On 24 April 2021, President Biden formally recognised the Armenian Genocide, the mass
murder of Armenians that occurred within the Ottoman Empire at the start of the 20th century.
As expected, Turkey furiously rejected the move, stating that it would open up
a deep wound between the people of the United States and the Turkish people.
So, what exactly is the dispute over recognition all about?
And why is it proving to be so divisive?
[MUSIC]
Hello and welcome. If you're new to the channel, my name is James Ker-Lindsay and here I take an
informed look at international relations, conflicts and the origins of countries.
The question of how countries respond to historic atrocities
has become increasingly significant in international politics.
As awareness grows about the violent past of many states,
so calls have grown for them to acknowledge abuses and injustices.
In some cases, there has been acceptance and even apologies for past acts, including,
genocide, slavery, internment, ethnic cleansing, wilful neglect or colonialism.
However, many countries resist such calls.
This may be because they dispute the events in
question or because they feel that the circumstances have been misrepresented.
Alternatively, it may be because such claims are seen as a slur on the nation
or could potentially lay it open to claims for compensation.
Meanwhile, some argue that it's not for one generation to apologise for the sins of another.
Sometimes, the issue of past atrocities can become a significant foreign policy matter
that shapes the wider international relations of a country.
One of the most significant examples of this centres on Turkey
and the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
Over the past 30 years, this has become an increasingly divisive issue
that has put the country's relations with a number of its closest partners under strain.
So, just what is the dispute all about? And how and why has it become so contentious?
The story starts with the Ottoman Empire,
the heartland of which is today the Republic of Turkey.
At its height, the Empire stretched into Southeast Europe,
across North Africa and down into the Arabian Gulf.
However, by the start of the 20th century it was collapsing.
The territories in the Balkans had won their independence.
Meanwhile, in the east, the Christian Armenians were becoming increasingly restive.
In October 1914, just months after the start of the First World War,
the Ottoman Empire joined Germany against Britain, France and Russia.
Seeing their chance to break away, many Armenians allied themselves with imperial Russia.
Following a major defeat by Russian forces in early 1915,
the Ottoman administration began a crackdown on Armenian dissent.
As well as harsh reprisals in the east, on the 24 April
hundreds of leading Armenian figures were arrested, with many later executed.
Now viewed as an internal threat,
a law was passed ordering the deportation of the Armenians in eastern Anatolia.
In the months that followed, hundreds of thousands of Armenians - as well
as Christian Assyrians, who are often forgotten in the story - were rounded
up and forced to walk south into the deserts of what is now northern Syria.
As a result, it's estimated that anywhere between six hundred thousand and one and
a half million men, women and children died of hunger, exhaustion, illness or violence.
In the decades that followed,
two main factors would shape these events into the dispute we know today.
The first is the Armenian diaspora.
While Armenians have a long history of emigration, following the deportation many
hundreds of thousands of survivors made their way around the world, establishing large communities
in the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Greece and Cyprus, to name just a few.
Indeed, today the diaspora is believed to be in
the region of around 7 million people - as compared to 3 million in Armenia.
Within these communities, the memory of the trauma of 1915 has remained strong.
As they became increasingly established,
they began to raise awareness of the issue and demand action.
The second major factor was the official recognition of
the term genocide by the United Nations.
The 1948 Genocide Convention formally defined it as, 'acts committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a nation, ethnical, racial or religious group.'
Crucially, this extends beyond mass murder.
It also includes causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group's
physical destruction, in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births;
and forcibly transferring children to another group.
Viewing the deportations as falling within the terms of the Convention, the Armenian diaspora
began to call for the term genocide to be explicitly applied to the events of 1915.
Interestingly, while today we think of the campaign for recognition
as a peaceful effort, it wasn't always the case.
In fact, during the 1970s and 80s the issue came to international attention
through the actions of several terrorist groups that carried out attacks on Turkish targets,
including the assassination of a number of Turkish diplomats.
The most notorious of these was the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia - ASALA.
However, since the end of the 1980s the campaign has been political and generally peaceful.
Although the first formal statement recognizing 'atrocities' came in 1965 from Uruguay,
the first explicit mention of genocide was in a resolution passed by the US House of
Representatives in 1975, followed soon afterwards by resolution in the Cypriot parliament.
In 1987, the European Parliament recognised the events of 1915 as a genocide, becoming
the first of several international bodies, including the Council of Europe, to do so.
However, it wasn't until the 1990s that the campaign really took off with resolutions passed
in the Russian, Canadian, Greek, Argentinian and Belgian parliaments, to name a few.
But perhaps the most major breakthrough came in 2001,
when the French parliament recognised the Armenian Genocide.
Today, around 30 countries have recognised the Armenian Genocide,
either through parliamentary resolutions or as formal statements of government policy.
And it was against this backdrop that President Biden
made the announcement that the United States now also recognised the events of 1915 as genocide.
From the start, the Turkish government has campaigned heavily against recognition and
has strongly condemned countries that have chosen to recognise the events as genocide,
often recalling its ambassador to the country concerned.
In the US case, the Turkish foreign ministry accused President Biden
of having bowed to pressure from 'radical Armenian circles
and anti-Turkey groups', and noted that it would undermine bilateral relations.
Responding angrily, the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the US should
"look in the mirror" over the killing of Native Americans before pointing the finger at Turkey.
Interestingly, and despite common misconceptions,
Turkey's campaign isn't about whether the massacres took place/
This has in fact been publicly acknowledged.
Indeed, as prime minister, President Erdogan offered condolences to the
grandchildren of those who died from the "inhumane consequences" of 1915.
Likewise, it isn't about avoiding reparations or compensation, as many believe.
International law recognises a right to redress for human rights violations,
regardless of whether it's defined as genocide.
Instead, the dispute is about how the events of 1915 should be understood
and whether they really do constitute genocide.
Ultimately, it's framed by Turkey as a matter of national honour.
Essentially, the Turkish counter-argument is built around several distinct strands.
For a start, it disputes the historical account.
As well as contesting the number of those killed - arguing that the 1.5
million claimed by Armenians has been inflated for political purposes - it
insists that the events need to be set in their proper context.
While many Armenians were indeed killed, many more Muslims were murdered at the same time.
It also rejects the reliability of the sources.
For example, it argues that the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau,
a key source of information, was biased as he was looking to encourage the United States to
enter the war against Germany and its allies, including the Ottoman Empire.
Secondly, the Turkish government disputes that the events constitute genocide.
Arguing that the Armenian people took up arms against their own government,
it insists that the order was to relocate them.
There's no evidence, in its view, of a command to kill them or an intent to do so.
Moreover, it points out that Ottoman Officials put on trial by the British after the war
were all acquitted - although others have pointed out that there were political issues at play
and that international criminal law was undeveloped at the time.
Finally, the Turkish Government insists that no conclusion can be drawn until
all the evidence has been properly weighed, noting that it has proposed
the establishment of a Turkish-Armenian commission to look into the issue.
Responding to these arguments, those who call for the Armenian Genocide to be recognised
note that neither the number nor the context has any bearing on whether it is in fact genocide.
Nor does the Genocide Convention require a direct order to kill.
Even if there was no such order, the decision to force march hundreds of thousands of men,
women and children into the desert with inadequate food, water and medical attention
clearly constitutes a wilful disregard for the lives of those people - a people who had
been collectively identified as the enemies of the state.
Perhaps most importantly, the considered opinion of most expert scholars who've
examined the issue - including leading Turkish scholars living abroad - is
that the events of 1915 do fall within the terms of the Genocide Convention.
In the meantime, it's telling that most countries continue to maintain a distance on the issue.
Indeed, the number of states that have chosen to recognise the Armenian Genocide
represents just a sixth of the 193 members of the United Nations.
In some cases, this is down to self-interest.
Many states facing calls to accept past atrocities - some committed relatively recently - have little
reason to want to condemn another country and thus open themselves up to claims of hypocrisy.
For others, there's a more strategic motive.
Many countries maintain close political,
economic and military ties with Turkey and don't want to see relations disrupted.
Facing pressure over this, some countries sidestep the issue by insisting that
it's not for governments to make decisions on genocide, but for historians and courts of law.
The question of how countries come to terms with the worst aspects of
their history is becoming increasingly important in international affairs.
More and more states, especially those with a legacy of imperialism or colonialism,
are facing up to their past and acknowledging atrocities.
However, it also remains a deeply sensitive issue for many countries;
especially where allegations include genocide.
However, with the United States now having acknowledged those events as
constituting a genocide, and with more countries seemingly set to follow,
it could well appear that Turkey could well be waging a losing battle on this issue.
To this extent, there's an argument to be made the longer that Turkey makes
this about its reputation, rather than that of the final stages of the Ottoman Empire,
the more its reputation will be tarnished by its failure
to acknowledge what a growing number of its international partners and allies now accept.
In a world where more and more states are showing contrition for past acts,
and in doing so are gaining praise for coming to terms with their history, many would argue that
Turkey's position is not only increasingly costly, it's also counterproductive at a pragmatic level.
I hope you found that interesting. If so, here are some more videos that you might find useful.
Thanks so much for watching and see you in the next video.