The Extermination of the Armenians and the Concept of Genocide in Contemporary American Encyclopedias

THE EXTERMINATION OF THE ARMENIANS AND THE CONCEPT OF GENOCIDE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ENCYCLOPEDIAS Arman Kirakossian The Armenian Genocide is an approved fact of history, a public knowledge which is recognized not only by specialists but also by the international community. For more than forty years, the government of the Ottoman Empire succeeded in the cleaning out of the native-born Armenian population from not only the Armenian highland but also from the entire territory of the Empire by carrying out a genocidal policy of massacres and deportations, the culmi- Dr. Arman Kirakossian is Ambassador Extraordinary and nation of which was the Genocide of the Armenians during the First World War. The crime Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Armenia to Austria, committed by the Ottoman authorities towards the Armenian nation fully corresponds to the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Armenia defi nition of the special convention of UN General Assembly in 1948 “On Prevention and to the OSCE. He is author of books and more than 120 Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” according to which “genocide means the acts commit- publications on the History of Diplomacy and International ted with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Relations among them British Diplomacy and the Armenian As a recognized public knowledge the Armenian Genocide is adequately and in a wor- Question (Gomidas Institute, Princeton and London, thy manner represented in contemporary specialized encyclopedias, dictionaries, resource guides and handbooks published in the United States during the last fi fteen years. The au- 2003), The Armenian Massacres 1894-1896: U.S. Media thors of the entries are leading specialists in the fi eld of genocide studies. The analysis of Testimony (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 2004), this issues shows that the Armenian Genocide strengthened its position as a public knowl- Armenia-USA: Current Realities and Vision for Future edge and recognized fact of history. (Yerevan State University Press, 2007), and The Armenian According to Alan Whitehorn1 “The Armenian Genocide is a reminder of the risks Massacres 1894-1896: British Media Testimony (Armenian of not learning the lessons of history, the dangers of genocide denial, and the long-term Research Center, University of Michigan, Dearborn, 2008) negative consequences of allowing perpetrators to go unpunished. These were contributing factors to subsequent genocides. The knowledge of past genocides, such as the Armenian case, is a key to understanding and preventing future genocide. The mass slaughter of the Armenians was, however, instrumental in the birth of two important human rights concepts: ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘genocide’.”2 Genocide is a twentieth-century concept for an age-old phenomenon, the killing of a defi ned population group. The word was coined during the Second World War by Raphael Lemkin,3 who “was looking for a word that would convey the full dimension of 1. Alan Whitehorn is a Professor at Royal Military College of Canada. 2. Alan Whitehorn, “Armenian Genocide.” Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month 2013, ABC-CLIO. Cf. http://www.historyandtheheadlines.abc-clio.com/ContentPages/ContentPage.aspx?entry- Id=1797707&currentSection=1797513&productid=61. 3. Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) was a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, who lived in the United States from 1941. He is best known for his work against genocide, a word he coined in 1943. He fi rst used the word genocide in print in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation – Analysis of Government – Proposals for Redress (1944), and defi ned it as “the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.” 7 International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies: Volume 2, Issue 1 The Extermination of the Armenians and the Concept of Genocide in Contemporary American Encyclopedias the Nazi murder of Jews, though he also was deeply conscious of precedents, especially and Genocide “the campaign to exterminate the Armenian population and expel them from the killing of Armenians in 1915 and 1916 by the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Ottoman Empire (which was superseded by Turkey) was so organized and systematic that Empire. Lemkin joined the Greek word for a group, ‘genus’, with the Latin suffi x for it became a model for the prosecution of even more devastating genocidal programs later murder, ‘-cide’, to create the word genocide. He launched a one-man diplomatic campaign in the 20th century.”10 to convince the newly formed United Nations that it should develop a treaty that would Professors Donald Bloxham11 and A. Dirk Moses12 advocate in the Introduction of The outlaw genocide.”4 Lemkin insisted upon the relationship between genocide and the Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies that “…there is the tendency in university syllabi, growing interest in the protection of peoples and minorities that was manifested in several textbooks, and the mantras of public commemoration of genocide to focus upon a few in- treaties and declarations adopted following World War I. He said there was a need to stances of genocide that, for a variety of reasons, have qualifi ed for the canon of general revisit international legal instruments, pointing out particularly the inadequacies of the acceptance: alongside the Holocaust, Armenia, Cambodia, Rwanda, and the former Yugo- Hague Convention of 1907, which he noted was “silent regarding the preservation of the slavia, and now Darfur tend to be included, but virtually no other cases.”13 integrity of a people.”5 The General Assembly passed an initial resolution in favor of such According to Michael R. Taylor (Encyclopedia of Death and Human Experience), a treaty in 1946, and the fi nal Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime “Genocide is the attempt to eradicate a people due to their race, religion, ethnicity, or na- of Genocide was approved on 9 December 1948. It came into effect in January 1951 with tionality, usually by means of mass slaughter. The Holocaust, in which the Nazis murdered the ratifi cation by the requisite number of states. Since then, more than 140 states have about 6 million Jews along with millions of others, is probably the most widely known signed the Genocide Convention. genocide of the 20th century. Although the Holocaust may be unique in other respects, it is The massacres and deportations of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire are not unique in its being genocide. Over the 20th century and into the 21st century, genocide qualifi ed by the authors of the conceptual entries in the encyclopedias of Genocide, Death has occurred in Cambodia, Germany, Iraq, Turkey, and Rwanda, and intervention has been and Human Experience, Global Justice, Human Rights Issues Since 1945, Ethics, World’s rare. Some of these acts of genocide were probably preventable, and great harm might have Minorities, Social Science, War Crimes and Genocide, Community, Human Rights, and The been averted had the international community taken swift, decisive action.”14 Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies as a Genocide. In the Editor’s Introduction of the The author continues that “there is no known single motive or reason for genocide. The Encyclopedia of Genocide one of the leading specialists in genocide studies Dr. Israel W. Nazis were motivated primarily by concerns for racial purity. The Khmer Rouge, responsi- Charny6 listed the “the Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Turks” at the fi rst place of the ble for the genocide in Cambodia in the latter half of the 1970s, were intent on creating what “past genocides in the twentieth century.”7 In the Foreword to the same encyclopedia, the they took to be an ideal communist society, and they eliminated anyone they believed might Most Reverend Archbishop Emeritus Desmond M. Tutu8 wrote: “And yet it is possible that obstruct this project. The genocide perpetrated by the government of Turkey in 1915 against if the world had been conscious of the genocide that was committed by the Ottoman Turks its Armenian population was apparently motivated by concerns for national security, as against the Armenians, the fi rst genocide of the twentieth century, then perhaps humanity was Saddam Hussein’s genocide directed against the Kurds of Iraq. …The government of might have been more alert to the warning signs that were being given before Hitler’s mad- Turkey, allied with Germany during World War I, suspected that some of Turkey’s Arme- ness was unleashed on an unbelieving world.”9 According to Encyclopedia of War Crimes nians were aiding opposing powers. The Armenians were taken to pose a threat to national security, and their elimination was a way of resolving this issue.”15 4. Eric D. Weitz, “Genocide.” in The Social Science Encyclopedia, ed. Adam Kuper and Jessica Kuper (New York: Routledge, 2004, 2009), 409. 5. William A. Schabas, “Genocide,” in Encyclopedia of Human Rights, vol. 2, ed. David P. Forsythe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 295-296. CLIO, 1999), LVII. 6. Dr. Israel W. Charny (born 1931, Brooklyn, New York) is an Israeli psychologist and genocide 10. “Armenian Genocide,” in Leslie Alan Horvitz and Christopher Catherwood, Encyclopedia of War scholar, executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, professor of Crimes and Genocide (New York: Facts on File, 2006), 25. Psychology and Family Therapy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, co-founder of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, editor-in-chief and executive director of GPN – Genocide Prevention 11. Donald Bloxham is a Professor of Modern History at Edinburgh University, editor of the Journal of Now. Holocaust Education. 7. Israel W. Charny, “Editor`s Introduction to the Encyclopedia: The Dawning of a New Age of Opposi- 12. A. Dirk Moses is the Chair of Global and Colonial History at the European University Institute, Flo- tion to Genocide,” in Encyclopedia of Genocide, vol.

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