Even if only a lim- sion once again ignores the immediate backdrop ited number of Armenians had actually taken up against which this horrific episode must be seen. arms, the authorities in Constantinople under- If one of the main causes of the Armenian disas- stood themselves to be dealing with a population ter was starvation, the Armenians were hardly of traitors. alone in experiencing such deprivation. Severe Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the war food shortages were endemic to Turkey at the time. and at the Paris peace conference in 1919, the Ar- The military mobilization of large numbers of menians would make no bones about their contri- peasants in 1914, as well as the reckless requisi- bution to the Allied victory. To the contrary: tioning of their horses, oxen, and carriages, had Boghos Nubar, the head of the Armenian delega- made it impossible to bring in the harvest and left tion, asserted in late October 1918 that his people many fields untilled for the following year’s crop. had in fact been belligerents, fighting alongside the In the spring of 1915, Ambassador Morgenthau Allies on all fronts; in particular, he wrote to the told Washington that the empire’s whole domestic French foreign minister, 150,000 Armenians had situation was “deplorable,” with “thousands of the fought in the Russian army and had held the front populace . . . daily dying of starvation.” In the late
[49] lewy 1205.qxp 11/7/2005 12:42 PM Page 50
Commentary December 2005
spring and summer of 1915, the Ottoman nians, but neither can it be simply ignored in any provinces of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria were assessment of the general conditions against which devastated by a plague of locusts, creating famine they met their fate. Many of the Turkish deaths conditions. To exacerbate matters, Allied warships could have been prevented by better sanitary con- had blockaded the coast of Syria and Lebanon, thus ditions and medical care. A government so callous preventing the import of food from Egypt. about the suffering of its own soldiers was hardly Moreover, the food that was available in Turkey about to show concern for the terrible human mis- often could not be distributed. The country’s few ery that would result from deporting a minority existing one-track railroads were overburdened, population rightly or wrongly suspected of treason. and shortages of coal and wood frequently ren- dered locomotives unusable. A crucial tunnel on ne of the problems bedeviling the Armenian the line toward Syria—the famous Baghdad rail- O side in this controversy is that no authentic way—remained unfinished until late in the war. documentary evidence exists to prove the culpabil- The resulting scarcities afflicted even the Turkish ity of the central government of Turkey for the army, whose troops, as one German officer report- massacre of 1915-16. In the face of this lack, Ar- ed, received a maximum of one third of their allot- menians have relied upon materials of questionable ted rations. In circumstances where soldiers in the authenticity like The Memoirs of Naim Bey by Aram Turkish army were dying of undernourishment, it Andonian. The English edition of this book, first is not so surprising that little if any food was made published in 1920, offers in evidence 30 alleged available to the deported Armenians. telegrams by Talaat Pasha, Turkey’s minister of the Indeed, the mistreatment of common Turkish interior, some of which order the killing of all Ar- soldiers, the subject of many comments by con- menians irrespective of sex or age. But the book is temporaries, makes an instructive comparison with considered a forgery not only by Turkish historians the wretched lot of the Armenians. Although “pro- but by practically every Western student of Ot- visions and clothing had been confiscated to sup- toman history. ply the army,” wrote an American missionary in Similarly unreliable are the verdicts of Turkish Van, “the soldiers profited very little by this. They military tribunals that in 1919-20 found the top were poorly fed and poorly clothed when fed or leadership of the Young Turk regime, together with clothed at all.” The Danish missionary Maria Ja- a special-forces outfit called Teskilat-i Mahsusa, re- cobsen noted in her diary on February 7, 1915: sponsible for the massacres of the Armenians. “The officers are filling their pockets, while the These trials suffered from serious deficiencies of soldiers die of starvation, lack of hygiene, and ill- due process; more importantly, all of the original ness.” Many had neither boots nor socks, and were trial documents are lost, leaving nothing but copies dressed in rags. of some documents that were printed in the gov- The treatment of Turkish soldiers who were ernment gazette and the press. wounded or sick was especially appalling. Those It is true that no written record of Hitler’s order who managed to reach hospitals—many never for the Final Solution of the “Jewish question” has did—perished in large numbers because of unsani- been found, either. But the major elements of the tary conditions and a lack of basic supplies. Patients decision-making process leading up to the annihi- shared beds or simply lay next to each other on the lation of the Jews of Europe can be reconstructed floor in facilities that often lacked running water from events, court testimony, and a rich store of and electricity. Typhus, cholera, dysentery, and authentic documents. It is doubtful that the other infectious diseases spread rapidly. As Maria Nuremberg trials would ever have achieved their Jacobsen noted on May 24, 1916, a cholera out- tremendous significance in authenticating the break in the city of Malatia was killing 100 soldiers crimes of the Nazi regime if they had had to rely a day. “The army there,” she wrote, “will soon be on a few copies instead of on the thousands of orig- wiped out without a war.” inal documents preserved in archives. Barring the The Turks experienced some 244,000 combat unlikely discovery of sensational new documents in deaths during World War I. As against this, some the Turkish archives, it is safe to say that no simi- 68,000 soldiers died of their wounds and almost a lar evidence exists for the tragic events of 1915-16. half-million of disease—a ratio of non-combat to At the same time, a number of facts about the combat deaths almost certainly unmatched by any deportations argue against the thesis that they con- of the other warring nations. This terrible toll ob- stituted a premeditated program for exterminating viously does not excuse the treatment of the Arme- the Armenians of Turkey. For one thing, the large
[50] lewy 1205.qxp 11/7/2005 12:42 PM Page 51
The First Genocide of the 20th Century?
Armenian communities of Constantinople, Smyr- military personnel. The job of relocating several na, and Aleppo were spared deportation and, apart hundred thousand people in a short span of time from tribulations that also afflicted the Muslim and over a highly primitive system of transporta- populations of these cities, survived the war largely tion was simply beyond the ability of the Turkish intact. This would be analogous to Hitler’s failing bureaucracy. to include the Jews of Berlin, Cologne, and Mu- Many observers on the scene, indeed, saw the nich in the Final Solution. tragedy in this light, constantly citing the incom- Moreover, the trek on foot that took so many petence and inefficiency of the Ottoman bureau- lives was imposed only on the Armenians of east- cracy. “The lack of proper transportation facilities,” ern and central Anatolia, a part of the country that wrote the American consul in Mersina in Septem- had no railroads. Elsewhere, and despite the fact ber 1915, “is the most important factor in causing that the one-spur Baghdad line was overburdened the misery.” The German consul in Aleppo told his with the transport of troops and supplies, Armen- ambassador around the same time that the majori- ian deportees were allowed to purchase rail tickets ty of Armenian exiles were starving to death be- and were thus spared at least some of the trials of cause the Turks were “incapable of solving the or- the deportation process. If, as is often alleged, the ganizational task of mass feeding.” A lengthy mem- intent was to subject the exiles to a forced march orandum on the Armenian question drawn up in until they died of exhaustion, why was this punish- 1916 by Alexander von Hoesch, an official in the ment not imposed on all? German embassy, pointed to a basic lack of ac- Similar variation can be found in the fortunes of countability: some local officials had sought to al- other parts of the Armenian population. While leviate the hardships of the exiles, but others were many of the exiles were left to fend for themselves extremely hostile to the Armenians and, in defi- and often died of starvation, others were given food ance of Constantinople, had abandoned them to here and there. Some gendarmes accompanying the violence of Kurds or Circassians. the convoys sold their charges to Kurds who pil- Today, the stakes in this historical controversy laged and murdered them, but other gendarmes remain high, and both sides continue to use heavy- were protective. In some places all Armenians, ir- handed tactics to advance their views. The Turkish respective of creed, were sent away, while in others government regularly threatens retaliation against Protestant and Catholic (as opposed to Gregorian) anyone calling into question its own version of Armenians were exempted. Many of the deportees events, a threat made good most recently by its succumbed to the harsh conditions in their places cancellation of an order for a $149-million French of resettlement, but others were able to survive by spy satellite after the French national assembly de- making themselves useful as artisans or traders. In clared in 2001 that the killing of the Armenians some locations, not even conversion to Islam could during World War I was a case of genocide. For purchase exemption from deportation; in others, their part, the Armenians have also played hardball. large numbers of Armenians were allowed, or When Bernard Lewis, in a 1994 letter to Le Monde, forced, to convert and were saved. questioned on scholarly grounds the existence of a plan of extermination on the part of the Ottoman ll of these differences, of both treatment and government, a French-Armenian organization A outcome, are difficult to reconcile with a brought suit and a French court convicted Lewis of premeditated program of total annihilation. How, causing “grievous prejudice to truthful memory.” then, to explain the events of 1915-16? What ac- But there are also more hopeful signs, at least on counts for the enormous loss of life? the academic front. In the last several years, a num- The documentary evidence suggests that the Ot- ber of conferences have brought together Turkish toman government wanted to arrange an orderly and Armenian scholars willing to discuss the events process of deportation—even a relatively humane of 1915-16 without a political agenda. Turkish his- one, to gauge by the many decrees commanding torical scholarship has shown signs of a post-na- protection and compassionate treatment of the de- tionalist phase, while some scholars on the Armen- portees. But, leaving aside the justice of the expul- ian side, too, now engage in research free of pro- sion order itself, the deportation and resettlement pagandistic rhetoric. Needless to say, such efforts of the Armenians took place, as we have seen, at a have brought down accusations of betrayal, even time of great insecurity and dislocation throughout treason, upon the heads of the offending historians; the country and in conditions of widespread suffer- it would be foolish to expect genuine reconciliation ing and deprivation among Turkish civilians and any time soon.
[51] lewy 1205.qxp 11/7/2005 4:04 PM Page 52
Commentary December 2005
ll of which raises deeply troubling questions, Pasha, the Turkish minister of war, that the gov- A not least about the role played by the notion ernment had to act forcefully against any commu- of genocide itself in perpetuating the almost cen- nity, however small, that was bent upon indepen- tury-old impasse between Turks and Armenians. dence and was acting directly against the interests For, once this charge is on the table, any sort of of the empire. mutually acceptable resolution becomes extremely For the human disaster subsequently endured by difficult if not impossible to achieve. As the Turk- its Armenian population, the Ottoman regime cer- ish historian Selim Deringil has written, both sides tainly bears its due measure of responsibility, just as need to “step back from the was-it-genocide-or-not it does for general corruption, bungling misrule, dialogue of the deaf” and instead seek a “common and indifference to the suffering of its own popu- project of knowledge.” lation during World War I. And one can go fur- If, then, we were to follow this advice, how best ther: with the benefit of hindsight, it is also possi- should we judge the Armenian tragedy? The pri- ble to question whether the severity of the threat mary intent of the deportation order was un- posed by Armenian revolutionaries justified the doubtedly not to eradicate an entire people but to drastic remedy of even partial deportation. The deny support to the Armenian guerrilla bands and Canadian researcher Gwynne Dyer may have put to remove the Armenians from war zones and the case most appropriately in writing that, al- other strategic locations. For the Ottomans, though Turkish allegations of wholesale disloyalty, painful experience with other Christian minorities treason, and revolt on the part of the Ottoman Ar- during the Balkan wars (1912-13) had created ex- menians were “wholly true as far as Armenian sen- treme sensitivity to rebellion and territorial loss. timent went,” they were “only partly true in terms Talaat Pasha, the minister of the interior, is sup- of overt acts, and totally insufficient as a justifica- posed to have told the cabinet in 1915, “We have tion for what was done” to the Armenians. to create a Turkish bloc, free of foreign elements, If both Armenians and Turks could accept this which in the future will never again give the Eu- appraisal, even as a starting point for further dis- ropeans the opportunity to interfere in the inter- cussion, they would reach an important milestone nal affairs of Turkey.” Ambassador Morgenthau toward settling one of modern history’s most bitter reported being told on several occasions by Enver and longstanding conflicts.
[52]