American presidential candidate Barack Obama recently reaffirmed his commitment to the recognition of the alleged Armenian genocide.
The message came after a reminder by Professor Ahmet Davudo?lu, foreign policy adviser to the Turkish prime minister, indicating that such a move would be detrimental to bilateral relations between Turkey and the US. In this message, Obama argued that whether Armenians were subjected to a campaign of genocide by Turkey is undisputable, adding that the genocide claims were substantiated by historical facts.
But a thorough and integrated review of historical data will show that the deaths were actually part of inter-communal conflicts, which were common in other war zones during World War I. Therefore, pro-genocide historians are actually wrong because of their limited focus on the deaths of Armenians while ignoring deaths of the Turks in the same period of time. An integrated approach that will take the latter in consideration will reveal that hundreds of thousands of Turks were also killed by Armenians during the period where a large number of Armenians died of famine, diseases, revengeful acts or killings.
Do historical facts support genocide claims?
Those who allege that Ottoman Turks committed crimes of genocide against the Armenians in the early 20th century believe that a verdict by an international tribunal is not needed to confirm their allegations simply because there is plenty of historical evidence. Mostly for this reason, promoters of the alleged Armenian genocide take care to keep the issue away from the adjudication of an international court.
But it should be noted that their over-reliance on historical findings to make their point is also groundless because while they consider the facts or evidence supporting their claims, they fail to take the stories of the other side into account. Assessing the whole story from the perspective of murdered Armenians would be misleading because there were many Turks killed by Armenians in various parts of the empire, but their stories were ignored by the supporters of the Armenian genocide claims.
More importantly, historical findings and facts should be rechecked to determine whether these would suffice to call the deaths of Armenians in the early 20th century "genocide." Two particular and important criteria of genocide should be taken into consideration; otherwise, it would not be appropriate to describe the deaths as genocide just because many Armenians were slaughtered or massacred.
Central to reaching a decision as to whether a set of actions constitute the crime of genocide is whether the actions took place as part of a well-defined plan drafted by the state or state authorities. To this end, in order to speak of the presence of genocide, there should be a state policy in place for the specific purpose of destroying a religious, national, racial or ethnic group and this policy should be actually implemented and result in whole or partial destruction of the targeted group. In our case, there is no undisputable evidence suggesting that the Ottoman state or statesmen had drafted a plan to annihilate Armenians in the territory of the Ottoman Empire. More importantly, there is also no evidence indicating that such a policy -- if drafted -- was implemented to wipe out the Armenian population.
Supporters of the genocide claims often cite Ottoman authorities' decision to deport Armenians as an indication of their decisiveness to coercively send them on a deadly journey. They assert that deportation or displacement of such a large population would mean nothing but death for hundreds of thousands of people because of the conditions prevalent at that time.
This explanation seems a bit logical and reasonable given that most of the casualties were due to this journey, which became a deadly walk for many Armenians. But the Ottoman state or the state authorities may not be accused of devising a plan of genocide to exterminate the Armenian population just because they made such a decision. This might have been a terribly wrong decision, but this does not necessarily mean that it could be taken as clear evidence for the intention to destroy Armenians in whole or in part. This was a decision that state authorities at the time considered would be the best solution to the ongoing problems in regions with a substantial Armenian population. Many Armenians suffered from this decision, but that does not make state authorities liable for preparing a great plot to eliminate all Armenians.
Reference points in history
Those who allege that Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign by the Turks also make reference to the trials and conviction in Ottoman courts of several Ottoman officers, who were executed because of crimes committed against Armenians. True, some military and administrative officers were tried and executed in connection with offenses against civilian Armenians, but this does not suggest that they were guilty of the crime of genocide. There are a variety of war crimes other than genocide, and these trials might be relevant to such offenses.
More importantly, that such trials were held by the Ottoman state should actually prove that there was no centrally devised plan to annihilate the entire Armenian population. If there had been such a plan, the state should not have held its own officers responsible for these offenses.
It should also be noted that Armenians and Turks coexisted peacefully for centuries in Ottoman territories. That is to say, there has never been a culture of hatred or enmity held by Turks against Armenians. Even though there was some sort of hidden or indirect hostility between the Greeks and the Jews, most sub-identities were tolerant to each other. Among these sub-identities, Armenians were the closest to the Turks in terms of cultural and lifestyle similarities. A foreigner would have difficulty discerning an Armenian from a Turk even as late as the 19th century.
In return, Armenians never considered rioting against the administration mostly held by Turks. For this reason, they were referred to as "loyal nation" (millet-i sadika). Considering this loyalty, the late Ottoman sultans appointed some high-level Armenians to influential posts. Even Abdulhamid II, who is abhorred by the Armenian diaspora, had an affinity for Armenians and reserved crucial positions for leading Armenian figures. Despite an assassination attempt plotted by Armenian terrorists against him, Abdulhamid II never considered wiping out the entire Armenian population nor did he remove influential Armenian figures from government posts.
Of course, this cannot be taken as an assurance that Turks would never commit the crime of genocide against Armenians. But this crucial fact implies that historians should consider the nature of relations between the Turkish and Armenian communities in the Ottoman Empire when making generalizations about the Armenian genocide claims. If there was no source of conflict or tension for centuries between these communities, then there should a reason for the breakout of a deadly conflict that left millions of dead people behind.
At this point, recalling tensions between conflicting communities in the two most important and legally confirmed genocides will be illustrative. In regards to the Holocaust, it could be said that the Jewry suffered from certain stereotypes held by a substantial number of Germans and that there had been no peace between these two communities. Hitler successfully mobilized anti-Semitic sentiments to ignite a genocidal campaign against the Jewish population. Likewise, in Rwanda, Hutu extremists exploited the long-standing tension with the Tutsi minority and justified an extremely violent campaign by which they aimed to wipe out the Tutsi identity. Extremists made particular references to the alleged abuse by Tutsis, whose identity was formerly promoted by colonial Belgians.
But in the case of Armenian deaths, there was no such motive that could be used by the Turks and the Ottoman authorities. What happened was a conflict between the parties because of the war conditions and the subsequent deportation of a large Armenian population, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians. Again, almost an equal number of Turks were slaughtered by Armenians in hopes of having an independent state of their own, which was encouraged by Russia, which occupied a substantial part of eastern Ottoman territories.
Most historians are prone to focus on what happened to the Armenians during the early 20th century because their minds are set to investigate the facts about the alleged Armenian genocide. This is a legitimate yet insufficient inquiry because it misses the details of the other side of the story. A brief survey of what happened to Turks in the same period and of crimes committed by the Armenians against the Muslim population will prove that the killings were not genocide but a wholesale conflict that left many Muslims and Armenians dead in the war zone. The fact that nothing harmful done to the Armenians living in other parts of the Ottoman state confirms this, as there was no such conflict in Istanbul or other provinces in the Marmara or Ege regions.
An integrated historical approach should consider the whole picture to have a more accurate depiction of what happened. Supporters of Armenian genocide claims often fail to take the war conditions into account and the fact that the Ottoman state lost authority in the eastern and southeastern parts of the country, where most of the massacres took place. It should be noted once more that these atrocities were committed by both sides; considering that the death toll was growing and was not likely to stop any time soon, the Ottoman state decided -- for better or worse -- to relocate the Armenian population in an attempt to put an end to the clashes.
The process of relocation was unfortunately deadly, leaving countless sad stories behind. Famine, excessive heat and revenge attacks by armed Kurds, who chased the deportees, caught many Armenians defenseless on their way to another place to live.
Author; Dr. Cenap
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