Turkey, Past and Future What Is Genocide? The Armenian Case by Michael M. Gunter hortly after the World War II, genocide was legally defined by the U.N. Geno- cide Convention as “any... acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in Spart, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”1 The key word from the perspective of this article is “intent.” For while nobody can deny the disaster wrought on the Armenians by the 1915 deportations and massacres, the question is whether or not it can be defined as genocide—arguably the most heinous crime imaginable. massacre constitutes genocide, even the 1986 THE AMBIGUITY Chernobyl nuclear meltdown.2 At the other end OF GENOCIDE of the spectrum, Stephen Katz views the Holo- caust as the only true genocide in history.3 In The strict international law definition of geno- between these two polar definitions, Ton Zwaan cide has not prevented its application to virtually has attempted to distinguish between “total” and every conflict involving a large number of civilian “complete” genocide and “partial” genocides.4 deaths from the Athenian massacre of the inhab- Even the U.N. definition suffers from some itants of Milos in 416 B.C.E., to the Mongol sack- ambiguities owing to being a compromise among ing of Baghdad in 1258, to the fate of the native all signatories. Thus, the convention legally pro- North American Indians, to Stalin’s induced fam- tects only “national, racial, ethnic, and religious ine in the Ukraine in the early 1930s, to the recent groups,” not those defined politically, economi- conflicts in Bosnia, Burundi, Chechnya, Colom- bia, Guatemala, Iraq, Sudan, and Rwanda, which is not to deny that some of these cases do indeed 1 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of qualify as genocide. Genocide, 78 U.N. Treaty Series (UNTS) 277, adopted by the The liberal use of the term has naturally General Assembly, Dec. 9, 1948, entered into force, Jan. 12, 1951. stirred numerous controversies and debates. Is- 2 Israel W. Charny, “Towards a Generic Definition of Genocide,” rael Charny offers little help by arguing that any in George J. Andreopoulos, ed., Genocide: Conceptual and His- torical Dimensions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 64-94. 3 Stephen Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 4 Ton Zwaan, “On the Aetiology and Genesis of Genocides and Michael M. Gunter, professor of political sci- Other Mass Crimes Targeting Specific Groups,” Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former ence at Tennessee Technological University, was Yugoslavia, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Univer- senior Fulbright lecturer at the Middle East Tech- sity of Amsterdam/Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sci- nical University in Turkey. ences, Nov. 2003, p. 12. Gunter: No Armenian Genocide / 37 cally, or culturally, giving rise to varying interpre- For their part EU, British, Canadian, and Chinese tations of its intentions. For example, while the officials, among others, have shied away from call- International Criminal Tribunal for the Former ing it genocide. Samantha Power, the author of a Yugoslavia convicted seven Bosnian Serbs of Pulitzer Prize winning study on genocide, favored genocide for their role in the July 1995 Srebrenica the term ethnic cleansing to describe what was massacre of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims,5 the occurring.9 International Court of Justice, in its judgment in When in July 2008, ICC chief prosecutor Luis Bosnia vs. Serbia, fo- Moreno-Ocampo accused Sudanese president cused on Serbia’s “in- Omar Bashir of genocide and asked the court to Intent or tent” rather than “out- issue an arrest warrant, many in the Arab League premeditation come” regarding the mur- and the African Union criticized the genocide der of Bosnian Muslims, charge as biased against their region.10 It remains is important in absolving it of the charge to be seen how wise the ICC has been in bringing defining genocide; of genocide.6 Clearly, genocide charges in this case. Clearly, there was a large loss of life these contradictory deci- a lack of agreement on what did or did not consti- is not in itself sions have added to the tute genocide in Darfur. Such a situation illus- confusion of what geno- trates the ambiguity surrounding the concept of proof of genocide. cide legally constitutes. genocide. Likewise, the debate In an attempt to alleviate these problems, whether the Darfur events constituted genocide scholars have offered such additional detailed continues apace. U.S. secretary of state Colin concepts as “politicide” to refer to mass murders Powell characterized Darfur as a case of genocide of a political nature, “democide” to describe gov- based on a U.S. government-funded study, which ernment-perpetrated mass murders of at least one had surveyed 1,136 Darfur refugees in neighbor- million people, ethnocide, Judeocide, ecocide, ing Chad.7 By contrast, a study commissioned feminicide, libricide (for the destruction of librar- by U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan concluded ies), urbicide, elitocide, linguicide, and culturicide, that while the Darfur events should be referred to among others.11 In addition we now have such the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes concepts as crimes against humanity, war crimes, against humanity, they did not amount to geno- and ethnic cleansing. cide.8 Amnesty International and Human Rights Why this semantic disarray? Henry Watch also declined to characterize the violence Huttenbach has argued, “Too often has the ac- in Darfur as genocide while the Arab League and cusation of genocide been made simply for the the African Union took a similar position, empha- emotional effect or to make a political point, with sizing instead the civil war aspect of the conflict. the result that more and more events have been claimed to be genocide to the point that the term has lost its original meaning.”12 Jacques Semelin has similarly explained: “Whether use of the word 5 David Rhode, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, ‘genocide’ is justified or not, the term aims to strike Europe’s Worst Massacre since World War II (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), p. 167; Jacques Semelin, Purify and our imagination, awaken our moral conscience Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 34-5, 65-6, 138-9, 195-8, 213-20, 245-6; “Report of the Secretary General Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35: The Fall of Srebrenica,” U.N. doc. no. A/54/549, Nov. 15, 1999. 6 The Application of the Convention on the Prevention and 9 Scott Straus, “Darfur and the Genocide Debate,” Foreign Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina Affairs, Jan.-Feb. 2005, pp. 128, 130. vs. Serbia and Montenegro), case 91, International Court of Jus- 10 Public Radio International, July 28, 2008; Voice of America, tice, The Hague, Feb. 26, 2007. July 22, 2010. 7 “Documenting the Atrocities in Darfur,” Bureau of Democracy, 11 Semelin, Purify and Destroy, pp. 319-20. Human Rights, and Labor, and Bureau of Intelligence and Re- 12 Henry R. Huttenbach “Locating the Holocaust under the search, U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C., Sept. 2004. Genocide Spectrum: Toward a Methodology of Definition and 8 The Guardian (London), Feb. 1, 2005. Categorization,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 3 (1988): 297. 38 / MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY WINTER 2013 and mobilise public opin- ion on behalf of the vic- tims.” He adds: “Under these circumstances, any- one daring to suggest that what is going on is not ‘re- ally’ genocide is immedi- ately accused of weakness or sympathizing with the aggressors.” Thus, The term genocide can be used as a propaganda tool by becoming the hinge for a venomous rhetoric against a sworn enemy. Given the powerful emo- tional charge the word genocide generates, it can The liberal use of the term “genocide” has stirred numerous be used and re-used in all controversies and debates. Despite an international law definition, sorts of hate talk to heap the word has been applied in some questionable instances. The international opprobrium deliberate murder of more than a million Cambodians by the Khmer on whoever is accused of Rouge, some of whose victims are pictured here, was undoubtedly genocidal intent. … The obvious conclusion: The a horrific crime, but does it fit the definition of genocide? word is used as much as a symbolic shield to claim victim status for one’s people, as a sword raised against one’s deadly enemy.13 THE ARMENIANS Intent or premeditation is all important in de- What then of the Armenian case? Unfortu- fining genocide “because it removes from con- nately, as the well-known journalist and scholar sideration not only natural disasters but also those Gwynne Dyer concluded more than thirty-five man-made disasters that took place without ex- years ago, most Turkish and Armenian scholars plicit planning. Many of the epidemics of com- are unable to be objective on this issue resulting municable diseases that reached genocidal pro- in a situation of “Turkish falsifiers and Armenian portions, for example were caused by unwitting deceivers.”15 human actions.”14 Although some would dis- The main purpose of this discussion, there- agree, the fate of the North American indigenous fore, is not to deny that Turks killed and expelled people is a case in point as they died largely from Armenians on a large scale; indeed what hap- disease, not intent. Therefore, a large loss of life pened might in today’s vocabulary be called war is not in itself proof of genocide. Ignoring intent crimes, ethnic cleansing, or even crimes against creates a distorted scenario and may lead to in- humanity.