Knowledge and Acknowledgement in the Politics of Memory of the Armenian Genocide [1 ed.] 113831885X, 9781138318854

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Knowledge and Acknowledgement in the Politics of Memory of the Armenian Genocide

Is the Armenian Genocide a strictly historical matter? If that is the case, why is it still a topical issue, capable of causing diplomatic rows and heated debates? The short answer would be that the century old Armenian Genocide is much more than a historical question. It emerged as a political dilemma on the international arena at the San Stefano peace conference in 1878 and has remained as such into our days. The disparity between knowledge and acknowledgement, mainly ascribable to Turkey’s official denial of the genocide, has only heightened the politicization of the Armenian question. Thus, the memories of the WWI era refuse to be relegated to the pages of history but are rather perceived as a vivid presence. This is the result of the perpetual process of politics of memory. The politics of memory is an intricate and interdisciplinary negotiation, engaging many different actors in the society who have access to a wide range of resources and measures in order to achieve their goals. By following the Armenian question during the past century up to its Centennial Commemoration in 2015, this study aims to explain why and how the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide has kept it as a topical issue in our days. Vahagn Avedian is the editor of Armenica.org and Genocide1915.org. The current publication is a modified version of his Ph.D. thesis at the History Department, Lund University.

Mass Violence in Modern History

Edited by Alexander Korb and Ug˘ ur Ümit Üngor

1 Knowledge and Acknowledgement in the Politics of Memory of the Armenian Genocide Vahagn Avedian

Knowledge and Acknowledgement in the Politics of Memory of the Armenian Genocide Vahagn Avedian

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Vahagn Avedian The right of Vahagn Avedian to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book. ISBN: 978-1-138-31885-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-45425-7 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction

vi 1

1

The politics of memory: An intricate perpetual process

10

2

The Armenian question between history and politics

65

3

The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide

117

4

Memory, history and justice: Towards reconciliation

210

5

Knowledge and (dis)acknowledgement: A century of the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide

262

Bibliography Index

271 300

Acknowledgements

This book is a slightly revised version of my Ph.D. thesis which I defended in June 2017. Those who are familiar with the process of writing a Ph.D. thesis know very well that it is a highly collective achievement. This study is no exception. First and foremost, my gratitude has to go to my doctoral supervisor, KlasGöran Karlsson. He not only made the journey possible by urging me to apply for the position when I was seriously contemplating reconsidering the prospects of a Ph.D. position, but has been an invaluable asset during the whole journey. I am grateful for all the insightful remarks and ideas which have improved the thesis as well as my progression as scholar. The same gratitude is in place to my co-supervisor, Cecilie Stokholm Banke. Her comments in general, but more significantly in regard to the political aspects of the issue, have been more than helpful in indicating some of the delicate matters in the whole dilemma described in the thesis. My sincere thanks to both of you. I’m also in debt to several of the doctoral colleagues who have turned up at my seminars, commenting on the progress and offering ideas for improvement. Thus, in no particular order, I need to acknowledge the help and the friendship I have attained from Per Höjeberg, Maria Karlsson, Valter Lundell, Helen Persson and Marianne Sjöland. Thank you for the exchange of ideas and the other non-thesis-related conversations. I need also to direct my gratitude for the opportunity and the support received from the History Department at Lund University and the National Graduate School in History. Special thanks to the United Nations Office at Geneva Library for their immense help with providing me with the enquired documents. There are two persons who need special mentioning in this endeavor. First, Matthias Bjørnlund, who has in a never-ending stream of links to articles, publications and other sources been providing me with much appreciated information. Although I’m grateful for all the links you have spammed me with (and by all means, don’t stop!), you really need to find another hobby than vacuuming the internet for genocide related information. And, second, my friend and co-founder of Armenica.org and all its related projects and publications, Sevan Amirians. Even though I’ve been receiving much of the credit for all the work we have done together, your part has by no means been

Acknowledgements

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any less. I cherish your ideas and comments, especially from an inside-perspective from Armenia. I hope that we can continue producing and updating our work together in the future as well. And finally, turning to the immediate circle, I am ever grateful to my parents, Roubik and Verjik, for the uprising which is partly responsible for why I’m, among other things, doing this and most certainly for who I am. Your teachings about democracy, humanism and integrity have been invaluable guidelines which I hold dear and try my best to live up to and pass onto my own children. To my sister, Yevgine, who, despite an ocean and a continent apart, has always cheered me on in my endeavors. To my sons, Mher and Sasoon, whom I promised that I would do my best not to neglect while completing the thesis: I hope that I have upheld that promise and that any sacrificed playing-time can be compensated by this study being of some help for you to understand the whole ordeal a bit better. And last, but definitely not least, my life partner and wife Erebouni: I couldn’t have done it without you. You have from the very beginning encouraged me to take on the challenge, sharing knowledge from your own doctoral thesis process as well as offloading me from home chores and taking care of the boys. You have even gone as far as simulating the denialist camp (superbly I may add), by now and then exclaiming “Enough with the nonsense! Quit living in the past and pay more attention to your family in the present!” Few could emulate the politics of memory on micro level as you have been able to do and I love you for that.

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Introduction

April 24 2005, was a sunny and warm spring Sunday in Uppsala. The Union of Armenian Associations in Sweden had its annual Armenian Genocide commemoration day in the auditorium of Eriksberg elementary school. After the completion of the program, with the customary lecture by an invited scholar, who happened to be Klas-Göran Karlsson, my future doctoral thesis supervisor, speeches by members of the Swedish parliament, dance performances and recitals, people started to mingle. Working my way through the crowd, I ran into Rafik Boroian and we started to talk about the topical issue in Sweden: the weather. Having survived the five months of dark and snowy Swedish winter, people would not deliberately stay indoors when the sun was shining outside. But it was April 24. It was in that conversation that Rafik, a fellow Iranian-Armenian, said: “You know, I keep telling Hasmik [his wife, with origins in Western Armenia], that this is all your people’s fault. Had you Western Armenians managed to find a common language with the Turks back then, you would not have ruined all our weekends for the past 90 years.” That anecdote has been retold numerous times and it brings a smile to every Armenian’s face I have told it to, since they immediately recognize the situation: similar commemoration days and countless hours and effort invested into the recognition process; not to mention how this century-old question still engages not only Armenians and Turks, but also the international community whenever the question pops up in a parliament etc. One can only imagine how much we could have had achieved if people were able to put that focus on other aspects of their lives, inside as well as outside Armenia. Nonetheless, something clearly made the issue linger and refuse to just subside and disappear by time. All these factors made me realize the seriousness of Rafik’s anecdote. What impact has the genocide had on Armenian identity and everyday life? And why is a “historical” issue still around and able to stir up such commotion in Sweden, the USA, France or Switzerland? Why have we not been able to put this behind us and move forward? The more I contemplated on the issue, the more I realized how complex this issue really is, including many different aspects of the Turkish-Armenian relations, but perhaps more significantly, the neglected role of the international community. Something has evidently kept the issue alive, prohibiting it from

2

Introduction

disappearing down the pages of history, but rather wedging it into the very fabric of the Armenian and Turkish identities and their relationship. Besides the activities directly related to the recognition process, the genocide has also, as an omnipresent factor, indirectly loaded many diaspora Armenians with considerable overhead activity in their daily life: the endless hours invested in association meetings (of which I have had more than a fair share), the Armenian Sunday schools we had to attend while our Swedish classmates were enjoying the weekends, and the constant concern about the new generation’s loss of its Armenian identity through assimilation, the “white genocide.” Yet an additional aspect revealed itself as I started studying history and became familiar with the field of research: how the Armenian Genocide almost eclipses the rest of the Armenian history in the modern research. Considering that the main part of the genocide took place during the two years of 1915 and 1916, while the Armenian history stretches back well over 2,500 years (counting from the first known “official” mentioning in the Persian King Darius I’s cuneiform, 521 B.C.), the genocide comprises less than 0.1 percent of the Armenian history.1 However, looking into the Armenianrelated topics within the academy, it would hardly be a great exaggeration to assert that the genocide (with its different aspects) occupies close to 99 percent of the research, especially international research. It is saddening that a history of almost three millennia, including many bright pages of technological, cultural, architectural, political and other achievements and contributions to humanity and civilization, is eclipsed with that one single dark event. This is of course a highly simplistic approach, given the gravity of the event, its impact on the Armenian nation and its relatively short temporal distance, but most significantly, the meaning it has been given, both by Armenians and the world community. The genocide and our interpretation of the 1915 events have evidently become a focal point of the Armenian nation, a decisive factor in the relations with Turkey and a distinctive historical and political feature for Armenia as well as for Turkey internationally. Nonetheless, it evokes the question of whether it is really worth that much attention, and if so, why? In most similar cases, we might adhere to the call to “forgive and forget,” moving on and looking forward to the future rather than to the past. Furthermore, why would someone deliberately want to study such a wretched and depressing subject as genocide, representing perhaps the darkest side of humanity? This aspect of genocide studies is evident in the fact that several researchers have testified about the anxiety connected to the studied horrors, impressions which have even led to suicide.2 This is probably why genocide scholars, at least from my own experience of those I have had the privilege to get to know better, seem to possess an additional share of humor. Perhaps this is a quality needed for being able to handle such a subject or it could simply be a natural consequence of a human reaction in order to be able to cope with the learned facts, or probably a combination of both. Yet, evidently there is something which evokes and motivates this interest in a century old issue. Why has this question lingered along and remains

Introduction

3

almost intact, surviving numerous social and political changes during the past century? While the research has spent much time and effort on understanding what happened during WWI, we have not quite reflected on why that knowledge has not yielded in a wider acknowledgement. The genocide and its memory are obviously deeply rooted in both victim and perpetrator groups and one needs to understand why and how this anchorage is incarnated and functions. Moreover, the issue is not limited to these two groups, but it also engages the international community, witnessed foremost in the diplomatic rows in regard to its recognition. Somehow a “historical” event continues to be a political and diplomatic hotbed in our time, a quandary which gives rise to the question about how history is used and abused in the political arena and what reciprocal effects this process has on its constituent memories. To narrow it down in the framework of this study, the politics of memory lies at the core of the issue and runs through the history of the Armenian Genocide, a process which engages many disciplines and actors. A highly intricate process, the politics of memory is often defined as a negotiation, engaging many different actors from a top-down perspective (official and institutional) as well as a bottom-up (public, NGOs etc.), who together have access to a wide range of resources and measures in order to achieve their goals.3 De Brito, Enriquez and Aguilar summarize the politics of memory in two items: Narrowly conceived, it consists of policies of truth and justice in transition (official or public memory); more widely conceived, it is about how a society interprets and appropriates its past, in an ongoing attempt to mould its future (social memory).4 While the former part can be (although not necessarily) delimited to a specific period of time in a given society, the latter part is an open-end process which is continuously in progress. This study aims to pay attention to this interdisciplinary process where history, political science and law interact.

The vitality of the Armenian Genocide: why is it still topical? Is the Armenian Genocide a strictly historical question which belongs to the past? Although this is one of the main arguments used against recognition of the Armenian Genocide in contemporary debates, especially political ones, many factors and examples suggest otherwise. Yet, there are few other events with equal temporal distance as the Armenian Genocide which manage to evoke similar heated emotions and debates in our time. This brings us to the central question in our study, namely how and why is this question kept alive and what factors and actors are contributing to this process? Despite being one of the most researched cases of genocide in modern era, there are still references to an alleged controversy surrounding the historical data and the applicability of the term genocide. This in turn results in the seemingly persistent need for revisiting the events and reinterpreting the

4

Introduction

information at hand, especially in conjunction with political confirmations of scholarly research and conclusions. Thus, the quandary stated in the title of this study emphasizes the existing disparity between knowledge and its acknowledgement. To explain this disparity, it is required to look at the progression of the knowledge and our current understanding of the events on one hand and the persisting resistance within the political arena for acknowledging the same knowledge on the other. The explanation is done by studying some key concepts such as memory and history, but also through some rather auxiliary concepts and mechanisms such as identity, democracy, law and reconciliation. This multidimensional nature of the Armenian Genocide not only implies the inherent force of the historicity of the events, but also its intricate relations with social, political and legal aspects and their actors. Studying the genocide recognition process, we discover an event which transcends both time and geographical boundaries, revealing the aforementioned power of memory and history. A hundred years after WWI, the memories not only affect the present, but our current interpretation and usage of them also redefine our perception of the very same memories, constantly evolving them and the history they amount to. The prolonged recognition process is rather due to its saturation with political undertones than factual uncertainties about the events. The passage of time has only cemented the two sides in a seemingly diametrical view of the events. Thus, the memories simply do not fade away by the passage of time, but instead are regenerated and sometimes even amplified within the perpetual process we call the politics of memory.

Genocide Studies: a true interdisciplinary field and its challenges Before continuing to the theoretical discussion, let’s briefly reflect upon some special features related to genocide studies and its related challenges. Genocide studies is indeed a challenging area, not only due to the described psychological aspects but also to its complexity. Other than the issue of justice and the truth, it is this interdisciplinary nature of genocide research which makes it a compelling subject. While history is the detective for the fact-finding and the analyzer of unearthed information, sociology copes with the understanding of how such an enterprise can be undertaken, engulfing an entire society; psychology to understand the reasoning leading to the crime, but also for processing the trauma and its memory; political science for explaining the dynamics of the political process, including the foreign relations and the means for prevention and punishment, which leads to the legal aspects and international law. This is also why it is very difficult to study a case of genocide strictly from one of these aspects without at least touching upon the other disciplines. Lifting out and isolating one discipline on its own deprives the issue of its entirety. Regarded only from a psychological point of view, focusing on the individual or on the society, the study loses the legal implications of the genocide, a crime against humanity and punishable by law, while missing the underlying political aspects affecting the recognition process. On the other

Introduction

5

hand, focusing on the legal perspective often ends up in interpreting the problem from strict judicial considerations, which then overlooks the built-in psychological and sociological aspects determining and fueling the controversy of the unresolved problem. A strictly historical study informs us of what happened, but for answering “why” and “how,” or for considering the consequences, we need the assistance of the other disciplines. Thus, an ideal study would incorporate all these aspects. Naturally, limitations in both space and expertise do not allow an all-embracing rendering and one has to compromise and form the width and the depth depending on the aims of the study. This interdisciplinary nature is, however, not limited to the scholarly research, but as it will be observed in this study, it is very palpable between academic, legislative and judicial bodies dealing with the Armenian Genocide. History is, nonetheless, still the primary field and the glue holding the others together, as is the centrality of the inherent power of historicity and its influence on all other aspects. Naturally, this capacity of history makes it significant to control, implying that it can also be abused. This is evident in the Armenian case when the Turkish state, as well as foreign states, refer to it as a strict “historical” issue in order to avoid its political and legal implications. Thus, to assert that the Armenian Genocide is merely a historical issue is an utterly naïve and a misleading statement. As this study will emphasize, the Armenian question, ever since it emerged on the international agenda at the San Stefano Peace Conference in 1878,5 has been nothing but a political issue. The Turkish state denial is perhaps the most notable politicizing factor, often witnessed in the diplomatic skirmish whenever the issue of recognition is introduced in foreign countries. However, there are other subtler indicators for this political sensitivity too, among others one that I have encountered during my research. Ever since I embarked on the path of university studies, writing articles and seminar papers on the subject, the issue of my objectivity as an Armenian has constantly been a matter for remark. This discussion has followed me during the doctoral program application process, when my suitability as a candidate in regard to my ethnicity along with my engagement in the Union of Armenian Associations of Sweden (UAAS) would supposedly endanger my objectivity.6 Later, the issue of ethnicity has been brought up in numerous occasions during the seminars and the workshops I have participated in, asking whether it would “dilute” the objectivity of the study. Frankly, my immediate reaction was one of surprise, which was soon replaced with disappointment. This argumentation implied that my research was suddenly not judged by its merits, but rather in regard to my ethnicity and UAAS-affiliation as “lobbyist,” a label I never really liked to begin with and now started to even resent. The fact that the issue is politicized and “sensitive” became even more obvious once I contemplated that the same critics would most likely think twice about their academic ethics and reputation before questioning whether a Jew is suitable to carry out research on the Holocaust, a gay person on LGBT issues, or a woman about feminism. The Armenian Genocide, somehow, is fair game, though. I would ascribe this

6

Introduction

attribute directly to the existing active Turkish state denial of the Armenian Genocide and how it has further politicized the issue. I say further, since, as mentioned earlier, the Armenian question was a highly topical political issue before becoming a historical one due to the passage of time. The denial has only galvanized this aspect, preserving it from the corrosion of time, keeping it as a topical issue on the international agenda a century later. Notwithstanding, let it be abundantly clear that this is not in any way a measure for shielding oneself against criticism. On the contrary, the very mentioning of this issue quite evidently invites additional criticism, which I have experienced at different stages of the development of the study. It would have been much simpler just to omit this part and not invite such discussion. However, I still believe that this issue requires emphasizing due to a couple of reasons, of which the topic of this study, the politics of memory, is an evident one. Second, the very nature of the Armenian Genocide – i.e. crimes against humanity, and its politicization through the employed official denial by Turkey – simply requires a clear standpoint. In this regard, I would agree with Yehuda Bauer’s recommendation that the scholar must make his or her bias obvious, for to do otherwise is to engage in amoral posturing. Thus, studies of genocide and other human atrocities cannot be objective unless the scholar is willing to posit that morality is not … “an absolute value – that is, absolute as long as one posits the existence of the human race as a desired condition.”7 Another equally significant aspect is the power of history of which we are a product. I, as any other person, am influenced by the surrounding collective memories and narratives. What is more significant in this case is my role as a historian, who, as Herbert Hirsch notes, both utilizes and creates memory.8 Thus, this study, as many other literatures on the subject of the politics of memory, is truly part of the same process it studies. While analyzing the memories, the history and the process at work, the study itself is participating in that process, creating a narrative of its own.9 While on the subject, let me also reflect on the issue of objectivity, especially in the Armenian case. It is only natural to expect that the scholarly research is objective in the sense that it aims at a nuanced and balanced view. This is achieved primarily by at least not excluding or slanting unfavorable data which would contradict one’s assertions. Other than a fundamental pillar in scholarly ethics, this also seems quite logical since the truth is simply much more sustainable in argumentation compared to the efforts required for maintaining a position based on slanted or untrue facts. Nonetheless, we have a natural sense of fair play which entails the need to hear both sides out. The truth, we argue, is probably somewhere in between the two stories. But yet again, when abused, this tendency of fair play becomes what I would call a “strained objectivity,” where we sometimes feel compelled to even balance the obvious facts with counter-arguments. This aspect is further amplified by the

Introduction

7

rule that “who screams loudest is probably right,” which became abundantly clear in the wake of the Swedish Riksdag’s genocide recognition on March 11 2010. The subsequent Turkish furious protests, by official Ankara as well as the minority in Sweden, expressing their dismay for “being compared with Hitler and the Nazis,” were so loud that the media coverage almost exclusively was about criticizing the recognition without one single interview or statement by the Armenian state and very few statements by the affected Christian minorities in Sweden (Armenian, Assyrian/Syrian/Chaldean and Anatolian and Pontic Greeks to quote the resolution).10 The more flagrant aspect of this was the wording “while Armenia calls it genocide, Turkey denies it,” implying the issue being an exclusively Armenian-Turkish dispute, which is definitely incorrect. It required several debate articles by leading scholars as well as supplementary information about the existing research and scholarly consensus for the media to, almost a year after, start stating that “while Armenia and the majority of the scholarly community …” We will return to this episode further ahead. To point out the obvious, let’s compare this with the Holocaust. I have encountered numerous pages and lengthy articles which, with meticulous mathematical calculations about combustion and oxygen supply, argue that you cannot dispose of so many bodies in the crematorium ovens of Auschwitz etc. Notwithstanding, I have not yet seen one credible news article about the Holocaust in which the author, for the sake of “objectivity,” is compelled to also mention such absurd argumentations as the one about the dimensioning of Auschwitz crematoriums in order to present the “other side” of the story and “balance” it in the name of fair play. Somehow, the Armenian Genocide evokes similar needs, an aspect yet again ascribed to the political nature of the issue which will be addressed by several examples in this study. Thus, to me, objectivity does not necessarily lie in putting forward all available contesting arguments, but the merits of the presented authenticated and verifiable facts suffice. This also implies that we put some responsibility on the reader who, instead of loading that responsibility entirely onto the author, is required to study the presented facts critically and not take them at face value. It is worth, early on, to mention that the primary objective of this study is not to investigate the genocide itself but its aftermath and impact. Given the body of the existing research I do not feel the urge to devote any more time exclusively to the WWI events and the question whether the massacres and the deportations qualify as genocide or not, but instead to look at the issue from a different and wider perspective. Having that said, let it be abundantly clear that I am by no means asserting that we know everything that can be learned about the events. On the contrary, there are still aspects of the Armenian Genocide which need more illumination, most notably the Turkish aspects. These could include a comprehensive study of their archives, oral history, the width of the confiscations and other subjects which have not been researched more extensively due to the prevailing atmosphere and politics in Turkey. These are certainly still important missing pieces of the puzzle which

8

Introduction

amount to the complete picture of the events. The more gaps we fill in, the richer the level of detail gets. However, I am convinced that despite these missing pieces, we have enough information in place to discern what happened and to what end. To further dwell on and exclusively seek for that ultimate compelling evidence is playing the game according to the rules set by the genocide denialists, meant for a never ending wild goose chase. As Richard Holbrooke once remarked in regard to the US administration’s standpoint towards the ongoing massacres in former Yugoslavia, “the search for intelligence is often a deliberate excuse to avoid or at least to delay action.”11 This is directly applicable in the case of the Armenian Genocide and the call for further “objective research.” As it will be substantiated throughout this study, it should also be clear that I have no doubt about the applicability of the genocide definition by the UN Genocide Convention on the Armenian case.12 The issue of the legal applicability of the UN Convention is a completely different matter, which I leave out of this study. Let us just note that not acknowledging the Armenian case as genocide by referring to the non-retroactive legal nature of the Genocide Convention (which some deliberately mix up with the genocide terminology), based on the legal principle of ex post facto, simply implies not acknowledging the Holocaust as a case of genocide either. From a strictly legal perspective, the events during 1915–1916 and 1939–1945 both equally predate the 1948 Convention. This, too, has been fully abused by the genocide deniers and those who would refrain from calling the events of 1915 by their proper designation: genocide. Let me use the following example in regard to the issue of definition of the terminology: the term “dinosauria” was first coined in 1841 by the paleontologist Sir Richard Owen.13 However, this certainly does not imply that any discovered fossil prior to that date is dismissed as not being a dinosaur simply because the discovery occurred prior to the coining of the term. The same is true about the definition of the term genocide which Lemkin introduced in 1944 (not its codification into international law as the UN Convention of 1948) and its applicability to the Armenian events thirty years earlier. I will discuss the relevance of the legal aspects of the term in regard to the recognition process later on in the study. This also brings us to the terms used in the study which need some deliberation. As it will be argued throughout the study, it is not the usage of the term genocide which is per se the sole reason for the Turkish denial, but rather the issue of responsibility in regard to any kind of committed error. Thus, the events of WWI will be referred to interchangeably as genocide, crimes against humanity or internationally wrongful acts, which can be said are generalizations of the respective term in that order of mentioning.

Notes 1 This is of course a highly simplified example to illustrate the relation between the genocide and the Armenian history. Including the proto-Armenian Urartu

Introduction

2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10

11 12 13

9

Kingdom into the calculation (dating back to around 800 B.C.) or prolonging the genocide to cover the period between 1894 (the Hamidian massacres) up to 1923 (the establishment of the Turkish Republic and the end of the major Armenian persecutions) would make a marginal difference to the matter. The case of Iris Chang, researcher of the Japanese war crimes in China, who committed suicide in 2004. See e.g. Üngör, 2009, p. 176. Lebow, p. 26. See also Sieder, p. 161. De Brito, Enriquez and Aguilar, p. 37. For the text of the San Stefano Treaty see Hurst, pp. 528–548. An example of such assertion is found in the report commissioned by the Swedish Government to Pål Wrange, Professor of Law at Stockholm University. In his report Wrange asserted that in setting up similar truth-finding commissions it is “[o]ften suitable that there are no scholars from the affected groups.” See Wrange, p. 35. Quoted in Hirsch, 1995, p. 75. Ibid., p. 17. Using Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s terminology, the historians must be seen as “both actors and narrators.” See Carr, p. 67. De Brito, Enriquez and Aguilar, p. 39. This was illustrated in a cursory study of the media coverage and a compilation of the results in a report which was partly published on the debate site of Swedish Public Service TV (SVT Debatt), with the title “Medias bevakning brast i objektivitet” (The Media Coverage Failed in Objectivity). For the report (in Swedish) see Avedian, 2010, “Medias bevakning av riksdagens erkännande av Folkmordet 1915”. Power, p. 410. For the text of the convention see “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”. Owen, p. 103.

1

The politics of memory An intricate perpetual process

It is widely accepted that we are experiencing a boom of memory studies, especially in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the post-Communist era in Europe, where the Holocaust and the post-WWII era have a prominent position.1 One of the important impacts of the Holocaust on contemporary studies was breaking the norm of history being written by the victors. As JanWerner Müller puts it, the post-Holocaust study of memory is characterized by “the shift from a ‘history for the victors’ or, in Nietzsche’s terms, ‘monumental history’, to a ‘history of the victims.’”2 Another aspect of the evolution of Holocaust studies has been its key factor in the increased interest in the non-medical study of trauma and memories. It is hardly surprising that memory studies concerning traumatic events dominate the field, observed in the “‘catastrophic’ history of the twentieth century,” 3 which has also been called the “century of genocide.” Thus, before moving on, it is appropriate to make a short reflection on the usage of the Holocaust in this study. There are couple of reasons why the Holocaust is rendered a rather salient part here. The foremost reason, as already mentioned, is the immense impact the Holocaust has had on memory studies and its related topics. The extensive and versatile research conducted regarding the WWII events and the post-war German response is recognized as a major contributor to the field, both in regard to the empirical data, but foremost in regard to its theories. Consequently, the Holocaust and the German experience have become a frequent example to illustrate the measures used within the politics of memory. Second, being an interdisciplinary field, genocide research is well-suited for comparative studies. To that end, the Holocaust is often used as a yard stick even though it is rather a paradigm than an example suited for generic comparison.4 Ironically, the Armenian case, often dubbed as the archetype or prototype, is more eligible for that role.5 One could ascribe the same paradigm to the post-WWII handling of the memories in Germany, a consequence of the unique set of parameters set by the Cold War era. It should be pointed out that the intention here is not to plead why the Armenian Genocide must be placed on par with the Holocaust, but to show how they have interacted within the politics of memory. The Holocaust, as David B. MacDonald duly notes, “provides an unrivaled moral clarity in historical representation … and will continue to occupy a

The politics of memory

11

privileged place in genocide studies, and in Western consciousness more generally.”6 This unique position implies that the Armenian Genocide, even when and if recognized more widely, will perhaps never have the same “social resonance” or the same “contribution to national memory, as the Holocaust” does in Europe and USA.7 Nonetheless, the aftermath of the Holocaust and WWII is still useful, especially in highlighting the diverging paths chosen by post-WWI Turkey compared to the post-WWII Germany in several similar circumstances. What is more significant here is not the temporal case-by-case comparison, but the respective society’s choice of handling the past as it is about how the international community’s policies guided towards that choice and reinforced it. Finally, the Holocaust and its memory, as we will see in the empirical part, have a special relation to the Armenian Genocide, foremost in regard to the latter’s recognition process. While prominent Holocaust scholars and their research have had a pivotal role in setting the framework employed within the political circles, other Holocaust related issues such as the US Holocaust Museum have also had a fundamental part in shaping the politics of the memory of the Armenian Genocide. The Holocaust is thereby an almost integral part of the recognition process of the Armenian Genocide. As such, the Holocaust and its aftermath are utilized rather as an instrument across the different aspects of the politics of memory throughout this study. Indeed, the frequent usage of the Holocaust has truly transformed it from a historical event into a political one in our days. The same, as illustrated in this study, can be attributed to the Armenian case.

The politics of memory explained through its constituent parts Memory is not only a central concept to the politics of memory but an important fabric of our being. Our individual memories not only define our identity but also act as an imperative factor and reference point, which we call experience, in our everyday orientation. A sudden loss of memory or an illness such as Alzheimers shatters the individual identity and in turn the individual’s functioning in the society. In the same manner, identity is an essential building block of modern day societies and nation-states and as such also highly susceptible to political and social influences and prevailing circumstances.8 Identity is also the medium through which the memories are filtered, interpreted and stored. As we will see, this is mainly done in a negotiation process of the politics of memory. In this study, the issue of identity becomes most visible in the Turkish case, both in regard to the nation-building measures in the immediate post-WWI era and the creation of a “Turkey for Turks,” but also a major factor in the subsequent genocide denial, reflecting the stigmatization of the term genocide and its relation to the Holocaust. The Armenian identity is subjected to a similar influence, but from a victim’s perspective. But how does memory, or perhaps more significantly, its inherent power, translate into the national and international arena? What role does the official narrative, often represented by history, play in this production of memories

12

The politics of memory

and their propagation? As a consequence, one needs to understand how history is created through a selective process of an often heterogeneous and sometimes contradicting set of memories. However, while memories are indeed the building blocks of history, the latter is far from simply a collection of the former. As elaborated further ahead, history is the result of an analytical processing of the existing data, including memories. History emerges through a process of the politics of memory, namely the “ongoing intellectual and political negotiations. The products of these negotiations may achieve a certain degree of stability for a period of time, but they are constantly subject to challenges and alternative interpretations.”9 What is more important, “memories of a nation’s past and institutional practices are mutually constitutive and shaped by political contingencies.”10 This view is shared by Karl Wilds, who states that “memory is a historically specific and politically malleable concept whose meaning can only be apprehended in context.”11 This context can be provided by different measures such as prevailing policies, often backed up by the existing history and its narrative. As such, history differs in one substantial aspect from memory, namely in being a synthesis of both empirical data and theories, old and new. Thus, new theories alone, offering new perspectives, might revise the existing history, which in turn could result in a new set of memories. The fact that a revised history transfers to a new set of memories is captured well by Raul Hilberg’s observation that as the written words “take the place of the past; these words, rather than the events themselves, will be remembered.”12 Both memory and history are thereby subject to change, but in different manners. Speaking in the terms of a nation, the outcome of this process often transforms into the nation’s collective memory, but also affects its identity. Prevailing policies, as part of the politics of memory, have thereby a prominent role in the formation of the memory, the subsequent identity and its development.13 This relation between the past and the present, as this study will illuminate, gives us the notion of “the presence of the history.” How, then, does history relate to politics and in what way could these influence each other? The political atmosphere is one of the important aspects in the politics of memory, especially in regard to the role of present-day democracy. Processing memories, especially in the aftermath of committed wrongdoings, becomes an indicator for the status of the democracy. Simultaneously, the institutions in the democracy can employ and affect the process of the politics of memory in different ways. Studying this process shows how society chooses to handle those memories, what measures it employs to that end and how democracy and memory affect each other. One such means at the disposal of decision-makers is the role of the law, which can be equally utilized by the public through calls for justice. By telling wrong from right, the law and justice are thereby formidable tools in condoning as well as condemning memories and identities. In fact, the legal system is itself a memory bank consisting of past actions, their interpretation and corresponding codification in order to prevent and rebuke future events. As we will see further

The politics of memory

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ahead, law and justice have a multifaceted role in the politics of memory and are employed frequently to mold identities, confirm democratic values or to serve in different aspects of a reconciliatory process, by remembering as well as forgetting. Finally, this leads us to the process of reconciliation and its constituent parts as additional auxiliary measures for illustrating the inner mechanism of the politics of memory. What does a reconciliatory process consist of and how does it contribute to the politics of memory? If memories represent the past, reconciliation is certainly associated with the future. Reconciliation is a natural focal point in any post-conflict society which is trying to move forward, healing the wounds and achieving an equilibrium between victim and perpetrator. But, what does reconciliation imply and how is it achieved? The relation to memory is established by the fact that reconciliatory measures – here identified as a trinity of recognition, responsibility and reparation – often imply processing memories, whether through remembering or forgetting. Furthermore, reconciliation is sometimes perceived as a concrete step in the normalization of relations between victim and perpetrator. This is, as this study will suggest, an incorrect assumption which can actually be counterproductive when initiating a rapprochement. Instead, reconciliation is rather the synthesis of its component parts where these, individually and collectively, play an important role in the outcome of the process as a whole. It is worth emphasizing that, while examining the reconciliation process, it is not the different alternative approaches – for example, retributive versus restorative justice, track two diplomacy etc. – that are of interest here. Instead, it is the role of the above-mentioned trinity which is in focus and the impact of their presence or absence within the politics of memory.

Memory and history in the politics of memory As Hirsch points out, our perception of the past has “a profound impact on what we will do and how we will live. Memory is, therefore, a distinctly political phenomenon and requires analysis as possibly the most important aspect of political understanding.”14 The memories and their produced collective narrative become formidable tools in nation-building, laying a national course and justifying the measures taken to attain it. This hegemony not only controls the past but the construction of the future as well.15 In short “[m]emory is a struggle over power and who gets to decide the future.”16 The politics of memory seems thereby to be a permanent feature in our societies as we know them. The politics of memory engages a range of actors, both from a top-down and a bottom-up perspective, resulting in an interaction which molds the national memory. Thus, as Richard Lebow states, “the construction of memory is infused by politics.”17 Considering the inherent power of memory, the elite has always been keen on shaping these memories in accordance with its own discourse and policies, enshrining them into history as the main repository for the memories.18 However, since the history is no longer an exclusive domain of state-controlled

14

The politics of memory

historians, the public has also been able to actively engage in this memory production.19 This mobilization of society (i.e. a bottom-up perspective) also functions as a stimulus for the authorities to react accordingly.20 History, as the result of these negotiations within a society of interpreting the past, also molds the political atmosphere in the present. This is illustrated by how some historical liabilities and actions which were acceptable yesterday (e.g. slavery, racial theories, fascism etc.) can become intolerable today. Memory and history are thereby a major actor in setting the political norms of our time. While the power of memory over politics usually represents a bottom-up construction, the power of politics over memory gives the top-down view. In regard to the latter, the decision-makers in the modern-day nation-states are among the main actors in the creation of myths employed to justify or rationalize the policies of the leadership, especially in response to an encountered crisis.21 In that sense, the top-down inflicted memory acts as an accumulator, a battery, for future use. When the need arises, by reversing the process, the previously stored memories are invoked to justify the present-day policies, revealing the dualistic nature of memory within the political context. They are invoked by leaders to legitimize and explain the intended politics while simultaneously influencing those very leaders and how they perceive society and the world at large.22 Memories are thereby not only about the past, but they actually influence and shape present and future state policies, domestic and foreign.23 History, as a synthesis of these memories, is thereby often used as a reference guideline to avoid past mistakes, turning the past into moral lessons for justifying the current agenda of the state and rallying forces.24 The process presupposes an important link between memory and power, namely the question of legitimacy, where “policies are legitimated through appeals to the collective or national memory for social consumption both at home and abroad.”25 Conversely, our policies in the present and our plans for the future might entail reinterpretation of the past in order to make it fit into our current and future plans. This genealogical view (as in contrast to a genetic view, which we will return to later) of our past is, thus, constantly reevaluated as history becomes a resource created and consumed by us in the present.26 The genealogical perspective is thereby closely related to identity building, moral issues, ideological preferences and political manifestation of power, its narrative effects, analogies, metaphors and other forms of transgressing temporal historical thinking, its goal with the need to orient itself temporally and ascribing a meaning to the past.27 In Reinhart Koselleck’s word, as new expectations on the future arise, “new questions are posed to our past, questions which demand that history be reconsidered, reviewed and reinvestigated.”28 The past becomes a sense-bearing and meaningful history through which

The politics of memory

15

the burden of the past pressing human identity into the responsibility for things and events that happened before their time or outside their experience is replaced by the creativity of the human mind. The creative mind shapes the past into a narrative of development that ends in a projection of future that propagates the group’s identity along the lines of their self-esteem.29 This production/consumption has been implemented by all parties in the Armenian case. While the Turkish state’s creation of an alternative version of memories exemplifies the top-down view, the bottom-up approach can be illustrated by how the Armenians immediately translated the Sumgait pogroms in 1988 (as a prelude to the Karabakh conflict) into a new Turkish attempt to annihilate the Armenians.30 The same application applies to third parties where, for example, the USA and European states frequently use the Armenian Genocide as a stick to restrain Turkey when called for.31 Memory is simply a keystone in nation-building and governance, thus making power over memory an essential part of the political system and the politics of memory an essential process to that end. The process is quite evident in the manner the founders of the Turkish Republic perceived the WWI events, namely in the light of an imminent threat of dissolution, thus the need to conceal and/or rationalize past wrongdoings. The same threat, as seen in the empiric part of this study, has been rendered by present-day Turkish leaders. Thus, when Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in 2016 brushed aside international criticism for excessive violence against the Kurdish population, he justified the government actions by an outright reference to the WWI events, accusing the Kurds of “collaborating with Russia like the Armenian gangs used to do.”32 The argumentation regarding the Armenian fate becomes timeless; the measures taken towards the Armenians back in WWI are explained and justified within the context of how the Kurdish insurrection is handled in the present time. The past is not only being used as a reference, but present actions are also used as a justification of the past. The creation of memory is, however, not restricted to politicians but is also implemented by journalists, clergy and others who equally partake in shaping the collective memory.33 By doing so, these public figures (much alike the historians) become agents of the memory who actively play a part in both transferring the memories but also interpreting and reinterpreting them into history. Notwithstanding this, the political-bureaucratic produced history, due to its very nature, composed by rather unfiltered memories into a collection of information, suffers from severe limitations. The remedy would be the services of professional historians.34 This is also why Koselleck distinguishes between subjective truth – i.e. the individual memories and the unmediated experience – and the objective truth – put forward by the professional historian who does this by comparing sources, analyzing data and engaging in discourse with other experts.35 He thereby distinguishes between memory, being limited to the individuals, and “historical consciousness,” when referring to an entire

16

The politics of memory

society.36 Others such as Michael Stürmer prefer a functional interpretation of historical consciousness, asserting that “in a country without history, he who fills the memory, defines the concepts and interprets the past, wins the future.”37 Thus, the saying “history is written by the victor,” was quite true due to the fact that, up till the nineteenth century when the division between academic writing and the political sphere took place, the historians were usually in the service of the state and their work was expected to confirm nationalistic presuppositions.38 The separation was far from universal and all-embracing, nor has it stopped modern nation-states in employing history as a formidable tool in their arsenal for policy-making. A striking example of utilizing the politics of memory was how history was authored in the newly established Republic of Turkey, especially in regard to the revisionism of the WWI events. This aspect was even more incisive due to the fact that leading historians of the Republic were politicians and political figures, many of them former Unionists (referring to the ruling Committee of Union and Progress, CUP, commonly known in West as the “Young Turks”). Indeed, modern Turkish history was primarily authored by political actors and scholars with a strong nationalistic agenda. They were assembled by Mustafa Kemal, the leader of the Nationalist Movement (also called the Kemalists after their leader) and the first president of the republic, to write the desired historical narrative, clearly reflected in the history books of modern Turkey.39 In addition, foreign historiography played an important role in confirming and cementing the Turkish memory and identity building. Ayhan Aktar’s research notes how Australian and British writers, including Winston Churchill, contributed to the myth around Mustafa Kemal and his role in the Gallipoli campaign. Such a glorification was done due to both political contingencies, self-justification and exoneration in Australian and British historiography in order to explain the devastating failure at the Dardanelles, a focal point in the creation of Kemalist Turkey.40 The politically authored history thereby gave birth to a new set of memories. In the long run, the society relates to past events, often beyond its own life span, using the memories as a common denominator for the group affinity and identity as well as formulating and interpreting these patterns.41 The reciprocal relation between history and nation is captured well by Chris Lorenz, claiming that “[n]ations emerge as the subject of history just as history emerges as the ground, the mode of being, of the nation.”42 History becomes the fabric of the nation and although it evolves and is changeable, it still provides us with continuity and stability in the present, partly through its produced identity around which the nation unites.43 There seems, however, to be a fluctuation affecting the entire concept of history. While history, unlike memory, has been perceived as a solid foundation for societies and the state, the creation of nation-states and the dynamics of the politics of memory and its produced history during the last century have certainly shattered the image of history being a stable reference.44 Pierre Nora describes this as an “acceleration of history” in which the present is

The politics of memory

17

ever more rapidly included into the history, diluting the boundaries of the present marked by “before” and “after.”45 The avalanche of accumulating information in our time, which Nora in 1989 referred to as the “paper archive,”46 has only accelerated with the digitalization of our societies. The Information Technology revolution has meant that nowadays the digital data produced every two days equals the total amount of information human civilization has produced since the dawn of time.47 This intrusion by memory into the realm of history has also meant that the individual aspects of memory have naturally started affecting history itself, an aspect which fits quite well into the aforementioned role of the historian as consumer as well as a producer within the context of the politics of memory. The historian, previously anticipated as a transparent, objective conveyer of the past has become a manifested interpreter of the same, making history a reflection of one’s own perception, rather than a mere representation of the past. As such, “[t]he historian is the one who prevents history from becoming merely history.”48 History is simply much more volatile than it used to be and susceptible to contemporary events and policies. As we will discuss later regarding the relation between democracy and memory, the more authoritarian a regime is, the more labile the official narrative tends to become. This was captured quite eloquently by a Russian citizen in the post-Soviet era, who asserted that “it’s easy to talk about the future and the present, but the past keeps changing every day.”49 True as it may be, the instability of the past is not confined to that era alone but does definitely affect the present and the future as well, making them more labile and unpredictable.50 Nonetheless, compiled history embodies the relation between reconstructing the past on one hand and the imagined identity and the envisioned future on the other.51 Thus, national narrative and identity become the next significant factors in explaining the politics of memory.

Creating national narrative and identity National narrative and identity are powerful factors at the disposal of decision-makers to rally support and legitimize their policies, both in the process of nation building and long-term governance. Translating policies into memories not only produces the required identity, but the memories also act as a repository “for group affinities, loyalties, and identity formations in a postindividualist age.”52 Conversely, the group identity acts as a medium in which the interpretation of the past is relived, giving meaning in the present.53 By providing a structural framework around which the individuals of the community gather and define themselves, the collective memory becomes the core of the community.54 Nations, in Avishai Margalit’s words, become “natural communities of memory.”55 The creation of identity, as one of the pillars of the intended nation-state and its collective narrative, is closely related to history and the issue of continuity requiring a “synthesis of what one was and of what one would like to

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The politics of memory

become.”56 Turning the equation around, Friedrich Schlegel writes that “the historian’s reconstruction of the past is done from the standpoint of a certain identity in the present.”57 Maurice Halbwachs agrees in this regard, asserting that the “present social context has the final word in reconstructing the past.”58 Studying the post-WWI Armenian-Turkish case presents good insights into this process. The transition from the multi-ethnic and multi-religious Ottoman Empire to the Muslim nation-state of Turkey naturally necessitated a definition of what Turkish identity was. In addition, creating a robust identity was also one of the measures in establishing internal stability and security.59 The dominance of the Turkish element, i.e. the goal of the CUP-initiated policies prior to WWI to homogenize the Ottoman society, was anchored in the creation of a national identity on the basis of disavowing the non-Turkish ethnic groups within the country.60 Thus, ethnicity also becomes a natural tool in the arsenal of the state to shape the desired identity of the nation.61 The slogan “Turkey for Turks” was abundantly obvious in the provisions of the 1923 peace treaty of Lausanne, establishing peace between Turkey and the Entente powers (except Russia), in which Turkey did not recognize any ethnic or national minorities, only religious minorities.62 Furthermore, the Kemalists excluded Armenians, Greeks and Jews from the molding of the new Turkish society since they were perceived as “non-Turkifiable” minorities.63 This was clearly evident in the composition of the new nationalistic assembly, through which Mustafa Kemal secured his grip on the new republic even further by sending a circular to the provinces, stating that “non-Muslim elements shall not be allowed to participate in the elections.”64 Together with ethnicity, religion played a significant role in this identity building, as “[r]eligion is often ethnically exclusive, and used to strengthen group boundaries and stratification.”65 Erik Zürcher claims that the identity formation in Turkey between 1908 and 1928 was “sharply defined by the opposition between Muslims and non-Muslims, a process in which religious identity had become an ethnic marker and which ultimately resulted in the emergence of a fierce Ottoman-Muslim nationalism.”66 He further asserts that “the dominant discourse of the movement between 1919 and 1922 is one of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ in which the other is defined as the nonMuslim.”67 It is within this context that the Armenians were portrayed as the “others” in the official Turkish historiography.68 Although religion has undoubtedly played a significant role in identifying the target groups, one would still wonder how to then explain the Kurdish issue arising soon after. Instead, the issue could be viewed from a purely ethnic perspective, in which religion indeed was, as so many times before and after, used as a catalyst or lubrication. One way of creating the identity within the context of the modern-day nation-state would be to secure the territory of the perceived state. It is not surprising that the notion of “fatherland” becomes one of the main pillars in nation-building.69 Victor Roudometof asserts that

The politics of memory

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[n]ational identity is the outcome of conflicting claims that are generated by more or less selective references to, and interpretations of, written and oral historical narratives, a process that establishes collective beliefs in the legitimacy of claims to a territorial “fatherland.”70 Thus, the slogan “Turkey for Turks” necessitated the exclusive control over what was perceived as the Turkish “heartland.” The importance of history for providing a continuity is seen anew, this time for justifying the claim to the territory, by establishing a linkage to the past and the glorious ancestors.71 The construction of this continuity can thereby go beyond historical facts, venturing into mythologizing the past, which tends quite often to offer a more simplified version that is easier for the common public to absorb than the version provided by the academic research.72 The process of the politics of memory could thereby serve the purpose of upholding the pretense of continuity, among other things by retouching the past. This revisionism can be achieved by specific selection, omission or simplification of the past in order to render a narrative suited for the policies of the prevailing regime.73 This simplification or omission of certain events cannot, however, leave a void; it needs replacement in order to uphold the appearance of continuity.74 Leaving a void, the created vacuum will sooner or later raise question about the past, potentially even resulting in reactionary measures. We will return to the issue of forgetting as a way to mold the memory. The required continuity can indeed, as in Turkey’s case, be achieved by artificially inserting gaps in the timeline to omit the facts which do not fit into the desired continuity. This simplification and omission was highly evident in the constructed memories of the emerging Turkish republic on the remains of the Ottoman Empire, where any claims by Armenians and other non-Turks towards what the Turks identified as their homeland had to be precluded.75 Thereby, the Turkish “heartland” was born and even more importantly, it was presumed to have belonged to the Turks since the dawn of time. The territory is eventually infused into the national identity by state institutions.76 Given these facts, it is hardly surprising that the territorial integrity is an inseparable part of the modern Turkish identity and as such, any attack on the Turkish territory, for example, by recognition of the Armenian Genocide, which in turn could imply territorial claims, is equated to attacking the Turkish identity itself.77 Thus, in constructing the Turkish identity to justify the slogan “Turkey for Turks,” the Kemalists could not defend the latter by including war criminals in the capacity of that identity. The past simply needed to be retouched and cleansed from the atrocities committed during WWI. The remedy was to create a narrative of the glorious ancestors together with heroic founders of the Republic, an untainted past free from any flaws or wrongdoings. Atatürk provided such a narrative in his infamous 34-hour speech, Nutuk, in 1927.78 The new history began with Atatürk’s landing at Samsun on May 19 1919, to embark on the Nationalists’ rise to power, by which the previous wrongdoings were erased from the inherited legacy of the

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The politics of memory

new Republic. This version has ever since become the canon of the nation and untouchable due to the penalization of any criticism aimed at Atatürk and his achievements.79 What Turkish leaders achieved at the time and continue to implement through their version of the WWI events, thereby fits quite well into how the politics of memory function. It exemplifies how the state exerts power over the memory, manipulating it and synthesizing it into history in order to justify its present as well as past actions.80 In contrast, the German identity is defined by catastrophe, of which the Holocaust constitutes a major part and has a prominent role in German society today. An equally important factor in this has been the reconciliatory process, both externally towards the international community, but perhaps more significantly internally towards the self-image and identity of Germans themselves. WWII was an event which not only brought total defeat, devastation, loss of territory and the division of Germany, it also burdened the nation with the shaming and the guilt of the horrors committed during the war, along with the issue of responsibility.81 The public shaming through the revealed truth thereby becomes a reasonable substitute for judicial procedure and punishment. The public shaming also transfers the victim role, by exonerating the formerly targeted group accused of wrongdoings and exposing the perpetrators as the accused for having wronged.82 Postwar Germans, much like Turks after WWI, were confronted with the reality of complete defeat and the devastation of war. However, contrary to the Turkish experience with the emergence of a strong nationalistic movement, the dissolution of the Third Reich was seen “as a rupture of identity that radically weakened the hitherto strong nationalism that supported German collective identity.”83 Furthermore, the integration of the Holocaust and its consequences into German history meant replacing the distinct German norms and values with more universalistic ones. This adaption reshaped the German identity in which the new generation eventually identified itself “against the negative historical experience of Nazism.”84 Jörn Rüsen calls this a “moralistic” response, since it “places blame on the other.”85 The new German generation simply denounced the Nazism, instead embracing the counter-image of Nazism. Thus, the “otherness” was manifested in the past of the German people, but in a way that excluded it (by critique) from the realm of the self.… This distinction between self and other within the same German history was a constructive step beyond the extraterritorialization of Nazis and the Holocaust from identity-building history. It allowed a German collective identity that could come to terms with the Holocaust by interpreting it historically in a framework based on universalistic values.86 Regardless of the pitfalls of the German experience, the debate and the selfsearching process did exist in Germany, where phrases such as “Only if we don’t forget can we again be proud to call ourselves Germans,”87 were stated and “[Federal President Richard von] Weizsäcker made it clear that the

The politics of memory

21

88

Germans had a moral debt of memory towards the Jews.” In an address to the West German Parliament, Weizsäcker stated that “whoever closes his eyes to the past becomes blind to the present. Whoever does not wish to remember inhumanity becomes susceptible to the dangers of new infections.”89 Nazism was the contrast to the new society, against which its memories and identity would be shaped. Yet, the denazification was in no way accepted by the Germans at large, but was met with indignation and was viewed “as an attempt to attach a label of collective guilt to the Germans.”90 The common German was either against Nazism, a member of the opposition, or had justifiable reasons why they had been a part of it and that with good intentions. Nevertheless, the establishment did address this issue. West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard warned the Germans against pushing the terrible time of dictatorship from their memory. He said that the memory of deeds, misdeeds and guilt would be with the Germans for generations, and that they would have to bear responsibility for their “political fate” from one generation to the next, regardless of the degree of personal guilt.91 However, the opposite has also been aired, for example, in Helmut Kohl’s “tendency to pin sole responsibility for the war on Hitler or the Nazi Party, while implicitly exonerating the broad mass of Germans.”92 The same was expressed concerning the German Army. The exhibition Crimes of the Wehrmacht (1995), displayed another image of the German Armed Forces which the general public regarded as “a helpless tool, its soldiers as pawns” in Hitler’s and other Nazi leaders’ game.93 The newly emerged public display in the exhibition awoke suppressed guilt among the former soldiers. This guilt was perhaps not for being involved, but for having known and turned a blind eye. In addition, it would diminish the image of the honorable and the victimized German soldier.94 The exhibition also caused the children of the warring generation to ask questions and confront their parents, providing the latter the opportunity to air their suppressed memories.95 This, too, never occurred in Turkey and a display of similar nature would most probably be regarded as offending the nation, punishable by the Turkish Criminal Code.96 Turkish soldiers, regardless of their involvement in the massacres, were martyrs and heroes of the nation, who fought the enemies, foreign and domestic. Now, with the warring generation gone, their children and grandchildren are left with a glorified version of history, created for defending their honorable past and heroic deeds in the “Independence War.” German soldiers, too, denied involvement in the inhumane deeds displayed in the pictures. “Instead, examples of enemy inhumanity were provided,” whereby the Germans appeared, not only as true gentlemen, but the real victims.97 Another parallel with the Turkish experience was the memory images of the parents. The younger German generations had “images of the Wehrmacht soldiers as heroes, victims and gentlemen [which] were passed

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The politics of memory

down from one generation to the next.”98 Jan Philipp Reemtsma, head of the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, rightly wondered why the constant insistence that not all soldiers had been involved in inhumanities did not yield to the common recognition that too many had been involved. Could it be, he surmised, because there is an interest in resisting the implication that, if it had been so many, it could have been all?99 This self-justification and exoneration occurred in Turkey as well, but unlike Germany, became the official doctrine in the Republic. The reunification of Germany symbolized the end of a four-decade redemption process, where the Germans could once again be proud of their “nation’s history without having to feel embarrassed.”100 This is also evident in the fact that an increasing openness to Nazi crimes, the Holocaust and its victims has occurred after the unification. It is noteworthy that the goal of reconciliation shortly after WWII was not about a “new attitude in German-Jewish relations, but a normalizing reconciliation of West Germany with its own past.”101 Confronted with the horrifying facts, Germans needed to fundamentally reevaluate their own self-image in order to repair and restore their status, nationally as well as internationally. The internal process of the politics of memory came in due time to be directed outwards as well. The scrutiny initiated in Germany during the 1960s was partly a measure by the new generation to regain wider acceptance in the international, more specifically in the European community, for which the German youth demanded a more honest discussion regarding WWII.102 The temporal distance to the Holocaust, together with the new generation’s distance to the value-based perspective allowed them to realize that the perpetrators of the condemned genocide were also Germans, thus allowing the new generation to use “we” for the perpetrators.103 This internal process should indeed be viewed as a natural prerequisite and forerunner for the external process, paving the way for Germany’s reintegration into the world community as a major player. It is equally significant that the internal reconciliation and the subsequent entrance into the major leagues of politics did not occur by glorifying the past, which, for example, has taken place in Turkey, but by confronting a disastrous and a discredited past. Observing that “[t]his postconventional pride in the FRG’s [Federal German Republic, commonly called West Germany] successful confrontation with the Nazi past reflects the transformation of Vergangenheitsbewältigung from a critical to an affirmative cultural resource,” Wilds duly notes that the Vergangenheitsbewältigung “can be applied to other periods of German history (most notably the former GDR [German Democratic Republic or East Germany]) and, indeed, other states.”104 One such conspicuous case, befitting this study, was the 2005 German Bundestag recognition of the Armenian Genocide, when the German lawmakers, referring to their own confrontation of the painful past, called upon Turkey to do the same.105 Wulf Kansteiner agrees

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23

with Wilds’ observation, adding that the German confrontation of their guilt has indeed empowered them within the international politics. Even though some leaders such as Helmut Kohl feared that emphasis on the Holocaust would limit German influence on the international arena, it has evidently had the opposite effect.106 Turkey might have achieved the same, presumably in the capacity of its more recent championing as a role-model democracy among the Muslim nations but seems to have forfeited that opportunity. The already mentioned German confrontation started during the immediate years after WWII. Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of FRG, “not only wanted to recognize responsibility for the past crimes of Germans, he wanted to repay a personal debt of honor.”107 The Luxemburg Agreement on reparation was a significant step in this process.108 It should be noted that the German official policy towards Israel was not frictionless and did meet considerable opposition, both from public opinion but also from leading members of Adenauer’s own party. Nonetheless, he pushed through with the reparation treaty.109 Finally, the liberation of Auschwitz was a “symbolic end to the Third Reich’s campaign of military and racial aggression.”110 While these measures were all due to the memories and the lessons derived from them, they must also be viewed in the light of how these actions were being perceived by the world community and the kind of responses they generated towards FRG.111 This reciprocal process is amplified as the world has become more globalized, as international relations and norms have gained an increasing influence on national domains. While international influences and opinion play an increasing role in shaping domestic processes, the level of these efforts “in turn shaped partly by the perceived success or failure of domestic attempts to deal with the past.”112 Foreign influence is thereby a crucial factor in this process. Not only did this “Zero Hour” never occur in Turkey, the “new era” in Turkey was only artificial or at least pertaining to Turks alone. The continuity from the CUP regime and its policy of “Turkey for Turks” was not only constant from a minority perspective but even grew during the reign of a pronounced nationalistic Kemalist regime. One could say that Turkey experienced almost the opposite of the German process. This had three main fundamental reasons: 1

2

the (relatively) clean cut between predecessor and successor which happened in Germany did not occur in Turkey; on the contrary, there was a clear continuity between the Young Turk administration and the new Nationalist Republic with its implicated issues of responsibility.113 The Germans, war-weary and disillusioned by the defeat and confronted with the revealed horrors committed by the Nazi regime “developed a profound aversion to nationalist themes, especially when expressed in connection with foreign policy goals.”114 Turkey, in the middle of the nation-state building process, chanting slogans such as “Turkey for Turks,” experienced quite the opposite. Since the negative reference to the “other self” was absent due to the erasing of the past wrongdoings, there

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The politics of memory was no such inclusion in the Turkish national (state) identity. What was even more distinctive for the Turkish case, once the perpetrators of the genocide were exculpated and lifted to the status of national heroes, the opportunity for distancing oneself from the wrongdoings, in order to create the “other,” was lost entirely. In fact, the future Turkish adoption of universalistic values such as the UN Genocide Convention has only fortified the obstacle to accept that “we” could have been the perpetrators. And finally, while in the German case the foreign powers made sure to at least secure recognition and condemnation of the committed wrongdoings, they in fact aided Turkey in concealing its responsibility for the WWI events, cementing the revisionism of the past.

The default of this “other” in Turkish society led naturally to a homogenous Turkish identity, devoid of perpetrators, which ironically could backfire entirely, especially outside Turkey. Not only did the omission of the events hide the really righteous people, but, parallel with the shifting of the blame from perpetrator to victim, the definition of “righteous people” was redefined altogether.115 As the new republic exculpated the perpetrators and made national heroes and martyrs out of them, it also came, in Fatma Müge Göçek’s words, to “interpret as righteous those who took a stand against and punished the righteous people.”116 Thereby, from an outside perspective, one might assert that the wrongdoings were projected on the entire nation and all Turks become “terrible” in the eyes of the victims. This has also become a pretense frequently abused in the political arena by opponents of Turkey, for example, in the ongoing EU membership negotiations. Thus, when Hakan Yavuz in 2014 attempts to deny the genocide by alluding to “Orientalism” and “Turkophobia,” complaining that the recognition of the genocide is stereotyping the “Terrible Turk,” he is in fact partly correct.117 Although Yavuz is justified in asserting that the stereotyping of the “Terrible Turk” has at times been used by the Entente as war propaganda during WWI, the endurance of the epithet into our times can equally be ascribed to the Turkish state policy of genocide denial and its omission of the righteous people.118 The omission of the righteous Turks and the projection of the guilt on the entire Turkish identity is quite noticeable in the Armenian perception as well. In 2009, when one of the key speakers at the conference “The Legacy of the 1915 Genocide” held in Stockholm was the Turkish publisher and editor Ragip Zarakolu, some of the members of the Armenian community declined to participate in the dinner arranged with the guest speakers. They did not wish to put the community in an awkward position by refusing to shake Zarakolu’s hand. That Zarakolu was a pronounced advocate of genocide recognition, that his publishing house had been bombed, that his late wife had spent two years in jail for publishing books on the Armenian Genocide and that Zarakolu himself risked prosecution did not matter. He was a Turk.

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Only after having heard Zarakolu’s lecture at the conference did these individuals approach him to shake his hand and express their gratitude. All things considered, one might raise some reservations regarding the homogeneity of the Turkish identity and the national narrative. Conducting a series of interviews with the grandchildren of (Turkish and Kurdish) eyewitnesses to the genocide, Ug˘ ur Ümit Üngör asserts that there is, after all, a clash between the official state memory and popular social memory. While denial is the official stand, the population remembers the genocide. Üngör argues that the Armenian Genocide is “characterized by a successful silencing of high-culture and written texts, but a failure of silencing the social and cultural memory of the perpetrator, bystander and victim communities.”119 However, as Üngör points out in his article, similar oral studies are scarce and, more importantly, are conducted only recently,120 indeed representing an area of research about the Armenian Genocide which still needs broader attention.

Molding the memory by forgetting As the Turkish case illustrates, the politics of memory is also about forgetting, induced deliberately to escape responsibility or unconsciously as a psychological means for self-protection. Undertaken by the authorities, for example, incarnated as history revisionism or an amnesty, such an oblivion can indeed be implemented for constructing a desired memory by excluding unwanted parts of the past.121 Thus, even if we are in an age of remembering and commemoration, a frequent and justified question is “whether letting go of such memories – after a certain point, and under certain conditions – may actually be more appropriate.”122 To this end, some would propose silence and forgetting as a means to “reconcile conflicting emotions and common sense,” especially in regard to the medical aspects of forgetting as an act of defense mechanism.123 It is quite natural that the victims prefer to forget the unpleasant memories, “or to compartmentalize them into memories that stay unchanged and depersonalized.”124 One should point out that this forgetting, or more correctly suppression, is often temporary and the memories might be dormant, simmering deep inside, and can erupt as soon as the external circumstances are correct. As Michael Pollack has concluded, “remaining silent about the past stems less perhaps from forgetting than from a way of dealing with memory according to the conditions for communicating it at a given moment of one’s life.”125 This suppression of memory is not limited to the victim but is highly valid for the perpetrator as well. Indeed, the concept of “forgive and forget” is one proposed frequently in the Armenian case, by Turkey as well as by the international community. By letting bygones be bygones and turning the page, looking towards the future, Turkish and Armenian societies are supposedly able to reconcile instead of dwelling in the past. A substantial argument in this proposal, especially on the part of Turkey, is that the suffering was not an exclusive Armenian experience, but rather a general one at a time of war where Armenians and

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Muslims alike perished.126 This abstraction and relativization of the prevailing circumstances during WWI and their “unfortunate outcome” has become one of the cornerstones of the official Turkish narrative of WWI and employed frequently in the denial of the Armenian Genocide. Confronting a similar abstraction in Germany during the 1980s, Jürgen Habermas captures this issue by observing that “[o]ne cannot employ a moral abstraction and at the same time seriously insist on concrete historical analysis. Whoever still insists on mourning collective fates, without distinguishing between culprits and victims, obviously has something else up his sleeve.”127 More importantly, especially from the victim’s perspective, such a policy of “forgive and forget” is surely perceived as an imposed measure, since forgiveness should be granted rather than demanded. In fact, the approach of amnesty and forgetting past wrongdoings are rarely insisted upon by the victims but by the victors who emphasize “that dwelling on them would only prolong antagonism.”128 If complied with, typically within the context of political contingencies, this reconciliation tends instead to be a temporary and superficial one. As soon as the prevailing political parameters change or future generations object to the mitigation as a compromise at the time rather than a satisfactory and lasting reconciliation, the memories of the wrongdoing resurface. South Africa represents a striking example for this argumentation. Despite being heralded as one of the exemplary cases of amnesty in exchange for truth-telling during the postApartheid conciliatory process, there are observable signs in present-day South Africa where the “generation of young people believe the generation before them ‘sold their cause’ for the sake of reconciliation.”129 As we will witness further ahead, these were very similar reactions to those heard by the young generation in Yerevan on April 24 1965. The forgetting can, as mentioned, also be a psychological response. The trauma, in this case the war, induces an amnesia or, as Müller calls it, “a kind of psychological ‘numbing,’” in order for the postwar society to be able to pour all its energy into reconstruction and resurrection.130 Recognizing the wrongdoings and especially the nature of these actions, entitles the post-war society to “emerge on the correct side,” which in turn could encourage the erasing of the unsuitable parts, simply by passing them into oblivion.131 Tony Judt points out that the granted amnesty to former Nazis in 1948 resulted in “a sort of instant amnesia.”132 The amnesty, along with amnesia by suppressing the memories of the wrongdoings, could also be viewed as a tool for consolidating democracy. This policy is noticeable in several recent cases such as in South American countries and South Africa, which we will return to shortly, as was the case in West Germany during the 1950s. While the contemporaries of Nazism chose suppression of memories while rebuilding the devastated nation, so did the victims who had survived the encroachment and were fully busy with their own integration into society and normality.133 This aspect of suppressing memories is especially relevant to societies affected by major traumatic events such as the two world wars or a genocidal campaign. The greater pain the victims have endured, the less likely will they step forward and talk about it.134

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The process of the politics of memory could thereby serve the purpose of upholding the pretense of a continuity, among other ways by retouching the past. As discussed earlier, this retouching needs to be handled correctly in order to be sustainable. Leaving a void, the created vacuum will sooner or later raise questions about the past, potentially even resulting in reactionary measures. However, deliberately suppressing the memories, for example, by the political actors as a means to conceal, or at least postpone the confrontation of the past, has its own downsides. Investigating past wrongdoings renders the possibility for perpetrator and victim to come to “some kind of peaceful accommodation only when the past is explored openly and honestly.”135 Timothy Garton Ash argues that delay and suppression have their own psychological and political price. The fact that the torturers or the commanders go unpunished, even remain in high office, compromises the new regime in the eyes of those who should be its strongest supporters. Dirty fragments of the past constantly resurface and are used, often dirtily, in current political disputes.136 Democracy, as our time’s championed political system, is thereby a decisive factor for providing the aforementioned openness and transparency, while itself being affected by the same memories.

The reciprocal relation between democracy and memory Given that “the composition of national memories is a highly politicized issue,” especially in cases where there are competing or even contradicting versions of the memory, a functioning democracy is a prerequisite for allowing a process of “open negotiations” in order to reach a convergence regarding the memory.137 Democracy and an atmosphere of openness are thus important factors for a reconciliation process in which the perpetrator and the victim can engage in the search for answers.138 The relation functions in the other direction as well. The politics of memory, i.e. the way societies interpret the past in order to make choices in the present, laying the path for the future, is considered as an important process in facilitating the democratization of societies as well as deepening the process in already existing democracies.139 For instance, it is asserted that in the German case the unearthing of the “private knowledge about the past made better citizens and thereby contributed to the consolidation of a democratic political culture.”140 Although there are examples which illustrate that dealing with past injustice and its memories “is in itself no guarantee that democracy will endure, a memory politics that demobilizes and does not empower civil society cannot bode well for deeper democracy.”141 Their mutual relation is rather an iterative process where the increased knowledge and its processing strengthens the political sphere, which then in turn relaxes its authority to unveil additional facts etc. Thus, it would hardly be a surprise that neither in Soviet Armenia,

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especially during Joseph Stalin’s reign, nor in Kemalist Turkey, was there any room for memories which did not align with the political agenda of the respective state. In similar authoritarian regimes, the top-down perspective and influence on the politics of memory simply overruns and effectively suffocates the bottom-up perspective. The non-Turkish minorities in the Republic of Turkey, and especially the remnants of the Armenian community, who had experienced a traumatic episode, but even more importantly, were still being subjected to pressure and threats, had little impact on the newly built Turkish identity and narrative. As Wulf Kansteiner observes, these traumatized groups only have a chance to shape the national memory if they command the means to express their visions, and if their vision meets with compatible social or political objectives and inclinations among other important social groups, for instance, political elites or parties.142 Only then can both top-down and bottom-up perspectives take part in the negotiations of the politics of memory on equal basis. Thus, there seems to be a consensus regarding the necessity of a certain degree of openness and self-scrutiny, usually closely affiliated with democratic societies rather than with those lacking such openness. Considering the transgressing aspects of the politics of memory, integration into international communities such as the European Union is regarded as a way to facilitate such an openness and as encouragement to confront, rather than conceal, a troublesome past. This is observable in the membership process of ex-Communist countries into EU.143 Such encouragement has also meant that the international community adopts some part of these memories as its own. As Kansteiner points out, Germany’s relatively open-minded confrontation of the Nazi era has not only been hailed by the European and the international community but has also resulted in the absorbing of the Holocaust and other human-rights abuses into a wider European context. In turn, this has exposed the parts played by other European countries, as perpetrators and victims as well as bystanders.144 The German memory has become the European memory. But this process has not stopped there and the Holocaust and its related lessons have long left the realm of memory, entering into the policymaking on the international arena.145 As we will see, similar patterns can be viewed in the Turkish-EU membership process, which is partially responsible for forcing Ankara to abandon its former strict denial of the Armenian Genocide. In regard to the beneficial impact of an openness on the quality of the democracy, Gesine Schwan points out that conversely, forced silence and forgetting might severely damage democracy. Democracy, at a basic level, is itself about reiterated acts of accountability – and without facing the past, there can be no accountability. Ultimately, without facing the past, there can also be no civic trust, which is the outcome of a continuous public deliberation about the past.146

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The link between democracy and memory is, among other matters, emphasized by the Spanish political theorist Perez-Diaz, who asserts that similar omissions of past wrongdoings, or the trivialization of them, damages the democracy, fostering “incomplete and forgetful individuals who can easily become prey of totalitarian movements.”147 Continuing on the same subject, Dominick LaCapra argues that being able to relate a past through the critical reflection of memory is fundamental to maintaining the values of a democratic culture. This requires incorporating memories that are not pleasant, are not ours, and do not belong to the image a nation or individual would perhaps like to maintain. When political systems or individuals cannot allow for this because they lack either a sufficient degree of democracy, or have something to hide, the result is official censure or self-censure.148 Unlike Turkey, it was the virtue of the democratic values and openness which, in combination with the established legal precedent, made an increasing number of West Germans, in due time (by late 1950s and early 1960s), start to inquire about a more nuanced rendering of the Nazi regime and the war. This demand implied a shift from the previous focus on the Germans being the victims of WWII to the accountability of the Nazi regime and the atrocities committed during the war. But as Moeller points out, this historiographical shift was enabled due to an existing political will, as well as the legitimization of those policies due to the legal system’s prosecution of the major war criminals, i.e. justice and politics working in tandem.149 We will return to the role of law and justice shortly. The diametrically opposite Turkish experience – concealing the past and replacing it with an alternative version – is, however, far from unique and other historical experiences suggest that “silence, avoidance, suppression of the memory of past crimes is the norm rather than the exception.”150 Left to the domestic authorities, there is a good chance that the national constellations, especially when there are no substantial changes in the power structure, will ignore or address past wrongs summarily rather than the opposite. Nevertheless, what this emphasizes is yet again the pivotal role external pressure plays, acting as a guarantor that the silence, as in Turkey’s case, is not total. It was the power of the WWII Allied victors which enabled their authority to impose their interpretation of the events on the Germans immediately after the war, while the German society was perhaps not quite willing to entirely admit its guilt.151 While international law may require the successor state to undertake its predecessor’s duties, it cannot interfere in the internal affairs of the successor’s courts. Thus, in practice, this becomes applicable only by foreign diplomatic pressure.152 This power was, however, a doubleedged sword and “power meant the ability to encourage some to speak and suppress other, in this case Nazi voices.”153 Other similar examples of the role of external influence can be viewed in how US and UN pressure played a

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positive role in El Salvador’s truth-finding process,154 or how Switzerland has come to terms with its Holocaust legacy only after intense international pressure.155 The latter case is also interesting from the Turkish point of view since, as Lebow observes, the resistance of Swiss banks to US pressure was eased due to the already existing research and media debate regarding the Holocaust. This problematized the war-time era and Switzerland’s role, thus challenging the prevailing official narrative.156 This implies, according to Lebow “that international pressure may be most effective when it comes after national populations have already begun to look into some of the darker corners of their past.”157 However, the opposite can also be said, especially in cases where the official sanctioned version is evidently formed as a cover-up, while some progressive segments in the society would acknowledge the wrongdoings. As former US Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, notes, the “silence of the outside world rarely, if ever, helps the dissident.”158 Nonetheless, a level of knowledge within the society in question is evidently an important factor for accommodating such an internal scrutiny. The content of this knowledge is thereby a matter of interest within the politics of memory, which in turn makes one such means of dissemination of that knowledge, the education system, a good example to study.

Education: an example of auxiliary means in the politics of memory The educational system is one example of the tools at the disposal of the political leadership in shaping the national narrative and identity. There are of course many other similar tools such as the media, literature etc. but here we limit ourselves to the field of education. As Hirsch points out, once the nation-state replaced religion as the major power institution around the world, the function of the education was secularized and transferred to the state.159 Thereby, the secularized role of education has moved from upholding the faith to telling the citizens which memories to revere and how to be model, obedient citizens. The “institutional memory” produced by the educational system becomes a formidable carrier for conveying the desired version of the past and the correct interpretation of it to the members of the society.160 Using the educational institutions, especially in regard to their status and authority, further helps legitimizing one’s version of the past. This argumentation can be manifested in the fact that the memories of individuals, and the stories based on public narrative, can indeed be dismissed as myths and legends. In contrast, the versions created by the professional historians and educational institutions are often regarded as significantly more authentic and reliable, thus enjoying much higher authority in influencing official decision-making, legal proceedings and the society at large, primarily via school textbooks.161 Naturally, this venue can be abused by the political leadership in cases where the past needs concealing or retouching, whereby the educational institutions can be perceived by decisionmakers as extensions of the state.162

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The significance of education for matters of national identity and collective memory was a central concern for the Allies after the German surrender in 1945. As already mentioned earlier, in regard to identity-building, one of the primary goals of the three Western Allies was to prevent a resurgence of nationalism. Allied reforms were aimed largely at the democratization and demilitarization of the education.163 Post-WWI Turkey, once again, chose a different direction, utilizing the educational system in fostering a nationalistic ideology into its citizens, creating a national narrative devoid of any wrongdoing.164 Göçek claims that the state, exerting strong control over the Turkish centralized educational system, not only indoctrinated the population with the nationalistic rhetoric, but it also violently repressed any attempt at criticism.165 While the political system, instead of punishing, rewarded the perpetrators through appointments to high official posts, “the unified educational system in turn mythified the past by exclusively lauding Turkish bravery during the independence struggle, conveniently silencing the preceding collective violence that also continued during the independence struggle.”166 This process continued well into the coming decades after the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Not only had all textbooks to be reviewed and approved by the Ministry of Education, but most of them were authored by retired officers and officials with political connections, rather than scholars. This political grip on the educational system also included the training of new teachers.167 The intent, according to Göçek, was simply “to produce the proper Turkish citizen.”168 The newspapers and journals followed suit in this rendering.169 Thus, the newly constructed national narrative was truly tailored to fit into the policies of the Kemalist administration, implanting the correct memories and their preferred interpretation from an early age into the Turkish citizenry for several generations since the 1920s. Naturally, the pronounced nationalistic content of the Turkish history books was implemented at the expense of minority narratives, among others the remaining Armenians who still had their own exclusive schools.170 This implied the teaching of the Turkish civilization’s achievement and righteousness at the expense of all other religious and ethnic minorities, but also identifying Turks “as the oldest inhabitants of Anatolia.”171 The “Sun Language Theory” and the theory of Turks being the ancestors of the ancient Sumerians was notoriously sponsored by Mustafa Kemal, becoming a legitimate theory in spite of its evident lack of sanity.172 What was more disturbing, though, was the gradual emergence of the Armenians as “the eternal enemy of the Turk in the past and the future,” which later on was altered to read that Turkish officials being “saddened that the Armenians had to be gotten rid of.”173 According to Göçek, the converging argumentation was the same, namely that the eradication of the Armenians was the main reason behind the nationalist success.174 Thus, it is in the light of this stringent educational control which one needs to view the mindset of the Turkish citizens who have been taught a mythicized version of their history during the past eight decades.175

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The absence of the Armenian Genocide in the school books was not an exclusively Turkish measure though; the same omission was implemented across the border in Soviet Armenia. Until late 1957, history books did not mention the genocide or any details of the wrongdoings during WWI. The omission seems to have been due to two main factors: first, the initial Soviet courting of the Kemalist Turkey and, second, the Bolshevik ideology of replacing all national narratives with that of grand socialism. The latter would later also include the prominent role of Russia as the emancipating force uniting the different nations in a voluntary union of the “brotherly people.” There was simply no room for any “nationalistic” claims or accusations in the name of the Armenian people towards the Turks.176 Yet another contributing factor was the disappearance of history as a subject within the Soviet educational system and its replacement with other subjects such as cultural history, political economy, history of socialism etc. It was only in 1934 that the discipline of history was restored and included in the school curriculum in the Soviet Union.177 The books in the diaspora, on the other hand, quite early on described the WWI events as committed atrocities. As early as during the 1920s, there were school books speaking of a plan for getting rid of the Armenian issue by “annihilating the entire Armenian population in Turkey.”178 Nonetheless, it is unclear which books of the many printed throughout the diaspora communities have been used in actual teaching and to what extent. It had to wait until the Nikita Khrushchev era before the history textbooks in Armenia would mention the massacres and the deportations in Western Armenia during WWI. Other than the general post-Stalin thaw in regard to Soviet politics, a possible explanation for this shift, which occurred very gradually after WWII, could be Moscow’s change of policy towards Ankara, to which we will return further ahead. A 1957 textbook of the History of the Armenian People included passages mentioning “Massacres of Western Armenia,” “deportations” and “the physical annihilation of the entire Western Armenian population.”179 From then on, all high school and university textbooks about Armenian history published in Soviet Armenia would consistently cover the Armenian Genocide. It is noteworthy that in the 1967 edition of the book History of the Armenian People, in a clear reference to the newly coined term of genocide and the ongoing discussions within UN for adopting Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity (1968),180 we see that the wording has evolved to speak of massacres and genocide [Armenian “tseghaspanutyun”], noting it to be the most terrible crime within international law. However, Cold War rhetoric was conspicuous in the rendering of the events. This was achieved by making sure to also include a comprehensive description of “imperialistic Germany’s role” as well as emphasizing how the Western Allied powers had exploited the Armenians during the war, only to abandon them during the subsequent peace negotiations for the sake of their own political and economic gains in Turkey.181 The circumstance that Soviet Russia’s actions were hardly any different from the rest of the Entente was

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naturally not mentioned. As we will see in regard to the events of the 50th commemoration of the genocide in Yerevan, it was probably this rendering of WWI events during the late 1950s which motivated the university students to stage a commemoration demonstration. The newly acquired knowledge in combination with the imposed omission by the central Soviet authorities would be viewed as a bitter infringement on the Armenian identity and its collective memory. As we will see later on, a main part of the slogans and demands expressed by the tens of thousands of Soviet Armenians who staged an unprecedented rally in Yerevan on April 24 1965 was indeed aimed at the failure of the international community to recognize and serve justice, making the law an important factor in the politics of memory.

The central role of law and justice The judicial system and its inherent authority and status have an overarching influence on several components of the politics of memory, foremost by distinguishing wrong from right as one of the central pillars of democracy, condoning one identity while condemning another. Moreover, as we will discuss further ahead, it plays a central role in a reconciliatory process. As Stanislaw Tyszka points out, justice and rule of law play an essential role in the politics of memory by reshaping the collective memory.182 One such aspect is the relation between memory and reparation which Tyszka exemplifies by the Jewish case where “restitution of property led to the evocation of past memories […] restitution was the result of recovered memory,” making reparation policies a significant venue of the Holocaust remembrance.183 Nuremberg, apart from setting the grounds for the impending international codification of the crime of genocide, contributed heavily to shaping European and world memory and identity by its iconic value. It symbolized the administration of justice and punishment of the committed crimes during WWII in general and the Holocaust in particular. However, tribunals such as the one in Nuremberg are much more than just about prosecuting the guilty parties; they also introduce a venue for the victims to reclaim their dignity. “The courtroom,” Jay Winter notes, “becomes a place of witnessing, in the sense of being a site for the restoration of dignity and authority to those whom grave injustices have been done.”184 As such, the legal framework presumably presents the equal-based space in which the victim and the perpetrator are engaged into a dialogue.185 From a therapeutic point of view, letting the victim confront the past atrocity and its related painful memories is one way to reach closure and to understand that the harm has occurred in the past.186 Within the politics of memory, these testimonies, just as retelling memories, present the forum for moving the private individual memory into the realm of public memory and even potentially into history.187 In addition, justice not only concerns punishment, but there is a clear reciprocal relationship between justice and memory, more specifically in regard to the issue of recognition and remembrance. In this context, the aim and duty of remembrance is wider than just keeping the memory alive, the sad as well

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as the joyful. As Jeffery Blustein points out, it is also “a duty of justice, justice of a particular kind. Modes of remembrance, officially and publicly implemented and supported, are instances of a type of historical redress or reparation for the harms caused by the wrongs of the past.”188 Memory and justice are intertwined. Nevertheless, the repeated phrase “never again” since WWII is probably a clear evidence of how the relation between memory and justice does not quite yield and how the past, rather than serving as a warning against committed mistakes, is instead repeated. Remembering and retelling experienced wrongdoings is, however, not devoid of difficulties, since it forces the survivors to once again confront the cruelty, the humiliation and the pain that they have previously encountered. Nevertheless, this approach is based on one of the “accepted canons of psychotherapy […] that mental health requires people to ‘come to terms’ with the past.”189 In addition, when victims tell their story to a receptive audience, whether that is a therapist or an oral historian, the experience is co-processed, sometimes resulting in the narrator feeling a little better and the listener a little worse.190 Naturally, in extreme traumatic cases, such as genocide, the process exerts its toll on the listener, which could partly explain the reluctance of the outside world towards such stories. The process inevitably drags the listener from the periphery, often from a passive bystander perspective, into the event itself, by which the listener (in our case the international community) de facto becomes an active participant. This activation is substantiated in the fact that the sharing of experiences and the telling of the individual story, other than a co-processing of the memories, also means a re-processing based on how “the affective experience of the teller is reconfigured by the perceived reaction of the listener.”191 Conversely, denied justice (be it by the court of law or recognition at large) can be correspondingly harmful. More important, once this refusal is repeated, it could even become demeaning. By forcing the victim, in addition to reliving the painful story over and over again, to have to beg for acknowledgement of the inflicted harm, enhances the sense of injustice and abandonment. In Avishai Margalit’s words, “the idea of reliving the past takes its toll when the past was deeply humiliating. You cannot relive humiliation without being humiliated anew.”192 Notwithstanding this painful experience for both perpetrator and victim, the revealing of it is asserted to do more good than harm, for instance in regard to the modern-day democratic values such as justice, truth and equality before the law. In parallel, giving amnesty in similar violations of human rights, especially in regard to their universal nature, would mean that not only is justice obstructed, but the society at large (in our case even the international community) becomes accessory to the crimes and injustice in the eyes of the victims. Ash argues that such a confrontation with the committed misdeeds if it is to be done, it should be done quickly, in an orderly, explicit and legal way. This also has the great advantage of allowing people to move

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on, not necessarily to forget, perhaps not even to forgive, but simply to go forward with that knowledge behind them.193 Otherwise, the postponing is most likely to aggravate the reconciliation process and as Müller asserts, the general prescription for “transitional justice” is exceedingly difficult,194 a recognizable characteristic of the Armenian question. Existing inconsistencies or loopholes, created by amnesties or other measures for granting impunity to committed wrongs will most probably only aggravate a similar conflict.195 The issue of justice was a fundamental part of the post-WWII process and soon after the occupation of Germany the Allied powers agreed upon the need to demilitarize, denazify and democratize Germany.196 Here we mainly pay attention to the denazification process as an evident means of the politics of memory to brand and stigmatize the policies which are regarded as deplorable and unfitting in a democratic society as well as from a moral point of view. The denazification in the Soviet zones was “fairly radical, in terms of both structural transformation and turnover of personnel” where “the expropriation of Nazis and war criminals was a self-evident justification.”197 Besides the political and administrative spheres, the purge did also target the teaching profession and the judiciary,198 which in turn confirms the aforementioned role of education and the legal system in the politics of memory and as tools in shaping memory and identity. The denazification was, however, far from a perfect process, since it often included not only men and women arrested on wrongful charges, but also children. Around 130,000 Germans were held captive, of whom “[a]t least 43,000 died, including 700 sentenced to death by Soviet military tribunals.”199 The radical transformation in the Soviet zone meant, literally, replacing the old elites with new personnel, while the western zones tended towards rehabilitation.200 Shortly after the end of the war, in April 1945, Moscow-trained German communists were flown into Berlin.201 In due time, an amnesty was issued for all former Nazis in German Democratic Republic (GDR), except for the war criminals.202 The same process in the Allied controlled zones is often regarded somewhat as a total failure.203 Besides the fact of the Allies being more inclined to the rehabilitation method, there were divergent views among the Western powers as well. While the British preferred the political disposition, “the Americans tended to believe not only that a trial was a morally superior way of dealing with the problem, but that it was very important that the victorious powers demonstrate that the Nazis were criminals according to prevailing and accepted standards of justice.”204 The main criticism of the process was that it caught and punished the minor Nazis, while the major offenders slipped through unpunished, resulting in a superficial rehabilitation of former Nazis.205 One major task was the compilation of a questionnaire consisting of 131 questions, which would help the Allies to categorize all Germans in five categories: major offenders, offenders, lesser offenders, followers, and nonoffenders. Thirteen million questionnaires were filled out.206 All persons

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heavily indicted were interned between several weeks to several months, and although not all were tried, the trials were an obvious measure to demonstrate the need to adapt to new values and policies. A striking example of this reasoning was a letter by Rolf Lahr, diplomat and state secretary in the foreign ministry from the 1950s to 1973, who wrote the following to his family regarding the process: “Denazification is not set up to find the criminals and punishing them. They are known ad nauseam – no, it is aimed at punishing fundamental beliefs, punishing formation of a ‘wrong’ political opinion.”207 The denazification process envisaged that the “Germans should be convinced of the error of Nazi views and persuaded to assent to more democratic and peaceful nation.”208 As Dennis L. Bark and David R. Gress point out, denazification might have been a failure in not convicting all Nazis, but together with other measures, such as education and media, it put on record that to have been a devoted follower of Hitler was to have supported crime and violence on massive scale. In political terms it turned Nazis from being the accusers to being the accused. The concept worked.209 With other words, it was a true process of the politics of memory in order to construct a condoned narrative and identity. The same process was repeated after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. “Decommunisation,” like denazification, was an instrument in naming the perpetrator, while “rehabilitation of political prisoners and restitution of nationalized property, were meant to redress injustices committed by the Communist regime, and named its victims.”210 Once again, branding the wrongful acts and creating the counter-identity to promote democratic values were the essential part in the process, while the punishment of every single perpetrator was in reality a quite distant secondary aim. In Patrizia Violi’s words: the legal system plays a very important role, systematically defining what is allowed, forbidden, or mandatory in a given society. It constructs social reality by establishing, through its network of prohibitions and obligations, a powerful shared value system, legitimizing some narratives while excluding others, constructing a self-description of a culture and society, and filtering memories and thus operating as a memory framework in Maurice Halbwachs’ sense.211 Here, it is once again worth emphasizing that external pressure did play a crucial role in the German soul searching and self-examination. This became noticeable during the rise of Cold War politics and the dismantlement of the denazification apparatus, when the scrutinizing was handed over to the Germans themselves. Once in charge of the examination, the Germans instead started embracing the more benign memories, which would present the German nation as a victim, having been misled by the Nazi clique, divided in

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two states and under occupation. This internal scrutiny was by no means frictionless. The reinstatement of former Nazis in administrative, judicial, and political positions caused heated debates and criticism in the early years of the FRG. For Adenauer and his political allies, the priority was to man the administrative and civil service machinery. The persons most qualified for this had usually previously belonged to the Nazi party, which often resulted in the downplaying of their Nazi involvement and instead emphasizing their administrative positions.213 Despite this obvious shortcoming in reinstating former Nazis, it is highly noteworthy to remember that, within the new German administration, the majority (or all) top politicians and administrators consisted of anti-Nazis, old opposition or non-partisans.214 More importantly, the restorations of Holocaust memory and Nazi crimes “were brought about by a generation of non- and anti-Nazi German politicians who re-entered political life in 1945.”215 Perhaps apart from a very brief period during 1917–1920, this did not occur in Turkey. Instead, the issue of justice was simply obstructed since the political arena continued to be dominated by individuals implicated in the WWI events and now in position to absolve themselves from any accusations of committed wrongdoings. In Turkey, from being in a state of remorse in the light of the 1919 trials, the roles of perpetrator and victim started to shift as the Nationalist movement gained a foothold. It was now the foreign powers and the Armenians who were blamed for the past mischief. The Kemalists played strongly on accusing Armenians of collaboration with the enemy and killing the Muslim population, an indictment which has become one of the cornerstones in the policy of the Turkish state denial of the Armenian Genocide. In Müller’s words, “[m]ost dangerously, leaders can reconfigure collective memory to present a narrative of victimization, which then becomes an incentive for aggression.”216 This was exactly what happened in the newly established Kemalist Turkey, where, after resuming the hostilities against remaining Armenians, the new nationalistic administration of the republic continued to implement large-scale massacres of other Christian minorities, most notably the Pontic Greeks. And it did certainly not stop there. Once the non-Muslims of the new nation-state were eliminated, the same aggression was directed towards the non-Turkish Muslims of the country, foremost the Kurds. Thus, the omitted court-martials and tribunals after WWI and the scrapping of the Sèvres Treaty, along with the amnesty given in the Lausanne Treaty, refused the Armenians their recognition for being victims, while depriving the Turks of the possibility of coming to terms with the committed errors.217 Nothing had happened. It is in this aspect that one of the main differences between the Turkish and the German experience stands out, namely the foreign enforcement of the norms of international law, ensuring an official and loud condemnation of the committed crimes and confronting the perpetrator for the committed wrongdoings. This brings us to the first aspect of the involvement of the third party, illustrating that similar conflicts are hardly limited to the perpetrator and

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victim, implying that there is no such thing as a “passive bystander.” The Allied not only failed to follow through with the upholding of law and justice in regard to the provisions in the Treaty of Sèvres pertaining to committed “crimes against humanity,” but the Lausanne amnesty and the subsequent amnesia legitimized the Turkish narrative, giving birth to the “forgotten genocide.” The lack of punishment was thus used by the Turkish officials as evidence that no crimes had been committed. The major powers thereby played a significant role in suppressing the memories of these wrongdoings by outright whitewashing of the perpetrators of the genocide. These measures were, for example, evident in the way the former US High Commissioner to Turkey, Admiral Mark L. Bristol, during the immediate postwar era helped prominent Turks to publish favorable articles in American periodicals, while his organization “contracted a public relations firm ‘to combat’ what it considered ‘ignorance, misinformation, and misunderstandings on the part of many Americans’” about the stories told of the Armenian atrocities.218 In addition, Bristol’s organization, at the behest of the Turkish ambassador to Washington, lobbied the Democratic Party to drop support for an independent Armenia.219 Trials and administrated justice are hardly the only alternatives in processing past injustices and their memories. As we will discuss shortly, truth commissions have seemingly been more preferred internationally during the past three decades. Nonetheless, as the research shows, courts and commissions are good complements to each other rather than substitutes. Studying the Rwandan genocide, Hessel Nieuwelink asserts that both trials and commissions have had important benefits for the Rwandans. While trials redress the injustice, the commissions repair the damaged relationships between the two communities.220 Nonetheless, the latter seems to require the former in order to function properly as reconciliation. This in itself is a highly intricate process with several different components which can in various combinations promote the reconciliatory process and thereby the politics of memory in different manners.

Reconciliation: synthesis of recognition, responsibility and reparation Let us take a leap to the near end of the Armenian Genocide and look at its future prospects, namely the issue of reconciliation, a process which contributes highly to reinterpreting and shaping memories and the history they amount to. Reconciliation, itself a process within the process of the politics of memory, consists of different measures, each employing means such as law and justice, inducing remembrance and the means of forgetting, etc. The reconciliation process provides a forum for the ongoing negotiation between the top-down hegemony over the collective memory and bottom-up public actions and their related private memories. Thus, the reconciliation process offers an additional insight into several of the aforementioned aspects such as democracy, remembrance versus forgetting and the role of law to further illustrate their mutual relations and effects on the politics of memory.

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The seemingly frozen relations between Turkey and Armenia, cemented quite differently in the memory of the respective nations and their narrated history, have not been devoid of attempts at rapprochement, of which the semi-official Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC), was the first to test the challenge in early 2000s. Although the famous 2009 Protocols were considered as a more official attempt on state level at normalization, TARC was able to exist for a longer period of time. Reaching beyond formal diplomatic signatures, TARC even accomplished some success in the nongovernmental areas by establishing contacts and cooperation between NGOs and educational institutions. Nonetheless, none of these attempts have managed to achieve the ultimate goal of reconciling the two nations but have definitely added more nuance to the question at hand, especially to the once homogenous Turkish stand. The latter also emphasizes the fact that reconciliation is not only about the relations between victim and perpetrator, but highly relevant to the respective group, their own self-image, their national narrative, memories and history. Reconciliation means that each group needs to come to terms with the past, a narrative which is sometimes subject to revision in order to conceal committed wrongs, shield oneself against experienced trauma etc. Thus, as is apparent in the Armenian-Turkish case, this is not as straightforward a process as one might think or hope it to be. Reconciling entire societies or nations is much more complicated than achieving the same with individuals. Some would even dismiss the prospects of the former as naïve and utopic.221 An important factor in this aspect is the realization that there is substantial difference between “political” and “social” reconciliation. While the former might be achieved among decision-makers and leaders, the latter might never be accomplished.222 This might sound a disheartening revelation, but rather than using it as an argument to abandon any attempt at reconciliation at all, one should rather utilize the tenor of the observation in approaching similar conflicts and initiating a reconciliatory process in a better manner. The Armenian-Turkish case offers a good example in which external mediations as well as Yerevan’s policy of “normalization without condition” could have benefitted from this observation. Reconciliation is often seen as a concrete step in similar processes. However, reconciliation is rather the sum, or more correctly, a synthesis of its preceding steps, summarized in this study as the trinity of recognition, responsibility and reparation. In this aspect, reconciliation, especially on a national or societal level, is much similar to one of its constituent parts, namely forgiveness, i.e. “the fruit of a process, but it should not be the direct objective of a government that lets victims and survivors tell their stories, and that identifies offenders.”223 The same is equally true about reconciliation since a forced reconciliation without the proper steps, individually or collectively, would indeed be most likely a superficial and untenable one, even counterproductive. This in turn means that, in a sense, the asserted preceding steps become even more important and fundamental than the ultimate goal of reconciliation itself. Yet, in the Armenian-Turkish case, the attempts to

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normalization of the relations have rather had the reverse order envisioned, starting with reconciliation in the hope to achieve the rest in due time. What does reconciliation then consist of and how does it function within the politics of memory? Recognition Although the process towards reconciliation does not necessarily need to be a sequential fulfillment of the aforementioned trinity, one would assume that a natural and logical, perhaps even an essential first step would be recognition. After all, the recognition and acknowledgment of the facts is the primary goal, while other issues such as reparation are secondary.224 In many cases, the recognition of committed wrongdoings would bring perpetrator and victim a long way on their path towards reconciliation by simply creating a common memory about the past. As such, justice is not only about reparation, but recognition itself.225 This becomes further significant in the cases of concealed past wrongdoings when not only the victim has been denied justice but so has the truth. Thus, as mentioned earlier in regard to the role of law, recognition has an obvious legal dimension as well as a therapeutic effect by being heard and acknowledged as wronged.226 It should be pointed out that recognition does not really imply or guarantee definite closure or reconciliation.227 Recognition may carry the involved parties a long way, but the event (especially in proportion to its magnitude) could continue to be a matter of analysis for further comprehensive understanding by both sides. Nonetheless, identifying both perpetrator and victim, i.e. reaching a consensus about the past and the committed wrongdoing, is still a major step on the path of a reconciliatory process. The significance of acknowledgement on the path towards reconciliation is widely observed in Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) throughout history, where almost in every case the prerequisite of such a commission has been to accept a consensus regarding the wrongdoings having indeed been committed.228 In most of the cases, the goal of the commission was then to expose the entire truth in order to reconcile the conflicting sides. Having said that, it should be noted that by the “entire” truth we do not mean an “absolute” truth as this would be utterly difficult, if not an unethical task in regard to history as a scholarly discipline as such. In fact, as De Brito bluntly points out, truth-finding and justice policies are “the first act in a play with no final act.… The politics of memory about past atrocities will thus become a part of the identity of these countries and their political systems.”229 Instead, what is sought here is rather a minimum denominating ground which corresponds to the existing scholarly consensus in order to avoid entering into discussions on false premises, or even more dangerously, in order to attain a negotiated history based on political constraints. This is especially important in post-conflict societies where the past wrongdoings have been deliberately concealed or been untouchable due to the political constraints. As Müller duly notes

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Justice is necessary and can play a role in finding the truth, but shared truth might be impossible, as long as political opponents remain trapped in collective memories of trauma and victimhood – or, alternatively, in the defensiveness and self-righteousness of the perpetrators. On the other hand, it is far from obvious that even a shared truth will necessarily lead to reconciliation.230 The consensus on the facts, thus, becomes an inevitable starting point without which the two sides will be interlocked in the trenches of their own contradicting versions of the memory and their interpretations. Simply put, a sound approach would argue that reconciliation is unrealistic if it is based on falsity. Here again lies a significant difference between TRCs in other well-known cases (South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador etc.) and the attempts made in the Turkish-Armenian case, where the prerequisite has rather been the possibility of negotiating the reality of the WWI events and their nature. The TRC in South Africa did not consider whether the apartheid regime was flawed and had committed wrongs, but its task was to openly address those crimes and give perpetrators a chance to confess to their crimes and the victims to face their oppressors. The same applies to the commissions in Argentina, Chile, Sierra Leone, Rwanda et al., with the task to unearth the entire truth about the committed crimes, not to discuss whether they had taken place or not.231 In stark contrast to this, at both major attempts to normalize the Armenian-Turkish relations, namely the TARC (2000) and the 2009 Protocols, the outset was rather different than those in South Africa and other countries. As we will see in the empirical part of the study, in both those cases the parties agreed to investigate the historical events, with clear divergent expectations and intentions for the outcome. In both cases the meditators, either deliberately or quite naively, allowed such an arbitral ruling, perhaps in order to just bring both parties to the negotiation table. The non-mentionable issue of the genocide, however, came quite expectedly to be the main hurdle in both occasions which none could surmount, constituting one of the main reasons to eventually topple the entire process. Recognition can take many forms. An outright acknowledgment of the committed acts is the most obvious one. Another, which could also be viewed as a bridge to assuming responsibility as well as reparation, is an apology. It sets the records straight, compensating the victims for previous unjust treatment, setting them once again on par with the rest of the society, domestically as well as internationally. The international aspect is equally important since the recognition rehabilitates the victims by granting them third party empathy through the acknowledgment of their victimization and committed wrongs.232 The apology also empowers the victims by giving them the opportunity to forgive, an action which is equally conciliatory towards the perpetrator as it is towards the victim itself. As Anie Kalayjan notes, through forgiveness one emancipates oneself from the cycle of anger and resentment, abandoning the hatred harbored towards the perpetrator. Only then can one proceed in life,

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potentially also towards reconciliation with the former foe.233 This was exactly what happened in Stockholm, when a simple recognition and apology on behalf of Zarakolu redeemed him in the eyes of those Armenians who did not wish to shake his hand a day earlier. The Zarakolu episode also highlights another important aspect in this regard, namely the relation between forgiveness and forgetting. Slogans such as “we do not forget; we do not forgive” indeed imply that some mistake forgiveness for forgetting. On the contrary, forgiving does not whitewash the injustice, but properly done it could in fact legitimate the recognition even further by sanctioning it. However, handled incorrectly, an insincere recognition or an apology could be equally or even more harmful than the lack of it. As John Kador phrases it, “[a]pology isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card.”234 An apology implies not only one’s admittance to having wronged the victim, but also some sort of remorse and reparation combined with the guarantee of non-repetition of the offense.235 The “I Apologize” campaign (Turkish “Özür Diliyoruz”), launched in December 2008 (three months after Turkish President Abdullah Gül’s historic visit to Armenia to watch the football match, initiating the famous 2009 Protocols) came to demonstrate the shortcomings of such an approach when devoid of both political backing and perceived as insincere. The privately initiated campaign gathered several members of the Turkish intellectual elite in which the signatories of the campaign text called for an end to the denial of the “Great Catastrophe that Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915” and apologizing for it. The timing of the campaign should be viewed in the context of some of the events in the preceding years, beginning with the Turkish writer and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s statement in 2005 acknowledging the genocide.236 His indictment in accordance with the infamous Article 301 in the Turkish penal code for having insulted “Turkish identity” (also translated to “Turkishness,” later amended to being a crime to insult the “Turkish nation”) and the following debate contracted immense international criticism, but also displayed signs of a thaw in the Turkish denialist barrage at home. It was also during this time that Hrant Dink, as an Armenian voice within Turkey and a potential bridge between the two nations, emerged on the international arena. Dink’s prosecution in accordance with Article 301 and his murder on January 19 2007, probably acted even more as a catalyst, encouraging Turkish liberal powers to openly challenge the official denial. When the “I Apologize” campaign internet site was launched in December 2008, it instigated a heated debate in Turkey with a clear division among those condoning it and those condemning it. While some welcomed the action as a sign of breaking taboos and of more openness in the Turkish society, others criticized it quite harshly and soon a number of countercampaigns were launched online.237 It is interesting to note that the criticism did not only come from Turkish officials (the ruling AKP together with the oppositional parties MHP and CHP spearheaded the assault, denouncing the

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campaign and even condemned it), it also came from pro-recognition advocates, Armenian as well as Turkish. Among the pro-recognition camp, the obvious point of critique was the lack of the taboo word, the “g-word.” Although some justified the wording as a deliberate and careful balancing in order to minimize the inevitable repercussions, both from nationalist extremists and legal actions, others criticized it for falling short of a genuine attempt to reconciliation. One such criticism concerned the choice of using “Great Catastrophe” (often the translation of Metz Yeghern, the Armenian equivalent to the Jewish term Shoah for the Holocaust) to refer to the events rather than call it genocide. In addition to this criticism, Aytekin Yıldız, the coordinator of the Association for Facing History, asserted that the state needed to apologize, rather than individuals.238 One would agree with Yıldız since it is often the state which acts as a proxy in taking responsibility for similar actions on behalf of its citizens, both in regard to recognition and for its consequences.239 This was perhaps even more valid in the Turkish case, considering that the state is the foremost instigator of the decades long genocide denial and the narrator of its alternative version. When President Abdullah Gül initially did not condemn the campaign, but instead referred to it as an example of freedom of speech in Turkey, some were cautiously optimistic about it being a positive shift in the official Turkish stand. Others interpreted it as a seized opportunity for Ankara to rebuke the international criticism for the usage of Article 301. Gül’s reaction, though, opened him up to an assault from the nationalist camp as CHP deputy Canan Arıtman asserted that Gül’s reluctance was due to his Armenian ancestry.240 The fact that Gül not only found it necessary to prove his Muslim and Turkish heritage, but even went to court to fight the “insult” of being called Armenian, only confirmed the still derogatory perception of the Armenian identity in Turkey.241 The episode illustrated how state officials failed to facilitate the arisen opportunity created by the public to at least initiate a viable dialogue between the top-down and bottom-up perspectives inside Turkey. However, this was hardly an isolated case. In 2014, during his presidential campaign, Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a similar remark stating that “You wouldn’t believe the things they have said about me. They have said I am Georgian … they have said even uglier things – they have called me Armenian, but I am Turkish.”242 Given similar statements, it would be quite difficult to expect the victim to perceive an apology as sincere, when the past accusations towards them are still being implied through the defamation of their sheer identity. Analyzing the word apology itself, Ayda Erbal asserted that similar actions were rather an act of denial than recognition. Indeed, dictionaries define the semantics of the word apology as one of the following: 1) a formal justification as a defensive measure; 2) an admission of error accompanied by an expression of regret; and 3) a poor substitute, a makeshift.243 Being devoid of any political backing or, as we will return to shortly, complemented by the question of responsibility and reparation, the Turkish apology in 2008 was

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perceived by the critics as anything other than the second definition of the word. It simply fell short of being a genuine apology and could not be met with the proper response on behalf of the victim. As Nicholas Tavuchis duly points out, “we not only apologize to someone but also for something.”244 If the fundamental question here were the something – i.e. an internationally wrongful act committed by a state – then it surely would entail some form of consequence after the recognition. Otherwise it is most probably an excuse to avoid responsibility, which in turn would imply that little would change in regard to the existing divergent narratives of the past. Although the campaign did not quite achieve the expectations of its initiators, or for others hoping it to promote wider reconciliation between Armenians and Turks, it demonstrated a shift within the Turkish society in regard to the WWI events. The politics of memory employed from a bottom-up perspective had forced the Turkish elite, political as well as intellectual, to confront the issue within the domestic realm. This aspect was quite substantial, since it was not the Armenian lobby or a foreign parliament that had confronted the official Turkish narrative, but the Turkish intellectuals and the human rights representatives within Turkey. As the pressure on the government increases by, for example, questioning the official narrative, the more likely it is that the government has to confront them.245 This does not necessarily mean that the blunt denial will be replaced by an outright recognition, but rather that the existing narrative will at least be reviewed. As it happens, in the Turkish case this confrontation has not resulted in an abandonment of the genocide denial, but in a steady sophistication of it though history revisionism. The dilemma raised by the 2008 apology campaign would emerge in another guise six years later, namely in a highly noticed statement by the then Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan on April 23 2014, when the media headlines read “Erdogan offers condolences for 1915 Armenia killings.”246 This “sudden shift,” however, soon turned out to be yet another policy of containment, namely in regard to the impending annual April 24 commemoration. It was also an attempt to defuse any potential attempts to recognition by foreign countries, especially as the 2015 centennial commemoration was hastily approaching.247 Once again the statement received a wide range of reactions: while the international media and political leaders seemed overjoyed by the “reconciliatory gesture,” others perceived it as a conventional tactical maneuver which would fade away as soon as the imminent danger of April 24 blew over. As Cengiz Candar bluntly hinted, Erdogan’s statement was “aimed for an impact on Washington, rather than Yerevan.”248 Reading Erdogan’s entire statement revealed the core predicaments of official Ankara, namely how to confront the WWI events without risking the issue of responsibility and reparation. First of all, Erdogan’s expressed condolences were not specific in regard to Armenians; he explicitly stated that they were merely one group of all Ottoman subjects affected by the same fate during the war.249 Nothing extraordinary had befallen the Armenians and their deaths (the statement mentioned neither “deportation,” “massacre” nor “killing”) were merely the result of “[h]aving experienced events which had

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inhumane consequences – such as relocation” which had engulfed “[m]illions of people of all religions and ethnicities.”250 Erdogan’s statement casually concluded that “[a]s a Turkish proverb goes, ‘fire burns the place where it falls.’” There was nothing exceptional with the Armenian fate nor did the state bear any responsibility for it. But, more significantly, Erdogan made it utterly clear that “using the events of 1915 as an excuse for hostility against Turkey and turning this issue into a matter of political conflict is inadmissible.”251 It is true that the syntax had slightly changed and there were no outright accusations of treason etc. towards the Armenians justifying their fate, but other than that the semantics of the statement differed very little from Ankara’s official denialist policy. The diversity of the barrage of criticism and reactions toward the 2008 campaign as well as Erdogan’s 2014 “condolences,” anew demonstrated the significance of the international community’s role, more specifically the failure of politically taking a clear stand in regard to the scholarly established facts, leaving the question in a disturbing limbo, open to assault from all directions. This also brings us back to the issue of recognition by the perpetrator alone not being sufficient, since the victim needs to have an acknowledgement of the wrongdoing by the society at large.252 Nonetheless, Erdogan’s statement illustrated how the issues of recognition, responsibility and reparation are interlinked. It also demonstrated that the core of the issue has little to do with the labelling of the events as genocide per se; recognition of any wrongdoing, regardless of epithet, would indeed require addressing its consequences. The reluctance to mitigate the issue of responsibility certainly affects the willingness to recognition. How, then, does the issue of responsibility relate to recognition within the politics of memory and the path towards reconciliation? Responsibility If recognition now admits to committed errors and creates a shared memory of the events, the issue of responsibility follows automatically. Consequently, the issue of responsibility and its attached consequences are also one of the main reasons why perpetrators often refuse to recognize the errors committed in the first place. Instead, as in Turkey’s case, leaders rather stress the importance of looking ahead for building a conciliatory future, leaving the past behind. Although this might sound as a viable choice for moving forward, there are obvious pitfalls. By granting such amnesty and omitting the issue of responsibility, David Crocker states that “a society falls into the morally objectionable options of, on the one hand, whitewash and amnesia, or, on the other hand, the demonization of all members of an opposing group.”253 Sadly enough, this seems to be the case for Turks and Armenians (as well as other impacted victim groups of the WWI atrocities), noticeable in the aforementioned derogatory statements by Turkish officials regarding their asserted Armenian heritage as well as the projection of “the terrible Turk” on the entire Turkish nation.

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As the records have shown, for example, in the case of Germany, assuming responsibility for recognized errors is an essential part of the reconciliation process within the politics of memory. In fact, some would suggest that accountability is a prerequisite for reconciliation. Ronald Slye adheres to the latter category, suggesting that “[r]econciliation is not possible without accountability for two reasons: one cannot be reconciled if there is a feeling of injustice; and the lack of accountability for the past endangers the creation of a human rights culture.”254 In the end, reconciliation is rather a cancelation of the enmity when the perpetrator and beneficiaries acknowledge responsibility for past wrongdoings. This entails a fundamental change in both side’s identity.255 But what is more significant, an unrectified injustice could not only undermine a reconciliatory process, but even impact the democracy by signaling that similar acts can be acceptable as social norm. This aspect is highly topical in the Turkish case, where the failure to bring the perpetrators of the WWI crimes before justice is ever more frequently used to explain the reoccurring authoritarian regimes (several military coup d’états) and human rights abuses in the country, both in the society at large, but especially towards Turkey’s minorities and the Kurds in particular. The Kurdish quandary is also relevant with regard to the Armenian issue, since unraveling past wrongdoings and their nature could very well undermine the authority of the regime which has consistently denied the past and employed similar accusations towards the now main minority, the Kurds.256 Similar to the issue of recognition, the question of responsibility and justice as part of a reconciliatory process can be addressed in different ways. While in the 1940s retributive justice through courts and tribunals were the norm, by the 1990s the focus had shifted towards truth telling, and material and symbolic reparations.257 The latter approach, restorative justice, is instead heralded as a better alternative in which the forgiveness and reconciliation is preceded by truth telling and confrontation of the perpetrator by the victim, as well as reparations.258 Restorative justice is meant to rebuild the broken relationships by healing the wounds in order to achieve reconciliation.259 Such a move, however, requires that the perpetrator, or their successor, has openly admitted to the committed wrongdoings and taken steps to transcend them and heal the wounds. The truth commissions and the potential trials are then equally about “reclaiming history in the face of denial. They allow for a reconstruction of the past and are part of social efforts to reconstruct collective identities and social memory at a critical juncture of a country’s political history.”260 Apartheid was defeated, the Pinochet dictatorship was gone and the respective succeeding societies had condemned their wrongful deeds and openly chosen to deal with the past concealed by the official narrative. This was neither the case for Turkey nor for Armenia back in the 1920s or in the following decades. The truth was buried in both states, although for different reasons, and the issue of justice was buried with it. Subsequently, with the attempts for reconciliation and the prerequisite to unearth the truth, the question of justice followed suit and needed to be addressed accordingly. As

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mentioned earlier, the question of justice and accountability are closely related to the society’s democratic values and its fundaments. If democracy is meant to be built on the rule of law and justice, upheld and safeguarded by state institutions, then surely the omission of legal consequences and justice would potentially undermine the democracy.261 What is more dangerous from a historical point of view is that such a default would imply the subsequent loss of the meaning of these events to future generations, a loss which resembles “losing a moral compass.”262 Society becomes susceptible to similar wrongdoings in the absence of proper handling of preceding occasions.263 On the other hand, in advocating restorative justice, often in the wake of a newly emerged democracy, it is argued that the short-term myth-making and amnesty is preferred in order to build a stable democracy combined with revelations of the truth later on.264 This approach is especially suitable in cases similar to post-Apartheid South Africa where the issue of amnesty became vital in a transitional society where the perpetrating group was still in possession of power (judicial, police, army), risking political instability if they were put on trial and risked punishment.265 Thus, the success of transitional justice seems to have no uniform solution, but depends highly on the prevailing balance between perpetrator and victim as well as the nature of the wrongdoing. The post-conditions in the balance of power define the premises for the measures that can be employed and their success rate.266 The combination of these factors is thereby quite decisive in whether the succeeding regime will address the past events, as well as whether it has the means to do this. The continuity between the two states is thereby a significant factor in how the succeeding regime will act upon the events during the reign of its precedent. As it will be discussed further ahead, the evident continuity between the two Turkish states and the almost intact transfer of administration from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic, the issue of responsibility and its apparent consequences were strong reasons in the official denial of any wrongdoing during WWI. Although considerations about granting amnesty or waiving the issue of responsibility for the sake of political stability can be deemed sound and justifiable, the omission of justice and punishment, as discussed earlier, has its evident drawbacks. While the South African case has been heralded for its restorative approach, heavily influenced by the policies of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu’s Christian values, it has also been criticized for the lack of dealing with the issue of justice. Thus, a common refrain in regard to the Final Report (1998) by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was “We’ve heard the truth. There is even talk about reconciliation. But where’s the justice?”267 Perhaps the more aggravating factor in this perspective was the fact that some perpetrators, shielded by the granted amnesty, not only did not show any remorse but were also proud of their actions and continued to defend and justify their ideologies.268 As Robert Rotberg notes, “a society cannot forgive what it cannot punish.”269 Time will tell whether the trading of justice for the sake of a stable democracy will be sustainable in the

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long run or whether this suppression of justice will only contain the memories temporarily before they will surface later on.270 South Africa is hardly a unique case, though, and the same pattern can be observed in other countries as well. One such case is Spain where there are still continuous actions to address the authoritarian past of the Franco era, a process explained by the lack of chance to heal due to omission of justice in exchange for political stability.271 Aguilar describes these contemporary actions as “the repercussions of the absence of such political justice on the consolidation and institutionalization of democracy.”272 Post-Communist Russia is another example of how the unsolved issue of responsibility has affected the rehabilitation of the victims in an evident negative manner.273 While recognition of the past certainly sets the records straight, it still falls somewhat short of reaching reconciliation if it is not backed up by the issue of justice. The temporal perspective of the dilemma should also be seen in the context of the fact that while political considerations usually tend to address contemporary issues in order to remedy the immediate problems, the more fundamental moral issues tend to linger on much longer. Given the fact that the society at large and the victims in particular will perceive these kinds of tradeoffs as “morally suspect,”274 one can only speculate on when and how the issue of justice will resurface again, bringing the old memories back to life. Looking at the Turkish-Armenian case, it is worth noting that the amnesty granted at Lausanne neither helped in creating a just and fully democratic Turkey, nor did it result in truth-telling in the long-run. On the contrary, the official refusal to acknowledge the truth in order to evade responsibility has instead resulted in cementing the policy of denial, while justifying similar actions towards all groups targeted as “enemies of the state,” be it Kurds, human rights activists or political opposition. The victim’s perception of the injustice, as in the Armenian case, illustrates the relationship between memory and repressed justice, which in turn serves as an even stronger incentive to keep the memory alive, despite the elapsed time, becoming a significant impediment to reconciliation with the perpetrator. This aspect, as we will see in the empirical part, is vividly evident in the reactions to the WWII trials where Armenians have viewed the international justice system with skepticism. Their disappointment is not only due to the jurisprudence set by the Nuremberg trials, but perhaps even more by the growing knowledge that the Sèvres Treaty has indeed played a significant role in the criminalization of “crimes against humanity” within international law. Having these facts in mind, the post-WWI peace treaties of Sèvres and Lausanne have become symbolic of the international community’s failure towards the victims of the Armenian Genocide in bringing the perpetrator before justice.275 It is hardly surprising that the symbolic value of Nuremburg was and remains immense for the Armenians who never got a trial of their own. Not only had the Armenians been deprived of the opportunity to receive justice in the court of law, but it also meant that the entire narrative of their suffering seemed to have been lost as well. Recognition of the genocide has become

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synonymous with demanding the denied justice as a prerequisite for being reconciled with the perpetrator. Paul Ricoeur captures the reciprocal relation between memory and justice by stating that “[e]xtracting the exemplary value from traumatic memories, it is justice that turns memory into a project; and it is this same project of justice that gives the form of the future and of the imperative to the duty of memory.”276 Ricoeur’s conclusion that “[t]he duty of memory is the duty to do justice, through memories, to another than the self,”277 is highly apparent in the Armenian case where the passage of time has not eroded the memory since the lack of justice has instead kept those memories alive. Mark Pendleton elaborates further on this relationship, stating that “[m]emories of victimization, then, are inevitably tied up with experiences of violence and specific historical developments, which shapes the particular ways in which justice is understood and articulated.”278 Reparation tends to be one such articulation. Reparation Recognition and the subsequent assumption of responsibility are not only conditions but also “a constituent of reparations measures.”279 This makes the reparation part of the entire process for restoring both the breached norms and the victim’s confidence and trust in the authorities.280 Reparation is often translated only into restitution, which is not true. It can certainly come in different forms, such as restitution, reparation or even recognition and an apology alone. At the same time, reparation can also be viewed as a sort of punishment. Rather, it is the severity of the wrongful act in need of redress which sets the appropriate bar for the form of reparation, as well as the degree of benevolence of the perpetrator. Nonetheless, much like the two other elements in the asserted trinity, reparation has most effect when implemented in conjunction with recognition and responsibility instead of being offered on its own. After all, reparation is “not so much a remedy for an international wrongful act as it is the cessation of that wrong.”281 The relation to the other elements was clearly evident in Japan’s way of acknowledging the committed wrongs during WWII. When the Japanese government, pressured by international criticism, finally gave in and offered an apology to the surviving “comfort women,” the issue of reparation followed suit. However, the monetary compensation did not come from the state, but from a private fund. As a result, in response to the Japanese Prime Minister Ryutara Hashimoto’s letter of apology and monetary compensation to some 500 survivors of the “comfort women,” only six accepted the offer. Most others rejected it since it did not come from the state, but a private fund, a clear indication of the State refusing to fully acknowledge its responsibility in the committed wrongful acts.282 The same is observed in the post South African TRC era, where the younger generation repudiates the older generation’s renunciation of justice and reparatory aspects for the sake of, what seems to be, a political reconciliation.283

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In contrast, the decision by West Germany to compensate Jews and others for the wrongful acts committed during WWII was viewed as a confirmation of the sincerity of the German state’s remorse and its commitment to the restitution of justice. This certainly did not mean that the Holocaust or other atrocities were undone or that they were entirely forgiven and forgotten. On the contrary; the German restitution came to set the international norms for similar reparatory measures, through which it also contributed further to the creation of the collective memory pertaining to the committed wrongs, but also to its reparation. Reparation plays a pivotal role in aiding the victims in their mourning, but perhaps even more important, during their process of recuperation and rebuilding their new lives and society.284 In addition, reparation is not only about replacing lost property, but also about regaining respect by acknowledging the victim’s rights. It also shows the desirability of the perpetrator asking for forgiveness, from which equality is gained in society.285 Looking at the Turkish-Armenian case, one can easily put the issue of reparation at the core of the dispute. It is hardly any secret that the issues of responsibility and the ensuing reparation play a significant role in the Turkish denial.286 It was the initial driving force behind the Kemalist regime’s renunciation of the Sèvres Treaty and the subsequent enforced denial of the occurrence of any wrongdoing long before the issue of calling it genocide became topical. Later on, if one now would interpret Erdogan’s 2014 condolences as admittance of committed wrongdoing of some sort, it still explicitly exclaims refusal of any responsibility and thereby the waiver of any reparation thereof. At the same time, victims view reparation as an essential part of their experienced injustice. A study conducted by the Armenian American Society for Studies on Stress and Genocide found that it was not only the lack of recognition due to the persistent denial of Turkey that enraged the survivors, but also the lack of reparation.287 In short, reparation is viewed as a receipt for the acknowledged wrongdoings and its related remorse, strengthening the conciliatory process, as well as the political and social structure of the involved societies. A reparatory measure can in fact, in itself, trigger wider examination of the existing narrative and scrutiny of the past, disclosing new information. One such example was the aforementioned international campaign aimed at Swiss banks to compensate the Holocaust victims, a process which in turn initiated and promoted intensive research with regard to Swiss involvement in the WWII events.288 Let us sum up this discussion by observing that there is no apparent uniform recipe in how truth-telling and justice-seeking achieve their goals of reconciliation and promoting democracy. Although the aforementioned trinity of recognition, responsibility and reparation have a mutually amplifying effect, their co-existence depends highly on the prevailing political and societal factors. Evidently, there are cases in which the exclusion of one or more of the three mechanisms can also promote reconciliation and coming to terms with the past. While there are cases which indicate that dealing with past wrongdoings is in itself not a necessity for democratic consolidation, it is considered that

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implementing policies of truth and justice do indeed have a highly positive impact on the public’s perception of the incumbent regime and help legitimizing its authority and policies.289 In fact, the manner in which past wrongdoings are commemorated and dealt with can be a good indicator of the level of democracy a society harbors, when past atrocities can be confronted without provoking or threatening the regime.290 Thus, it is safe to assume that excluding any of the mentioned trinity is most often (if not exclusively) due to a political trade-off; in an idealistic scenario it would have been included in a reconciliatory process. Notwithstanding, the inclusion, as well as the omission, of each and every part of the trinity plays a significant role in the process of the politics of memory, and in shaping both memories and history, as it will be seen during the empiric study of the Armenian Genocide.

Existing research Having laid the theoretical framework, let us take a look at the existing research to identify the uncharted parts, which this study aims to illuminate. As already mentioned, the Armenian Genocide is nowadays considered one of the most studied cases of genocide in modern time, second only to the Holocaust. Having said that, the Turkish official denial of the genocide has had its toll, influencing the research quite heavily. One could summarize the strategy behind the Turkish state denial in the two following aspects: 1) by dwelling on the issue of recognition of the events as genocide, it has effectively prevented the evolution of the research to better understand the dynamics of the Armenian Genocide; 2) it avoids any possible liability charges and subsequent claims for indemnity and reparations. As such, the recognition of the Armenian Genocide has foremost become a historical battleground, focusing on the quest for the convincing evidence to quench the refusal to call the events genocide. Only in recent years has the research on the events started to widen its horizons and diversify to also focus on other aspects, time periods and even other victim groups. However, many of these scholarly works still deal with quite a narrow spectrum of the issue. Furthermore, it should be admitted that the mentioned demarcations are also a natural reflection of the transdisciplinary nature of the genocide studies. Often, focusing on one specific field of research, be it history, law or sociology, is rather the norm than the opposite. Nonetheless, surveying the existing research regarding the Armenian Genocide reveals how the Turkish official denial has resulted in a strict historical study of the events, foremost reflected in national archive studies, which dominate the topic. Publications such as Peter Balakian’s Burning Tigris, Taner Akcam’s A Shameful Act, or Akaby Nassibian’s nowadays rather anonymous but highly informative Great Britain and the Armenian Question, are prime examples of this group.291 Presenting meticulous rendering of national perspectives of the WWI events, these books illustrate how political and financial considerations have heavily affected their respective standpoint towards the Armenian question. Among the comparative works, almost

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exclusively comparing the Armenian Genocide with the Holocaust, we find several publications by Vahakn N. Dadrian, perhaps the most prominent contributor to the Armenian Genocide studies, especially The History of the Armenian Genocide, 292 and Robert Melson’s Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. 293 There are, of course, comparative studies, although in clear minority compared to the affirmative cases, which use the comparison with the Holocaust to dispute the applicability of the term genocide. Among these Guenter Lewy’s The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, A Disputed Genocide is perhaps the most notable.294 The common denominator for all these works is a genetic perspective (in contrast to the aforementioned genealogical perspective), i.e. representing the linkage each individual has to history, narrated along a chronological timeline.295 In this perspective, history starts at a given point in time and by studying the immediate period leading to the event, its duration and the aftermath, we try to analyze and understand how and why the event in question occurred and how it has led us into the present.296 Thus, these studies focus on the genesis of the Armenian question, the WWI events and the immediate period after the war. Further, the interpretation of the nature of the events is studied, along with the role of the events in the existing rift between Armenia and Turkey. The legacy aspects are perhaps best represented by several edited volumes by Richard G. Hovannisian, paying an increasing amount of attention to the legacies of the genocide, in particular in regard to its denial and to some extent to how commemoration and the memories related to the genocide are treated and shape our perception of the WWI events.297 The focus has, however, lately been lifted from the events themselves and more books and articles are authored on other aspects of the genocide. Fatma Göçek’s Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009 (2014) is mainly based on the memoirs of Turkish officials. It depicts the evolution of the Turkish narrative in denial of the genocide, but also how some of these personal diaries challenge the official narrative pertaining to the events of WWI.298 By examining the Turkish reactions to the Armenian fate, Göçek also expands the study to explain the seemingly reoccurring waves of violence in Turkey since WWI. In doing so, she draws a direct connection between the history and the democratization of Turkey: As the Turkish state fails to confront the past and the violence contained therein, denial remains normalized, reproducing itself throughout Turkish state and society. True democracy therefore remains a constant challenge for Turkey as its failure to acknowledge the collective violence embedded in its past keeps reproducing such violence in the present.299 Göçek’s observation about Turkey fits well into the process of the politics of memory. The Turkish political and social conditions are well aligned with the

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assertion that there is indeed a symbiotic relationship between policy-making and democracy on one side, and truth and justice on the other, especially in regard to the past. Turning to the issue of denial, Maria Karlsson’s Cultures of Denial (2015) analyzes what genocide denial amounts to by comparing denial of the Holocaust and denial of the Armenian Genocide.300 Confining herself to the academic realm, Karlsson breaks up the image of genocide denial as a homogenous field by introducing a spectrum between “hard” and “soft” denial with an intermediate “grey zone.” Genocide denial seems to follow a pattern of wandering from the “hard” pole towards the “soft” as the respective Jewish and Armenian case has evolved. The original outright insistence on the non-existence of the events has with the passage of time evolved to a relativization, often employed within the academic realm. In both cases, the deniers use the same techniques for trivializing and relativizing the circumstances and the evidence, abusing their academic positions and the seemingly thin line between history and pseudo-history. Although Karlsson’s research confines itself to the academics, her conclusions imply the main topic in this study, namely the political nature of the Armenian case. While Holocaust denial is mainly exercised by those associated with anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, the denial of the Armenian Genocide is mainly anchored in concrete realpolitik considerations. Looking at the events from a legal perspective, Geoffrey Robertson’s An Inconvenient Genocide (2014) examines the applicability of the genocide definition, but also the issue of liability and reparations.301 Robertson, a former UN appeals judge, extends his analysis beyond the purely legal examination of the events, also touching upon the political aspects of the issue in regard to third party responses, especially those resisting the call to recognize the events as genocide. The British stand-point is quite relevant, not only due to the roots of the question, as will be illustrated further ahead in this study, but in regard to a special report Robertson compiled in 2009. His examination of the British documents and his correspondence with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is highly topical for this study, especially in regard to the political considerations when addressing historical evidence. Perhaps more significant is the evident policy shift in the British Government’s stand regarding the Armenian Genocide, witnessed in an internal FCO memo from 2010, stating: Following Mr. Robertson’s report and the publicity it attracted, we have updated our public line to make clear that HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] does not believe it is our place to make a judgment (historical or legal) on whether or not the Armenian massacres constituted genocide.302 At the same time FCO explained that it was no longer justified to maintain that “the historical evidence was not sufficiently unequivocal to persuade us that these events should be categorized as genocide.”303

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While Robertson, much like William Schabas,304 mentions the discussions in the United Nations regarding the applicability of the term regarding the WWI events, it is rather summarily rendered and focused on the outcome of the respective UN reports (one in 1979 and the second in 1985). Since the politics of memory is the focal point of this study, it will expand the analysis by employing a more in-depth rendering of the UN commission and subcommission debates, the used arguments and the interpretation of the events within respective framework, along with their impact on the general narrative regarding the Armenian Genocide. Much like the UN Genocide reports, the 1987 European Parliament’s resolution has been widely mentioned in the literature, but yet again in passing. Seyhan Bayraktar’s Ph.D. thesis entitled Politik und Erinnerung: Der Diskurs über den Armeniermord in der Türkeizwischen Nationalismus und Europäisierung (2010) includes the episode in a wider context of Turkey’s EU candidacy.305 Examining Turkey’s journey towards EU membership negotiations, Bayraktar observes the significance of external political pressure as a key factor in forcing Turkey to reconsider its traditional denial of the genocide, even though it has rather resulted in the Turkish state’s employment of a more sophisticated denial policy of the Armenian Genocide. Donald Bloxham’s The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (2005) comes closer to bring together a broader aspect of the Armenian Genocide.306 By reviewing the genesis of the Armenian question as a consequence of the rise of nationalism, Bloxham broadens his study by both including the fate of other affected minorities (Assyrian and Greeks, but also Kurds) and presenting the role of international politics and economic interests in responding to the committed genocide. He then moves to addressing the role of memory and its usage by the political actors in the ongoing denial policy. Nonetheless, the focus of the book is still on the period between late nineteenth century and peacetime politics in order to review the events in regard to accusations pertaining to the committed genocide. The WWII period until present time is more briefly reviewed, chiefly as a dynamic relation between Turkey and USA. Michael Bobelian’s Children of Armenia: A Forgotten Genocide and the Century-Long Struggle for Justice (2009), is another example of a similar approach to a wider narrative, but especially to the demand for justice.307 Diving into the matter of the assassination of the Turkish diplomats in California in 1973, Bobelian draws attention to a victim’s need to come to terms with the injustice it has been subjected to and the memories which still remain intact. By going back to the days of the genocide, Bobelian focuses on the recognition process of the Armenian Genocide ever since the conclusion of WWI up till 1990. Although the book touches on the international aspects of the genocide, it is the American perspective which is the main focus: the US administration’s stance and the development of its foreign policy in this regard, the Cold War policies and the congressional struggle for a genocide recognition. The book also offers an insight into the life of the American Armenians, their

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struggle for adaptation to their new host country and the strife for justice. Klas-Göran Karlsson’s more recent publication, De som är oskyldiga idag kan bli skyldiga imorgon (2012) has a similar approach as Bloxham’s book.308 Much like the current study, the genocide is not the focus of Karlsson’s book, but rather the background and the developments leading to it and its aftermath. While the reforms in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century and rise of nationalism, the 1915 events and the analysis thereof take a substantial part of the book, explaining the inherent complexity of the issue, Karlsson devotes the remaining one third to reviewing the memory of the genocide by examining the effective history of it. This study aims to tip the balance of the study over to the aftermath of the genocide, with the emphasis on the latter half of the past century, namely the period since April 24 1965, the 50th commemoration day of the Armenian Genocide, but more significantly, with particular focus on the multifaceted process of the politics of memory and how it has kept the issue topical into our days.

Outline and delimitations In order to render structure to the data, the study is divided into three major periods, each marked with pivotal events, so-called borderline events, which will require more thorough deliberation accordingly. These borderline events, for example, the 50th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide in 1965 or the European Parliament’s genocide recognition in 1987 represent significant demarcations within the process of the politics of memory. These borderlines often serve as catalysts for the unfolding events or are utilized as monumental reference points in the same process. The chronological perspective in the study will present the genetic progression of the Armenian question, while a genealogical perspective will appear in the respective contemporary revisiting and reinterpreting of the past events. Having identified the main actors as Turkey, Armenia, the Armenian diaspora and the international community, the study will indicate how their roles and participation in this process have shifted in activity and tenor throughout the studied period. The first part of the study, covering the period from 1878 to 1972, comprises three such borderline events, namely the emergence of the Armenian question on the international agenda (1878), the post-WWI peace negotiations, resulting in the Sèvres (1920) and the Lausanne (1923) treaties, and finally the 50th commemoration of the genocide on April 24 1965. This part will be based predominantly on existing research regarding the genesis of the Armenian question, the unfolding of the events up to and during WWI and the international response thereof. Using the former period as a starting point and background information, the significant points in this study involve the latter period, including the legal investigations of the WWI events, the international response reflected in the treaties of Sèvres and Lausanne and the role of the Armenian fate in the creation of the term genocide. Looking beyond

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the historical documentation of the events, this study will include some overlooked legal contemporary analyses, which are highly relevant to the recognition process of the Armenian Genocide. Moving to the farther demarcation for this period, namely the 50th commemoration day on April 24 1965, the study relies on previously published transcripts of archive material, which have remained relatively anonymous to the broader research community due to their publication in Armenian. The protocols and documents pertaining to the leading political and intellectual elite in Armenia give an insightful presentation of how the older generation was caught off guard in regard to the reaction of the youth, but also how wary the political elite was with regard to the potential repercussions from the Soviet regime that would result from such an eruption of nationalistic tendencies. The second period between 1973 and 1987 is dominated by two main topics which are quite interrelated. The first is the Armenian militant actions, which were seemingly a response to the international community’s perceived disinterest in the Armenian Genocide; this propelled the Armenian question onto the international arena through media coverage and political responses. Secondly, the reemergence of the Armenian question on the international arena was accompanied by its inclusion in some official proceedings such as UN reports, parliamentary resolutions and international tribunals, and perhaps most significantly within the scholarly community. Turning to the legal analysis of the Armenian Genocide, the literature often recounts the two UN genocide studies which were finalized in 1979 (the Ruhashyankiko Report) and 1985 (the Whitaker Report). The entry of the Armenian case into the scholarly community, which in turn opened a new front for demanding recognition, is identified as one of the most significant factors in the process of the politics of memory. The research not only turned the light on the “forgotten genocide,” but it also became a major contributor to the political discussion of the issue. As the WWI events made their entry into the scholarly community, the political measures were no longer sufficient on their own, but needed to be supplemented with an academic denial of the genocide. The 1982 conference in Tel Aviv and the protocols from the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (also known as the Bertrand Russel Tribunal) present the first forum in which the scholarly findings from historical and legal perspectives were given a salient feature in the call to the Turkish Republic to end its denial policy. The increasing impact of scholarly findings in regard to the Armenian Genocide becomes more evident in relation to the European Parliament’s resolution in 1987, marking a significant and critical point in the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The last part, comprising the period between 1988 and 2015, renders the path towards regained Armenian sovereignty, which in turn implied the dilemma of the normalization of relations with Turkey and the issue of reconciliation. The genocide was a tangible factor to reckon with for the Armenian politicians struggling with structuring the independent Armenia in the midst of an ongoing armed conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. This period

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also includes two attempts at normalization (or reconciliation as the first attempt, named the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission, implied) of the Turkish-Armenian relations, but also the more frequently recurring issue of parliamentary resolutions and recognitions by foreign parliaments. The sources employed for this part consist mainly of the literature published by individuals involved in the various processes but also an increasing amount of journal and media articles. While drawing closer to present time entails scarcity of literature, the age of information-sharing instead facilitates access to most of the documents and protocols pertaining to legislature and judicial debates, statements and verdicts which are naturally a vital information source in this study. Thus, the protocols from various parliamentary resolutions and court hearings present highly interesting insights relevant to this study, reminding us how much more intrusive the present has become in the narrative of the past. Finally, before embarking on the empiric part of this study, let us briefly reflect on how the process of the politics of memory – i.e. reinterpreting existing history and memory into a new narrative and memory – also applies to the sources utilized in this study. As the abovementioned summary of the literature and sources implies, this study might not exclusively contain primary source revelations, but it certainly aims to present a new interdisciplinary perspective, which hopefully would result in new revelations as well as new questions. Paraphrasing Gurminder K. Bhambra in regard to global history studies: To construct a singular history of the world is more than simply “a collection of the particular stories of different communities” […] what is needed is a particular narrative to bring these histories with a coherent structure. The issue in this conception is less about discovering new histories about others, more about ordering them […] in an elegant discourse.… In a sense, reinterpretations of history are not just different interpretation of the same facts; they also bring into being new facts.309 This study aims to do the same in regard to the past century of the Armenian question.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

Roth and Salas, p. 1; Roudometof, p. 6. Müller, 2002, p. 14. Lorenz, 2010, p. 69. See, for example, Karlsson, 2007, p. 2. See also Bauer, 2001, p. 58. For the usage of “archetype” see Karlsson, Klas-Göran, 2015, pp. 14–16. For the usage of “prototype” see Melson, p. 252. 6 MacDonald, p. 3. 7 Ibid., p. 128. 8 Hirsch, p. 134.

58 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

The politics of memory Berger, p. 83. Levy and Dierkes, p. 262. Wilds, p. 82. Hilberg, p. 83. Hirsch, p. 137. Ibid., p. 10. De Brito, Enriquez and Aguilar, p. 38. Ibid. See also Hirsch, p. 24; Huyssen, p. 95. Lebow, p. 4. Kansteiner, p. 104; Wilds, p. 88. De Brito, p. 160. See, for example, Kansteiner, p. 117. Hirsch, p. 26. Berger, p. 80. Müller, 2002, p. 2. Hirsch, p. 34. Müller, 2002, p. 26. Karlsson, 2014, p. 49. Ibid., p. 50. Koselleck, p. 128. Rüsen, p. 259. Hovannisian, 1994, pp. 115–116. In regard to US resolutions as punitive gesture towards Turkey during the second Iraqi War see, for example, Phillips, p. 127. Cited in Tremblay. Roudometof, p. 14. See Habermas, p. 28. Assmann, p. 38. Bottici, p. 340. See Habermas, p. 28. See Pearton, pp. 163, 169–171. See Poulton, p. 103; Bloxham, p. 207; Davison, p. 136; Bobelian, p. 79. Regarding the research into dissident historians’ versions see Zürcher, 1984, p. 173. See Aktar, pp. 149–171. Rüsen, p. 255. Lorenz, p. 72. Roth and Salas, pp. 10–11. Huyssen, pp. 1–2. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., pp. 13–14. See, for example, Schmidt. Nora, p. 18. Adler, 2001, p. 276. Ibid. Bottici, p. 339. Assmann, p. 39. Orla-Burkowska, p. 178. Lebow, p. 8. Margalit, p. 26. Rüsen, p. 266. Bottici, p. 353. In Wilds, p. 87. See Lebow, p. 29. See Lorenz, p. 78.

The politics of memory 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105

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Yiftachel and Ghanem, p. 179. See Lausanne Treaty. Üngör, 2011, p. 291. Akçam, 2006, p. 298. Kemal regarded the “Christians as unsuitable material for becoming ‘Turkish’”. See Poulton, p. 97. Yiftachel and Ghanem, p. 181. Zürcher, 2011, pp. 306, 308. Ibid. Aybak. Yiftachel and Ghanem, p. 180. Roudometof, p. 16. Ibid., p. 194. See also Lorenz, p. 79. Orla-Burkowska, p. 200; Burgoyne, p. 210. Zhurzhenko, p. 231. Passerini, p. 241. Göçek, “Reading Genocide”, p. 48. Roudometof, p. 9. It is worth mentioning that by 1923, Turkey became the only defeated Central Power which, at the conclusion of the war, had expanded its territory compared to the pre-WWI boundaries and, ironically, at the expense of Armenia by annexing Kars and Ardahan provinces. Göçek, “Reading Genocide”, p. 43. Ibid. See Hirsch, p. 136. Rüsen, pp. 259–260. Ntsebeza, p. 164. Rüsen, p. 262. It should be pointed out that it is the war time crimes, and not necessarily the Holocaust, which was initially at the center of attention in postwar Germany. Ibid., p. 264. Ibid. Ibid. Federal President Walter Scheel, on May 6 1975; see Niven, p. 105. Ibid., p. 107. Amstutz, p. 25. Niven, p. 96. Speech at the German Trade and Industry Conference on May 6 1965; in Niven, p. 104. Niven, p. 107. Ibid., p. 147. Ibid., p. 157. Ibid., p. 155. A relevant representative for this is the famous Paragraph 301 in the Turkish Penal Code. For the English text of the law see Haraszti, p. 10. Niven, p. 156. Ibid., p. 159. Ibid., p. 163. Neumann, p. 16. Stern, p. 206. Lebow, p. 33. Rüsen, p. 265. Wilds, p. 88. Ibid. For the Bundestag resolution text see “Motion tabled by the parliamentary groups of the SPD, CDU/CSU, ALLIANCE 90/THE GREENS and the FDP”.

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106 Kansteiner, p. 104. 107 Bark and Gress, p. 314. 108 Stern, p. 228. Up to 1953, about 25 percent of the Soviet zone national product was spent of occupation and reparation costs, while in the Western zones this cost (until 1949) was about 10–11 percent. See also Fullbrook, 1990, p. 154. 109 See Moeller, p. 195. 110 Niven, p. 97. 111 See Lebow, p. 4. 112 Roht‐Arriaza, 2001, p. 40. 113 For a more comprehensive discussion on the subject of continuity between the two Turkish states and state responsibility see Avedian, 2012. 114 Berger, p. 84. 115 For a rendering of some of these Turks, Kurds and other Muslims who aided the Armenians during the genocide see Shirinian, pp. 208–227. 116 Göçek, The transformation of Turkey, p. 238. 117 Yavuz. 118 This is yet another aspect of the genocide which has been eclipsed by the focus on the events of 1915 itself and the need of proving the reality of the genocide as a result of the ongoing state denial. Only in recent years have scholars started paying attention to this matter. E.g. see Donef. 119 Üngör, 2014, p. 3. 120 Ibid., p. 13. 121 See Roudometof, p. 191. 122 Adler, Leydesdorff, Chamberlain and Neyzi, p. xiii. 123 Peltonen, p. 67. 124 Adler, Leydesdorff, Chamberlain and Neyzi, p. xii. 125 House, p. 143. 126 For example, see Lewy, pp. 240–241. 127 Habermas, p. 27. 128 For example, see Heimo and Peltonen, p. 44; Greenawalt, p. 199. 129 Bas¸er. 130 Müller, 2002, p. 4. 131 See Judt, p. 159. 132 Ibid., p. 161. 133 Friedländer, p. 273. 134 House, p. 140. 135 Naimark, p. 15. 136 Ash, p. 269. 137 Assmann, p. 48. 138 Naimark, p. 15. See also Habermas, p. 38. 139 De Brito, p. 119. 140 Müller, 2001, p. 267. 141 Sieder, p. 188. 142 Tyszka, p. 321. 143 Lebow, p. 25. 144 Kansteiner, pp. 129–130; Huyssen, p. 74 145 See, for example, Huyssen, p. 14. 146 Müller, 2002, p. 34. 147 Quoted in Passerini, p. 246. 148 In Adler, Leydesdorff, Chamberlain and Neyzi, p. xii. 149 See Moeller, pp. 205–206. 150 Herf, pp. 184, 185. 151 Ibid., p. 186. 152 O’Connell, p. 33.

The politics of memory 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167

168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177

178

179

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Herf, p. 186. Sieder, p. 171. Ludi, p. 239. Lebow, p. 33. Ibid. Evans, p. 70. Hirsch, pp. 110–111. Lebow, p. 13. Kansteiner, p. 114; Hirsch, p. 25. Hirsch, p. 166. Levy and Dierkes, p. 245. Dixon, p. 4. For a general discussion on the role of education in Turkish identity building see Çayır. Göçek, 2014, pp. 285–286. Ibid., p. 261. Ibid., pp. 286–287. For instance, Göçek mentions the appointment of Hasan Cemil Çambel, a former military officer and deputy, as director of the Turkish Historical Society in 1941, thus becoming the spokesperson of the state ideology. See ibid., p. 293. Ibid., p. 294. Ibid., p. 289. Ibid., p. 288. Ibid. See ibid. Ibid., pp. 320–321. Ibid., p. 321. Ibid., p. 289. See Kharatyan. Ibid. Ara Sanjian, who in 2014 embarked on a project to study the evolution of Soviet official attitudes toward the Armenian Genocide, says: “At the All-Union level, a textbook was hastily devised for a new subject called the History of the USSR. A. V. Shestakov’s History of the USSR. for the Third and Fourth Classes of Middle School was approved by the highest authorities in Moscow for compulsory use in all Soviet schools in 1937. Its first Armenian translation appeared the following year. In Soviet Armenia, the first curriculum for the subject then called History of Armenia (later, History of the Armenian people) was published in 1933. Updated versions were issued in 1938 and 1939. Although these programs foresaw chapters on the plight of Armenians during WWI and the Armenian massacres of 1915–1916, the first actual textbooks which appeared in 1943 and 1951, respectively, both covered developments only until the end of the eighteenth century. The first Armenian history school textbook covering developments until the twentieth century would appear only in the second half of the 1950s”. See Sanjian. Khan-Azat, p. 222. Achemian, pp. 147–151. It is worth mentioning that the survey done for this research is far from exhausting and relies on the copies found in the National Library of Armenia (Yerevan). The encountered books printed outside Armenia found in the Library (from Tabriz, Cairo, Athens, Beirut, Paris, Boston etc.) testify about the existence of the editions, but not quite where they have been used for teaching and to what extent. Although National Library of Armenia has an extensive collection of these books, they fully rely on publications which have been sent to them, which in turn implies that the collection might not be exhaustive. For a list of books printed between 1921 and 1930 see Hakob Meghapart Project. Nersisian and Parsamian, pp. 253–256. Ara Sanjian adds: “The section on the Armenian massacres during WWI was penned by Nersisyan. Actually, two years earlier, in issue no. 5 of Teghekagir (Bulletin), the journal of the Soviet Armenian

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182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213

The politics of memory Academy of Sciences, he had published an article entitled ‘Hay Zhoghovrdi Patmutyun (1900–1917 tt.)’ [History of the Armenian People (1900–1917)], which had included an earlier version of the section on the massacres of WWI (re-)published in the 1957 textbook. The 1955 article was arguably the first exposé of the Armenian Genocide from the viewpoint of the discipline of history, published in Soviet Armenia. In a footnote to this text in Teghekagir, it was stated that this article would be part of the second volume of the textbook of the History of the Armenian People which was under preparation for intermediate-level schools. It also asked readers to send their comments to the editorial board of the journal (p. 3). By comparing the 1955 and 1957 texts, we see that the latter has undergone almost no change from the earlier version in Teghekagir”; See Sanjian. See “Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.” Parsamian, 1967, pp. 446–459. The same depicting of the massacres and deportations as state orchestrated means for solving the Armenian question were also given in future publications. For examples see Parsamian, Poghosian and Harutyunian, pp. 217–218; Nersisian, 1972, pp. 430–435; Parsamian, 1973; Nersisian, 1985, pp. 324–7. Tyszka, p. 306. Ibid., p. 307. Winter, p. 11. See also Göçek, 2011, p. 17. Slye, p. 172. Colvin, p. 156. Roth and Salas, p. 2. See also Adler, Leydesdorff, Chamberlain and Neyzi, p. xiii. Blustein, p. 75. Amstutz, p. 24. Adler, Leydesdorff, Chamberlain and Neyzi, p. xii. Adler, 1997, p. 32. Margalit, 2002, pp. 61–64. Ash, p. 280. Müller, p. 31. De Brito, p. 158. Fullbrook, 1992, p. 131. Fullbrook, 1990, p. 207. Fullbrook, 1992, p. 145. Another 24 death sentences fell later in 1950. See Niven, p. 41. See also Neumann, p. 157. Fullbrook, 1992, p. 146. Fullbrook, 1990, p. 206. Fullbrook, 1992, p. 145. Stern, p. 223. Bark and Gress, p. 64. Fullbrook, 1992, pp. 147, 148; Bark and Gress, p. 76. Bark and Gress, p. 75. Ibid., p. 76. Fullbrook, 1992, p. 141. Bark and Gress, p. 87. Tyszka, p. 305. Violi, p. 116. Kansteiner, p. 108. The same process is valid in other cases, for example, in Swiss. See Ludi, p. 234. Garner, pp. 139, 148–9, 167; Neumann, p. 157. In comparison, Poulton mentions that 85 percent of the Ottoman civil servants retained their positions. See Poulton, p. 88.

The politics of memory 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264

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Bark and Gress, pp. 93–107. Herf, p. 186. Müller, 2002, p. 21. See “Sèvres Treaty”. See Bobelian, pp. 77–78. Ibid. Nieuwelink, pp. 133–134. See also Kiss, p. 79. See, for example, De Brito, Enriquez and Aguilar, p. 26. Ibid., p. 36. Greenawalt, p. 199. E.g. see the example of the Japanese Americans who had been interned during WWII in Thompson, p. 49. Ibid. Hodgkin and Radstone, p. 99. Müller, 2001, p. 266. See also Barkan, p. XXIX. See Rotberg, p. 19. See also Amstutz, p. 6. De Brito, p. 157. Müller, 2002, p. 32. See Gutmann and Thompson, p. 25; Verwoerd, p. 481. Barkan and Bec´irbašic´, p. 95. Kalayjian, p. 118. See also Minow, p. 14. Kador, p. 14. Ibid., p. 16. See also Bevernage, 2015, p. 341. “Turk ‘genocide’ author faces jail”. Erbal, p. 66. Ibid., pp. 71–72. Bakiner, p. 152. Erbal, pp. 66–67. See ibid., p. 68–69. “PM uses offensive, racist language targeting Armenians”. See, for example, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Tavuchis, p. 13. Adler, “Conclusion”, p. 307. See, for example, Hogg. See, for example, Erbal, pp. 90–91. Candar. “Turkish Prime Minister Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdog˘ an published a message on the events of 1915”. Ibid. Ibid. See Minow, p. 247. Crocker, p. 103. Slye, pp. 170, 179. See also Sieder, p. 161. Bhargava, pp. 60–61. As a parallel of Gorbachev’s reform leading to the rediscovery of past errors undermining the authority of the Soviet regime see Adler, “In Search of Identity”, p. 284. Neumann and Thompson, p. 8. Rotberg, p. 10. Kiss, p. 69. See also Bevernage, 2012, p. 10. De Brito, p. 155. Jelin and Kaufman, p. 36. De Brito, Enriquez and Aguilar, p. 25. Adler, “Conclusion”, p. 311. See also Lebow, p. 25. Slye, p. 178.

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265 See, for example, Desmond Tutu’s argumentation in the South African case in Gutmann and Thompson, p. 39; Kiss, p. 69; Crocker, p. 103. 266 De Brito, Enriquez and Aguilar, p. 13. De Brito, p. 158. 267 Kiss, p. 68. See also McCarthy, p. 490. On the issue of the majority of South Africans being critical of the announced amnesty see Bevernage, 2012, p. 47–48. 268 Wilson, pp. 210–211. 269 Rotberg, p. 7. 270 There are indeed indications of this resurfacing already taking place, observable in an increasing amount of student demonstrations in South Africa. See Bas¸er. 271 Aguilar, p. 92. 272 Ibid. 273 Adler, “In Search of Identity”, p. 288. 274 See Rotberg, p. 8. 275 For the role of Sèvres Treaty as rule setter see, for example, Vrdoljak, pp. 17–47. 276 Ricoeur, p. 88. 277 Ibid., p. 89. 278 Pendleton, p. 218. 279 Walker, 2015, p. 134. 280 See, for example, ibid., p. 135. 281 Vrdoljak, p. 18. 282 Minow, p. 105. Barkan, 2000, pp. 58–59. 283 See Bas¸er. 284 Barkan, pp. XXIII–XXIV, 24. 285 Nieuwelink, p. 126. See also Jelin and Kaufman, p. 37. 286 See Avedian, 2012. 287 Kalayjian, p. 116. 288 See Ludi, p. 232. 289 Adler, “Conclusion”, p. 311–313. 290 Sieder, p. 180; De Brito, p. 151. 291 Balakian; Akcam, 2006; Nassibian. 292 Dadrian, 2004. 293 Melson. 294 Lewy. See also Katz. 295 Karlsson, 2014, p. 48. 296 Ibid., pp. 48–49. 297 See, for example, Hovannisian, 1986; Hovannisian, 1992; Hovannisian, 1999. 298 Göçek, 2014. 299 Ibid., p. 2. 300 Karlsson, Maria, 2015. 301 Robertson, 2014. 302 Ibid., p. 185. 303 Ibid. 304 Schabas. 305 Bayraktar. However, much like Schabas overview of the UN process, Bayraktar gives a brief outline of the 1987 recognition as part of her thesis main subject about Turkey’s denial discourse in the context of nationalism and the path toward Europeanization. 306 Bloxham. 307 Bobelian. 308 Karlsson, 2012. 309 Bhambra, pp. 657–658, 662.

2

The Armenian question between history and politics

On April 24 1965, a dormant international issue, the Armenian question, resurfaced in earnest. That Saturday marked the 50th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The massacres and deportations of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire were widely covered in the contemporary Western world, especially in the Entente member states (the UK, France and Russia) and the USA which remained neutral until 1917 when they too joined the Entente against the Central Powers.1 As research indicates, the humanitarian attention, especially in the UK and the USA, was quite substantial and the Armenian relief collections were probably among the very first of their kind internationally. However, regardless of their extent and aim, these actions would eventually give way to realpolitik considerations, abandoning the Armenian cause. The public silence in the Central Power states (Germany and Austria-Hungary) was due to the war-time censorship to avoid evoking any unfavorable domestic opinion about the treatment of the Christian subjects by the Turkish ally. Notwithstanding this, the knowledge of the ongoing atrocities were well known to the Central Power leadership, especially due to their immediate presence in the Ottoman Empire, and among the ranks of its armed forces. Nonetheless, the period until April 24 1965 was significant for the almost complete absence of the Armenian question from the international arena, providing a reason for naming the events of WWI as the “forgotten genocide.” Having that said, as will be observed in this study, although it was not at the central attention of the world community, it would be incorrect to call the Armenian Genocide “forgotten” since it was indeed mentioned, used as an example, invoked in expedient cases and actively refuted during the entire period. April 24 1965 was significant for two main reasons: first of all, it was the day on which the Armenian Genocide, or more specifically its recognition process, entered the international arena on a wide front. Second, the 50th commemoration became an occasion which transformed the Armenian Genocide into a focal point for all Armenians, in respect to the relations between Soviet Armenia and the diaspora, as well as the different fractions in the latter. This revival of old memories also made the genocide the main determinant factor in Turkish-Armenian relations. Until that point, the main focus of the Armenian

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diaspora was neither the genocide nor its international recognition, even less so for Soviet Armenia, whose domestic and foreign affairs were dictated and run by Moscow. Instead, the diaspora was more eager in voicing the non-materialized Sèvres Treaty and the envisioned unified Armenia in accordance with the Wilsonian arbitral award. Consequently, it was Soviet Armenia and the lost independence of the 1918–1920 republic that was criticized loudly. Thus, Turkey did not have any reason to address the issue either. The years between 1915 and 1920 had been a dense period of extreme upheaval for the Armenian nation. Thus, a recap of this period is in place in order to better comprehend the significance of April 24 1965 and the evolution of the Armenian cause in the following years. To assert that the Armenians in 1920 were in great shock would be an understatement. In less than five years, they had been subjected to a genocide, been more or less forced to proclaim independence in quite unfavorable conditions and had made a last stand in a seemingly existential battle against the advancing Turkish armies at Sardarabad (1918).2 They had signed a treaty for unification of some parts of Western Armenia with the independent Republic of Armenia (August 10 1920), only to lose it all by the Sovietization of Armenia (December 2 1920). Furthermore, the Sèvres Treaty had been scrapped due to the rise of the National Movement in Turkey. By 1923, the Lausanne Treaty had left behind a disillusioned Armenian nation, which had lost approximately one third of its world population in the genocide. But, perhaps even more devastating, the genocide had cleansed the Armenians from 85 percent of their historical homeland and annihilated a large portion of its leadership and intelligentsia. The Armenian nation was a mutilated body in severe need of recuperation. In order to understand the nature of the Armenian Genocide and its politics of memory, one must backtrack even more, namely to the emergence of the “Armenian Question” as part of the “Eastern Question,” referring to the unsustainable situation in a decaying Ottoman Empire in late nineteenth century.3

The entry of the Armenian question into the international arena The Armenian question, referring to the unbearable situation of the Armenian population being subjected to unlawful taxations and armed assaults by Kurdish tribes and other paramilitary groups supported by Turkish military, entered the international arena at the San Stefano peace negotiations in 1878.4 The Armenians appealed to the Russians, the victors of the RussianTurkish war of 1877–1878, to guarantee reforms in Western Armenia, the six so-called Armenian provinces (“Ermeni vilayeten” in Turkish) in the eastern Ottoman Empire, including protection against the Kurdish and Cherkess assaults. They also requested some degree of administrative self-governance in the Armenian provinces of Erzurum, Van and Mush. These demands were supported by the Russian Grand Duke Nicholas, approved by Tsar Alexander II and included in the Article 16 of the San Stefano Treaty (March 3 1878).5 However, as a first ominous sign of what was to happen again in Sèvres and

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Lausanne, the interests of the major powers intervened to the disadvantage of the Armenians with cataclysmic effects, first during 1894–1896 and later during WWI. Great Britain, during Benjamin Disraeli’s government, afraid that Russian advances in the eastern Ottoman Empire would threaten the crown jewel of the British Empire, India, stepped in to minimize the Turkish losses. In a secret treaty with Constantinople (June 4 1878), Great Britain committed itself to force Russia to a new round of peace negotiations in order to abate the Turkish losses. As compensation for services rendered, Britain was granted the control of Cyprus.6 The British insistence on reviewing the San Stefano Treaty resulted in the Berlin Treaty (July 13 1878).7 This British meddling also encumbered them with the responsibility for the fate of Armenian and was criticized heavily by the opposition, especially the future Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone. Commenting on the British safeguarding of their interests at the expense of the Armenians, Gladstone stated that “I value our insular position but I dread the day when we shall be reduced to a moral insularity.”8 According to him, this move had greatly diminished “the estimation of our moral standard of action, and consequently our moral position in the world.”9 Gladstone was quite accurate in at least one thing: when considering Armenia, the issue of morality was more or less the only hard currency which the Great Powers could think of for justifying their engagement in her defense. Armenia had no natural resources which could entice foreign protection. The critique did not stop with the opposition though; two of Disraeli’s ministers, Lord Derby, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Lord Carnarvon, Secretary of State for the Colonies, resigned in objection to Disraeli’s policy on the Eastern Question.10 The Armenian question had not only entered onto the international arena, it had also become an issue for the domestic politics of foreign countries’ executive and legislative bodies. This aspect will be a recurring topic throughout this study, emphasizing the fact that the Armenian Genocide is far more than a historical quarrel; it is a highly topical political issue with legal consequences. We will also see that the world community, and the major powers in particular, are highly implicated in the Armenian question, a factor which is quite overlooked mainly due to the finger-pointing towards Turkey. By ascribing the genocide denial to Turkey, the world community seems to have exonerated itself from any responsibility to actively engage in the problem. The Berlin Congress (June 13 to July 13 1878), was the first international negotiation forum at which the Armenians participated, articulating the demands of their own people and for the guaranty and the safety of life and property in the Ottoman Empire. Heading the delegation was the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople and future Catholicos of the Armenian Church, Mkrtich Khrimian, also known as Khrimian “Hayrik” (Armenian “father”). Upon his return, he gave his famous speech entitled “The Paper Ladle”: while all people at the Berlin Congress could dip their iron ladles into the cauldron full of harissa (Armenian porridge), taking their share, the Armenian people had given him a paper ladle, the petition paper. Every time he dipped the

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paper into the cauldron it got wet and dissolved, leaving him empty-handed. Moral issues without the backing of hard currency, either in the form of brute force and weaponry or financial and political prerogatives, were simply insufficient means for securing the national interests. As we will see, this interpretation would materialize in the violent manner of the Armenian armed actions during 1970s and 1980s. As far as the Berlin Treaty text is regarded, there was a major and significant change to the disadvantage of the Armenians, namely the replacement of the Article 16 of the San Stefano Treaty with the watered down and diffuse Article 61 of the Berlin Treaty, replacing Russia with a collective of Western Powers as guarantor for the implementation of the envisioned reforms. As Duke of Argyll commented: “What was everybody’s business, was nobody’s business.”11 The Berlin Congress and the abortive Armenian demands did not go unnoticed in Constantinople, which now became attentive to a potential threat in the eastern provinces which could end in the same way as the preceding cessions of the Christian nations in the Balkans. Thus, the San Stefano and Berlin congresses can very well be regarded as the entry point of the Armenian question into the international arena, politicizing an issue which lasts into our days. To address this threat, the Ottoman government engaged in administrative measures (redrawing the province borders and forcing immigration of Kurds at home to the south of the Taurus Mountains into Armenian provinces) to diminish Armenian demography. When that turned out to be insufficient, the so-called Hamidian (referring to the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II) Massacres of 1894–1896 reaped approximately 150,000 Armenian victims, while 40,000 were forced to convert to Islam and an additional 100,000 escaped the killing fields for Transcaucasia, Balkans and USA. It was not until early 1914 that the maltreatment of Armenian subjects forced the major powers to interfere, appointing two Inspector Generals, Major Nicolai Hoff (Norwegian) and M. Westeneck (Dutch) to oversee the implementation of the stipulated reforms in the Berlin Treaty.12 However, the outbreak of WWI in August 1914 and Turkey’s entry on the Germany’s side set an effective stop to the reform implementation. The Armenians were left to the mercy of the Turkish administration, which was now presented with the perfect window of opportunity during the war, without external interference, to get rid of the Armenian headache. The WWI genocide followed.

Beacons of hope and justice: the Sèvres Treaty The Armenian Genocide ravaged the Armenian nation, leaving a permanent mark on its national identity. Having been deprived of its intellectual elite and leadership, decimated and cleansed from an overwhelming majority of its homeland, the genocide could not but scorch the Armenian national identity by victimization. While Turkish leaders were fortifying foreign relations, they needed to address the completion of the domestic metamorphoses, from a religiously and ethnically heterogeneous Ottoman empire only half a century ago, to a highly homogenous Muslim Turkish

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nation-state in the early 1920s. Having got rid of the imminent threat of punishment for the committed wrongdoings during WWI and reparation to Armenians and other Christian minorities, the Turkish leaders engaged in earnest to shape the new Turkey. There are probably few parallels among modern states where society went through such a fundamental upheaval as it did in post-WWI Turkey: a homogenized society, a “Turkey for Turks,” through genocide and social engineering,13 transforming the sultanate to a secular republic, with a changed alphabet, family naming, dress code etc. Constructing the collective narrative, as part of the politics of memory, was a constituent process of this engineering to create the new identity which would fit the newly molded Turkish society.14 All these encroachments brought about a new-born nation and with it a new identity along with new memories. The early 1920s were the formative years for Turkey, as well as for the Armenian question, setting not only the physical boundaries of the region and future disputes (among others the Karabakh conflict), but also molding the memory and the narrative of Turkey and the Armenian question. The dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had resulted in its implosion into a homogenous state entailing tangible crises in need of considerable political and social responses: With the collapse of empire, rump states like Hungary, Britain or Turkey were faced with crises of identity. They could either return to imperial scale (a “greater” strategy that involves more power/territory but less ethnic homogeneity) or turn inwards a “little” nationalism that stress the dominant ethnie’s cultural particularity.15 Notwithstanding, the inevitable approaching defeat made the Turkish leaders start courting Armenians as a preemptive measure for the feared consequences of the committed internationally wrongful acts during the war.16 In fact, by October 1918, an Armenian delegation headed by Avetis Aharonian, a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation government (ARF; Hay Heghapokhakan Dashnaktsutyun or Dashnak in short), was in Constantinople to renegotiate the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.17 The delegation also included the Armenian Foreign Minister Alexander Khatisian. Rauf Bey, the Turkish Minister of Navy, bound for Port Mudros to sign the armistice, asked Khatisian to accompany him to Mudros to convince the British about the friendship between Turks and Armenians. In return, the Turkish government would reestablish the 1914 boundary, thus ceding Kars and Ardahan to Armenia (retaken by Turks in accordance with the Brest-Litovsk Treaty) as well as part of the Alashkert Valley.18 After almost six months of begging for Turkish benevolence towards the newly established Armenian republic, it was now the Armenians who considered the concessions insufficient. The tables had turned. Khatisian and Aharonian turned down Rauf’s offer. This was, however, a short-lived period of Armenian fortune.

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In 1918, the Armenian leaders had reason to be exhilarated about the future prospects. The Entente ultimatum of May 24 1915, about punishing those responsible for committed “crime against humanity and civilisation,”19 had been materialized in concrete paragraphs in the Sèvres Treaty.20 While this mentioning of “crimes against humanity” was the first within international context, the term had in fact been used at least once earlier, even that time about Armenia, namely in the 1908 issue of American Journal of International Law where Armenia was given as an example of “great crimes against humanity.”21 By 1920, the wording had changed to be even more specific when Philip Marshall Brown, Professor of International Law at Princeton and associate editor of the American Journal of International Law, described the Armenian fate as a “general policy of extermination adopted later by the Young Turks.”22 At least some within the academic world and the international law expertise were aware of the nature of the massacres and the deportations. Now, in 1920, it seemed that the Armenians were to be compensated for their sufferings during the last decades. Empowered by the League of Nations, the US President Woodrow Wilson had in his arbitral award defined the borders of the new unified Armenia, while a broad public support in Europe and the USA enforced the illusion of the justice which Armenians considered as a reparation for the recent sufferings. After almost seven centuries of lost statehood, the looming goal of a united sovereign Armenia (even though only partially covering the historic Armenia) was in reach. What Armenians did not know was the utterly low priority of their cause on the agenda of the major powers who were in the midst of carving the map of post-WWI Europe and Middle East. Neither the UK nor the USA, two of the major actors in molding the political borders of the Middle East, had any political or financial gains in advancing Armenian interests. This “lemon,” as the U.S. High Commissioner to Turkey, Admiral Mark L. Bristol called Armenia, was a barren land in the eyes of Western exploiters, a land with no natural resources or even seaports.23 The only apparent argument, as Gladstone had pointed out back in 1878, was that of morality, which would prove to be inadequate. This would become increasingly clear as the Turkish Nationalist Movement, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal was gathering momentum in Turkey and was about to turn the defeat into victory. The British standpoint and argumentation is well described in Akaby Nassibian’s Great Britain and the Armenian Genocide, a work which is highly overlooked in the research of the Armenian Genocide and the roots of the abandonment of the cause for the sake of realpolitik.24 Prior to the Mudros negotiations, the British Foreign Office, the War Ministry and the War Cabinet were fully occupied with prioritizing the terms to be negotiated with the Turks. Despite the wartime public pledges for Armenian salvation from Turkish rule, it was Mesopotamia and Palestine that were at the top of the British agenda, not Armenia. The dilemma was how to reconcile the public with the reluctance to assume responsibility for Armenia. The “War Cabinet had neither a comprehensive plan nor a tangible interest in the future of

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Armenia.” Armenia was neither strategically nor financially interesting for Britain. It was regarded as Russia’s backyard, provided that the White Army would reconquer it, not the Bolsheviks. In Nassibian’s words, Armenia was “a desolate country which was only rich in misery.”26 The fact that Armenia was of negligible importance to the British is evident in the priority list set for the armistice. The approved terms by the British for the Mudros armistice negotiations consisted of 24 terms. The War Cabinet made it utterly clear that “if the first four of the 24 terms were secured, the remaining twenty ‘could be cut’ without serious loss.”27 The first four were of “paramount importance.” Items one to three concerned the opening of the Dardanelles and securing access to the Black Sea. Item four was about “handing over Allied and Armenian interned persons.” Armenia was item 24. Next to the Straits, the most important issue was occupying Aleppo as soon as possible and pushing towards oil-rich Mosul.28 Alongside the War Cabinet, the influential War Office was also a decisive factor in abandoning Armenia. Nassibian notes that 25

In the War Office, on the other hand, Sir Henry Wilson, who, as he himself put it, was “determined to make love to the Turk”, was not only a shrewd person of remarkable intellectual gifts but also “a schemer and intriguer.”29 His stance was quite clear on the issue: “what is essential is concentration of forces in theatres vital to us, viz., England, Ireland, Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, in that order.”30 Armenia did not exist in his world. Thus, by May 1920, British policy made it clear that “concessions to Turkey, aimed at detaching her from Bolshevik Russia, were strongly urged on the British government both by the Secretary for War and the Secretary for India.”31 Armenia was simply devoid of any strategic value. However, public opinion did not allow the politicians to just drop it, especially due to the relatively high awareness about the fate of the Armenians during WWI, as well as during the 1894–1896 massacres. Thus, the core of the dilemma was how to drop the Armenian cause without arousing public criticism. It seems, however, that there were conflicting views on how to handle this issue and Armenia was not abandoned entirely after all. There was some sense of responsibility among the decision-makers for the Armenian nation, which went back to the British out-maneuvering of Russia in the Berlin Treaty. In a memorandum, The Political Intelligence Department claimed that Britain was “‘bound perhaps juridically and certainly morally’ by article 61 of the Berlin Treaty” to secure Armenia’s future.32 The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Robert Cecil, “insisted in some provision ‘must be inserted to protect Armenians,’” while Sir Mark Sykes advised in Allied occupation of Cilicia. However, the support in the Foreign Office was not shared by their counterparts in the influential War Office and India Office. The quandary was how to get rid of this moral duty. A simple solution would

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be to offload the responsibility on another state which would not harm British interests. The choice fell upon the USA. The United States’ stand is equally clear in Peter Balakian’s The Burning Tigris and Christopher Simpson’s The Splendid Blond Beast. 33 Their rendering of the American reasoning shows that it was only the humanitarian movement and mainly President Woodrow Wilson who strived for external support for a sovereign Armenia. Some Americans were viewing the British insistence on a US mandate over Armenia as London’s manner of securing the richest part for herself, while the British military withdrawal from Caucasus was their way to force the USA to accept the mandatory power for the “poorest” parts of the territories.34 The Americans also resented the fact that the British, during the war, were making statements about liberation and protection, while they were now “trying to pass the responsibility onto the United States.”35 The political establishment, especially the future Harding Administration had no interest in Armenia, especially in the light of the emerging Kemalist movement in Turkey. This affinity was perhaps most noticeable in Bristol’s stance towards Turkey and his advocacy for US alliance with Mustafa Kemal. “The Armenians,” Bristol wrote, “are a race like the Jews – they have little or no national spirit and poor moral character.”36 The sooner the US dropped its support for Armenia in order to improve its relations with Turkey the better, so as to get access to the Ottoman oilfields. This line was received positively by the incumbent administration in Washington, “whose affinity for oil interests eventually blossomed into the famous Teapot Dome bribery scandal.”37 The State Department was now actively working to avoid giving the impression that it was sacrificing the rights of the Christian subjects for the sake of securing its own commercial interests. Allen Dulles was busy “to ward off congressional resolutions of sympathy” for Greeks, Armenians and Jews.38 In a true process of the politics of memory, the US and UK administrations needed to avert wartime memories regarding the treatment of the Armenians, along with the pledges to punish the perpetrators and compensate the victims, for the sake of prevailing realpolitik considerations. Bristol went even further; once the Turkish nationalists started committing new massacres against the Armenians, he barred newspapers from access to the areas in question.39 What the US administration did not need at this moment was additional public demand for support of the Armenian cause. The cover-up and the cosmetic improvements of the Turkish image among the domestic public had begun. Marjorie Housepian-Dobkin has correctly written that “[t]hose who underestimate the power of commerce in the history of Middle East cannot have studied the postwar situation in Turkey between 1918 and 1923.”40 The memories of the WWI atrocities needed to give way for a benevolent image of the new Turkey. The blind Armenian faith in the Allied protection, which never came, would turn out to be a grave mistake. During April 1920, an Armenian delegation left for Moscow to establish diplomatic relations with the Bolsheviks

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and seek assistance against the advancing Turkish armies. The delegation was headed by Levon Shant, a Western Armenian and vice-chairmen of the Armenian Parliament; he was accompanied by the left wing ARF members Hambardzum Terterian and Levon Zarafian. They had several meetings with the Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgy Chicherin.41 In one of the initial meetings Chicherin stressed, according to Terterian, that Russo-Turkish co-operation was a matter of life and death for Soviet Russia. Turkey was prepared to attack Allies but was afraid that Armenia would strike here in the rear. Hence the Soviet Russia desired to reconcile Armenia to Turkey. At another meeting in June, Chicherin on “behalf of Soviet Russia” “promised to satisfy the Armenians” by annexing to Armenia certain territories of Turkish Armenia and securing her exit to the Black Sea. As to the question of the boundary with Azerbaijan: Zangezur and Nakhichevan would be declared Armenian territories but Karabakh’s legal status would be decided after a referendum.42 Armenia would also receive material aid as well as financial loans. This oral agreement was to be put in writing. Zarafian and Terterian wanted to sign the treaty at once with the view of not losing this “golden opportunity,” but Levon Shant refused to agree and they asked Yerevan for advice.43 Eventually, internal feuds in Armenia put a halt to the signing of the treaty when the Armenian Bolsheviks, emboldened by the Red Army’s seizure of Azerbaijan, started opposing the Dashnakist government. Records show that the Russians had actually pressured Turkey to make the mentioned concessions to Armenia, causing the Turkish delegation to leave Moscow without signing any agreement.44 Naturally, it would be all but speculation whether the Russians would follow through, especially in regard to the later concessions made by Moscow to Ankara in regard to the Turkey-Armenia border, as well as the fate of Nakhichevan and Karabakh, which we will return to shortly. Nonetheless, the records show that if the Bolsheviks had been allowed to man the TurkishArmenian line of contact, the western borders of the soon to be Soviet Armenia might have looked different. Regardless of this speculation, it is noteworthy that even at this stage Britain pressured Armenia not to give in for any agreements with Bolshevik Russia, which would definitely be viewed as Armenian betrayal of the Allies.45 However, as symptomatic for the entire affair, the British did not come with any countermeasures whatsoever, leaving Armenia in a dangerous and devastating limbo. Soon it turned out that Italy and France were conducting their own secret talks with Ankara, the stronghold of the Nationalist Movement. Italy was backing Kemalist Turkey because Britain was supporting Greece and had refused the former war allies any economic concessions in Anatolia.46 “According to Rechad Halise Bey, the former Turkish Minister in Berne, it was Italy who first began intriguing following the Greek occupation of

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Smyrna” and “provided Turkey with money and munitions of war.”47 Paris was backing Kemalist Turkey as well, since France felt that Britain had let her down over the Rhine in order to limit increased French control in the region.48 In addition, having sustained heavy losses in the wake of the Russian Bolshevik revolution and expropriation of foreign assets, French financiers were “particularly anxious not to lose also in Turkey.”49 French politicians were going to safeguard their country’s “material and moral” interests in Turkey.50 The British knew all along that the French and the Italians were cooperating with the Nationalists, supplying them with military intelligence and information about the Allied negotiations. “Neither the Italians nor the French wanted the Treaty of Sèvres carried out and they were ‘encouraging the Nationalists to resist.’”51 The stage was set for renegotiating the Sèvres Treaty “in favor of TURKEY.”52 In return for French favors to solve Turkey’s problems regarding the establishment of an independent and sovereign Turkey, the latter would give concessions to a “French group for the exploitation of iron, chrome and silver mines in the Karshut valley. In addition, the Turkish government would examine with ‘outmost goodwill’ other requests for ‘concessions for mines, railways, ports and waterways.’”53 The Kemalists had effectively broken up the Allied front and were making deals with each of them behind the back of the collective. Thus, upon its signature in August 10 1920, the Sèvres Treaty was in reality no more than a mirage. The post-war realpolitik brought additional blows to the Armenian territorial composition, mostly with regard to the future Armenian SSR, wedging the territorial aspect firmly into the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide. This is significant in the light of Russian promises to Yerevan for securing the Armenian front in Kars and Ardahan against the advancing Nationalist army. The skepticism towards the Russian territorial guaranties in return for permission to enter Armenia’s territory should be seen in the light of the concessions made by Stalin in the immediate years, especially the cession of Nakhichevan and Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. The issue went back to the last years of the rule of the Young Turks, when the Turkish General Vehib Pasha, during the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations with the Armenian delegation, openly argued for the Turkish expansion plans eastward, thus necessitating Armenia’s relinquishment of the corridor connecting Ottoman Turkey to Baku and beyond.54 However, while the inter-state wars of 1918–1920 in the Caucasus had de facto left both Nakhichevan and Karabakh under Armenian control, both territories were lost as a result of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Armenia, but also, most notably, through the Turkish involvement. The Bolsheviks in Moscow, having also firm plans for Turkey, hoped that the new republic under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal would develop into a communist rule.55 In order to appease Turkey, Moscow chose to cede Nagorno-Karabakh as well as Nakhichevan to Azerbaijan, the Turks’ closest cousins in the Caucasus. Until then, Nakhichevan had actually no common border with Turkey, but Atatürk’s negotiator was able to persuade Moscow to annex a narrow strip of land to Nakhichevan so that the

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area could have a short strip of common border (15km) with Turkey. Furthermore, Nakhichevan’s status could not be altered without Turkey’s direct consent.57 Svante Cornell asserts that this was a concession by Stalin against the newly formed state of Turkey due to the fact that “Atatürk was hostile to any territorial arrangements favoring Soviet Armenia, since a strong Armenia could have potential territorial claims on Turkey.”58 The Turkish intervention on behalf of Azerbaijan would only cement the Armenians’ conviction of a joint Turkish-Azeri malevolence towards Armenia, a viable factor in the politics of memory which still echoes into our time, especially in regard to the Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The transfer of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani rule was even more obvious and done directly by Stalin’s order. On June 12 1921, the Communist Party Bureau in the Caucasus debated the issue upon which (on July 4) a majority vote decided to transfer Karabakh to the Armenian SSR.59 Stalin, in the capacity of Soviet Commissar for Nationalities, was also present at the meeting but took no part in the debate. The details of what Stalin said later are unknown, but after the session’s ending, in a closed and secret meeting, he allegedly shared his opinion with the members of the Bureau with regard to the decision to transfer Nagorno-Karabakh to the Armenian SSR. The next day, without either any deliberation or any formal vote, the Bureau stated the following: Given the need for national peace between Muslims and Armenians, and in view of the economic ties between the upper [mountainous] and lower Karabakh and its permanent ties with Azerbaijan, the Mountainous Karabakh remains within Azerbaijani SSR’s borders, and has broad regional autonomy with the administrative center of Shusha and becomes an autonomous region.60 The speculations are many about why Stalin insisted on the inclusion of Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan. The arguments about economic ties are regarded as reprehensible as it would mean that Nakhichevan, on the very same reasoning, would be returned to Armenia, which did not happen. The idea that the inclusion of the region in Azerbaijan would ensure peace between Armenians and Muslims also seems far-fetched, given both the history of the conflict and its legacy. The historian Michael P. Croissant shares the view of several other researchers who suggest that this was nothing but Stalin’s policy of “divide and rule.” By adding the region to Azerbaijan, the Armenian population was used as a potential “hostage” in order to ensure that the Armenian SSR’s cooperation with Soviet leadership was secured. Meanwhile, an “autonomous” Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan served as a potential pro-Soviet “fifth column” in the event of Azeri disloyalty.61 In order to realize these potentials and seal their plan, on July 7 1923, Stalin created the Autonomous Oblast (Russian province) of Nagorno-Karabakh, with its own administrative and legislative body (the Soviet), but subject to

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Azerbaijani SSR. This status gave the region some degree of autonomy. But Stalin did not confine himself to this administrative change. At the time, Karabakh bordered on Armenia and that needed to be resolved. The boundaries of the enclave were redrawn in such a manner that Stalin left a narrow strip of land, which physically separated Karabakh from Armenia. This redrawing of the borders separated Karabakh physically from the southeastern region of Zangezur in present-day Armenia. This strip was then used to create the three enclaves of Kelbadjar, Lachin and Zangelan, which were placed within Azerbaijani SSR, but outside of Karabakh’s administrative boundaries. This became a dormant and ticking conflict, which would erupt as soon as Moscow’s authoritarian rule loosened up. The first occasion would coincide with the first dissident events in Soviet Union’s history, the 50th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide on April 24 1965.

From Sèvres to Lausanne: realpolitik reigns supreme As already mentioned, it was a highly accommodating Turkish Minister of Navy, Rauf Bey, who, en route to Mudros to sign the Turkish surrender, attempted courting the Armenian delegates in Constantinople. Notwithstanding, even though officially surrendered, Turkey was far from defeated. Next to the 1878 Berlin Treaty, the Mudros Treaty was a devastating blow to the Armenian issue. Unlike the Entente armistice treaties with Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, which entirely disarmed the defeated armies, the Mudros Treaty did not include such terms with regard to Turkey. This would entail disastrous consequences for Armenia and the Armenian question since it allowed the Turks to regroup and emerge as victors. More importantly, it allowed Turkey to persuade the Entente powers to abandon the Armenians and the question of punishment of the crimes committed during WWI. But perhaps more significantly, it also consigned the whole issue to oblivion, initiating the state genocide denial, which persists until the present day, becoming a distinguishing hallmark for the Armenian Genocide. Richard Hovannisian defines the denial as the final stage of the genocide process aimed at killing the memory itself: Following the physical destruction of a people and their material culture, memory is all that is left and is targeted as the last victim. Complete annihilation of a people requires the banishment of recollection and suffocation of remembrance. Falsification, deception and half-truths reduce what was to what might have been or perhaps what was not at all.62 As such, one of the main arguments of the Turkish denial is the discontinuity between the Ottoman Empire and the succeeding Republic, thus exonerating Turkey from any responsibility, even that of recognizing any committed wrongdoings by its predecessor during WWI. The research suggests otherwise. In fact, according to then existing international laws as well as court

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rulings, the Republic of Turkey bore the state identity of its predecessor and was considered the continuity of the Ottoman Empire.63 The Nationalist movement needed to begin on a clean slate, one purified from the flawed past related to the rule of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, Turkish . “Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti”), also known as the Young Turks. Thus, the official Turkish version states that the Nationalist movement, renouncing the CUP, was a brand-new start resulting in the new Turkish Republic. However, as elaborated on by researchers such as Erik J. Zürcher and Taner Akçam, the Nationalist movement was initiated, nourished and supported by Unionist leaders, many of whom were fugitives of the law, wanted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and unlawful confiscations.64 In addition to the need of dismissing these allegations, Mustafa Kemal needed to get rid of the competition in the political arena, consolidating his position in the new republic through political purges during the 1920s. The Kemalists simply needed a new version of history, which would uphold the illusion of the glorious and stainless history of the Turkish nation, with Kemal as its single unchallenged champion. To that end, a new history was invented which broke with the defeated and flawed past, founded its power on the basic popular roots movement, initiated and directed by Mustafa Kemal, earning him the title Atatürk, “Father of Turks.” As Michel Ignatieff points out societies and nations are not like individuals, but their leaders can have an enormous impact on the mysterious process by which individuals come to terms with the painfulness of their societies’ past. Leaders give their societies permission to say the unsayable, to think the unthinkable, to rise to gestures of reconciliation that people, individually, cannot imagine.65 However, in the Turkish case, with regard to the wrongdoings in the Ottoman past, the leader’s role turned out to involve shielding/depriving society from the knowledge about the unthinkable misdeeds, thereby missing the window of opportunity for reconciliation, both with the victims, but also with their own past, shaping an imaginary identity for Turkey. The issue of state identity, continuity and responsibility lies thereby at the core of the denial of the Armenian Genocide and has had an immense impact on the creation of the memory and the identity of the respective parties. With the emergence of the Nationalist movement and its consolidation of the power in Turkey, there should be little surprise that the Sèvres Treaty was rejected by the Kemalists. Soon, Ankara managed to force a new round of negotiations in order to review the Sèvres Treaty provisions. However, the intended revision would instead result in scrapping the whole Sèvres Treaty and replacing it with the Lausanne Treaty. The Turks had come to Lausanne with clear demands regarding the Armenians. The Turkish delegation leader, Ismet Inönü, made it abundantly clear that any attempt to discuss the Armenian question would lead to the termination of the negotiations. A British delegate recalled that “there is no subject upon which the Turks are

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more fixed in obstinacy” than the Armenian question.66 While the Sèvres Treaty contained a separate section with six articles pertaining to Armenia (along with at least four additional articles in regard to boundaries and punishment of the war criminals), not only did the Lausanne Treaty grant a general amnesty of all wrongdoings, it was also barren of any mentioning of the words “Armenia” or “Armenian” whatsoever. Winston Churchill wrote: “In the Lausanne Treaty, which established a new peace between the allies and Turkey, history will search in vain for the name Armenia.”67 It is hardly surprising that the Lausanne Treaty (in parallel with the similar amnesty in the Kars Treaty, 1921),68 was received poorly among Armenians and came to symbolize their sense of having been betrayed by the great powers.69 Having been victim of a genocide, the Armenians felt victimized again, this time by the interests of the realpolitik. Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George called the Lausanne treaty an “abject, cowardly, and infamous surrender.”70 The journey from Sèvres to Lausanne marks the essence of the Armenian Genocide and constitutes, as the Rosetta stone, the key for understanding the politics of memory surrounding and controlling the point at issue. Article VIII of the Lausanne Treaty pertaining to the Declaration relating to the Amnesty begins with the following introduction: “The Powers signatory of the Treaty of Peace signed this day being equally desirous to cause the events which have troubled the peace in the East to be forgotten.”71 The problem, however, was that the infringements were not theirs to forgive and the inflicted injustice could not be forgotten. Thus, the Lausanne Treaty became a significant element in how the victims of the WWI atrocities were never able to have a closure. As Martha Minow points out forgiveness does not and should not take the place of justice or punishment. Forgiveness marks a change in how the offended feels about the person who committed the injury, not a change in the actions to be taken by a justice system.72 In a highly relevant observation, Minow states that “[a]n amnesty is credible only as a humane means to remember, not as a legislation of forgetfulness.”73 Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened in the Armenian case where the Lausanne Treaty paved way for the future epithet of the “forgotten genocide.” As already discussed, although amnesty is sometimes employed in order to secure transition to a democratic system or bring the previously warring parties to the negotiation table, the compromise on granting amnesty, which at the same time also implies a moral compromise, risks undermining the very democracy it is supposed to encourage and build.74 The doctrine of realpolitik at Lausanne was illustrated clearly by Kay Holloway, observing how the Great Powers sacrificed small nations, especially newly liberated national groups, when the powers did not follow through, instead protecting their own interests and ignored ratifying an already signed treaty, thus

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“deprive the treaty wholly or in part (in this case wholly) of its effectiveness and this deceives the other contracting party” and deprive it “of the benefits which it legitimately hoped (and was given to believe) to achieve from it,” and for which it had loyally fought by the side of the Allies, endured the most hideous atrocities and paid in countless thousands of innocent victims, so as to achieve its liberation, after successive massacres. The action of the signatories, contrary to the provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres, not only destroyed the Treaty, but resulted in the abandonment of thousands of defenceless people – Armenians and Greeks – to the fury of their persecutors, by engendering subsequent holocausts in which the few survivors of the 1915 Armenian massacres perished.75 Thereby, the world powers capable of supervising and realizing the Sèvres Treaty provisions, were in fact implicated in the initiation of the genocide denial that started at the Lausanne Treaty and have indeed played a decisive role in its perseverance within the politics of memory. The Turkish denial and evasion from responsibility would hardly have succeeded had it not been for the consent of the international community in general and the major powers in particular. That the League of Nations was unwilling or unable to make any commitment in regard to the Armenian question in the hour of need was best depicted by the Swedish Social-Demokraten’s correspondent in Geneva, who wrote: The civilized nations looked at each other, a bit ashamed indeed and each and everyone whispered their answer to the Council: “Surely Armenia must be aided. It is a responsibility toward all humanity to aid Armenia. It must not happen that Armenia is not aided. But why should I do it? Why should I? Why should I?” was sounded from every direction. “Why exactly should I expose myself for the risk and the inconvenience of putting my nose in this robber’s den?” And so, all the civilized nations there stood on the shore, around the drowning people, each and everyone with its lifeline in hand. But no one wanted or dared to throw it, fearing they would themselves be drawn into the water.76 Weary from the heavy toll of the war, most of these states were simply not up for spending more resources and capital on a people in far-off lands, especially when this had to be done on the expense of rebuilding their own affected society and economy, causing the interwar period to be called the “eclipse of humanitarian intervention.”77 Nonetheless, the Armenian question did not fade away entirely due to its erasing from the treaty pages. As it had impacted the Disraeli Cabinet back in 1878, although partially included in the Eastern question, the Armenian question came to directly affect the affairs of foreign states, a hallmark of the problem which has prevailed until our days. It was in fact the very issue of the Armenian massacres and the US policy towards the new Nationalist Turkey

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which stalled the ratification of the Lausanne Treaty by the US Senate. Suddenly two new lobby organizations were created, for and against the Treaty of Lausanne. The pro-Armenian lobby, led by among others the influential Rabbi Wise and former US Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau, publicly announced that the “State Department had sold out the Armenians over political interests and the oil fields of the Mosul.”78 The pursuit of securing the access to the black gold had given birth to the new epithet of “Oleaginous diplomacy.”79 The issue was prolonged until May 1924, when the Coolidge Administration, realizing that the treaty had no support in either Capitol Hill or the nation at large, refused to send it to the Senate for ratification. Later the same year, the Democrats put the condemnation of the treaty in their 1924 election platform, calling for the fulfillment of President Wilson’s arbitral award. Senator Pat Harrison put it in plain text when he, during his speech at the Democrat Convention, said “Show this administration an oil well and it will show you a foreign policy.”80 The Coolidge administration did not send the treaty to Senate for debate until January 1927. There, the Democrats voted unanimously against it and thus, the Lausanne Treaty was never ratified by the USA. This, however, mattered little to both the fait accompli of Armenia and the policy towards Turkey, dictated by realpolitik.

Genocide in international law: Nuremberg and the UN Convention While economic and political factors played a prominent role in the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide during the immediate post-WWI, the interwar period and the aftermath of WWII was dominated by its legal aspects. The default of envisioned legal consequences and justice declared in the Entente ultimatum of May 24 1915 and the Sèvres Treaty left its mark on both Turkish and Armenian identities, but perhaps more significantly, played a pivotal role in the definition of the new term genocide and its corresponding UN Convention. The issue of justice, however, did not subside; at least not among the Armenian survivors. Already in 1919, during Dashnak party’s 9th General Congress in Yerevan, a “black list” containing 200 names of individuals deemed responsible for the Armenian massacres was created. Records show that the decision was not unanimous and many delegates, especially Russian Armenians, opposed the idea, but were outvoted.81 The plan was code-named “Operation Nemesis,” after the Greek goddess of divine retribution. The actions of the group, however, remained much more limited than the created list. Dashnak agents traced some of the leading Unionist leaders and instigators of the Armenian massacres, who had fled Turkey in 1918 to escape prosecution. The number one on the list was the former Ottoman Minister of Interior and Grand Vizier, Talaat Pasha. His designated executioner was Soghomon Tehlirian, a survivor of the genocide who had lost his entire family during the deportations. Tehlirian had tracked down Talaat to Berlin and shot him point-blank in bright daylight on March 15 1921.

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Tehlirian was arrested on the spot and put on trial for the murder of Talaat but was acquitted mainly on the basis of temporary insanity but also in regard to his vivid testimony of the genocide experience.82 Tehlirian’s trial in Berlin was covered internationally, and the news also found its way to the young Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish student at the Linguistics Department of Lvov University. During a discussion of the trial, Lemkin had a heated exchange with his professor in which Lemkin argued that it was Talaat who should have been arraigned for mass murder, not Tehlirian for seeking revenge. The professor argued, “Let us take the case that a man who owns some chicken. He kills them. Why not? It is not your business. If you interfere, it is trespass.”83 John Cooper writes: “According to Lemkin this exchange with his professor caused him to drop some of his philology courses and decide to study law” even though probably “it was the killing of Jews in Poland and the Ukraine, which was happening around him, that sensitized Lemkin to this issue and made him agitated about the trial and acquittal of Tehlirian.”84 It is worth mentioning that Tehlirian’s trial and its outcome have also been viewed as the venue for reconciliation between Armenians and Germans, the allies of the perpetrators. The trial together with the actions of “righteous” Germans such as Johannes Lepsius and Armin Wegner contributed to a partial attempt of redemption for the German compliance or at least passivity despite the knowledge of the ongoing genocide.85 Lemkin’s knowledge of the Armenian case and the experiences of the Jewish fate during WWII resulted in his famous publication, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944), in which he introduced the definition of the term genocide. 86 He then continued championing the codification of the crime of genocide, resulting in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on December 9 1948. Unpublished articles and manuscripts, which served as the basis of his draft resolution, show that Lemkin drew many parallels between the Armenian and Jewish genocides, both in regard to the position of the victims, the motives of the perpetrators and the methods of implementation.87 During an interview and in response to the question by CBS reporter Quincy Howe, asking Lemkin about the creation of the word genocide and how he came to be interested in the matter, Lemkin replied “I became interested in genocide because it happened so many times. It happened to the Armenians … after[wards] the Armenians got a very rough deal at the Versailles Conference because their criminals were guilty of genocide and were not punished.”88 Thus, it was not only the committed crime and its nature which concerned Lemkin, but the inability of the international community to effectively prosecute the perpetrators. The memories of the Armenian massacres during WWI had directly been implicated in forming one of the most iconic legal terms of our time and its codification into the international legal system. Thus, it might seem quite ironic that the case which gave rise to the term in the first place is perhaps most known for being challenged to qualify for being called a genocide. The new term did not go unnoticed among Armenians. The editor of the French-Armenian daily newspaper Haratch, Schavarch Missakian, noted the

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newly defined term of genocide in an editorial article on December 9 1945.89 Describing the meaning of the word genocide, consisting of the Greek word genos (“race,” “tribe”) and cide (derivate from Latin cedere, “to kill”), addressing the committed war crimes by Nazis, the article transcribes the term into its verbatim Armenian translation “tseghaspanutyun” (“tsegh,” race and “spanutyun,” killing) occurring in quotation marks in the article as well. This might probably be one of the first, if not the very first, usage of the word “tseghaspanutyun” in regard to the WWI events, which is also the most common designation of the event in our days, “Hayots tseghaspanutyun,” the Armenian Genocide. Up to that moment, the most common denomination for the events was “Medz Yeghern,” commonly translated to “Great Calamity.”90 While, until the 1910s, “yeghern” referred to the 1909 Adana massacres,91 the 1915 massacres came to be known as “Medz Yeghern.”92 What is more significant with the Haratch article is its reflection on the issue of justice, or rather injustice towards the Armenians: “We read these lines [in Le Monde], we follow the Nuremberg trials and our thoughts naturally wander towards a distant world, where ‘war crimes’ were also committed 30 years ago.” The planning, the procedure and the outcome of the Ottoman treatment of the Armenians were the same as those defined by this new term and put forward as accusations at Nuremberg. “With one word, genocide.” “However,” continues the editorial, “where were then today’s lawyers and prosecutors? Had they not found the word or were the bloodthirsty monsters so powerful and inaccessible that they could not apprehend them?” The editorial bitterly noted that the Allied victors were on location and in control for four years, exactly as they were now in Germany and that numerous “monsters” were imprisoned in Malta waiting for being “put on trial and receive their deserved punishment. What, then?” As a precursor of the nowadays infamous “never again,” Missakian posed the highly rhetorical, yet ironical question: “Has the world improved, from Constantinople, Malta to Nuremberg, [Bergen-]Belsen or Auschwitz?” The editorial concluded with the following statement: “Let the genocide hyenas be prosecuted and severely punished. But, where did the first and ‘exemplary’ case of the modern time genocide start?” Missakian was in 1945 referring to what scholars such as Karlsson and Melson would decades later call the archetype and the prototype of genocides in modern time. The Armenians had now an internationally defined legal name for what had befallen them. At the same time, the Nuremberg trials reminded the Armenians of the promises given to them thirty years earlier and how the victors abandoned them, never pursuing the act of justice and the punishment of the perpetrators. The notion that “we had never our Nuremberg” entered thereby into the narrative of the Armenian Genocide, heightening the experienced injustice. This disparity could also be witnessed in the commemoration of the two events and the issue of some sort of closure: while the Holocaust Remembrance Day is on January 27 (proclaimed by UN resolution in 2005),93 referring to the same date in 1945 when the concentration

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camp of Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, signaling the end of the Holocaust, Armenians commemorate their genocide on April 24, the date marking the beginning of the genocide in 1915. In a sense, the Armenian Genocide is an open-ended and unsettled matter. The same argument would also be invoked later during the 1970s and 1980s to justify the armed actions targeting Turkish diplomats around the world. The post-WWI trials were truly an opportunity lost to the Armenians as well as the Turks in regard to both justice and reparation, but also for confession and self-redemption to possibly reconcile the victim with the perpetrator. Instead, the process of the politics of memory started raising a barrier by infusing the genocide into the identity and the narrative of respective nation. Thus, while playing a pivotal role in shaping the international law, the Armenian case was itself not comprehended by either the legal consequences or the new definition, at least not officially, giving more reason for frustration and lost faith in the international legal system on behalf of the victims. It is noteworthy that the knowledge of the Armenian case being a precursor of the newly defined crime of genocide transcended Armenian circles and was seemingly also adopted within the international law community. One such example was the UN War Commission Report of 1948 which we will return to later. Other occurrences included the 1950 Yearbook of the United Nations, which mentioned the “atrocities perpetrated in Armenia” as an example of committed genocide and “a crime against peace.”94 In 1959, Morris Greenspan exemplified the Armenian massacres of 1894–1896 and 1915 as cases for humanitarian intervention as well as the usage of the term “crimes against humanity and civilization” in the 1919 Commission of Responsibilities in regard to the Armenian massacres during WWI.95 It is highly interesting that by this time the United States’ official stand did in fact clearly acknowledge the Armenian case as an example of committed genocides in recent history. This standpoint was reflected in the written statement by United States given to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1951, observing that: The Genocide Convention resulted from the inhuman and barbarous practices which prevailed in certain countries prior to and during World War II, when entire religious, racial and national minority groups were threatened with and subjected to deliberate extermination. The practice of genocide has occurred throughout human history. The Roman persecution of the Christians, the Turkish massacres of Armenians, the extermination of millions of Jews and Poles by the Nazis are outstanding examples of the crime of genocide. This was the background when the General Assembly of the United Nations considered the problem of genocide.96 One is inclined to ascribe this labeling, which the US administrations have ever since resisted persistently to use in regard to the Armenian case, to the

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height of Lemkin’s advocacy and influence within the ranks of US State Department. Most probably, the rise of Turkey’s importance as a NATO ally during the 1950s along with the loss of Lemkin as a resilient human rights advocate within the State Department (Lemkin died of heart failure in 1959) played a pivotal role in the diametrical change in the US stance regarding the 1915 events. Another, more elaborative discussion on the subject of the Armenian fate as an example of committed cases of genocide was that of Kaye Holloway in Modern Trends in Treaty Law: Constitutional Law, Reservations and The Three Modes of Legislation, published in 1967: The first case of genocide, in its modern acceptation, was the extermination of the Armenians – an autochthonous population – by the Ottoman Empire in World War I, and the second that of the Jews by Nazi Germany, almost a quarter of a century after the first victims of the most vile atrocities and hideous crimes had been conveniently forgotten and the remnants driven out of their ancestral lands without reparation of any sort.97 He continued by noting that “the victims of the worst cases of genocide in the land of their fathers, where they had lived until the last Ottoman Government decided to apply its ruthless policy of the ‘final solution’ to the last of its subjected people.”98 Commenting on the existing framework and international laws on punishment of crimes against humanity prior to Nuremberg, Holloway noted that “no sanctions were taken against the State having committed the first large-scale genocide of the century, namely, the extermination of Christians and, in particular, of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.”99 The Armenian Genocide and its memory seemed thereby to have been a legitimate example within international legal circles, evidently yet relatively untainted by the political intrusion into the discussion which we are familiar with today. The absence of proper stigmatization of the WWI crimes through punishment had a much more tangible consequence in the ensuing politics of memory, namely consolidating the Turkish denial. Since no one had been convicted of any crime, the Turkish official denialist position simply maintains that no crime had been committed. However, the emergence of the genocide definition, and perhaps even more important, its reference to the Holocaust and the Nazis, had an immense impact on the Turkish denial policy, now from a psychological perspective. Suddenly, from being “the crime without a name,” as Winston Churchill called it, the committed wrongful acts during WWI were now catapulted into the top position, becoming the “ultimate crime.”100 Furthermore, as knowledge about the Holocaust grew, the act of genocide became synonymous with it, and more significantly, the perpetrators of the crime were equated with Nazis. As Saul Friedländer has pointed out: “Nazism has become the central metaphor for evil in our time.”101 If the Turkish state and society had concrete legal reasons

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to plea “not guilty” to any wrongdoing, they were now inclined even more to refute any possibility of being guilty of having committed our time’s “crime of crimes,” and thus being equated with Nazis and Hitler. As mentioned earlier, one of the main arguments among the Swedish Turkish minority when criticizing the Riksdag’s recognition in 2010, was their resentment of being compared with Hitler and the Nazis. This would clearly emphasize the aforementioned centrality of the Holocaust in this study. Leaving the historical realm, the Holocaust has been elevated to a moral measuring stick, often utilized in political circumstances while the scholarly debate about its analysis flourishes.102 In its capacity as a political and social gauge, the Holocaust thus constitutes a fine example of the politics of memory. It has become a striking example of why and how different actors harvest accumulated “moral capital” in the memories of similar events in order to promote their own agendas.103 As we will see throughout this study, the Holocaust has been employed as an example by almost all involved actors. Armenians and proponents of recognition of the genocide use it as a natural parallel; Turkey and other opponents use it primarily (by pointing out the differences between the two cases) to dismiss the Armenian case as not being a case of genocide, while others use the Holocaust to also promote the image of Turkey for having saved Jews, not only during WWII, but throughout the history, etc. While on the subject, it is worth reflecting upon the infamous statement, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” ascribed to Hitler, which surfaced during the post-WWII period. The frequency of its usage in regard to the Armenian Genocide, or more specifically its denial, has almost made it to an iconic slogan for the Armenian case, for example as an inscription on one of the walls of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. While the denialist side refutes the authenticity of the quote, the proponents of recognition use it diligently to both relate to the Holocaust and to substantiate how the negligence of the world community to rectify the WWI crimes resulted in the repetition of the history.104 Although the authenticity of the document is obviously of significant importance, it is the usage of the quote, especially in regard to the topic of the politics of memory, which is even more interesting here. The document was first introduced in the book What About Germany? (1942), authored by Louis P. Lochner, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and former bureau chief of the Associated Press in Berlin. It was later submitted to the Nuremberg trials as evidence (designated document “L-3”), even though it was rejected as such.105 The issue of authenticity notwithstanding, the significance of this quote is rather the obvious inherent symbolic value of it, as an example of committed atrocities similar to those by Nazi Germany. Considering that there was neither any tangible Armenian lobbying at the time, nor any indications that Lochner had done this due to pronounced anti-Turkish sentiments, the mention was an indication of general knowledge about the Armenian fate as well as its nature. This would in turn imply that the WWI events were indeed not as forgotten as

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one might think and the media reports from WWI still conveyed an image of what transpired in the Ottoman Empire during the war. At the time, it was the Armenian experience that was being used as a reference point to render the cruelty of the Jewish fate, not the other way around. This stigmatization of the “g-word” has in fact introduced an identity dilemma for the Turks. Bearing in mind that the UN Convention states the crime of genocide is “condemned by the civilized world,” this would naturally imply that the perpetrator, including the glorious founders of the current Turkish Republic, would be perceived as uncivilized, a thought vehemently rejected by Turkey. Thus, it should be no surprise that Turks, who denounce any third-party recognition of the Armenian Genocide, complain about its defamatory nature by equating them with Nazis and Hitler. Hrant Dink explained this aspect quite clearly by saying that “the Turks are good people and know that genocide is a horrible crime. It is precisely because of this they do not want to admit that they may have committed such an action.”106 The power of the “g-word” and its political implications is also widely observed in its usage by third parties. An example was when President Barack Obama, sidestepping from his usage of the term while a US Senator, instead used the term “Medz Yeghern” in every one of his annual commemoration messages on April 24 during his presidency, insisting that he had in fact not changed his views in the matter.107

Turkish genocide denial during the interwar period The Lausanne Treaty along with the Sovietization of Armenia, resulting in the de facto disappearance of an official representation on the international arena, meant the shelving of the Armenian question. As such, Turkey had little reason to pursue any active policy against the Armenian cause and the silent treatment was more than satisfactory. Notwithstanding, there were some isolated instances in which the resurrected body of the presumed dead and buried Armenian Genocide necessitated the active interference of the Turkish State. Turkey, in Roger Smith’s words, simply adhered to “silence when possible and diplomacy when necessary.”108 The first occasion occurred in 1934, when the American edition of the Austrian-Jewish author Franz Werfel’s novel Forty Days of Musa Dagh was published, selling 35,000 copies in two weeks (a record for that year’s publications). This triggered plans for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) of turning the bestseller into a movie. The screenwriting had started and William Powell had been cast in the lead role.109 These concrete steps were worrying enough for the Turkish Ambassador to the USA, Mahmet Munir Ertegun Bey, to attempt halting the project through the US State Department. He had “insisted that the production’s timing was inopportune and that its theme might mislead the American public through erroneous features regarding Turkey’s history.”110 While the Armenian community was exalted by the prospects of MGM producing such a movie depicting the Armenian fate in

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the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Embassy geared up its activities for the first of its many countermeasures abroad in this matter. Soon, the movie production had become a fully-fledged diplomatic issue engaging Turkish domestic newspapers, the Turkish government and its embassy in Washington, the US State Department, MGM, along with influential businessmen and other individuals on each side. After months of campaigning and despite numerous assurances by MGM that the movie would not offend the current Turkish Republic or its citizens,111 Ankara’s standpoint was abundantly clear: “The script was so antagonistic to Turkey that she will do everything in her power to stop the movie. Alterations and/or deletions could never be made satisfactory. It rekindles the Armenian Question. The Armenian Question is settled.”112 Evidently, Ankara considered the Armenian issue solved, dead and buried. This apparently applied to the memories of the event too. According to Turkey, MGM was “stirring up troubles about a situation that has been smoothed out and forgotten.”113 Despite the loss of already invested money in the project, as well as losing the potential income, MGM decided to terminate the movie plans due to mounting pressure from the State Department and the prospect of being boycotted entirely by Turkey and other Turkish “friendly” countries.114 This was the first of many successful Turkish intimidations abroad, stopping any potential information dissemination about the Armenian Genocide. Werfel’s book is worthy of attention due to yet another aspect, namely its linkage of the Armenian and Jewish genocides. In Yehuda Bauer’s words, Werfel’s novel “connected the Armenian Genocide with the Holocaust almost physically.”115 The connection was due to the fact that the Hebrew version of the book had an immense impact on the Jewish resistance under the Nazi rule and was read widely by the Jewish population in the Warsaw ghetto. The same is also evident in Yair Auron’s quotes from the memoirs of a Holocaust survivor saying that in 1941 “[t]he book passed from hand to hand.”116 The second related issue was Soviet territorial claims towards Turkey which has been described as partly responsible for driving Turkey towards a NATO membership. Even though this was not directly related to the genocide, it came to drive a firm wedge between Turkey and Armenia, putting them on either side of the Iron Curtain, precluding any prospect of Western recognition or pressure on Turkey during the Cold War. On March 19 1945, Moscow informed Ankara that the Soviet Union would not renew the 1925 Treaty of Neutrality and Nonaggression (about to expire in November 7 1945) unless Turkey returned the provinces of Kars and Ardahan along with permitting Soviet military bases in the Straits and the Aegean Sea.117 Stalin’s policy severely alienated Turkey and was later countered by the Truman Doctrine, extending US military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey as part of the combating of international communism.118 This development was highly unfortunate for the Armenian cause, which was now directly connected to Russian aspirations towards Turkey. The US State Department made it utterly clear that, despite the knowledge of the occurred Turkish “policy of

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extermination” towards the Armenians, it would oppose any land demands on Turkey on behalf of the Armenians.119 Britain arrived at the same conclusion. However, London was concerned about the memories of the genocide, noting that the “atrocious” massacres committed against the Armenians had “left such a lasting mark on the memory of the world” and if the Soviets used this in a propaganda campaign, it would “put Turkey in a very awkward position as Black Sheep No.1.”120 Nonetheless, Turkey was perceived as “essential to the preservation of order in the Middle East,”121 an incentive which would come to be invoked in numerous occasions during the coming decades, often accompanied by the US Administration’s manifested objection to Congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide.122 With the cementing of the Cold War, putting Armenia and Turkey on different sides of the Iron Curtain, the prospects of confronting Turkey about the Armenian cause vanished. In fact, this development introduced a virtual moat around Turkey, redirecting the demands for recognition to be aimed at her defenders, foremost towards the USA and other NATO countries. Thus, in the absence of official Yerevan’s authority on the international arena and the diaspora’s unofficial voice, the official Turkish narrative of the WWI events remained quite unchallenged. It is worth noting that the silencing of the Armenian Genocide due to the mentioned circumstances was not unique, but the prevailing Cold War policies had a similar profound impact on the politics of memory at large. This was, for example, evident in Soviet-influenced countries, where the imposed top-down narrative of the communist revolution and WWII quenched the bottom-up memories in the same manner as the Turkish measures did in regard to the image of the Turkish Republic.123 However, with the death of Stalin and the alteration of some of Moscow’s foreign policy, the attitude towards Turkey softened up. On May 30 1953, the Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov sent a note to Ankara, heralding a new reconciliatory policy, among other matters renouncing any territorial claims made earlier. The Russian courting started to give result in the early 1960s when Turkey, partly disillusioned with Washington due to US removal of the Jupiter missiles from Turkey (a consequence of the Cuba Crisis), responded positively to Moscow’s initiative.124 This rapprochement was quite apparent in the rhetoric and the discussions among the political and the intellectual elite of Soviet Armenia in connection with the 50th commemoration events of the genocide.

The reawakening: the 50th Commemoration Day on April 24 1965 April 24 1965, became not only a symbolic date but a highly catalytic event for the Armenian cause, giving momentum not only to the recognition process of the Armenian Genocide but also revival of the memories about territorial disputes within the union, which would eventually lead to the very first ethnic clashes in the Soviet Union during 1988. The 50th commemoration day displayed a vivid example of how the political negotiation between the official

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and public spheres takes place in the politics of memory, and how the past crystalizes in contemporary measures, while the known memory and history are reassessed. This necessitates a close examination of what proceeded that day in Yerevan, but more importantly how the events were perceived and assessed later. The genocide, even though not entirely forgotten, was not the issue at the focal point of the Armenian nation, either in Soviet Armenia or in the diaspora. Both were heavily preoccupied with gathering the pieces left from WWI and the genocide. In Soviet Armenia, other than being first and foremost busy with the “resurrection” of the country, the prevailing strict state control of the topics discussed in the political and the public arena effectively suppressed the issue of genocide. As we have seen, up till the late 1950s and early 1960s, the events were only briefly mentioned in the history books as massacres but without any further deliberation. In regard to the diaspora, it was the loss of Armenian independence which was mourned much louder than the genocide, putting Soviet Armenia, rather than Turkey, in the focus of the diaspora leadership.125 This schism between ARF (Dashnaks, the party of government during 1918–1920, forced into exile) and Soviet Armenia developed to such a degree, especially after the rise of the Iron Curtain during the 1950s, that it engulfed almost all aspects of the Armenian nation. The antagonism even spilled over to the religious sphere, splitting the Armenian Church into two camps: Etchmiadzin (Armenia), closely related to the Soviet structure, and Antelias (Lebanon, officially the Holy See of Cilicia) with strong affiliation with Dashnaktsutyun.126 The animosity went so far that the inconceivable happened: on December 24 1933, a group of assailants stabbed the Eastern Diocese Archbishop Levon Tourian to death with a kitchen knife over the choice of the Armenian flag.127 The background was an international exhibition in Chicago where the Dashnaks insisted on flying the Armenian tricolor (red, blue, orange, the flag of the 1918 republic which is adopted as Armenia’s official flag since the independence in 1991 as well), while the Archbishop intended to use the Soviet Armenian flag (with the orange stripe replaced by a red one). This incident resulted directly in a deep split within the Armenian Church in USA, which developed during the 1950s to a rift between Etchmiadzin and Antelias, representing the Soviet and anti-Soviet camps, thus putting Soviet Armenia in the focal point of the diaspora. The same seemed to be valid in regard to the academic realm as the genocide was hardly a topic of discussion in publications during the decades after 1920. Almost entirely skipping the immediate past, including the WWI period and the genocide (with some exceptions regarding memoirs from the republic era), the journal articles instead gazed at the ancient history, poetry and literature. This was tangible in e.g. the Armenian Review journal, published since 1948.128 The other major Armenian journal, Revue des Etudes Armeniennes (first published in 1920, with no publication during 1934–1963), had an almost exclusive focus on classical and medieval history and since 1964 on the early modern period (up to 1700).129 There was no comprehensive or

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dedicated literature in English about the genocide until the 1980s, which we will return to later in the study. However, it was not until the 1960s, and especially after the 50th commemoration, that the genocide emerged as the Armenian prime concern, bringing together the highly heterogeneous diaspora consisting of competing political parties, different regional identities (Soviet Armenia, the diaspora communities in Iran, the Arabic nations of Middle East, Europe and the USA), religions (Apostolic Orthodox, Catholic, Protestants), languages (Western and Eastern Armenian), molding them “into a relatively homogenous community with a collective consciousness as a diasporic nation.”130 The key element was the Armenian language, while the political focal point shifted to the “Armenian cause.” Confronting the past: the third generation By the early 1960s, the passage of time had provided the necessary distance to confront the trauma. Only then, by the decoupling of the trauma from “its psychological foundations, that the events of a traumatic past can become an issue on the public agenda.”131 The change does not happen only because of the temporal distance of those present during the past events, it is also due to the emergence of the new generations, widely known as the “third generation effect.”132 Unlike their grandparents who had experienced the trauma and the parents who grew up during the recuperation period of the grandparents, thus emotionally close to the experienced events, the grandchildren’s generation lacks such barriers, enabling them to ask questions. In addition, as the new generations relive the memories told by their parents and grandparents, the “[e]vents become reinterpreted in the light of a new context.”133 To reiterate Bhambra’s observation, “reinterpretations of history are not just different interpretations of the same facts; they also bring into being new facts,”134 constituting the essence of the perpetual process of the politics of memory. The generational effect is also evident in the fact that social memory changes with generational shifts (turnaround of about thirty years) when the new generation takes over public responsibility.135 However, while social memory is built on inter-generational communication, the political memory is transgenerational, involving for example libraries and monuments but also educational institutions.136 This is also why politicians and other similar public figures are designated as agents or bearers of memory. Confronted with the questions posed by the new generation, the victim is presented with the opportunity and a venue to share the burden and by doing so also some part of the victimhood as a therapeutic measure. Jay Winter exemplifies this in the diary writings of home-returned soldiers where [t]he writing of soldiers’ memoirs enabled some men to assert their authority over their own story, and thereby to get closer to saying “goodbye to all that.” … By speaking out, they lose some of the passivity

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of victimhood; by defining themselves, they set aside the story inflicted on them years ago.137 Winter asserts that “[m]emory performed is at the heart of the collective memory.” 138 It is here that the commemoration ceremonies play a major role. Expressing or interpreting a script about the past reinforces the group identity. Performing a commemoration, aside from mourning and remembering the past events could also become an occasion for demanding reparation.139 The commemorations can also canonize particular events, “in the sense of giving them a sacred or exemplary quality, making them ‘historic’ as well as historical.”140 This was exactly what happened at the 50th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide on April 24 1965. Commemoration also presents a means for the victim to treat the inflicted trauma, perhaps even transcending it.141 Naturally, disallowing the opportunity to express such sentiments aggravates the pain. The significance of such memories in relation to the issue of reconciliation is captured by Habermas, noting that [t]he less communality such a collective life-context allowed internally and the more it maintained itself by usurping and destroying the lives of others, the greater then is the ambivalence of the burden of reconciliation which is loaded onto subsequent generations’ allotted task of mourning.142 The duty to remember and demand recognition while faced with the reality to be able to reconcile were inherited almost intact from generation to generation. Thus, up till 1965, the genocide, while not forgotten, was remembered internally and in relative silence, both in Soviet Armenia and in the diaspora. There were no open commemorations in the diaspora and the mentioning of the genocide, if any, happened within the walls of the Sunday schools or similar gatherings. Archbishop Aris Shirvanian recalls that, as the newly appointed parish priest of Sourp Hakob (St. James) Church in Los Angeles in 1966, he found out that the commemoration of the victims of the genocide was organized as dinner receptions.143 Shirvanian put an end to the dinner receptions, replacing them with commemoration ceremonies, including a sermon at the newly erected Montebello genocide monument. In Soviet Armenia, save for a minority of the population, mainly consisting of the Western Armenian survivors, the genocide seems to have generally been a distant peripheral topic. Instead other information relevant to the Bolshevik ideology, such as “internationalism” and “friendship of the peoples,” was heralded which in practice prohibited Armenians to mark April 24, especially if this would imply any accusations towards Turkey and potentially the Soviet neighbor, Azerbaijan.144 The delicate state of the issue was exposed by the fact that once the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia (CCCPA) applied to Moscow for permission for the 50th commemoration, the very Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) established a special commission consisting of Mikhail

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Suslov (Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and unofficial Chief Ideologue of the Party), Nikolai Podgorny (future Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet) and Andrei Gromyko (Minister of Foreign Affairs) to examine the request. The response, although a positive one, was seemingly made after difficult deliberations.145 Strategy or sincere confrontation: planning the 50th commemoration Apparently, already in connection to April 24 1961, Hakob (Yakov) Zarobyan, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia during 1960–1966, scrutinized the diaspora plans for the 50th commemoration activities and had started in secrecy, keeping other Soviet Armenia leaders unaware, to prepare a Soviet commemoration as well.146 Zarobyan had already received some indications from Soviet leadership, and had confirmed the positive response in a conversation (with a Lebanese Armenian) during 1962 about Moscow’s consent, given that the program activities should not damage the USSR foreign policy.147 According to Avag Harutyunyan, Zarobyan (born 1908 in Western Armenian Artvin, then part of the Russian Empire, but later lost to Turkey) had a sincere desire to unite the diaspora with Soviet Armenia as a measure for preservation of the Armenian nation.148 Nonetheless, aside the apparent genuine will for marking the date (especially due to the post-Stalinist thaw in regard to nationality and ethnic issues etc.), the commemoration could equally be viewed as a necessary measure for avoiding assaults from anti-Soviet camps, primarily by Dashnaktsutyun. The unfolding events, especially the protocols of the postcommemoration analysis, substantiate such an incentive. By taking the helm of the commemoration events, Yerevan would simply deprive Dashnaktsutyun the opportunity of leading the events in their desired direction and taking advantage of the exposure. This conclusion can be drawn from the set of documents published by Harutyunyan in 2005 entitled The 50th Anniversary of Armenian Genocide and Soviet Armenia (Document and Material).149 These include classified correspondence and protocols belonging to the Soviet Armenian leadership, as well as the open letters and the protocols from the intelligentsia and the Armenian Apostolic Church. Yerevan’s desire to commemorate the genocide should also be seen in a wider context, namely the prevailing politics of memory during the mid-1960s in the Soviet Union, championing such notions as heroism and patriotism. Although this policy mainly concerned WWII,150 one could suggest that the same policy did encourage the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, although it was mostly intended as a preface to the rebirth of the Armenian nation in the form of the existing Soviet Republic. The records show that Yerevan had officially applied on July 16 1964, to Moscow for the 50th commemoration, presenting an eleven-point list, including the building of a monument to the memory of the victims.151 On December 13 1964, Zarobyan dispatched yet another letter, ensuring that the envisioned commemoration activities would not affect the rapprochement of Soviet Union with neighboring countries, especially Turkey.152 Later, on

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February 15 1965, the CCCPA proposed building a monument in memory of the genocide victims.153 The Council of the Ministers of Soviet Armenia announced its sanctioning decision in this regard on March 1 1965.154 On July 1 1964, in a letter signed by Pavlev Aghayan (Director of the Marxism-Leninism Institute, Armenian Branch), Hovhannes Inchikyan (Director of Eastern Studies of Academy of Sciences, Soviet Armenia) and John Kirakosyan (Deputy of the Division of Propaganda, CCCPA), an application entitled “In Connection to the Events for the 50th Commemoration of the Mass Annihilation of the Armenians in Western Armenia” was handed to the Presidium of CCCPA.155 The title alone is interesting, since, despite the given assurances and the precautious formulations in order to not offend the neighbors and their relations with the Soviet Union (especially Turkey), the wording could already at that stage be interpreted as a hint to future territorial claims. The letter described the background and the prelude to the genocide, the Pan-Turkic plan, beginning with the Abdul Hamid massacres and how the Armenian question was about to be solved by the total annihilation of the Armenian nation and how the “horrors are still alive in the memory of the people.”156 The letter noted that, in solving the national problems in modern days, [i]t is not accidental that by implementing the policy of annihilation of Jews, Slavs and other Eastern European people, Hitler, in August 1939 said that the history will not condemn them for it, since “no one in our time remembers the Armenian massacres in Turkey.” The message (reappearing in almost all future statements in this regard) made sure to emphasis the extraordinary link of friendship between Armenians and Russians. Thus, the letter made clear that the only true friend in time of need who came to rescue was Soviet Russia, although no mention was made of the subsequent territorial division made by Stalin, an issue which would, nonetheless, emerge later as a consequence of the unfolding events. The letter also pointed out the aspirations of diaspora Armenians to return home and how such a commemoration event would be appreciated, especially since diaspora Armenians commemorated it annually. It mentioned how the number of articles about the 50th commemoration in diaspora newspapers increased day by day. In other words, this was a perfect measure of the politics of memory to promote and elevate Soviet Armenia as the true leader of the Armenian nation. That the absence of the commemoration would have political implications became apparent in the letter also. Noting that the “anti-revolutionary and nationalist Dashnaktsutyun” was using these activities to agitate anti-Soviet feelings, they were pointing specially to the fact that hundreds of thousands of Western Armenians living in Soviet Armenia are not allowed to commemorate the events. The letter also made clear that ignoring the 50th commemoration would not only be politically unfavorable, but the silence would also be equal to sanctioning the genocide. It would be logical to

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assume that the references to the diaspora, and especially to Dashnaktsutyun, should also be viewed within the political game and the bargaining between Yerevan and Moscow. The relations between Dashnaktsutyun and Soviet Armenia were still relatively restrained, but there were indications that they were on the path of rapprochement. According to former ARF chairman, Hrair Marukhaian, the party and the Soviet Armenian leadership had since 1963 “met about once a year (or less) to discuss national issues such as the Armenian Cause, the rights of Soviet Armenian citizens, homeland-diaspora relations, attitudes towards Turkey, the reduction of media criticism of one another etc.”157 In conclusion, the letter enumerated the aforementioned eleven activities, such as holding conferences and academic seminars, gathering and publishing articles, academic as well as in media, holding exhibitions and finally erecting a monument dedicated to the victims of WWI which would symbolize the rejuvenation of the Armenian nation. Regardless of whether Zarobyan’s and his fellow Armenian leaders’ plans and announcements for the commemoration were sincere or merely a political appeasement to the public demands (most likely a mix of both), the fact remains that not much was done until quite late prior to April 24 1965. Only six months previously, on December 13 1964, Zarobyan had conveyed the information and argumentation of the aforementioned letter to the Central Committee of CPSU.158 In addition to pointing out the “mass annihilation” in “Western Armenia” as a lesson learned by Hitler, Zarobyan pointed out that the commemoration would be celebrating “the complete victory of the Leninist policy of nationalities and the economically, culturally, scientifically rejuvenated Armenian nation.” Zarobyan was specific in mentioning that the commemoration should be conducted in such a manner that it would not offend any neighboring country, especially “the improving relations between Turkey and Soviet Union,” as well as making sure that no such atrocity would ever be repeated in the history of humanity. The absence of any public commemoration or gathering was the main indicator of this containment policy, which would turn out to be a major miscalculation. In addition to the domestic measures for the commemoration, the CCCPA also took measures in regard to its external relations, in order to strengthen the ties with the diaspora. It was decided (January 26 1965) that the newspaper “The Voice of Fatherland” (Hayreniki dzayn) was to be published to “promote Communism and other Soviet ideologies to the workers of the Armenian diaspora.”159 In his letter to the Central Committee of CPSU, Zarobyan again stated that the purpose was to combat the reactionary and anti-revolutionary policies of Dashnaktsutyun through their publications in “Beirut, Cairo, Tehran, Athens and New York.” 160 “The Voice of the Fatherland” would combat their bourgeois propaganda. It was not until March 9 1965, that CCCPA decided on the ideology propaganda activities, including a fifteen point program list of genocide commemoration events, lectures, seminars, discussion forums, meetings with the youth and university students, publication and airing of educational information

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regarding the genocide, preparation of articles for the diaspora newspapers, plantation of trees, building of a monument etc.161 It was also made clear that the focus of the commemoration was not about mourning or any demands toward Turkey, but rather about the Bolshevik Russia’s role as the savior of the Armenian nation from a definitive annihilation, along with its rejuvenation and prosperous achievements as a tribute to Communism and Internationalism. However, while most of these items were planned to be launched from March until around April 15–20, save for a closed commemorative session for top leadership and intelligentsia on April 24, there were still no plans for public events on that significant day itself. The mentioned main event of April 24 was a closed commemorative session inside the Opera House, to which only the political, intellectual and religious elite had been invited to by especially printed invitation passes. The fact that no public event had been planned or announced for that day was by no means an issue of negligence on behalf of the authorities but a deliberate one; this would be revealed in the aftermath discussions. Only then did the officials admit that the public commemoration would have taken place, with or without the consent and the participation of the authorities. Nonetheless, the unfolding events simply implied that not only did the authorities not wish for people going out into the streets, they also did everything to prevent them from doing so.162 The apparent reason for this was the expressed fear of unforeseen events and actions which would in turn entail responsibility and accountability for the Yerevan administration among higher central Soviet instances.163 However, it would seem that commemorations and demonstrations of this kind share a general rule, namely the inability of the authorities to prohibit them, as well as their transformation from memory into politics: “[w]hen the students usurp the ritual, they can turn it into political theater.”164 Once the Armenian officials had realized the inevitability of the public reaction, they tried to at least tame it. By taking the helm of the commemoration events, official Yerevan wanted to satisfy the anticipated need for the occasion, but do it in a controlled environment. This would turn out to be a grave miscalculation on behalf of the leaders, underestimating the significance of the memory of the genocide, but also the expectations which the authorities themselves had been building up among the population ever since the news about the commemoration was made public. In (future Minister of Culture) Kamo Udumyan’s words “We raised a patriotic wave, but then desired to put it in a narrow frame.”165 Nonetheless, the authorities were not entirely unprepared. The Yerevan municipality held a meeting on April 23, speculating about possible scenarios of disorderly behavior, but it was simply too late and too little.166 As the unfolding events were to prove, April 24 would indeed become one of the earliest eruption of nationalistic and (perhaps more significant) non-Soviet sentiments since the creation of the Union, an unprecedented event which could partially explain the unreadiness of the authorities.

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April 24 1965: memories unleashed Early in the morning of April 24, students and young people started arriving in Lenin Square (current Republic Square) at the center of Yerevan. The fact that there was no coordinated planning for a popular action was observed by several representatives of the intelligentsia as well as the authorities who were present in the square, witnessing that the students and young people came in scattered groups and alone.167 The public was, of course, aware of the sanctioned commemoration events and the fact that “higher political considerations” would have limited the events.168 Police and security forces were present but never interfered. The number of demonstrators increased steadily during the day as if they were waiting for the workers to join them after finishing work. Following the development, the authorities sent some party members to the square as a precautionary measure. Only later in the afternoon, when the crowd had reached several thousands, did leaders such as Anton Kochinyan (Chairman of the Council of Ministers), Victor Hambardzumyan (President of the Armenian Academy of Sciences) and Edward Topchyan (Secretary of the Writers’ Union of Armenia) and others venture up to the podium to address the crowd in order to calm them down and take the lead. While the officials were up on the podium, one of the demonstrators approached them, handing over a document to Kochinyan, seemingly containing a list of requests or expressions of mind. The document does not appear to have been read out loud at the site, but the content was disclosed at the evaluation meeting of the Communist Party a couple of days later when Zarobyan mentioned that the document called for Returning Karabakh, Nakhichevan and other historically Armenian populated territories within the Soviet Union to Soviet Armenia; settling repatriated Armenians in Nakhichevan, since the density of the population in Soviet Armenia has reached critical level; freeing the seven patriots (regards the 1964 group who are supposedly jailed wrongly); hastening the repatriating Armenians from abroad.169 Thus, the genocide commemoration, in addition to the unsolved question of Western Armenia, also awakened the issue of Stalin’s geographical fragmentation, separating Karabakh and Nakhichevan from Armenia. The “other historically Armenian populated territories” was probably a reference to the bordering Samtskhe-Javakheti region in south-eastern Georgia, ethnically composed of an Armenian majority, a very similar case to that of Karabakh. In an apparent example of how the bottom-up perspective within the politics of memory conjures up a reaction from the leadership, the public demand would soon also move into the official realm with a request from Yerevan to Moscow. The initial reassurances for the commemoration to avoid accusations toward Armenia’s neighbors, outside and inside the Soviet Union, seemed increasingly bleak.

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Shortly after the speeches, without any apparent effect from the crowd, the officials left the square. At this stage, the crowd had increased considerably and was estimated to be around 30–40,000 people whereby they started to march throughout the streets of Yerevan, reportedly in orderly fashion. In front of them they carried a number of placards bearing the texts “2000000,” “Just Solution to the Armenian Question” with Mount Ararat depicted below it, “Free the Seven Patriots,” while the largest in the forefront read “Noble Armenians, Join Us.” The crowd continued to the Polytechnic Institute where they, addressing the students inside, started chanting, “Join us!” However, the students had been rounded up in the auditoriums and were not allowed to exit. Despite of the fear that the crowd could easily storm the building to “free” the locked-up students, nothing extraordinary happened. The students in the dormitories had been subjected to same confinement, but there the students had forced themselves through, breaking down the doors. Chanting “Shame on you, shame on you,” the demonstrators left the Polytechnic Institute moving towards the Pantheon where prominent Armenian cultural figures such as Komitas are buried.170 Here, writers, scientists and some of the young demonstrators delivered speeches in front of Komiats’ tombstone. There were also telegrams, directed to Leonid Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin (Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Soviet Union), and Anastas Mikoyan (Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union), regarding the reunification of Karabakh and Nakhichevan with Armenia.171 The main chant was “Our lands, our lands” and even though some tried to downplay the demands by pointing out that it was not aimed towards anyone in particular but towards injustice and inhumanity at large (especially since Turkey had no diplomatic representation in Yerevan), it was still obvious whom they meant and what it implied. Nonetheless, if there were any doubts about the message, the banderole reading “Return Our Six Vilayets” was more than obvious in this regard. Once the masses left the Pantheon and reached the Opera House, where the leaders were having their commemoration program, the number of demonstrators had reached close to 100,000.172 Inside the Opera House, surrounded by numerous police officers and security personnel, the top elite of Soviet Armenia was marking the 50th commemoration, broadcasted by TV and radio. Nagush Harutyunyan, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Soviet Armenia, inaugurated the event by a speech mentioning that the “Armenian people has today for the first time commemorated the Metz Yeghern with dignity,” condemning the perpetrators of the “genocide.”173 Otherwise, the delivered speeches were all in line with the nature of the official commemoration, focusing almost entirely on the resurrection of the nation and the achieved successes. One of the invited attendees, the writer Mkrtich Armen, noted that there were no signs or mentioning of “1915” or “50,” while “applauds were relieved by yet more applauds as if it was a festivity.”174 However, in the middle of Victor Hambardzumyan’s speech, the shouting and chanting of the demonstrators started to be heard ever more loudly inside the Opera chamber and the tone was getting more agitated and angry.

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Soon after, the program was concluded and while the leaders left the scene, the audience was directed to the lobby where cautionary words were circulating about avoiding the windows. The demonstrators were throwing stones at the building. While the subsequent official story would insist on the assault being an act of “hooligans,” some officials went even further, ascribing it to “thieves, alcoholics and morphine addicts,” who had taken the opportunity to spread disorder.175 It seemed that the explanation for the extraordinary behavior stemmed simply from the fact that it was unbecoming for a Soviet citizen and therefore could only be an act of criminals. But others were more open, attributing the action to the aggregated frustration among the crowd and the failure of the leadership to anticipate the now obvious scenario. According to witness accounts, the stone-throwing only broke out when a group of five students was allowed to enter the Opera building; they apparently wished to meet the leaders in order to find out about the response to the document which they had earlier handed over to Kochinyan in the Lenin Square. However, upon entrance, instead of leading them to the main hall where they could engage in discussion with the leadership, the security forces had started beating them and putting them into emergency vehicles to remove them from the scene.176 This, according to Garegin Sevunts (writer), was nothing short of the “methods and the traditions of [19]37,”177 an obvious allusion to the most intensive period of Stalin’s Great Purge. Once the news reached the crowd, the stone-throwing at the windows started. The security forces replied with water cannons. The highly undesirable scenario had come true: the demonstrators smashed almost all windows and then tried to storm the building. Around 100–200 young people managed to get in and go to the main hall. Upon their entrance into the hall, the orators and the officials left the presidency table and the Opera building entirely and the scene curtain was shut. At that moment, the Armenian Catholicos, Vazgen I, stepped forth, talking to the young people for almost an hour, trying to convince them that their concerns were shared by the leadership. However, international considerations and other similar factors, the Catholicos explained, complicated the issue. “We have waited for fifty years” remarked Vazgen I. “Are we not capable of waiting a bit more if that is required?”178 The witness accounts mostly stop here, indicating that nothing extraordinary took place after that and the crowd eventually dispersed of its own accord. While the authorities were relatively and surprisingly selfrestrained on April 24, the following day, April 25, was marked with more authoritarian interference when Lenin Square was surrounded by police and security forces in order to prevent the youth from staging yet another gathering. Even though the number of demonstrators on April 25 was much smaller than the prior day, there were still numerous people present in the square, when suddenly the police started violently beating and arresting young people.179 In a true manner of the politics of memory, the negotiation between the public and official actors had initiated several action points to cope with the memory of the “forgotten genocide.” April 24 1965 not only had symbolic

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values in reviving the memory of the genocide but quite tangible political ones as well. The public had not only disregarded, but outright defied, the directions of the Armenian Communist Party, an obvious reason for Moscow to chastise official Yerevan. Zarobyan was dismissed by Moscow in February 1966 and replaced with Kochinyan as the head of the Armenian Communist Party. The events of April 24 surely shook Soviet Armenia as well as the Soviet Union leadership who witnessed the first major nationalistic dissident event inside its borders. It acted as a wake-up call for the Armenian authorities about the need of both addressing the issue and reforming the methods for coping with national sentiments and the aroused memories from the genocide and its legacy.180 The events had also given opportunity for a political and intellectual self-criticism for explaining why such an event had taken place. But perhaps more significantly, it had presented an opportunity to openly criticize the silence of the world community in general and the central Soviet leadership in particular; even though this was still mainly undertaken in a carefully weighted and diplomatic tone. Nonetheless, the memories of 1915 had now transformed into palpable policy adaptations, which would also result in practical implementations. Self-reflection, criticism, excuses and self-exoneration The Writers’ Union of Armenia held an open meeting session on April 27, entirely dedicated to the 50th commemoration and its subsequent issues.181 About 75 members were present and the meeting proceedings and the discussions were recorded in a lengthy transcript. The main contemplated issues were actually whether it was a correct decision to hold the 50th commemoration and, of course, who were responsible for the demonstration and the reasons behind it. No one spoke against the commemoration, but rather how its absence would have been harmful. It was clear that the commemoration, apart from being significant for Soviet Armenia, was also vital for the relations with the diaspora. Topchyan asserted that the genocide “is not an abstract question, but related to the fate of almost one and half million Armenians who were wandering abroad. And we would not be a good Communist if we wouldn’t display care for our own people.”182 Reflecting on the reported international remarks on the commemoration day, Silva Kaputikyan (poet) wondered how it would have looked if Soviet Armenia was silent while the Pope and politicians in Lebanon, Uruguay and some US states commemorated that date.183 The issue of justice presented itself as she continued by asking how come they were constantly reminded of the insufficient condemnation of the Nazis at Nuremberg or that of other abuses against human rights while the Armenian rights were forced into oblivion? How come the predecessors of the “Hitlerian genocide” were not prosecuted? Why did not the Soviet government and the international community join in a common voice, condemning the perpetrators of the annihilation of half a nation?184 Saghatel Harutyunyan (poet) concurred in this

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regard, stating that “orders are issued that we do not forgive the crimes of fascism and shall not forget. But what were then the deeds of the Turks? Was it not a fascist crime? It was genocide and we must forgive.”185 The feeling of having been betrayed by the international community in the aftermath of the WWI was only amplified by the double standards in the light of the Nazi crimes and the manifest condemnation of these by international and Soviet leadership. Statements like that of Harutyunyan’s also confirmed what we have already seen in the theoretical review, namely that “[o]ne cannot forgive under compulsion, nor can others forgive on behalf of a victim.”186 Yet, the past crimes against the Armenians had been pardoned by the general amnesty in the Lausanne Treaty as well as in the Kars Treaty. The Armenians were told to forgive and forget, in spite of the fact that no perpetrator had been punished or had even confessed or repented. Once again, the naivety in the notion of “lets forgive and forget” is called to mind “because society is unwilling to forgive and forget, refusing to move on without confronting the repression of its precursor generation.”187 The genocide denial had even aggravated this notion, since the perpetrator was not asking for forgiveness but insisting that there was nothing to forgive. The consensus in Yerevan was that there were no alternatives to holding the commemoration. Anything else would have been denying the past, one’s own identity. Vazgen Mnatskanyan (writer), criticizing the attempts of smothering public commemoration stated that “a people who has been born to stay alive in the world, cannot view its history with askew eyes, including its sad pages.”188 The genocide survivor Soghomon Tarontsi (poet) exclaimed that not marking the commemoration date would have meant “physically losing the Diaspora, which had left its fatherland because of that calamity and we would lose the confidence of diaspora Armenians since we would have denied that page of our history.”189 Baghish Hovsepyan (writer), also an eyewitness to the genocide, recollected seeing how people were buried in front of his eyes, images which were constantly haunting him. He and others like him had kept silent, but not any longer. It was their duty towards the two million compatriots who were left without land or home.190 The commemoration had thereby also awakened the sense of guilt and responsibility of the survivors towards their lost ones. This is quite natural since, in committed crimes, not only is it the physical and material damage to the victim, but also the mental suffering that matters, most notably the sense of selfrespect.191 The call to forget only inflicts more harm to this damage; it becomes equal to making the victim accept that no wrong has been done. The forgetting not only increases the demoralization of the victim and results in further loss of self-esteem, but it could also make the perpetrator “grow in confidence that such injuries can be inflicted without resistance even in the future. Therefore, rather than prevent wrong acts, forgetting ends up facilitating them.”192 References to Hitler’s quote was a suitable example of this assumption. Thus, proper remembrance becomes a significant and critical measure for not only healing the wronged victim as well as the wounded

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society in general, but also preventing a normalization of similar atrocities by raising the standard of society’s acceptance and tolerance. The latter is highly valid in view of the Turkish Republic’s turbulent domestic history, both in regard to the treatment of the Kurdish minority in particular, and human rights in general. While official Yerevan was insisting that the occurred demonstration was the spontaneous act of a limited group, others, among them Kaputikyan, claimed that it had received much wider support.193 Kaputikyan, a dedicated socialist, seemed to wish to ascribe this to the virtue of grand socialism and internationalism, stating that the eruption was the act of an entire nation, once a victim, to mark its victory against the planned annihilation. In a poetic manner, she exhorted that it was certainly not only the young students, but workers, academicians, housewives and the grandfather with his grandchild on his shoulder who rose to tell each other, to all, to the world, that in spite of the genocide perpetrators and their silent supporters, in spite of all and everything, we are alive, we were born and we are, we are walking in the streets of our newly created capital and we shall walk, bold, proud, victorious.194 It is noteworthy that all statements were supplemented by the clarification that this was not an outlet for nationalistic (evidently still a highly sensitive term) sentiments, but “sound, noble universal values” as a token of Armenian people’s dedication to friendship and peace and internationalism. Nonetheless, the message was clearly a political one and as Joseph W. Esherick and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom have pointed out, regardless of how popular similar commemorations are, the intended audience is still de facto the authorities.195 The more support such a commemoration or demonstration gathers, the greater leverage it has on the authorities in the ongoing negotiations of politics and memory for achieving the intended aims. The demonstration was also partly blamed on the poor planning of the Armenian political leadership and its inability to lead such a significant event. This was evident in the uncertainty of the being or not being of the commemoration during a period of almost two years, causing frustration and agitation among the people, giving reason for speculations in this regard. The firm official decision did not arrive until one and a half months prior to April 24.196 Still, the announcement had made people expect that from then on various planned activities would take place, culminating in a commemoration on April 24. However, the opposite took place when the announced coverage on TV, radio and newspapers did not materialize. Neither did the numerous conferences, exhibitions or cultural evenings which had been announced. This led to an increasing discontent among the people. To make it worse, those few events which did take place were open almost exclusively to the closed circles of the political and intelligentsia leadership and restrictive in tenor, not addressing the core nature of the matter. Apart from the poor planning, Sevak Arzumanyan

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also stressed that the reaction was due to the fact that the knowledge about the genocide had not come gradually and in steps, but as if “a veil had been suddenly removed from the history, revealing its horrific image.”197 Soon enough the issue of the suppressed, rather than the “forgotten,” genocide was brought up. Arzumanyan continued his speech with the rhetorical question of “how come that first after fifty years were we able to morn our losses?”198 Answering himself, he stated that it was “natural that this was impossible during the political circumstances of Stalin and Beria. However, we could have marked the 40th or the 45th commemoration. We did not.”199 The soul-searching concerned why the diaspora was able to hold such commemorations while they could not in Soviet Armenia. Arzumanyan exclaimed further, stressing his discontent with the central Soviet media agencies, that they had defended the cases of Algerian Jamila, Greek Manolis Glezos and the people of Congo, while the Izvestia could not afford to dedicate one single article to April 24 depicting the tragedy that had befallen the Armenian people.200 He then turned to how Pravda had managed to marginalize and “dissolve” the Armenian Genocide within the wide grasp of the international concept of genocide, only dedicating two paragraphs to the Armenian case. As if this was not bad enough, the wording of the article was also perceived as if Pravda “seemed to apologize a thousand times to the Turks for that single line.”201 He concluded his speech by saying that “However, let us not forget the big compensation of history that shall yet come, which we shall wait for.”202 The Armenian case was far from closed but quite wide open in the mind of both leadership and intelligentsia. They had only been forced to keep their peace and not express their mind loudly. This also emphasized the necessity of the international acknowledgement. As Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy and law, has once remarked, there is a difference between “knowledge and acknowledgement. It is what happens and can only happen to knowledge when it becomes officially sanctioned, when it is made part of the public cognitive scene.”203 This is why the disparity between knowledge and acknowledgement has become a hallmark of the Armenian case, mostly through the refusal to use the proper definition of the events, i.e. genocide. A striking example for this was how Senator Barack Obama, on April 12 2007, during a meeting stated that “there was a genocide that did take place against the Armenian people; it is one of the situations where we have seen a constant denial on part of the Turkish government.”204 However, during his speech in the Turkish Parliament, on April 6 2009, now as the President of USA, he talked about “the terrible events of 1915,” avoiding the g-word.205 Once confronted in regard to the wording, Obama replied, “Well, my views are on the record and I have not changed views.”206 Nonetheless, his failure to openly acknowledge his evident knowledge about the nature of the events caused much disappointment among the Armenian community, even though they must have been accustomed to this traditional refraining of the usage of the “g-word” by US Presidents. The events on April 24 1965 seemed to have synthesized into the empowerment of official Yerevan to openly defy the

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imposed silence, acknowledging the common knowledge about the genocide and its aftermath. The development of the aforementioned synthesis shone through the criticism towards the political leadership. Turning to the sensitive nature of the topic concerning the genocide, especially in regard to the foreign relations with Turkey, Saghatel Harutyunyan criticized the Armenian leadership for being too submissive towards Moscow. He was highly critical of how Badal Muradyan, First Secretary of the Yerevan’s Municipality Committee went to the printing house, deleting the word “yeghern,” the word “Turk.” What has happened? Is that journalism or literature? I have fought fascism and when writing, I write against “Germans.” But, [he wondered] why is it not allowed to use the word “Turks?”207 This censorship was also confirmed later by Vardges Hamazaspyan’s address to the CCCPA Plenum’s meeting on April 29, stating that newspaper and journal editors were complaining that “already agreed and provided subjects are being withdrawn, not allowed to be published.”208 More significantly, if the news reached anti-Soviet instances (and Dashnaktsutyun explicitly), it would give their media opportunity to use this as propaganda against Soviet Armenia for silencing the genocide. The Turkish perspective was also put in relation to the dignity of one’s own nation and self-image. Mkrtich Armen, in a written statement, remarked that “I am aware that, bearing in mind some international considerations, it was not possible to offend the Turks. But does it imply offending one’s own people’s feeling, hurting its foremost sentiments?”209 However, the overwhelmingly cautious rhetoric had its flaws as several statements did no longer only speak in past sense, but present. Remarking the “impudent Turkish leaders” for having inaugurated a statue of the “executioner of the Armenian people,” Talaat Pasha, Armen asked whether they were not already overdue with inaugurating a statue of Soghomon Tehlirian. He concluded his letter by hoping that the Armenian youth, who were not even alive fifty years ago, had taken on “the dream of one and half million victim’s last wish and the responsibility of its fulfillment, making Soviet Armenia a more pleasant place, witnessing the complete liberation of its millennia old fatherland and repaying its historical debt.”210 Statements like this highlighted the invested responsibility upon the new generations and the nature of the recognition process: despite the political carefulness, the recognition was not only about memory and identity, but also about justice and reparation. These demands had not subsided or disappeared but were being passed down from one generation to the another, becoming a significant part of their identity and the collective narrative. This active transmission of the past onto the future generations thereby functions as an active identity-builder, thus broadening the definition of “we.”211 However, as Habermas points out, a drawn-out process with each side having its own exclusive view on the subject, especially when in

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an outspoken accusing tone, has its downsides and will result in a greater “ambivalence of the burden of reconciliation which is loaded onto subsequent generations’ allotted task of mourning.”212 A convergence in the politics of memory needs a common narrative shared by both victim and perpetrator. The Turkish aspect was brought up during the two day-long session of the Plenum of the CCCPA (April 29–30), discussing the past events and considering the report prepared by the CCCPA (April 28). Vladimir Darbinyan noted that “If Turkey’s present government is shamefully declaring heroes out of [Ottoman War Minister] Enver, Talaat and other genocidal beasts, why then can one not also say that history will neither forget the German fascism nor its prominent preceding Turkish sword massacres?”213 Turning to the international coverage, K. Udumyan, mentioned that he had received a copy of the French l’Humanité in which not only the Armenian massacres were described but also those who should be held accountable for them.214 If that paper was able to describe the events as such, noted Udumyan, then the Armenian authorities could also commemorate the genocide under anti-imperialistic slogans. Udumyan added that the “Foreign Ministry of the Soviet Union seems to be so afraid of Turkey, extremely cautious of not saying anything more than necessary in Turkey’s address.”215 Nonetheless, he too noted that the genocide accusations were directed at the past Young Turk government and that the present government did not bear responsibility for it.216 Commenting on the same topic, Sevunts pointed out that the issue of reclaiming Armenian lands was not for Zarobyan or Kochinyan to decide, simply due to the fact that this was not the right time for it. The circumstance that the Cold War had effectively buried the Armenian Genocide and the possibility for seeking reparation became apparent in Sevunts’ remark: “how could we raise such an issue against the capitalism, when there are atomic bombs, when it could lead to war.”217 Notwithstanding this, the common argumentation in these reservations was about the prevailing political circumstances, both in regard to the Yerevan-Moscow relations and the displacement of foreign political power (de facto in Moscow and not in Yerevan), and the international contingencies of the Cold War. The statements seemed to give the implicit presupposition that such demands would indeed be possible once the mentioned factors were favorable for such a process. Moreover, it was during these sessions that Zarobyan exemplified one of the aspects of the Armenian Genocide, which is used widely in present time, namely the issue of divide and conquer between the diaspora and Armenia. This became evident in an example Zarobyan mentioned in regard to the ongoing preparations for the 50th commemoration, paraphrasing a statement by the Turkish Foreign Ministry saying that “Armenians in Syria and Lebanon are staging actions against Turkey, but we do not pay attention to them, since the Armenians in the world are represented only by Soviet Armenia.”218 However, as already noted, while true in theory, the Turkish statement was rather academic, since Moscow’s authority effectively superseded Yerevan’s representation in foreign relations. This was also noted by Hambardzumyan, admitting that the CCCPA usually dealt with minor issues, while the major questions, e.g. some of

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those posed by the April 24 demonstrators, had always been handled centrally by Moscow.219 Yerevan simply had little to say in the matter. In his opening statement, Zarobyan pointed out that the diaspora annually commemorated the genocide and that the repatriated Armenians had some influence in this regard on the intelligentsia and the youth of Soviet Armenia.220 He noted that by the approaching of the 50th commemoration, the nationalistic sentiments of some part of the intelligentsia and the students started to get increasingly agitated. “Taking into account the political considerations, CCCPA decided to commemorate that date, in order to lead the feelings and the sentiments into a correct direction,” obviously referring to disallowing Dashnaktsutyun from assuming this role. Zarobyan also noted that the leadership was more or less forced to go to Lenin Square to confront the demonstrators and talk to them in order to confine the situation. Nonetheless, it was apparently of paramount significance for him to stress that the events of April 24–26 had their course without any inter-ethnic incidents. This was especially true about the Azerbaijani people who were referred to as “our brothers.”221 The Azeri reference was apparently necessary due to the rumors circulated by “provokers” prior to April 24. The memories had also brought up the issue of old ethnic antagonism. It was revealed in a testimony given by Soghomon Tarontsi on April 27, during the Writer’s Union, that similar rumors had been circulating among the public. He mentioned an ethnic Azerbaijani who asserted that “they will kill him on April 23,” although upon asking who had posed the threat he could not answer, thus giving Tarontsi reason to call him a liar and provoker.222 “A Kurdish writer,” continued Tarontsi, “who is known to all of us, came to me saying ‘comrade Tarontsi, we are afraid and would like to move with the entire family into your residence.’” Tarontsi had assured him that it was nothing but a lie and empty threats about nationalists calling for vengeance. However, the authorities seemed to have had contributed to this fear, since they had e.g. on April 24 posted security personnel in front of the Azerbaijani school.223 The “friendship of peoples” had its pitfalls and old memories from WWI as well as those emanating from the state-building years of 1918–1920 were still making their presence felt. As Rajeev Bhargava points out “emotional reactions ingrained in the human mind remain insensitive to altered circumstances and are bequeathed from generation to generation. Like property, animosities are inherited too.”224 An official narrative fitting for Moscow The Presidium of CCCPA held its evaluation meeting on April 28. The report proposed keeping an affirmative stance on the commemoration activities while taking measures to improve the opinions and the political education of the youth and other similar activities to strengthen their knowledge base.225 The resulting statement included the decision to hold the commemoration (which did not quite reflect the reality), taking note of a number of activities, including

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some “unhealthy events,” which in turn were blamed on “the immature nationalistic sentiments of the youth.” Apparently, there was a need to save face in front of Moscow by claiming that all had run according to the authorities’ knowledge and consent. The political leadership was firmly inclined to limit the dissident event to the “misguided” youth. However, evidently even this was not quite enough. The very mentioning of the word “nationalism” became one of the main issues discussed during the three-session long Plenum meeting of CCCPA held during April 29–30. Gevork Gharibjanyan, First Secretary of CCCPA in Leninakan (present-day Gyumri), cautioned that the Plenum should not use the term lightly and that the outcome of the occurred events was due to the lack of planning, thus allowing such errors to take place and these should not be ascribed to “nationalism.”226 Several others concurred in this view, suggesting that the mentioning of “nationalist tendencies” should be omitted from the report, which otherwise could have consequences once the report reached higher instances.227 The inclusion of nationalism would, according to G. Ter-Grigoryan, “leave a black stain on the Communist Party of Armenia.”228 The word was omitted from the final version sent to Moscow. Apart from the issue of nationalism, the Plenum’s discussion was much like the one of the Writers’ Union. The lack of planning and negligence of the significance of the day had resulted in a split and the genocide had been commemorated in two places: one on the streets and one official.229 The leadership had not only gravely underestimated the significance of the day, but four decades of Soviet slogans such as “friendship of peoples” had also lulled the Yerevan authorities into the pretense of a reality which did not exactly hold water. Now, suddenly the issue of justice and territorial claims towards Turkey, as well as Azerbaijani SSR, were peeking through the revealed cracks. One of the concluding comments at the Plenum meeting was made by Petros Melkonyan, Head Principal of Yerevan Polytechnic Institute, who pointed out that the Plenum report only mentioned the demands handed in by the demonstrators, without any further contemplation and explanation.230 He proposed that the report should instead discuss and give political assessment of the items mentioned in the document in order to “avoid future misunderstandings.” Whether it was the result of sheer tactics or not, the Armenian leadership did actually follow up the demands for repatriation of diaspora Armenians, but more significantly, the issue of returning Nakhichevan and Karabakh to Armenia; at least officially. On September 30 1966, Kochinyan (now First Secretary of Armenian Communist Party) and Muradyan (Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Soviet Armenia), sent a letter to the Central Committee of CPSU, proposing the return of both Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan to Soviet Armenia.231 The letter mentioned the historical background and how such a move would have economic, political and ethical benefits. To emphasize the significance of territory for each nation, the letter even pointed out the Turkish annexation of Western Armenia, constituting two thirds of the territory of Armenia, which coincided with the annihilation of 1.5 million Armenians.232 Once again, the choice of

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the wording was quite significant, since despite all the precautions in regard to the sensitive nature of the ongoing thaw between Moscow and Ankara, official Yerevan was using such clear territorial references which seemed inconceivable only weeks earlier. That the initial cautious tone in regard to the incumbent Turkish state had disappeared became even more conspicuous when the letter continued by stating [t]hat is exactly how one needs to explain the painful attitude of the Republic’s population towards the Turkish insidious diplomacy, which attempts to skew the history and get rid of the responsibility for the genocide and the occupation of Armenian lands.233 This was a radical change in rhetoric compared with the cautionary views in regard to the 1965 commemoration activities. Even though the letter immediately after stressed Soviet Armenia’s loyalty to the policy of peaceful coexistence of the nations and friendship among peoples, it was emphasized that while any territorial demands towards Turkey were impractical due to prevailing politics, the same could not be said about the return of NagornoKarabakh and Nakhichevan to the Armenian SSR.234 It was stated that the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh’s and Nakhichevan’s belonging had in reality never been doubted by anyone. Only during the period of 1918–1920 did the issue become a matter of manipulation, abused by Western imperialistic powers and reactionary Turkish circles. It was also noted that Nakhichevan was excluded from Armenia and attached to Azerbaijan (though as an autonomous exclave, lacking any borders with Azerbaijan) only due to Turkish interference. It was further argued the economic and social discrimination against Karabakh, i.e. the arguments used two decades later in the 1980s, which lead to the armed conflict between Armenian and Azerbaijan. A similar letter justifying the return of Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia was sent from the intelligentsia to Leonid Brezhnev with copies to the heads of Azerbaijani SSR and Armenian SSR.235 It is unclear whether any of the authors of these two letters sincerely believed in any affirmative response from Moscow, but nevertheless, the content was a major shift in official Yerevan’s tenor in regard to the WWI events and their aftermath. April 24 1965 marked the day when the genocide definitely escaped the confined space of the individual memory and entered not only into the national narrative, but also into politics. The politics of memory manifested by the commemoration had brought up decades of suppressed memories and territorial disputes onto the official Armenian political agenda, effectively also reintroducing the genocide to the international community. The resurfacing of the somehow taboo subjects of the genocide and the territorial claims came suddenly indeed, but this was due to the misunderstanding of the political leadership who considered these issues resolved during the past decades since WWI. As Arzumanyan duly noted, the question did not come gradually but instead erupted within the course of a short period; some would even assert a

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day, on April 24 1965. It not only awakened the memory of the genocide, demanding justice and reparation, but it also carried with it the issue of Nakhichevan and Nagorno-Karabakh, directed at the neighboring Azerbaijani SSR. Moreover, the commemoration seemed to have had a concrete positive effect, consolidating the relations between Soviet Armenia and the diaspora. This was witnessed in the increased number of Armenian diaspora organizations establishing contact with Armenia, from 620 in 1964 (the time of the establishment of the Diaspora Committee in Soviet Armenia) to 900 in May 1965.236 And, finally, the rapprochement probably played a pivotal role in shifting the diaspora’s attention from Soviet Armenia onto the genocide, more specifically its recognition process and Turkey’s denial. As Razmik Panossian notes, this diversion of attention fitted well into Soviet policy both in Moscow’s rhetoric towards the NATO member Turkey, but also as a means against separation tendencies, evident in the fact that “with the exception of a few dissidents there never was a call for independence (until mid-1988) in Armenia.”237 In the end, the victimization of the genocide out-voiced the Soviet victory. The fact that Armenia, even though heavily circumscribed and forced into a union, still existed as a state was a triumph for the Armenian nation. Notwithstanding, it seemed that on April 24 1965, the gravity of the genocide and its inflicted losses, territorial as well as demographical, were suddenly realized, outweighing the achievements of the Soviet Armenia. But, while Yerevan took center stage during the 50th commemoration, it still had to obey the policies of Moscow. Instead, the diaspora would soon carry on the agency of the genocide recognition process, becoming its loud champion on the international arena.

The resonance: the diaspora as agent of remembrance and recognition The events of April 24 in Yerevan became the peak of this kind of nationalistic sentiments and would not be repeated until the 1988 Karabakh movement in the wake of Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika reforms. The Armenian authorities did assess the events, the raised demands and some of them were indeed met. The leadership wrote a memorandum to Moscow regarding the issue of territorial claims towards Turkey and Azerbaijan. The authorities also followed through, building a genocide monument in Yerevan. It is noteworthy though that the monument, Tzitzernakabert (Swallow’s Fortress) was officially inaugurated, not in connection to the genocide commemoration, but on November 29 1967, i.e. in conjunction with the 47th anniversary of the establishment of Soviet Armenia.238 Nonetheless, there was not much official Yerevan could do in regard to the genocide beyond these measures at home. That task was shouldered by the diaspora. The genocide had not only awakened the sense of identity and memories related to that identity, it had also unified the diverse diaspora. The unifying power of the genocide as a focal point was perhaps most tangible in the USA where it had brought the feuding Armenian factions together. A prominent

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example of this was the project of the erection of a genocide monument in Montebello, California, which had met fierce lobbying from the Turkish representation in United States. In the end, the Armenians managed to pull through and the inauguration of the Montebello Genocide Monument took place on April 21 1968, becoming “a symbol of ethnic pride.”239 In the 1960s, but more significantly, in the wake of the 50th commemoration, the national awakening of the Armenian identity was also noticeable among the American-Armenians: they had started to reach prominent offices as well as public fame, and they were no more ashamed of speaking their mother tongue or felt the need to change their names.240 In spite of Zarobyan’s remark about Turkey’s dismissal of the diaspora’s significance, recognizing Soviet Armenia as the true representative for the nation, there are no records about any Turkish protest against the April 24 commemoration events in the Armenian capital (and the conveyed accusations, territorial demands etc.), either to Yerevan or Moscow. The same can hardly be said of the Turkish reaction to the genocide commemorations and activities around the world. April 24 1965 was not marked only in Yerevan but in numerous places globally. In Beirut, 85,000 Armenians gathered inside the city stadium. Thousands marched in Athens, Paris, Buenos Aires as did the Armenians in Italy, Canada, Syria, Egypt, Australia and several cities of the USA.241 On April 20, Uruguay’s Senate and House of Representatives adopted a resolution, the very first of its kind, declaring April 24 as the “‘Day of Remembrance for the Armenian Martyrs’, in honor of the members of that nationality slain in 1915.”242 The 50th commemoration also initiated a flood of pamphlets and letters to governments around the world, recalling the demand for resurrecting the Sèvres Treaty and its related promises to the Armenians.243 The seemingly sudden activities worldwide in connection to the 50th commemoration of the genocide caught Turkey off guard. The total lack of preparation for such an event hinted the wrong assumption on behalf of the Turkish State that the issue was dead and buried. The vacuum created by omitting the fate of the Armenians and other Christians in the Empire during WWI needed a satisfactory replacement, which did not happen until the 1970s when the dire need of a response to the terrorism suddenly made that vacuum conspicuous. Up to that moment, content with the policy of silence, the Turkish authorities had nothing in store to counter the sudden flood of accusations. In fact, this attitude would last another decade, until the terrorist actions against Turkish diplomats necessitated a more active Turkish role. Oblivion was still the best remedy the Turkish officials could prescribe. In an editorial article to New York Times on May 4 1965, a member of the Turkish Embassy in Washington urged readers that in dealing with these “dark days … the best thing to do now would be to forget them …”244 Indeed, as Göçek has observed, the Turkish assumption of the definitive conclusion of the Armenian question was witnessed in the fact that

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The Armenian question between history and politics when some of the Armenian perpetrators of the attacks were later tried in Western courts, the Turkish Foreign Ministry did not possess a single English-language text to send to the Western public prosecutors to inform them about the Turkish state position on 1915.245

Until then, the standard ad hoc protests and pressures by the Turkish Foreign Ministry had sufficed on the basis of the need to act. The barrage of diplomatic notes of protest to Foreign Affairs ministries of the countries where similar commemorations took place confirmed the policy.246 It was also from this period on that the US State Department’s involvement on behalf of Turkey became a standard procedure in counteracting US recognition, urging American diplomats to “tone down their Genocide proclamations.”247 Bhargava notes that “[m]ost calls to forget disguise the attempt to prevent victims from publicly remembering in the fear that ‘there is a dragon living on the patio and we better not provoke it.’”248 In the Armenian case, however, such a measure was already too late and the 50th commemoration had awakened the dormant dragon, which would show its destructive side in less than a decade later in form of political assassinations of Turkish diplomats. In Bhargava’s words It is well known that remembrance of past harm reinforces asymmetries of power. The fear of physical suffering in the future feeds on the remembrance of past acts of repression. Such thinking encourages passivity and obedience in victims, and this in turn serves the interest of the powerful. But such remembrance can cut both ways. If memory of suffering is kept alive, reprisal may occur at future, inopportune moments.249 Such a reprisal marked the next borderline event, at which the awakened dragon went into action, namely on January 27 1973 in Santa Barbara, California.

Notes 1 2 3 4

E.g. see Kloian and Peltekian respectively. For a highly enlightening record of the entire period see Hovannisian, 1967. Taylor, p. 302. Although one could go back even more, namely to the Treaty of Paris, 1856, in tracking the intervention of the international powers in preservation of the Ottoman Empire and the issue of maltreatment of the Christian subjects. E.g. Article VII called for respecting the “Independence and the Territorial Integrity of the Ottoman Empire,” while Article IX, stating Sultan’s “generous intentions towards the Christian population of his Empire” made it clear that “It is clearly understood that it cannot, in any case, give to the said Powers the right to interfere, either collectively or separately, in the relation of His Majesty the Sultan with his subjects, nor in the Internal Administration of his Empire.” For the treaty text see Oakes and Mowat, pp. 176–185. 5 Hurst, pp. 528–548. 6 Ibid. pp. 380, 548–551.

The Armenian question between history and politics 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

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Ibid., pp. 551–578. Bullock and Shock, p. 156. Ibid. Morley, p. 182. Argyll, p. 74. Hovannisian, 1967, p. 39. Üngör, 2008, pp. 15–39. For memory making as part of the politics of memory see, for example, De Brito, Enriquez and Aguilar, p. 39. Kaufmann, pp. 7. I will alternatively use the term internationally wrongful act in regard to the committed crimes of massacre, assault, deportation, confiscation etc. This does not imply that I’m sidestepping from the question of genocide, but rather using a term within the international law community defining breach of a state’s international obligations, both towards foreign states and their citizens and its own subjects. For a definition of international crimes and internationally wrongful acts see Bowett, p. 164. Peace treaty signed between Bolshevik Russia and the Central Powers as the result of Russia’s withdrawal from the war. See the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty. Hovannisian, 1967, p. 237. Ibid., p. 52. Article 228 in the Treaty of Sèvres, maintained the right of the Entente Powers to punish guilty Turks, while Article 230 established Turkey’s obligation for surrendering suspect individuals to the Entente Powers. See Sèvres Treaty. Hicks, p. 541. Brown, p. 382. Balakian, p. 367. Nassibian. Ibid., p. 121. Ibid. Ibid., p. 128. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 167–168. Ibid., p. 192. Ibid., p. 201. Ibid., p. 143. On the issue of British and European obligation to protect the Ottoman Armenian’s see also Rodogno, 2011, pp. 206–207. Simpson. Nassibian, p. 176. Ibid. Simpson, p. 33. Ibid. In addition to oil, the tobacco industry seems to have also played a pivotal role in molding US foreign policy towards the emerging nationalist Turkey and the plight to defend the Christian minorities in Turkey. See Goodman. Simpson, p. 34. Ibid. Housepian-Dobkin, p. 104. Nassibian, p. 202. Ibid., p. 203. Ibid. Ibid., p. 204. See ibid., pp. 205–206. Ibid., p. 232. Ibid., p. 233.

112 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

The Armenian question between history and politics Ibid., p. 231. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 232. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 233–234. Khatisian, p. 70. Kolstø and Helge, pp. 486–487; “Karabakh and the South Caucasus”, p. 27; “Azerbaijan: Seven years of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh”, p. xvi. Stipulated in the provisions of the Treaty of Kars between Russia and Turkey, signed on October 23 1921. See Kars Treaty. Mutafian, pp. 112–113. Cornell, p. 8. Croissant, p. 19. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 19–20. Hovannisian, 1999, p. 202. Among others, the Ottoman Debt Arbitration and Roselius & Co v. Karsten and the Turkish Republic, in Crawford, p. 676. See also Walker, 2009, p. 498. See Avedian, 2012. In Müller, 2002, p. 22. Balakian, p. 370. Churchill, p. 408. See Kars Treaty. See, for example, Sarkisian, p. 14. Bass, p. 144. “Treaty of Peace with Turkey and Other Instruments.” Minow, p. 15. Ibid., p. 137. Gutmann and Thompson, p. 28. See also Amstutz, p. ix. Holloway, pp. 60–61. Authored on November 24 and published in Social-Demokraten (Stockholm) on November 29 1920. Quoted in Avedian, 2010, p. 335. Rodogno, 2016, p. 186. Balakian, p. 372. Ibid., p. 366. Ibid., p. 372. See Bogosian, pp. 135–136. See Ihrig, pp. 234–269. Cooper, p. 15. Ibid. See Payne, pp. 44–50. Lemkin. Cooper, pp. 250–252. See also “Coining a Word and Championing a Cause.” Transcript from documentary footage. E.g. see the PBS documentary “The Armenian Genocide” at 45’ 02”. Used also in the German documentary “Aghet: Ein Völkermord” at 1 h 17’ 45”. Editorial, Haratch. Matiossian. The Adana massacres claimed between 20,000 and 30,000 victims within the few weeks of April, 1919. For example, see Adalian, 2013, pp. 131–132. The denomination of “Yeghern” can be compared to the Jewish “Shoah” or the Assyrian/Syrian “Seyfo” for their respective genocides.

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93 Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on the Holocaust Remembrance (A/RES/60/7). 94 See statement by the British International Lawyer James L. Brierly in “Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1950” (United Nations). 95 Greenspan, p. 438. 96 “Pleadings, Oral Arguments, Documents”. 97 Holloway, Note 40, p. 53. 98 Ibid., note 63, p. 61. See also p. 610. 99 Ibid., p. 610. 100 In the editorial note to Whitaker, 2008, p. 77. 101 Friedländer, p. 276. See also Alexander, 2004, pp. 196–263. 102 Ludi, p. 213. 103 Zhurzhenko, p. 242. 104 On the authenticity of the quote see, for example, Albrecht; Bardakjian. 105 For a presentation of Lochner as well as the “unnamed informant,” generally identified as Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, providing him with the document see Bardakjian, pp. 3–7. 106 Excerpt from the documentary Screamers, at 58’ 59”. 107 See Baker. 108 Smith, 1992, p. 3. 109 Minasian, pp. 122–123. 110 Ibid., p. 123. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid., p.127. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 Interview with Yehuda Bauer. For additional information about the relations between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust see Ihrig. 116 Auron, p. 303. See also Totten and Bartrop, p. 148. For an actual reference to Jewish community’s interest in Werfel’s book see Hirsch and Spitzer, p. 87. 117 Rubinstein, p. 48. 118 See ibid., p. 167. 119 Bobelian, p. 100. 120 Ibid., p. 101. 121 Ibid., p. 98. 122 For example, see “Bush warns Congress not to recognise Armenian ‘genocide’”. 123 Lebow, p. 25. 124 Rubinstein, pp. 191–192. 125 Bobelian, pp. 111–3. 126 Panossian, 1998, p. 83 and in note 7, p. 98. 127 Interview with Archbishop Aris Shirvanian. See also Alexander, 2007, pp. 32–59. 128 There are no comprehensive studies in this regard, but the statement is based on a review of the online archives of the Armenian Review journal available at armenianreview.org/archives.htm 129 “Revue des Études Arméniennes”. 130 Panossian, 1998, p. 82. 131 Bottici, p. 343. 132 Friedländer, p. 274. 133 House, p. 140. 134 Bhambra, p. 662. 135 Assmann, p. 41. 136 Ibid., pp. 41–42. 137 Winter, p. 19. 138 Ibid., p. 42.

114 139 140 141 142 143 144

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The Armenian question between history and politics Ibid., pp. 11–12. Burke, p. 106. Winter, p. 19. Habermas, pp. 26–27. Interview with Archbishop Aris Shirvanian. See Harutyunyan (ed.), pp. 6–7. It should be noted that the publication is a collection of archive files, mostly Russian in original and translated to Armenian in Harutyunyan’s book. The English translations in this study are my own. It should also be noted that the archive sources given here are those stated in Harutyunyan’s book and have been verified by me. However, of practical reasons, it is the English translation of the sources which are given here, rather than the Russian originals or the Armenian translations in Harutyunyan’s book. See ibid., p. 7. Ibid., pp. 8, 10. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid. The publication is prefaced with a summary of the presented documents, but mainly consists of their transcripts. See Wolfe, p. 265. Harutyunyan, p. 11. Ibid. National Archives of Armenia (NAA), Fund 1, Register 45, File 6, p. 171. Highly Confidential. NAA, Fund 113, Register 96, File 88, p. 2. NAA, Fund 1, Register 44, File 54, pp. 66–73. Ibid. See Panossian, 2006, pp. 374–5. NAA, Fund 1, Register 44, File 54, pp. 170–174. NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 15, pp. 51–52. Highly Confidential. NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 18, p. 35. NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 18, pp. 1–2, 4–5, 8–10. Highly Confidential. See B. Muradyan’s address in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, 29 April 1965. See remark by H. Zarobyan in regard to the initial wide skepticism against the commemoration plans, in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, April 29 1965. Esherick and Wasserstrom, p. 172. K. Udumyan’s address, which was also concurred by the comments made by Hayk Melkonyan, in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, April 29 1965. See Sevak Arzumanyan, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Ibid. NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 165, pp. 2–10, April 26 1965. H. Zarobyan’s address in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 20, pp. 28–35, Highly Confidential, April 28 1965. The mentioned “seven patriots” were Meruzhan Hovhannisyan, Khachatur Amirdjanyan, Karapet Kiramijyan, Vigen Babayan, Grigor-Hovhannes Eghiyan, Khachik Safaryan and Edward Kakosyan, who all were arrested during December 1963 and January 1964 charged with “nationalistic” and “anti-Soviet” views and for the creation of secret underground organizations. For additional information see also Panossian, 2006, p. 324. Born Soghomon Soghomonian, an Armenian priest, musicologist, composer and considered as the founder of Armenian national school of music. One of the few survivors among the Armenian leaders arrested on the night of April 23–24 1915. Witnessing the entire process of genocide, Komitas experienced a mental

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171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209

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breakdown and displaying signs of Posttraumatic stress disorder spent most of his remaining days in a psychiatric hospital in Paris where he died in 1935. As such, he has become one of the main symbols of the Armenian Genocide, especially within art. See Ruben Galstyan’s address in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, April 29 1965. For example, see the testimony of the poet Saghatel Harutyunyan, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Harutyunyan, p. 12. NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 165, pp. 2–10, 26 April 1965. Zarobyan’s address in address in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, 29 April 1965. See G. Sevunts testimony, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Ibid. See M. Armen’s letter, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 165, pp. 2–10, April 26 1965. See Sevak Arzumanyan, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. See e.g. the address by Badal Muradyan, in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–36. NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. E. Topchyan in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. S. Kaputikyan, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Ibid. S. Harutyunyan, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Bhargava, p. 61. Rotberg, p. 7. See Vazgen Mnatskanyan’s speech in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. S. Taronsti’s remarks, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. See Baghash Hovsepyan, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Bhargava, p. 52. Ibid. See S. Kaputikyan’s remarks, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Ibid. Esherick and Wasserstrom, p. 176. See S. Kaputikyan’s and Saghatel Harutyunyan’s speeches, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. See Sevak Arzumanyan, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. See Saghatel Harutyunyan’s speech in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Quoted in Garver, note 45, p. 214. Transcript from the video available from the meeting. See “Sen. Barack Obama Discusses Armenian Genocide.” For the entire speech see “Remarks of President Barack Obama.” Raum and Loven. See Saghatel Harutyunyan’s speech in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. See V. Hamazaspyan’s address, in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, April 29 1965. NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 165, pp. 2–10, April 26 1965.

116 210 211 212 213 214

215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249

The Armenian question between history and politics Ibid. Jelin and Kaufman, p. 49. Habermas, pp. 26–27. V. Darbinyan’s address in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, April 29 1965. K. Udumyan’s address in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, April 29 1965. Others shared this view as well, pointing out that the present-day Turkish Republic could not be held responsible for the crime committed by the Young Turk regime. See e.g. Vazgen Mnatskanyan’s speech in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Ibid. Ibid. See G. Sevunts’ testimony, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Zarobyan, in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, April 29 1965. Victor Hambardzumyan, in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, April 29 1965. NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, April 29 1965. Ibid. See Soghomon Taronatsi’s speech, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. Ibid. Bhargava, pp. 53–54. NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 1, pp. 2–4, Highly Confidential, April 29–30 1965. See G. Gharibjanyan’s address, in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, April 29 1965. For example, see Sero Khanzadyan’s speech in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. See G. Ter-Grigoryan’s address, in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, Third session, April 30 1965. G. Sevunts, in NAA, Fund 170, Register 1, File 158, pp. 29–78. See P. Melkonyan’s address, in NAA, Fund 1, Register 45, File 2, pp. 31–63, 71; File 4, pp. 34–49, 61–64, Confidential, April 29 1965. NAA, Fund 1, Register 46, File 65a, pp. 1–9. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. NAA, Fund 1, Register 46, File 65b, pp. 1–2. Harutyunyan, p. 19. Panossian, 2006, p. 322. See “Description and History, History of Tsisernakaberd Memorial Complex.” Bobelian, p. 133. Ibid., p. 132. See Bobelian, p. 125. Ibid., p. 126. Ibid. Quoted in ibid., p. 127. Göçek, 2011, p. 46. See Bobelian, p. 127. Ibid., p. 130. Bhargava, p. 52. Ibid.

3

The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide

Although the 50th commemoration on April 24 1965 symbolized the reawakening of an issue presumed dead and buried, it would take almost another decade before the Armenian Genocide made its proper entrance into both the political and the academic arena. The period from 1973 to 1987 was highlighted by violence committed by Armenian terrorist factions, but also a boom of literature and reports in regard to the Armenian Genocide. While being content with the prevailing silence during foregoing decades, Turkey had no reason to engage actively into the denial of the Armenian Genocide; the coming decade would force a vocal denial, which also needed to evolve in order to tackle the resurfaced Armenian question. The forgotten genocide was about to be rediscovered by the world community.

The igniting spark: the genocide survivor Gourgen Yanikian As already described, the 1965 Commemoration in Yerevan is generally ascribed to the “third generation” phenomenon. It was the grandchildren, detached from the events and the memories, who asked the uncomfortable questions about the past, reviving the Armenian issue, demanding recognition but also justice and reparation. This young generation also represented the radical elements with a tendency to extraordinary measures, mainly incarnated in the waves of assassinations which engulfed the Turkish diplomats during the 1970s and the 1980s. However, the igniter of the Armenian reactionary movement was far from a young member of the third generation, but a genocide witness. Gourgen Yanikian was seventy-eight years old when he shot the two Turkish diplomats dead in 1973. The deed, in Yanikian’s own words, was due to a revelation of a vivid memory from the genocide. His assassination of the two Turkish consular representatives in California brings out the psychological aspects of the transdisciplinary nature of genocide studies, but also the bottomup perspective in the process of the politics of memory. Yanikian’s action must be viewed within the context of his life story, especially in his memories from the genocide which would haunt him for the rest of his life, reflected in his memoirs authored during his time in prison.1 Thus, to understand his reasoning based on his interpretation of the memories and

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the experienced aftermath of the genocide, one needs a brief insight into his own narrative. Yanikian was born in Karin (Erzurum), three weeks premature on December 24 1895. Presumably, the reason for that was the murder of his uncle (mother’s brother) by the Turkish butcher in the city. “That was the start of the massacres in Erzurum,” his mother used to say when telling the story about his birth to little Gourgen. “We buried your uncle secretly during the night in our backyard.… I could not resist anymore.… You were born three weeks ahead of time.… There were no priests so your father said a prayer and named you ‘Massacre boy.’”2 When the ongoing Hamidian massacres of 1894–1896 reached the city, Yanikian’s family, having contacts with the Persian Consul, found refuge in the Consulate before fleeing through mountain roads to the village of Kiotah, near the city of Kars (then part of the Russian Empire). On arrival, the family discovered that the infant Gourgen, barely six months old, was missing. Exhausted and numb of the cold, he had slipped from his mother’s arms and had fallen down on the road. Risking certain death, the majority of the family advised against turning back, but his mother and older brother Hakob decided to head back to find the infant. Defying death, they backtracked over six kilometers, following the tracks of the sleigh before finding the seemingly lifeless body of the infant Gourgen. Warming the baby with the heat of their own bodies, his mother and Hakob returned to the border village and joined the family. This episode created a special bond between the brothers: “I loved all my brothers. But in loving, I had a special debt to my brother Hakob. Without him I would probably not experienced life and been frozen in the mountains of Erzurum.”3 Eight years later, Gourgen, his mother and brother Hakob, secretly crossed the border, returning to their home in Erzurum to retrieve some gold and jewelry and important documents buried in their stable. While Gourgen and his mother were hidden in a nearby shed, they watched the steps of Hakob digging for the hidden items. Suddenly, alerted by the sound of the pickaxe, two Turks appeared and seeing Hakob digging in the ground they attacked him and cut his throat. Horrified, Gourgen wanted to scream, but his mother put her hand firmly over his mouth so he would not expose their hiding, while silently witnessing the slaughtering of her son. Terrified, Gourgen bit and chewed on his mother’s hand, damaging muscles and nerves so severely that her right hand became permanently damaged. Once the Turks had collected the loot and disappeared, mother and son went out to Hakob’s lifeless body. The mother kissed her murdered boy’s head before they returned to the Persian Consulate in the city and subsequently went back to Kars.4 The horrifying scene would haunt Yanikian for the rest of his life. The memory of Hakob’s murder along with Gourgen’s special bond and his sense of gratitude towards the brother for saving his life would play a pivotal role in Yanikian’s decision almost seven decades later to commit murder. With the eruption of WWI, Yanikian (at the time an architect student at Moscow University) together with fifty Armenian, Russian and Georgian

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students headed for Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi) to join the volunteer corps. He became enlisted in the Second Battalion led by Dro (Drastamant Kananian) and Armen Garo Pasdermadjian. At this time, the Turkish forces had occupied Kars and Yanikian’s entire family, except for his brother-in-law Khatchik and his son had fled the city. After recapturing the city, Yanikian embarked on the quest of finding them. Arriving at the main Armenian Church of Kars, Gourgen discovered that the church had been set ablaze. In its court yard, there were more than 3,000 badly burned bodies, piled upon each other. A more horrendous scene was the naked bodies of hundreds of women and girls, who had apparently been subjected to sexual abuse and then killed, covered with cuts and burns. Unable to withhold his emotions and tears, he wrote: In the history of my entire life, as a witness to the genocide, among the most horrifying scenes, that was the most hellish experience, whose impact was inerasably carved and remains in my memories and my mental life, causing me chills and outbreaks. From that day on I vowed to forsaken the Turk, from that day the revenge became the main aim of my life. When we were carrying the dead with 50 military sleighs to bury them outside the city in graves, suddenly I encountered my second horrifying scene; petrified, with frozen eyes, not believing and fearing I approach the body of two dead beneath the wall.… One was my brotherin-law, Khatchik, and the other his seven years old son, embracing each other, eyes open, as if they were begging for help from me. My tears had dried out; I looked for a long while, heard and lived the sounds of their suffering, which are impossible to forget and which I have not forgotten. They have become the aim of my everyday feelings and the source behind my mission.5 The “mission” was to tell the world about the Armenian Genocide and “the deceit of the so-called civilized nations towards our rights.”6 In that regard, he accused the Entente powers, especially the USA, equally as Turkey for the genocide and the lost fatherland.7 Yanikian later travelled to Persia (1930), where he established a construction company. During WWII, he gained the contract offered by Allied Powers for constructing the railroad connecting the Persian Gulf to the Soviet Union, a contract worth millions of dollars.8 Upon the conclusion of the work, he and his wife, moving to the USA, decided to embark on their life dream, namely to expose the truth about the fate of the Armenian nation during WWI. However, he was unable to collect his payment from the Persian Shah and Yanikian failed to raise the necessary funding for the movie which he had already started producing.9 Now at the age of 78, he had begun worrying about his legacy and the promise he had made to his father upon joining the volunteer forces during WWI: “My son, do not forget the vengeance of your people, make me proud.”10 Later, he imparted in an interview that he had promised his father on his deathbed to “do something for the Armenian

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people.” The now failed movie was the means for realizing that dying wish. He had to find another venue to attract the world attention. The significance of memories and our contemporary interpretation of them to justify intended actions was embodied in the manner Yanikian asserts having decided to implement his plan of exclaiming his disappointment with the unpunished crimes he had witnessed. He just needed to find a proper way to achieve that goal. According to his memoirs, it was the very recollection of the death of his brother being murdered which appeared as a guidance for how “to awaken the compassion of humanity, urging that the crimes committed towards my people would not go unpunished, forcing the thieves to return to the owners what they had stolen.”11 He would kill a Turkish state representative in California. Notwithstanding, the use of force was according to Yanikian not his first choice. He despised force and killing, since by “violating the rights of others, you equally lose yours as well.” The 78-year-old man was very well aware of the crime he was about to commit, but the memories of his past were taking their toll, constantly reminding him of the perpetrators who had escaped justice. Yanikian wrote: I had always been against blood [shedding] in my life. I have always thought that the power of word is mightier than blood. The reality, however, proved me in a sad manner that I had been wrong in the past. The lessons of life told me that you can only with blood make a noise and attract the attention of humanity.12 That seven decades had passed seemed to matter little and the memories were still vivid. Similar behavior has been documented among Holocaust survivors. Martha Minow quotes one such Holocaust survivor who had after three years of searching tracked down the doctor in his death camp in charge of sending the victims to the gas chambers, and strangled him: “Only then, he explained, was he able to begin a new family and a new life. ‘It didn’t bring them back from the dead,’ replied his interlocutor. The survivor answered, ‘It brought me back from the dead.’”13 It is worth emphasizing that there is a concrete difference in killing one’s own assailant and a person who is only guilty of representing the perpetrator (state officials in the Turkish case) and as such accessory to the active denial of the crime. Yanikian’s action also fits quite well into the context of the politics of memory of the events: the aforementioned projection of the Turkish state’s guilt upon the entire Turkish society and the image of the “evil Turk;” the feeling of been abandoned by the international community as guarantor of the justice; the knowledge of the Operation Nemesis during the 1920s; and perhaps most significantly, awareness of the kind of international reaction and coverage Talaat’s assassination by Thelirian and his trial created. In the face of the circumstance that the political actors had failed to address the issue, the victim turned to the legal instances to attain justice. Yet another important factor which cannot be disregarded is the psychological harm the victimizing had inflicted upon the

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individual. Witnessing the horrors had also eroded the values of the victim, something that Holocaust survivors testified to as well. In Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity, Primo Levi describes how the majority of the individuals became brutalized by being exposed to such treatment. In Levi’s words, not much of “the ordinary moral world could survive” after such experience, noting that “[t]o destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one.”14 In Yanikian’s own words, he was now faced with the necessity to sacrifice one of his most holy principles for the sake of achieving his goal.15 The choice fell upon the Turkish diplomatic representatives in California, Consul Mehmet Baydar and Vice-Consul Bahadir Demir. Yanikian was supposed to donate a painting (which had been in Sultan Abdul Hamid’s chambers and was later stolen during the Turkish revolution) and a Turkish Republic’s banknote bearing the signatures of several dignities, among other Reza Shah of Persia.16 Prior to his deed, he wrote a manifest explaining his actions and the copies were to be sent to official institutions and decisionmakers but also to Armenians around the world.17 Quite evidently, the knowledge of Tehlirian’s assassination of Talaat Pasha in Berlin was in Yanikian’s mind, since he was explicit about being “apprehended and stay alive to be able to in front of the court scream in the face of humanity the agonies of my heart and demand justice for my people as well as other people like mine.”18 His actions were intended to make such a noise that not only the American people, but the entire humanity would not be able to ignore the demands of our people. I wanted to create such a situation, the result of which would be the Armenian Nuremberg.19 To him it was not only a question of delayed justice but also broken promises and suppression by silence: “I will not represent any party, ideology or organization. I will go public and work as an Armenian individual who has become weary of waiting, have been deceived by many promises and is unable to keep silent anymore.”20 His action indeed caused headlines in the media but fell short of reaching the levels which Yanikian had envisioned, mainly because the prosecutor managed successfully to disallow the trial to become a witness testimony of the genocide, as Tehlirian’s had once become. However, this strategy of the prosecutor, other than an obvious strategic choice in preventing Yanikian gaining the sympathy of the court, might very well have had yet another reason. Records indicate that the prosecutor might initially very well have explored the option of allowing Yanikian’s historical testimony. This could be implied by the fact that the prosecutor indeed contacted the Turkish authorities for attaining information about the Turkish official stand on the issue.21 Ironically, the earlier decades’ perceived silence as the best treatment by the Turkish State and its conviction that the issue was long forgotten and needed

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no attention also implied that there was no counter-information available for immediate usage. This fact was evident in the subsequent years in regard to the waves of assassinations of Turkish diplomats around the world, “when Western prosecutors asked the Turkish state for literature on its official standpoint on 1915, all the Turkish Foreign Ministry can come up with is one short brochure.”22 The Turkish state simply considered “the Armenian issue closed for all intents and purposes.”23 Although there are no certain proofs, this lack of information could plausibly indicate one of the main reasons behind the prosecutor’s insistence on disallowing Yanikian to make the trial into a witness testimony on the genocide itself since he simply could not contest Yanikian’s story in a satisfactory manner. Nonetheless, Yanikian’s action had now set in motion a chain of events which would have a significant impact on the international rediscovery of the Armenian cause and its process of memory of politics. Despite of his failure to utilize the trial as he had envisioned, Yanikian was quite satisfied with what he had achieved. In the 110-page document he had sent copies to newspapers, the White House and the United Nations, he had given the background to his deed and even made some demands. His very first demand was a recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the UN, referring to a UN Document addressing the Armenian Genocide.24 Although he does not mention what specific document he had in mind, one comes to think of the draft report on the “Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” in the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Most probably notified about the initial draft in 1973 and its content, he was at least at the time of writing those lines probably unaware of the fact that the mentioning of the Armenian Genocide was about to be deleted from the final version of the UN report, foremost known as the “Ruhashyankiko Report.”

The first UN genocide study: The Ruhashyankiko Report, 1979 Although the 50th commemoration on April 24 1965 and Yanikian’s action would certainly qualify as borderline events which acted as catalysts for future developments, the entry of the Armenian Genocide onto the international arena would wait a while longer. Aside from the politically motivated assassinations of Turkish diplomats during the decade following Yanikian’s deed, this period also brought a number of reports and studies on the legal aspects of the WWI events. First among these reports was the United Nation’s Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the “Ruhashyankiko Report.” A study of the protocols from the sessions reviewing the report and its final fate unveils interesting insight into how the politics of memory functions and especially about how politicized the issue had become, turning the Armenian events into the focal point of the report. In 1967, following a decision by the United Nations’ Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Minorities,25 the Economic and Social

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Council (ECOSOC) was asked to compile a report on the crime of genocide. In 1971, Nicodème Ruhashyankiko, a Rwandan member of the Sub-Commission, was designated Special Rapporteur for the study.26 He presented his preliminary report on May 23 1972, which, besides the background and discussion on the term genocide and the UN Convention, also gave accounts for the methods and procedure for preparation of the study. Among other matters, the study required gathering national and international viewpoints and collecting data from governments, in which item 4 of the “National Viewpoint” was requesting “[i]nformation on allegations of acts of genocide committed in various parts of the world /if the Sub-Commission so requests/.”27 In his progress report a year later (June 25 1973), Ruhashyankiko presented a draft version of the report in which he had included a historical survey, mentioning some of the recorded cases of genocide throughout the history, starting from antiquity.28 However, Paragraph 30 of the “Historical Survey” came to cause bitter discussions and cast a shadow on Ruhashyankiko’s report. Paragraph 30, enumerating historical cases of the crime of genocide, read “Passing to the modern era, one may note the existence of relatively full documentation [emphasis added] dealing with the massacres of Armenians, which have been described as ‘the first case of genocide in the twentieth century.’”29 This reference was quite interesting for two reasons: 1) prior to any outside intervention, the Rapporteur had evidently, upon his own survey of the research, included it due to the existence of a convincing documentation on the case; 2) it omitted any mentioning or reference to the perpetrators. In Leo Kuper’s words “[t]he reader will appreciate the extreme tact of the reference. No mention is made of the role of the Ottoman Empire in this genocide. It is as if the genocide happened of itself.”30 Notwithstanding the tactfulness of the short reference, it would become the hallmark of the report and the main issue around which the debate on the report would circle and almost collapse into. From an argumentation point of view, Ruhashyankiko’s references to the Armenian events had one obvious Achilles heel; per se, this is interesting in regard to its depiction of the extent of the scholarly knowledge about the six decades old events. The authors of all three references were Armenians.31 This opened for the obvious attack on the perceived objectivity of the mentioned sources. The preponderance of the sources included therein seemed to matter less in the light of the ethnicity of the authors, even though these sources were rich in documentation belonging to contemporary eye-witnesses such as Toynbee, Morgenthau, Lepsius, along with diplomatic correspondence and archival material from the Entente powers as well as Germany.32 However, in Ruhashyankiko’s defense, one should recall that in 1974 the literature on the Armenian Genocide was quite scarce; if the pro-genocide literature was hard to find, the literature reflecting the Turkish view of WWI was non-existing. This was already duly noted by Göcek’s observation in regard to the Western prosecutor’s inquiry into the Turkish Foreign Ministry.33 The Turkish State’s deliberate amnesia about the events had created a gaping void which now

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needed to be filled with a new emerging denialist version, thus reflecting well what, among others, Marc Ferro has noted: “To control the past is to master the present, to legitimize dominion and justify legal claims.”34 During a review on September 18 1973, Ruhashyankiko admitted that: He had encountered certain difficulties in preparing the historical survey, as there were no existing publications dealing with the history of genocide. To carry out such a study, it would be necessary first to establish the historicity of events that had taken place through the ages, and then to determine, in the light not only of the original documents but also bearing in mind the political, economic, social and the spiritual background of the period, whether such acts did in fact amount to genocide.35 Clearly, he was aware of the importance of the historical aspects as well as the significance of contemporary factors, against which the events would be weighed when considering a modern term such as genocide. Nonetheless, unless the Sub-Commission explicitly asked him for such a survey, he did not intend to compile an exhaustive historical research but confined himself to a brief historical survey, quoting only the examples that were most frequently mentioned in most of the works on genocide available to him, and he wished it to be understood that the references quoted were absolutely without prejudice to his personal position as to the historicity of the acts cited by the authors concerned.36 Leaving the floor for the Sub-Commission’s view, several members concurred in approving the inclusion of a historical survey, even though not exhaustive,37 while others pointed out the importance of the historical background in order to fully understand the concept of genocide.38 The Soviet member, Smirnov, agreeing with the inclusion, argued that the historicity would indeed be enlightening concerning the origins of the crime of genocide and would provide a framework for the study at hand, especially in regard to the 1948 Convention, but also other related international laws.39 However, not all members approved such a historical background. The Afghani diplomat proposed a more general survey without any specific mention that might run “the risk of hurting the feelings of countries or groups which might feel themselves criticized.”40 This was quite a significant observation, especially since it would reappear in future statements as well: it was not the validity of the information that was contested, but rather the impact such an accusation would imply for the feelings and the honor of the accused nation. Turning to the issue of sources, the Pakistani expert member, Sharifuddin Pirzada, was among the first to simply point out that the information contained in Paragarph 30 was from an Armenian perspective and proposed that the “Turkish point of view should also be taken into account.”41

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Yet, some other members, while acknowledging the importance of the historical view, argued that the report should instead focus on recent events, more specifically WWII. It was after all “those events which had the greatest impact on the world today.”42 On the aspect of the historicity of the term, the Tunisian expert member, Bouhdiba, asserted that the commission’s task was to promote the implementation of the UN Convention and not to produce a retrospect of the crimes during recorded history.43 More significantly, alluding to the same argument as the Afghani representative, Bouhdiba feared that the current mentioning of certain cases would detract attention from the main object of the report due to “the passions which the reading of a long historical account would arouse.” He too suggested that the historical background should be limited to the WWII period, “leaving history to the historians.”44 These statements would be echoed in the upcoming summary as well as the future reviews, in which the sensitive nature of the matter and the honor primarily spoke against an inclusion of the facts rather than the accuracy and authenticity of the facts themselves. Concluding the debate, Ruhashyankiko nonetheless noted that no majority support had been reached for excluding the historical part. Admitting that it would be impossible to compile a complete and exhaustive list, he added that “[t]he purpose of those paragraphs was not to incriminate present leaders but simply to quote historical examples.”45 Second review of the Report, March 1974 The records for the 1286th meeting of the Sub-Commission (March 6 1974) show the barrage of fire that Paragraph 30 was to be subjected to. In the absence of the Special Rapporteur, the opening statement was delivered by the observer of Turkey, Mr. Olcay. In reference to the views expressed during the previous meeting,46 he asserted that a majority of the speakers would like to delete Paragraphs 28 and 29 (dealing with religious genocide) and “paragraph 30, which referred to the so-called massacre of the Armenians.”47 The Turkish observer substantiated this call by also recalling the argumentation of the Special Rapporteur regarding the impossibility to ensure absolute accuracy regarding distant events.48 Thus, it seems that since the compilation could not guarantee the inclusion of every single case, it also implied that the known cases should be omitted as well, an argument employed frequently in the contemporary denial of the Armenian Genocide. Furthermore, it was stated that Paragraph 30 reflected only the views of “certain Armenian circles,” evident in the used sources. But Olcay went even further in chastising the Special Rapporteur, claiming that: Not only did that paragraph distort historical truths, but it appeared to be inspired by tendentious propaganda based on racial and religious hatred. The Special Rapporteur had confused the specific characteristics of the crime of genocide with the normal consequences of wars. However, in a study which was intended to be scientific, it was inadmissible that a

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The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide distorted picture of certain past events should be included. Indeed, it would merely complicate the Commission’s work in its search for an exact definition of the crime of genocide.49

This was an interesting observation, especially in respect of the distinction between “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity,” which had indeed been pointed out explicitly in the UN War Crimes report of 1948 to which we will return shortly. Unfortunately, it seems that the mentioned 1948 Report was totally unknown to all members of the Sub-Commission. Olcay then offered to give a “brief and objective” survey of the events, in which the Armenians, who had enjoyed centuries of privileged minority status, influenced by “European imperialism in general and Czarist Russia in particular” had carried out uprisings and in collaboration with the enemy during World War I had attacked the Ottoman army from the rear. The Ottoman Empire had therefore exercised its legitimate right to defend itself against the Armenian uprisings 30 years before the adoption of the United Nations Charter, which established the right of self-defence as one of the basic rights of a State in Article 51. Any Government would have acted in the same way in similar circumstances.50 “The myth of genocide” had arisen because of the expelling of these rebels. Thus, the Special Rapporteur had “assimilated acts of war and their results to the crime of genocide” which might lead to confusion in the study of the question of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.51 This would in turn risk causing “the embers of racial hatred which had glowed for 60 years to flare up again in the form of slanderous publications or even murder,” substantiating his argumentation by mentioning the recent assassination of the two Turkish diplomats in 1973 as an act of vengeance for the events during WWI.52 Olcay asked that the Commission should draw the Special Rapporteur’s attention to the necessity of not confusing certain concepts or basing his consideration on biased documentation. He also appealed that the mentioned paragraphs should be deleted. At this point, the Chairman intervened to state that such a decision was not the Commission’s to take, but that the views regarding the deletion of the mentioned paragraphs would be conveyed to the Special Rapporteur.53 Olcay yielded, asserting that “if a sufficient number of members shared his delegation’s point of view, that would serve as an indication to the Special Rapporteur as to how he should proceed.”54 The outcome of the debate would turn out to be quite satisfactory for Olcay’s intentions. What followed was an almost unanimous confirmation of the Turkish delegation’s view, although with various degrees of consent. The Pakistani member called Paragraph 30 a “historical distortion” while the “account of the events given by the representative of Turkey was more accurate.”55 The Italian member

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agreed with the observation of the Turkish delegation, stating that the historical survey should instead be “confined to events that had occurred in relatively recent times.”56 The Iraqi representative asserted that the “basic fault in the Special Rapporteur’s approach was that he attempted to apply the modern concept of genocide to historical examples taken at random without examining their social and economic background, thus making a series of unfounded value judgments.”57 The Tunisian member, Mr. Driss, also agreed with the Turkish view, stressing that the claim of the Armenian Genocide was “based on studies carried out by Armenian themselves.”58 That the definition of the term genocide was not only uncertain but also unknown to some of these speakers was abundantly demonstrated by the concluding words of Driss, exclaiming that “and, in any case, although allegations of genocide were made, the Armenian people were still in existence.”59 Apparently, the applicability of the term required a total annihilation of the targeted group, a common misinterpretation of the UN Convention. In fact, the UN Convention has explicitly taken into account that the issue of quantity has no relevance to the applicability of the term, hence the formulation “in whole or in part.”60 Nonetheless, the Nigerian, Austrian and Romanian representatives also supported the Turkish view.61 The UK representative did not mention the issue at all.62 Taking a more moderate approach, the French member considered the Turkish argumentation as valid, but pointed out the independence of the Special Rapporteur.63 The Commission had no right to censor the report but could only have a guiding influence on the work of the Sub-Commission.64 The expert member of United States, Philip E. Hoffman, expressed a rather balanced statement as well. Referring to the Turkish statement, Hoffman argued that it would raise “a very sensitive issue which could set a troublesome precedent.”65 Although the “Secretariat must be allowed as much latitude as possible in preparing its reports” one needed “to avoid statements susceptible to a charge that they were based on biased sources.”66 Hoffman agreed in the criticism that the sources cited in Paragraph 30 represented the Armenian point of view, while the Turkish view had not been taken into account. Raising the issue of objectivity, he stressed that in similar historical studies “care must be taken to ensure that a balanced picture was presented.”67 The statement of the Iranian member, Ganji, was also aligned with this view.68 The Ecuadorian expert, Martinez Cobo, objected to the inclusion of the historical survey too, but not due to the Armenian case. Instead it was the stated “role of the Catholic Church in religious wars and the condition of the indigenous Indian population in Latin America during colonial times” which was the concern.69 This politicization of a seemingly “impartial” UN body was to become much more conspicuous in the future sessions. The majority wish to delete Paragraph 30 in the final version was reflected in the Report on the Thirtieth Session of Commission on Human Rights (March 8 1974).70 Thus, in the next revision of the report, presented as soon as June 17 1974, the entire historical survey had been deleted, seemingly mainly due to the mentioned Armenian case and the expressed views during the March session.71

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Despite the confirmed necessity of the independence of the Rapporteur and the need to give him latitude for his work, it had certainly set the bar in regard to the interpretation of the definition of genocide, but more importantly its application to historical cases and the Armenian events specifically. Third review of the Report, 1975 However, by the next review of the Report a year later (September 9 1975), the argumentation had shifted dramatically. The inclusion of the Armenian case was not only favored, but even demanded. First among the speakers was Branimir M. Jankovic (Yugoslavia), who pointed out the significance of the historicity of the crime, especially since its occurrence had “neither started nor finished with the Second World War, but was even continuing.”72 Benjamin Whitaker (UK), turning to the “sacrosanct nature of the independence of the rapporteurs,” objected the proposed removal of Paragraph 30, based on three grounds: 1) that the factual and historical truth was reflected in the impartiality of the sources, such as Arnold Toynbee and Fridtjof Nansen, but also the fact that “it should further be noted that no apology or restitution had ever been extended to the victims.” 2) That while the critics had justified the deletion of the Armenian case by asserting that it “was unfair to cite specific cases when the list was incomplete,” there had indeed not been any objections to the specific cases in Paragraphs 28, 29 and 31 which, unlike Paragraph 30 (the Armenian Genocide), also mentioned specific nations or states as the perpetrator.73 3) That many deliberations had argued that the past should be buried, that old wars should not be re-fought and that it was best to concentrate on existing problems, with a view to providing better conditions for the future. Yet it was surely impossible to tackle existing problems, or to improve conditions for the future, without drawing on the experience of past mistakes; it had been rightly said that those who did not understand the past were condemned to repeat it. It was the SubCommission’s duty to diagnose the disease before prescribing the cure, and that could best be done by examining objectively the events of the past.74 Simply put, Whitaker was pointing out the significance of recognzing the known facts as a prerequisite for moving forward, in this case the issue of genocide prevention. Emphasizing another aspect of the significance of the term’s historicity, the Nigerian member, Durlong, complained about the Report’s lack of mention of the concept of crimes against humanity, “to which it [the concept of genocide] was not only related, but from which it seemed to have originated.”75 Referring to the Fourth Hague Convention, Durlong pointed out that the term “‘crimes against humanity’ seemed to have been first used in an official document during the First World War [Entente ultimatum to the Ottoman

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Government] and had finally been incorporated in the Charter of Nürenberg Tribunal.” 76 Thus, he was opposed to the omission of the Armenian case since “to single out paragraph 30 of the first progress report for deletion would, in addition to constituting a gross violation of human rights and of the principle of non-discrimination, set a very dangerous precedent.”77 By mentioning the issue of “crimes against humanity” and their importance to the Nürenberg Trials, Durlong came closest to the relevance of the Armenian case and the UN Genocide Convention. In fact, this relevance had already been established during 1948 in another UN report, namely the UN War Crimes Report, designated E/CN.4/W.20. The UN War Crimes Report, 1948 In both Ruhashyankiko’s and later as we will see in Whitaker’s report, the main argument used for contesting the inclusion of the Armenian events as a case of genocide was the issue of them being “historically disputed” and “remote.” However, it was also a case of the nature of the events and the difference between “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” as the Turkish delegate Olcay had stated during the second review session of Ruhashyankiko’s report on March 6 1974. Remarkably, what both Rapporteurs had overlooked was an existing report, perhaps somewhat ironically proposed and provisioned by the UN Commission on Human Rights, namely the report entitled “Information Concerning Human Rights Arising from Trials of War Criminals.”78 On May 15 1948, the Economic and Social Council presented a report prepared by the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), set up in London (October 1943) to collect and collate information on war crimes and war criminals.79 The 384-page report was the result of a resolution adopted on July 21 1946, proposed by the Commission on Human Rights.80 Paragraph 4 of the Resolution mentioned the request by the SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations to make arrangements for “the collection and publication of information concerning human rights arising from trials of war criminals, quislings and traitors, and in particular from the Nürnberg and Tokyo Trials.”81 The report had been prepared by members of the Legal Staff of the Commission.82 The report began with an introductory part, contemplating on Article 6 and Article 5 of the Charters of the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo respectively, regarding the determination of “three types of crimes: (a) crimes against peace, (b) war crimes, and (c) crimes against humanity.”83 To this end, the report began with a historical background of the mentioned terms, beginning with the fourth Hague Convention of 1907 (Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land), pointing out it was an instrument dealing per definitionem with war crimes in the technical and narrower sense, and the “interests of humanity” are conceived in it only as

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The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide the object which the laws and customs of war are intended to serve, and the “laws of humanity” only as one of the sources of the law of nations.84

In Part II of the introductory section, the report turned to the historical development in the area, starting with “Developments During the First World War: 1. The Massacres of the Armenians in Turkey.”85 Mentioning the Entente ultimatum of May 24 1915, denouncing the “crimes against humanity and civilization,” the report noted that: As will be shown later in more detail, the warning given to the Turkish Government on this occasion by the Governments of the Triple Entente dealt precisely with one of the types of acts which the modern term “crimes against humanity” is intended to cover, namely, inhumane acts committed by a government against its own subjects.86 The lengthy list of charges put forward by the 1919 Commission of Responsibilities (CoR),87 was divided in two types of categories, one pertaining to “violations of the laws and customs of war” and another as offenses committed on the territory of Germany and her Allies against their own nationals. In particular, the Commission included among its findings information on various crimes violating the rights of civilians, such as those committed by Turkish and German authorities against Turkish subjects (i.e. the Armenians and the Greek speaking population of Turkey).… It would appear that the latter set of offenses were qualified by the Commission as crimes coming within the notion of violations of the laws of humanity.88 The CoR had thus concluded that in regard to the committed offenses all persons belonging to enemy countries, however high their position may have been, without distinction of rank, including chiefs of States, who have been guilty of offenses against the laws and customs of war or the laws of humanity, are liable to criminal prosecution.89 The CoR had recommended that an “International Court (‘High Tribunal’) should be constituted for the trials of outrages falling under four special categories of charges of violations of the laws and customs of war and of the laws of humanity.”90 What is more significant regarding the Armenian Genocide, was the UN Report’s explicit separation of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity,” namely that the violations of the laws and customs of war … and offenses against the laws of humanity … correspond generally speaking to “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”, as they are distinguished in the two Charters of 1945 and 1946 and in the Control Council Law No. 10. Thus, in 1919

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we find for the first time the specific juxtaposition of these two types of offenses.91 The 1948 Report duly noted that in the subsequent Peace Treaties with Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria, the reference to “laws of humanity” do not appear in the text, while the charges are based on violations of the “laws and customs of war.”92 However, the first peace treaty with Turkey, namely, the Treaty of Sevres, signed on 10 August 1920, contained in addition to the provisions dealing with violations of the laws and customs of war (Articles 226–228 corresponding to Articles 228–230 of the Treaty of Versailles) a further provision, Article 230, by which the Turkish Government undertook to hand over the Allied Powers the persons responsible for the massacres committed during the war on Turkish territory.93 The Report stated that Article 230 was obviously in conformity with the Allied note of May 24 1915, adding that “[t]his article constitutes therefore a precedent for Articles 6 (c) and 5 (c) of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, and offers an example of one of the categories of ‘crimes against humanity’ as understood by these enactments.”94 Nonetheless, the Report also noted that the Sèvres Treaty had not been ratified and was replaced with the Lausanne Treaty “which did not contain provisions respecting the punishment of war crimes, but was accompanied by a ‘Declaration of Amnesty’ for all offences committed between 1 August 1914, and 20 November 1922.”95 The report was approved by the Sub-Committee as well as the Commission for Human Rights and sent to ECOSOC for approval.96 Evidently, in 1948, the reporters did not feel obliged to establish the historic aspects of the issue, but merely pointed out the legal aspects and the nature of the issue at hand as a fact. The passage of time had certainly had its toll. What in 1948 was considered as an uncontested legal precedent in the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, thus also in the future UN Genocide Convention, had in 1979 (and later in 1985) become not only history but also disputed. From then on it would be the historiography, not the legal grounds, which would heavily influence every aspect of the Armenian Genocide and its recognition. Notwithstanding, these de facto legal examinations, as well as those in the future, played a significant role in the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide and would have tangible impact on the reasoning surrounding the ongoing quarrel concerning its definition and recognition within both political and academic areas. The War Crimes Commission Report did not pass Turkey unnoticed and Ankara did try to intervene to stop the Armenian inclusion. A British Foreign Office document shows that the Turkish Ambassador to the UK attempted to persuade them to omit the Armenian case from the report, but in vain.97 In a letter dated July 29 1948, the UK representative to ECOSOC and UNCHR, R.

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P. Heppel, informed the Foreign Ministry that the Turks had been “offended” by the inclusion of the passage about the fate of the Armenians.98 Heppel noted that the Turkish representative “ought at that stage to have provided himself with a copy of this bulky document [E/CN.4/W.20], which in all probability was not issued to him in the ordinary course of events.”99 Since the Council did not alter the text already approved by the Human Rights Commission, the report with the Armenian mentioning had been approved and “issued by the Secretariat as a restricted document on the 15th May, 1948.”100 However, the Council was preparing a supplement and Heppel noted that if a second edition of the report was to be issued, “the Turks will no doubt have an opportunity of putting forward their point of view.”101 The very next day, on July 30 1948, the British Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Orme G. Sargent, wrote that the Turkish Ambassador to the UK had warned the British Government that once the UN report was brought before the ECOSOC, the Turkish representative would propose the omission of the passages dealing with events during [and] following the first world war on the ground that they are completely irrelevant to the present study which was intended merely to deal with developments arising out of the trial of war criminals after the second world war.102 The Turkish ambassador had “hinted that he hoped that” the British would give their support in the matter. However, while not making any promises, Sargent did not understand why the present Turkish Government should go out of their way to try and defend the actions of the previous Ottoman régime which had been swept away after the first world war. I should have thought their position would have been stronger if they had taken the line that it was no concern of theirs since the present Turkish Government had, as everyone knew, entirely broken with the past and the methods of the old régime.103 The Turkish Ambassador viewed the insertion of the Armenian case as “sinister,” assuring Sargent that it was the work of the Polish member of the War Crimes Commission who had “been obviously instructed to insert this passage by the Soviet Government.” 104 The Polish member was Dr. Jerzy Litawski,105 whose work had been “highly commended by Sir Robert Craigie … who said that the United Nations could find no better person to do the work which is still outstanding on the Human Rights aspect of the War Crimes trials.”106 Doubting that Litawski had any sinister motives behind the inclusion, the British, however, opened for the possibility of supporting the Turks if they were to raise the issue at the ECOSOC session. Even though the Turks were overreacting to the document’s content, the British argued, it did “seem as if the compilers and the document have been unnecessarily officious.”107 Once again,

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it seemed that the criticism, this time of being “officious,” did not refer to the challenging of the information as incorrect, but rather to the enticed objections due to the accusatory nature of the example. The whole ordeal resulted in a directive to the UK delegation in Geneva (with copies to the UK representations in New York, Washington and Ankara), in which Heppel gave information about the background of the document, its content, the Turkish protest, the reaction of Under-Secretary Sargent and the fact that the Armenian case was believed by the Commission to be “relevant as background.”108 In an interesting reflection on the nature of the matter, Heppel said that: “My own view is that if the Turkish Delegation raise this matter they will be gratuitously advertising the very matters to the mention of which they object.”109 From a contemporary point of view, the Turks would simply be better off keeping their silence instead of dragging attention to the issue more than necessary. The directive ended with the following note: If, however, you find that Turkish Delegation are not amenable to advice in the above sense, they might perhaps be counselled to content themselves with requesting that a protest by them be recorded in the minutes, and you may support such a request. Line apparently contemplated by them as outlined in paragraph 3 above [omission of the mentioning] seems wholly out of proportion, even if there is some technical justification for their feeling hurt.110 Once again, it was rather the feelings and the image of the current Turkish Republic which were supposed to be the factors taken into account rather than the factual grounds. There are no records or indications of such a protest being filed on behalf of Turkey. Searching through the literature, the knowledge about the aforementioned report seems to be quite limited in general, but almost non-existing in connection with the discussions regarding the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Harut Sassounian’s edited booklet The Armenian Genocide: Documents and declarations, 1915–1995 (1995), containing a collection of similar reports and resolutions seems to be the only publication in which excerpts of the report is mentioned.111 Although these very excerpts are stated as referencetext by the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute and among the “Official Reports” on the homepage of Armenian National Institute,112 the significance of the report in this context seems to have been grossly overlooked. There exists a lengthy correspondence between the then principal of the Armenian Evangelical College in Beirut, Zaven M. Messerlian, and UN officials, showing that Messerlian (in late 1970s) did know of the report and had notified the UN General Assembly as well as the Commission on Human Rights and the Sub-Commission about the report.113 Later, Messerlian also asked the UN officials to bring the existence of the report to the attention of at least Benjamin Whitaker upon the latter’s appointment as Special Rapporteur.114 However, despite assurances about doing so, Whitaker, as we will see, seems

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to have been unaware of the report. Considering the relevant nature of the report, especially in the light of the criticism both UN Rapporteurs received for having included the Armenian case as an example of genocide, one would suppose that Whitaker, much like Ruhashyankiko, could have used the report to justify the inclusion of the Armenian case as an example. International reputation versus factual grounds Returning to the Ruhashyankiko Report’s review (September 9 1975), the statement of the Egyptian expert member of the commission, Ahmed M. Khalifa was perhaps among the most illuminating in regard to the main quandary: The 1915 incidents between Turks and Armenians constituted a historical fact, but, in a civilized international community, consideration should also be given to the desire of a State not to be defamed on account of its past acts, which had been perpetrated by a previous generation and were probably regretted by the present generation.115 This statement pretty much depicted the entire intricacy of the issue in a nutshell: the historical fact of the events versus the defamation of the current Turkish Republic. Khalifa’s statement was also interesting since according to the Turkish official standpoint there were no crimes to regret. In conclusion Khalifa proposed postponing the consideration of “side-issues such as the 1915 incidents” in order to concentrate on the core issue of the study; “otherwise, it might become involved in an awkward political situation.”116 As it turned out, the Sub-Commission was already entangled in such a situation. Others were more affirmative of the inclusion of the Armenian case. The USSR member, Smirnov, without explicitly referring to the Armenian case in particular, “expressed great appreciation” for the Special Rapporteur’s effort to present a historical background of the term genocide and did not see any reason for its exclusion from the report.117 Turning to the issue of precedent and temporal order in regard to the genesis of the legal term, the Mexican member, Matínez Báez, made the following statement as opposition to the omission of Paragraph 30: If the views expressed by the members of the Commission on Human Rights in connection with paragraph 30 of the first progress report had been based on the fact that the historical situation referred to in that paragraph had occurred before the formulation of the contemporary notion of genocide, the implication would be that in the absence of law no crime could exist and no punishment could be applied. In accordance with that criterion, the violent death of Abel at the hands of Cain would have been neither a crime nor a case of fratricide, but merely the decease of one of the sons of Adam.118

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This is indeed an interesting reflection on the legal principle of nullum crimen sine lege, nulla poena sine lege (no crime without a law, no penalty without a law) which is often used for dismissing the application of the term genocide to WWI events. Such a principle would in fact then be equally applicable in dismissing the term genocide in the case of the Holocaust. Other members such as Théo van Boven (Netherlands), Capotorti (Italy) and the Romanian member instead emphasized the integrity and independence of the Special Rapporteur. All views tended to give rise to discussions and controversy, but this did not imply that the studies should be conducted in abstract. Thus, the Rapporteur should be “permitted to take up controversial questions, not in order to condemn a particular Government, but with a view to establishing the truth.”119 That the core of the issue was not so much a factual or legal controversy but a political one was emphasized among others by the Austrian representative, Nettel, who expressed his surprise about the ongoing debate, which he considered settled at the previous meeting. Nonetheless, Nettel noted that the “disturbing aspect of the discussion was that it had definite political overtones.”120 According to Nettel, It had been said that, since the issue raised in paragraph 30 was of a political and controversial nature, it should not be referred to in the report. He could not agree with that view because virtually all cases of genocide throughout history had been political and controversial in nature and had been the subject of emotional attempts at justification. In his opinion, the approach adopted by Special Rapporteur was perfectly satisfactory.121 Nonetheless, there were still representatives who objected to the inclusion. The Iraqi member, Mr. Al-Zahawi (diplomat), opposed the inclusion, arguing that “what possible good could it do to the 60,000 Armenians living in Turkey today to revive old quarrels by recalling the historical case of the Armenians?”122 The entire discussion seemed to have diverted from the very core issue about the nature of the events and the definition of the term genocide. Calling the historical examples controversial, Al-Zahawi called for the rapporteur to avoid statements which would “inflame passions or lead to new tensions. The Sub-Commission’s purpose should be to bring about some improvement by comparison with the past, and not to provide arguments with regard to past disputes.”123 Furthermore, he pointed out that the report could not refer to past history “in summary fashion – all the historical circumstances must be alluded to.” In the Armenian case, the suffering of the Turks must be included as well.124 The argumentation of the Pakistani member, Mahmood (diplomat), was also along the same lines, arguing that the conclusion drawn was not “based on an accurate evaluation of the situation with the versions of both sides taken into account.”125 Contending the objectivity of the used sources, Mahmood pointed out that there were “a number of independent works – not written by Turks – which affirmed that

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Turks as well as Armenians had been massacred. He had a list of 27 such works which the Special Rapporteur might wish to consult.”126 There is nothing pointing to Ruhashyankiko using those works. At this stage, by the invitation of the Chairman, the observer of Turkey, Arim, expressing his full respect for the independence of the Special Rapporteur, assured that “his intention in asking certain questions was merely to assist him [the Rapporteur] in his task.”127 Turning to the wording in Paragraph 30, Arim pointed out that it did not correspond with historical facts. Although some “regrettable” events had occurred during WWI, the victims, however, were not only Christian Armenians, but also Muslim Turks. “Moreover,” Arim added, “at that time, the European imperialists were making intense efforts to destroy the Moslem Ottoman Empire.”128 The Armenians had subsequently formed an insurrectional movement, which not only attacked the Ottoman Army, but also the Muslim population. “That struggle between different ethnic groups was to be regretted, but not unilaterally; paragraph 30 was biased.”129 Arim called for the rapporteur to “aim at complete historical objectivity, which would lead one to deplore the fate of all victims.” While the draft report contained the name of Asian conquerors as examples, “those of the Aryan leaders, who had committed similar acts, were not mentioned.” In Arim’s opinion “either everything or nothing should be included. If the Special Rapporteur made choices, they would be political choices.”130 Thus, the omission became once again a rhetorical question: since it was evidently impossible to include an absolutely exhaustive list, there was no room for mentioning the known documented cases either. As the debate went on, it became more evident that the bickering was less about a general view regarding the inclusion of historical cases than politically motivated specifically towards the Armenian case. This was pointed out by Shavarsh Toriguian, the observer from the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, who stated that while Paragraphs 28, 29 and 31 of the same report contained mentioning of other cases of genocide, no one had explicitly asked for their deletion. “The suggestion to delete paragraph 30 had been made by the representative of a State whose sensitivity had apparently been affected.”131 Recounting testimonies and reports by Toynbee, Nansen, Morgenthau, Gibbons, Lepsius and Barbi, as well as “thousands of documents on the subject in the Foreign Ministry archives of the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Austria,” Toriguian claimed them to be facts demonstrating “the truth of the statements contained in paragraph 30.”132 The Armenian case would, in Toriguian’s mind, even serve as a useful study for the Report concerning court rulings relating to genocide as well as its causes.133 Until this point no speaker during the session had alluded to the partiality of any other speaker. However, replying to Toriguian’s statement, Arim waved it aside as biased, “which was not surprising in view of the speaker’s Armenian origin,” assuring that “Turkey would provide the Special Rapporteur with all the material available to assist him in carrying out his task impartially.”134 The meeting was concluded by short statements from

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Ruhashyankiko, assuring that all views would be taken into account, a stand shared by the Chairman who, noting that although the Special Rapporteur was independent, the expressed suggestions should be taken into consideration in order to sufficiently present a broad view of all aspects in similar controversial problems.135 A noteworthy point is that this review session (September 1975), compared to the previous one (March 1974), was overwhelmingly positive towards the inclusion of the Armenian case. What had changed? Although some of the initial Armenian armed actions had been conducted in 1975, the assassinations of the Turkish diplomats had not yet commenced,136 thus one could not ascribe this shift to any such factor. One event on the international arena, which might have had a political and diplomatic impact on the question, was the Turkish invasion of Cyprus during July and August 1974. The military invasion provoked more than half a dozen UN Security resolutions condemning the “occupation of Cyprus,” although never singling out Turkey or condemning any side en clair.137 There were however, no overt indications that this event would have enticed any “anti-Turkish” stance in the Sub-Commission. There was, however, one conspicuous difference which could explain this shift, namely the composition of the two meetings, hinted by the complaint stated by the Dutch expert during the 1286th meeting back in 1974. The statement by Théo van Boven (Netherlands), the expert member of the SubCommission, unlike almost all previous speakers in the debate who chastised the inclusion of the Armenian case, mentioned something entirely different. This concerned the participation of the alternates in the Sub-Commission in the debate instead of the ordinary legal expert members. He pointed out that: Since its [Sub-Commission] members were elected by the Commission in their individual capacity as experts, he doubted whether they could be replaced by alternates who were not elected and who were often government officials. He felt that rule 70 of the rules of procedure, which governed the status of alternates, was applicable only to sub-commissions composed of government representatives. It seemed strange that the replacement of an expert by an alternate required the consent of his Government.138 Indeed, an examination of the speakers during the two review meetings confirms this aspect quite clearly: an overwhelming majority of the speakers in the previous meeting in March 1974, who heavily criticized the inclusion of Paragraph 30, were alternates (i.e. diplomats and government representatives). In stark contrast, the statements during the following meetings (September 1975 and September 1978, but also back in September 1973), overwhelmingly in favor of including Paragraph 30, were given by the elected legal expert members of the Sub-Commission. Although it would be naïve to believe that the experts were immune to their respective governments’ influence or regarding their national interests,139 their participation and statements were supposed to

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be in their capacity of independent legal experts on the area rather than as spokespersons of their governments and their corresponding policies. Final version of the report and debate, July 1978 Ruhashyankiko presented the final version of the report on July 4 1978, which continued to exclude the Armenian case as example of earlier committed genocides.140 The Sub-Commission reviewed the report on September 15.141 The records show that the criticism had now moved heavily against the omission of the Armenian Genocide to such a degree that the Sub-Commission was almost unanimous on this issue. Almost all representatives for the NGOs at the meeting stated their regret that the Rapporteur had excluded the Armenian Genocide from the final report and some even formally requested for its re-inclusion. Only two representatives spoke in favor of the omission: the observer from Turkey, Mr. Toperi, and the Turkish expert member of the Sub-Commission, Mr. Hicri Fisek, professor of the School of Law at the University of Ankara.142 The Observer for International Federation for Human Rights, Mr. Wolf, stated that [i]t would be contrary to historical truth and objectivity for a United Nations study on genocide to omit to mention the Armenian case, which was fully consistent with the provisions of articles II and IV of the 1948 Convention (E/CN.4/Sub.2/416, para. 42).143 In one of the few elaborations mentioning the legal relevance of the WWI events, Wolf noted that “long before the Nuremberg trials, the Turkish military tribunal at Istanbul had tried war criminals and crimes against humanity in 1919 and 1920.”144 Expert members of Argentina and France also requested the mentioning of the Armenian case in the historical survey.145 Leonel Dadiani, the alternate member for Soviet Union, agreeing with the Argentinian expert on the issue of discontinuity between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic noted that the inclusion of the Armenian case should not offend the national feelings of the Turks since the current government could not be held accountable for the actions of the then Ottoman predecessor.146 Arguing about the significance of the historical learning, the Greek expert member, Erica-Irene Daes, stated that: In order to improve the condition of man in the modern world, it was necessary to study history and learn from it. Where facts had been universally confirmed and condemned they should not be deleted from contemporary documents. She therefore formally proposed that the Special Rapporteur should include a reference to the Armenian massacres in his historical survey.147

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Trying to make the discussion null and superfluous, the Turkish expert member, Fisek expressed surprise that at a meeting concerned with measures to prevent the crime of genocide, there had been an attack on the policy of the Ottoman Empire. The acts referred to had occurred in wartime in a region bounded by enemy territory, and the persons responsible for those acts had been tried; those convicted, had suffered capital punishment. He saw no need to go back so far in history.148 Again, the issue of objectivity was brought up. Following the lead of Turkish speakers in preceding Sub-Commission meetings, while alluding to the Rapporteur’s integrity and independence, Fisek emphasized the necessity of the included sources being “complete and based on documents of unquestionable objectivity.”149 Fisek’s statement was backed up by the observer from Turkey, Mr. Toperi, who pointed out that the main objective of the study should be the elimination of genocide. In his view, since the historical past of the report had been omitted in its whole, he did not comprehend the wishes of previous speakers to reintroduce the Armenian case.150 He continued by adding that even though Armenians might justifiably feel resentment over the events of 1915, but the Sub-Commission should adopt a more detached attitude. It was absurd to speak of genocide: according to the latest authoritative and objective study of the Ottoman Empire, there was no evidence that the Government had had any intention of destroying the Armenians as a people. It could be accused of irresponsibility, but not of genocide. “Massacre” was not an accurate description of what had happened during the chaotic circumstances of war.151 Furthermore, referring to Fisek’s statement, Toperi reminded the Sub-Commission that those found guilty had been punished, concluding his remarks by stating that “[t]he references and sources mentioned were totally biased and even contradictory. The Sub-Commission should bear in mind that many objective documents existed and he could provide a bibliography to anyone interested.”152 No such amendments were ever made. The remaining three speakers (expert members from the USA and Jordan and the observer from the Anti-Slavery Society for the Protection of Human Rights) were neutral and did not address the subject. The American neutrality stance, however, needs a small remark. The dynamics of the politics of memory, embodied by the political overtones were observed by Leo Kuper, who ascribed the neutrality of the United States in the recognition game to an ongoing political bargaining: A curious footnote to this episode is provided by a former representative of the U.S.A. on the Commission. When the Turks had lobbied for the

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Finally, Ruhashyankiko had the concluding statement. With regard to the omission of the Armenian Genocide he stated that: A large volume of correspondence had been received concerning the Armenian question. When work had begun on the historical part of the study, it had been suggested that as many cases as possible should be reviewed. Many members of the Sub-Commission had been opposed to that idea, however, and eventually a number of cases considered to be beyond doubt had been taken up. Concern had been expressed that the study on genocide might be diverted from its intended course and lose its essential purpose. Consequently, it had been decided, to retain the massacre of the Jews under Nazism, because that case was known to all and no objections had been raised; but other cases had been omitted because it was impossible to compile an exhaustive-list, because it was important to maintain unity within the international community in regard to genocide, and because in many cases to delve into the past might re-open old wounds which were now healing.154 In Leo Kuper’s words, “The historical section had been collapsed down to the Nazi genocide. The Turkish genocide had disappeared down the memory hole.”155 The deletion seemed to Ruhashyankiko to be the “only logical” alternative even though it was done in obvious contradiction to his own initial statement about the existing information in support of the inclusion. In 1973, he had included the Armenian case due to its “relatively full documentation;” now in his concluding words he was defending that choice as “considered to be beyond doubt” an example of genocide in the modern era. However, he concluded, if the Sub-Commission considered that the historical chapter of the study should include all cases, he suggested that it should take a formal decision to review the chapter and to include, for example, the Armenian case. He would however, need to have the necessary evidence.156 Thus, the deletion was not due to shortage of information but in order to “maintain unity within the international community.”157 In addition, he was delegating the responsibility of the inclusion of the Armenian case to the SubCommission and requiring “the necessary evidence” for it. To assert that the exclusion was done so as not to “re-open old wounds which were now healing,” was quite an ironic statement given the fact that this was in the midst of the ongoing assassination campaign of Turkish diplomats, which most

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probably impacted the decision. Thus, the deletion was yet again due to political considerations rather than factual. A summary of the session, entitled The Report on the Thirty-Fifth Session of the Commission on Human Rights (March 1979), contained two items, one noting that “a number of representatives wanted to include in the final version of the study” the omitted Paragraph 30.158 While stressing that the present Turkish Government was not responsible for the described events, “It was felt that the inclusion of the paragraph was necessary from the point of view of historical truth.”159 The document also noted that “one representative and one observer” were satisfied with the report and they considered that the “historical analyses were unnecessary.” In conclusion, the chairman made the following statement which the commission agreed to as well: I have received many letters and messages of all kinds from different countries concerning the passages of an historical nature which have been omitted from the report on genocide. In Geneva a number of groups and private individuals have made representations to me on the subject of these omissions, whose effects are assuming proportions undoubtedly greater than the author had anticipated. In the circumstances, I venture to express the hope that Mr. Ruhashyankiko will kindly take account of those communications and the statements which we have heard in the debate on agenda item 22 when he comes to put the final touches to the text of his report.160 On March 14 1979, by the proposal of the Chairman, the Commission decided, without a vote, to “take note” of the report of the Sub-Commission’s report; they never took a formal decision on the matter.161 Despite the aforementioned calls from several members of the Sub-Commission, as well as the explicit statement of the Chairman of the Commission, to re-include the Armenian case in the study, Ruhashyankiko did not do so. William Schabas writes that “Ruhashyankiko’s unpardonable wavering on the Armenian Genocide cast a shadow over what was otherwise an extremely helpful and well-researched report.”162 The Commission also decided that the study “should be given the widest possible distribution.”163 However, as Schabas notes, despite the recommendation by UNCHR, the foreseen distribution never took place, leaving copies of the report to be found only in the research libraries of some major universities.164 The Ruhashyankiko Report had nonetheless presented the first instance of Turkish State denial successfully interfering in a legal examination of the Armenian case in modern time: the omission of the case from the report. The episode vividly demonstrated how history, law and politics were interlaced in assessing past events and used as instruments in the process of the politics of memory. By the time of the completion of the Ruhashyankiko Report, though, the Armenian question had been fully propelled onto the international political

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agenda by the waves of assassinations targeting Turkish diplomats around the world, especially in Europe and the US.

The iron ladle: armed terrorism as political leverage January 27, 1973, was a historical date, the beginning of a new era in the Armenian history, the beginning of Armenian demands coming from foreign soil, in the same way that 15 years later, February 20, 1988, became the beginning for Armenian demands from the Armenian soil.… G. Yanikian’s individual outburst transformed into a collective will. As its result, the Armenian Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia was born on January 20, 1975.165

So reads the preface to Gourgen Yanikian’s book, signed by the Armenian Popular Movement, usually regarded as the present-day political wing of the Armenian Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia, ASALA. This was the name foremost associated with the waves of assassination and terrorist acts mainly targeting Turkish diplomats around the world between 1975 and 1987. Although virtually no one would encourage the actions, at least openly, the terrorist actions did act as a catalyst in the process of the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide, forcing forth a transdisciplinary response by both political considerations, legal examinations but perhaps even more important, encouraging scholarly research of the WWI events in order to assess and understand the cause of these violent acts. As already mentioned, while Yanikian’s deed did not achieve the stir he had hoped for, it might very well have been the necessary spark required for the genesis of the Armenian terrorism conducted by groups such as ASALA, JCAG (Justice Commandos for Armenian Genocide), ARA (Armenian Revolutionary Army) and other subsidiary groups. The linkage between ASALA and Yanikian was apparent in the initial name of ASALA, namely “Prisoner Gourgen Yanikian’s Group.” The significance of Yanikian’s deed in the creation of the Armenian armed groups is captured by Anat Kurz and Ariel Merari who noted that, Yanikian’s deed might very well have been gradually forgotten “had it not in fact catalyzed a chain of events which turned it, and its perpetrator, into a symbol signifying the end of the conspiracy of silence which since 1915 had surrounded the holocaust of the Armenian people.”166 Hagop Hagopian, the alleged founder and leader of ASALA, used Yanikian’s deed as a rallying point for establishing the organization.167 In general, it seems that the period between 1965 and 1975, i.e. from the 50th commemoration until the first terrorist act by an organization (Yanikian’s individual act excluded), was an incubation time for these sentiments to ferment, mature and gather momentum before erupting in the violent manner they did. ASALA was in fact, at least during the 1970s and the early 1980s, considered among the most severe threats internationally by security agencies. One major contributing factor, especially in regard to the base of ASALA

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being in Beirut, Lebanon, was the surge of political terrorism in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The second factor was the “resurgence of Marxist and Trotskyist left among the student populations of all the industrial countries.”168 These currents were in line with the prevailing upsurge of radical political terrorism in Middle East and Europe, occurring since the late 1960s. Nonetheless, other more recent tangible factors also played a decisive role. Kurz and Merari partly ascribe the radicalization of the Armenian youth and the emergence of ASALA to the omission of the Armenian case in the Ruhashyankiko report. The omission caused bitterness among the Armenian establishment, which in turn further alienated the Armenian youth from the traditional political parties and their political approach, a process which had already started in the 1960s.169 The omission of the Armenian case from the Ruhashyankiko report was interpreted as “proof that the world was forgetting the Armenians.”170 Something radical must be done to capture the international attention and once again the memories of the Nemesis Operation during the 1920s and Yanikian’s deed presented a viable alternative. It should also be noted that the threat of falling into oblivion was not confined to the relation between the international community and Armenians but perceived as an internal concern as well. The diaspora Armenians’ ability to adapt to the host society had proven quite successful in their integration into their respective new homelands. This came, however, with a price, namely the partial loss of identity, e.g. noticeably by the fact that many Armenian youths no longer could speak Armenian, especially valid for the diaspora in Western countries, most noticeable in France and USA.171 The Armenian youth in the diaspora was on the verge of forgetting their heritage and national identity and becoming assimilated.172 They were falling victims to the white genocide. The preservation of identity was thereby directly connected to the responsibility of remembering, which in turn implied seeking justice for the event that had dispersed the Armenians around the world, in exile from their homeland. The rediscovery of his national identity was most probably the first step for one of the most well-known names associated with this era, namely Monte Melkonian and his journey to become a member of ASALA. Later he became a commander of the Armenian force in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and was proclaimed national hero,173 “the ‘Che Guevara’ of the Armenian people.”174 Born in California, Melkonian and his brother (in their teens at the time) were on a journey through Europe when a Spanish college student, teaching them the Spanish language, asked where they were from. Their response was “from California,” to which the Spanish teacher replied, “I mean, where did your ancestors come from?”175 According to his brother, this was probably the question that led Melkonian towards the path of rediscovering his Armenian heritage and history, especially the genocide and its aftermath.176 Soon, Melkonian identified himself as “diasporan Armenian” and “Armenian-American,” rather than “American-Armenian.” He considered his American nationality – a result of the genocide – as a “false identity.”177

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The frustration felt towards the Armenian establishment had been simmering for decades, although without any particular successful activity or focus. Following the 1965 commemoration, the 1970s was identified as a period of national reawakening, especially in the diaspora, a process which is partly ascribed to the realization about the failure of the political approach.178 ASALA, JCAG and their assassinations and the bombings were indeed a radical change in the approach implemented by the Armenians for an international recognition of the genocide. Until that, it was the traditional political establishment, especially in the diaspora headed by the Hnchak and Dashnak parties, who tried to achieve these goals by political means, but in vain. The fact that their mutual competition or even hostility had divided the Armenian community only amplified the obstacles, preventing them to act with a unified front.179 It is quite safe to assert that it was the accumulated memories of the past along with the frustration regarding the international community’s negligence of the Armenian fate which had a pivotal role in this violent development. In his analysis of the ASALA post-attack communiques, Francis P. Hyland asserts that it was “the memories of the genocide horrors which fueled the Armenian terrorism.”180 Going much further back in history, Hyland argued that the wrath which fueled the terrorist actions stemmed from centuries of injustice inflicted on the Armenian nation by different conquerors. Hyland went back to the beginning of the history of the Armenian nation, asserting that ASALA was not about 1915, but every case of oppression Armenians were subjected to.181 The terrorism was a manifestation for a desperate action by the public when other conventional venues to call for the decision-makers’ attention had failed. Indeed, Fernando Reinares argues that “[i]nsurrection can be, in fact, a rational weapon, when the oppression eliminates all the other means.”182 Oppression, in this case, was the politically imposed silence concerning the Armenian Genocide and the committed wrongdoings during WWI. Terrorism becomes “speaking with action.”183 As such, quite similar to the demonstration as a venue for negotiating with the elite, terrorists often aim to bring their agenda to the general public’s attention. In the Armenian case, it was the forgotten genocide. Ironically, it seems that similar terrorist acts, despite their “undemocratic” nature, are indeed dependent on functioning democratic systems, since once the terrorist actions are enacted they are foremost aimed at changing or at least affecting the political environment and decision-making by impacting public opinion in the democracy.184 Analysts such as Kurz and Merari attribute the international rediscovery of the Armenian Genocide to the actions of ASALA, regardless of whether it is condoned or condemned, as well as “the nationalist awakening among Armenian youth in the world at large.”185 Having said that, Paul Wilkinson duly notes that, generally speaking, terrorism is not usually endorsed and [i]t is almost universally agreed among the citizens of liberal democracies that the method of terrorism is morally indefensible in a free society in

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which, by definition, there are always other ways of campaigning for a cause, methods which do not involve a fundamental attack on the human rights of fellow citizens.186 True as it might be, it is hard to ignore the pivotal role these actions had for the international rediscovery of the silenced Armenian past. The distance to the events had truly made history the focal point of the problem, even from the denier’s perspective. Erich Feigl also points to history, stating it to be the “key to Armenian terror,” as well as its “only cure.”187 In Feigl’s version though, the Armenian history and presence in the region was more or less invented while the motive behind terrorism boiled down to simple revenge. Nonetheless, quite often, such similar disagreements about the memories, and the history they amount to, create divisions between groups. In some cases, this disagreement escalates, becoming the “starting point for retaliation and further victimization, particularly when incorporated within national(ist) processes of identity formation and consolidation.”188 This is probably a fitting description of the Armenian armed actions. The terrorist acts were, however, not only a spontaneous eruption of violence due to the recent past events and disagreement regarding the history but need to be viewed in a broader perspective. Khachig Tölölyan asserts that, aside from the political agenda and its ideology, “Armenian terrorism can only be properly understood in a broader cultural context. In that context, religion and popular narrative are very important factors.”189 Tölölyan adds that The terrorist can see himself not as a marginal outcast from his society but as a paradigmatic figure of its deepest values – as martyr, nahadag and witness – living and dying in the central martyrological tradition of the culture, while remaining resolutely secular, disdaining the promise and reward of any paradise.190 One such reference point in Armenian history was the battle in the fifth century for preserving Christianity as the state religion of Armenia. Indeed, the battle called Vartanank, after the supreme commander of the Armenian forces, General Vartan Mamikonian, plays a central role in Armenian culture and history. The martyrdom of Vartan Mamikonian at the battle of Avarayr is intimately related with the famous quote by the priest and the historian Yeghishe, depicting the prevailing situation: “Death unanticipated is death; death anticipated is immortality.”191 This referred to the battle of Avarayr (451), in which the numerically inferior Armenian army stood against the Persian Sasanid army of King Yazdgerd II, resolute in forcing Armenians to abandon Christianity for Zoroastrianism. The Armenians, led by the veteran General Mamikonian (who was killed in the battle), lost the encounter, but managed to inflict much heavier loss to the Persian army, forcing Yazdgerd to abandon his plans to convert the Armenians. The battle thus became a significant historic victory for Armenians and a reference point used in different

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occasions for rallying forces. One such much more recent occasion was on the evening of May 24 1918, when General Movses Silikian made an impassioned appeal to his Armenian forces, jammed between an advancing Turkish Army from north and west, while Tatar (who later would be renamed Azerbaijani) and Kurdish bands controlled the southern and eastern provinces of Caucasian Armenia. Armenians had simply nowhere to run. Heavily outnumbered, Silikian called upon the soldiers to rescue the honour of the maidens and exhorted the women to recall the heroic determination and sacrifices of their fifth-century sisters who, assisting General Vartan Mamikonian, had defended the religion and integrity of the nation. In terms apropos of the emotions of the moment, Silikian concluded: “In the name of the physical existence of this eternally tortured people, In the name of violated justice, Arise! On to the Holy War!”192 The Armenians managed the impossible, halting and forcing the Turkish army to retreat, thus saving what was left of the Armenian statehood and nation from a certain annihilation. In a sense, the members of the terrorist groups saw themselves waging a similar holy war. It was within this historical context that some part of the Armenian community, although disagreeing with the violence, condoned the armed attacks through silence. In Karlsson’s words, the social and historical context plays an important role in society’s perception of history and conveys “something essential about its understanding of the contemporary situation and about its tendency to change and development and thereby the historical change itself.”193 History becomes a “sharp-edged mental weapon for mobilizing individuals and groups of people for different cultural, political and ideological purposes.”194 Consequently, the “interpretation of the past stands in an intimate connection with the perception of the present and the anticipations on the future and that the past is, thus, constantly present in our conscious and our anticipation to meet the future.”195 It should hardly be surprising that ASALA chose to name one of its publications “Yerkate sherep,” the Iron Ladle.196 In the eyes of ASALA, their actions and the venue they had employed were nothing short of the iron ladle which Khrimian Hayrik had called for upon his return from the 1878 Berlin Congress.197 Terrorism is thereby not a monologue enacted by its perpetrators, but a dialogue between two actors, often involving an audience as well. As such, Melkonian considered their deeds of terrorism as “armed propaganda.”198 They were means to awaken the Armenian youth threatened by the white genocide.199 However, going back to the assertion of the centrality of democracy, the success of the terrorism naturally depends on the response and the actions of the target; to explain “successful terrorism one should study the behaviour of the target and not the behaviour of the terrorists.”200 Thus, terrorism becomes a form of political communication,201 fitting quite well in the

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top-down and bottom-up negotiation occurring in the politics of memory. This process is, however, not conducted on an equal basis and as R. D. Crelinsten points out “[a]s long as negotiation went on between terrorists and governments, the terrorists dominated the discussion.”202 It is indeed an interactive dialogue.203 Had Turkey openly engaged in polemic over the terrorist acts, either by negotiation or by retaliation, it would imply some sort of acknowledgement of the terrorist groups. Reports by foreign intelligence agencies, among others the CIA, included indications about the existence of Turkish counter-strike squads, which although “initially aimed at defusing criticism within the Turkish Government” was deemed to be “politically costly.”204 In the light of increasing Western criticism, at the time, towards Turkey’s martial laws and human rights abuses, the CIA report stated that it was not probable that “the government of Prime Minister Ozal would jeopardize military and economic aid from West European countries by officially and publicly sanctioning such attacks, which will be played up by the Armenian press.”205 More recent investigations connected to the so-called Ergenekon trials in 2008 . have suggested that the . Turkish National Intelligence Organization (Millî Istihbarat Tes¸kilatı, MIT) had indeed recruited and paid ultra-nationalist individuals affiliated with the Grey Wolves organization to carry out political assassinations, mostly targeting members of ASALA.206 For a brief moment, it seemed that the terrorist acts had indeed opened a window of opportunity for direct negotiations between Armenians and Turks. According to Thomas de Waal, the terrorist actions even conjured up a secret . meeting between the Turkish foreign minister, Ihsan Sabri Çag˘ layangil, and the leaders of three Armenian political parties in Zurich to discuss the assassinations, among other matters.207 Some Armenians were even excited, noting that “For the first time, the Turkish state was beginning to talk to the representatives of the nation against which it carried out a genocide.” The meeting was, however, fruitless and the whole attempt to initiate a reconciliation process died with the fall of the Demirel government.208 The armed actions had other tangible results as well, seen e.g. in the circumstance that Italian officials, in 1981, opened up for supporting Armenian demands for Turkish recognition of the genocide in exchange for ASALA’s assurance of ceasing its armed attacks on Italian territory.209 Although the terrorist acts undoubtedly brought the Armenian issue into the searchlight of international politics, and to some extent halted and reversed the assimilation process of the Armenian diaspora, it was not devoid of negative impacts on the recognition process. The primary Turkish reaction did not come in the form of retaliation (at least no official or large scale actions), but in gearing up its argumentation through its diplomatic channels and as we have noted earlier, the state-authored narrative of the WWI era, producing publications to dismiss the allegations about committed wrongful acts.210 Quite expectedly, the terrorist actions were also used as counterargument to official recognition of the genocide, since it would imply condoning these acts by giving in to the demands of their perpetrators. One such reflection was the article in Wall Street Journal on the passage of the

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Congressional Resolution 247 in 1984, calling for US recognition of the Armenian Genocide, viewing it to be “particularly ironic” since such a passage would “be widely interpreted as endorsing terrorism against the diplomats of a democratic ally.”211 Recognition was equal to endorsing terrorism. Once ASALA started targeting non-Turkish individuals, the support among Armenians and the international community diminished considerably. ASALA started to become isolated and lost the support of major Armenian organizations and movements in the diaspora.212 Being a two-edged sword, terrorism aimed to evoke awareness about the intended subject, the “forgotten genocide,” but they were quite expectedly condemned too. This is accurately reflected in the saying that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” For instance, one can recall how the UK labelled American leaders as terrorists; the initial phase of the struggle of many former colonies towards independence has been bordered with actions and armed resistance, which most probably would be labelled as terrorism.213 One such example is the African National Congress (ANC), which employed terrorism during the 1970s.214 In fact, the French court prosecuting four ASALA members, who had been caught after an assault on the Turkish Consulate in Paris (1981), disallowed the defendants to be called as terrorists, “since anyone participating in a struggle can be called a terrorist by someone who opposes that struggle.”215 The Armenian community, too, was divided on the issue. Although the majority of Armenian political leaders did not openly condone the acts, the results were to their liking. Michael Gunter presents such a view in quoting “Harry Derderian, a leading official of the Armenian National Committee (the Dashnak’s political arm),” telling a reporter: “If the terrorism is a contributing factor in getting people’s attention, I can go along with it.”216 However, far from all Armenians approved the terrorist acts and instead considered them being counter-productive and in fact endangering the existing sympathy of the West for the Armenians. This stand became more conspicuous once ASALA, instead of exclusively targeting Turkish diplomatic personnel, started attacking civilian targets and nonTurkish targets as well.217 Nonetheless, they did achieve their aims to some degree. As Archbishop Aris Shirvanian points out, although condemning the terrorist acts which claimed the lives of innocent individuals, be it Turks or not, they did bring international attention to the issue.218 Shirvanian contends that “without those acts, our cause would not have got the international attention.”219 As sad as it may be, Shirvanian duly notes that no matter how much academicians write on the subject, either Armenians themselves or in other languages by non-Armenian scholars, these writings would most probably have remained in the realm of the academy.220 Within the dynamics of the politics of memory, the terrorist actions called for an entirely different kind of attention and reaction, namely the use of public agency in order to influence the political leadership. It was the need to cope with the terrorist acts and resolve them that made the politicians interested in the issue, and it was this attention which in due course was, at least partly, responsible for the

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terrorist acts to subside. Few would, for quite understandable reasons, admit that the terrorist acts played any significant role in the international rediscovery of the Armenian Genocide, since this would indeed be a tacit approval of similar acts. Notwithstanding, it would be naïve to disregard the role of these armed attacks in bringing the Armenian issue back into the international arena. The resurfacing of the genocide on the international arena along with the need to explain and understand these violent acts in turn stimulated the need for scholarly research on the topic, which had been almost non-existing during the past six decades since WWI. The rediscovery of the genocide by the scholarly community during the 1980s would indeed become a true turning point for the Armenian question, catapulting it into being one of the most studied cases of genocide in modern times, thus providing the recognition policy (as well as its denial) with much more substantial and factual data and arguments.

The entry into academia The terrorist attacks in combination with the international debates, such as the Ruhashyankiko Report, clearly revealed the dire need to present substantial academic arguments, both in favor as well as against. 1982 was a significant year for the Armenian question as it made its proper entrance into the academic world. For the first time, the Armenian case was included in a major international Holocaust and genocide conference, the 1982 Conference held in Tel Aviv. Later that year, two institutions were born, more or less entirely dedicated to the research of the WWI events and the Armenian fate, although on each side of the issue: the Zoryan Institute in Cambridge and the Institute of Turkish Studies in Washington DC. The battle over the Armenian Genocide and its politics of memory had now fully engaged political, judicial and scholarly circles. This period would also illustrate the means which the scholarly research presents to the political leadership and how the latter can employ the scholarly resources in promoting their own agenda. The significance of the scholarly research was due to yet another factor, namely the absence of a proper official voice for the Armenian Genocide on the international arena. With Soviet Armenia curtailed by Moscow in regard to the international issues and the diaspora being dismissed as an official voice for the Armenian nation, one can assert that the academic community came to shoulder this role for the time being, heralding the issue of recognition by substantiating knowledge about WWI events. The 1982 Genocide Conference in Tel Aviv The emergence of the Armenian case in the main academic arena also became one of the characteristics of the entire issue, namely its academic

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denial and its evolution almost in symbiosis with the increasing research. As scholarly research started unearthing more information about WWI events and their genocidal nature, political denial had to cope with it, thus necessitating an academic denial of its own. The 1982 conference would also mark the entry of the Armenian Genocide into Israeli official policy in earnest, foremost characterized by “a policy of non-recognition,”222 a description equally applicable to many other states, e.g. the USA and the UK. The idea for the 1982 conference was initiated by Israel Charny, teaming up with his colleague Shamai Davidson and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to realize the project.223 The idea had matured during 1979 while Charny was about to finish his book How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide, the Human Cancer (1982) which had taken him almost ten years to finish.224 He then started planning for a major international genocide conference as a follow-up. Approximately a month prior to the conference, there was pre-registration of 600 people. However, upon knowing that the conference would also include papers and discussion sessions concerning the Armenian Genocide, the political establishment stepped in. Charny recalls that both Israeli and American governments not only exerted pressures against the conference and its organizers but actually called the known participants from the preliminary program, trying to convince them to drop out from the conference.225 This was done in addition to similar calls from individuals. A few months prior to the conference, Charny, Davidson and Wiesel started receiving “implicit and explicit messages from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs encouraging them to cancel the conference.”226 Charny recalls that the American Jewish Committee and similar major Jewish organizations around the world had been visited by Turkish officials and “were pressured by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to pull out.”227 The Israeli government tried to convince the conference organizers to cancel the conference since it “would threaten ‘the humanitarian interest of Jews.’”228 The organizers had been told by Israeli officials that Turkey had not only threatened to sever its diplomatic relations with Israel but that it was also a matter of “the lives and livelihood of the 18,000 Jews in Turkey.”229 Israeli foreign ministry spokesmen were quoted when they made their request, which was based on “considerations ‘vital to the Jewish nation’ that could not be spelled out.”230 Official Ankara categorically denied that it had threatened Turkey’s Jews as a retaliation for the inclusion of the Armenian case in the conference. This view was also confirmed by the then Israeli charge d’affaires in Ankara, Calon Liel.231 Jewish leaders in Turkey likewise denied such threats. Yako Veissid, counselor of the Chief Rabbinate in Istanbul was quoted as saying “We are shocked by the article in The New York Times saying our lives and livelihood were threatened,” adding that “[t]here was absolutely no pressure, no threat from the Turkish Government.”232 Two days later, on June 4, Turkey’s Ambassador to Washington, Sukru Elekdag, denied any threats to the Jewish community in Turkey, stressing that

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a central theme of Turkish history, religious tolerance, finds its fullest expression in the history of Jewry in Turkey. Turkey provided refuge to thousands of Jews fleeing the Iberian Peninsula during the Inquisition. Tens of thousands escaping from Nazi-occupied Europe found haven in Turkey.233 This was one of the many occasions in which the denial of the Armenian Genocide would be substantiated by implicit reference to the Holocaust and to the image of Turkey as a safe haven for the Jews, which we will return to shortly. However, threats of this nature were confirmed within another context, namely the ongoing discussions regarding the future US Holocaust Museum. New York Times reported that similar threats had been expressed to an American official, Monroe H. Freedman, the Museum council’s executive director. He had been warned that “if the Armenian issue was to be part of the museum, ‘the physical safety of Jews in Turkey would be threatened and Turkey might pull out of NATO.’”234 The warning had been posed during a luncheon-meeting in 1981 by Mithat Balkan, an embassy counselor in Washington. When confronted, Balkan had denied having ever expressed such a threat, stating that he had told Freedman that there “would be repercussions.”235 Elaborating on the same argumentation and with clear reference to the Holocaust, the Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Nazmi Aikman stated that “The Armenians are trying to jump on the Israeli train … making a deliberate attempt to benefit from the general sympathy for the Jews.”236 As an example he recalled the Armenian attempts to be included in the ongoing plans for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, concluding that “Turkey protested the attempt then, and the Armenians were kept out.”237 The allusion to the Holocaust, more specifically to the differences in the comparison with the Armenian case, was a newly adopted strategy. As we will see shortly, this developed during the discussion about the establishment of the US Holocaust Museum and in a symbiosis between the academic world and politics. Nonetheless, as Eldad Ben Aharon notes, concerned about their [Turkey’s] negative public image with respect to treatment of minorities (especially the Armenians and Kurds), they resolved to make an example of their treatment of the Jews. The Jewish community in Turkey received a fair degree of independence and freedom.238 In order to understand the reactions, one should take the Israeli-Turkey relations into consideration. By far one of the few states in Middle East friendly towards Israel, Turkey was in fact the very first Muslim state to recognize the sovereignty of Israel as a state in 1950.239 In addition, Israel, other than being worried about her diplomatic relations with Turkey, also knew that the latter “served as an escape route for Jews from Iran.”240 However, Israeli-Turkish diplomatic relations were not without frictions. By the time of the conference in 1982, Turkey had downgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel to a level

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of second secretary, a direct consequence of Israel’s proclamation of an undivided Jerusalem as its eternal capital (1980). Now, the Turkish Jews feared that the conference would have a still more cooling effect on the TurkishIsraeli relations. This fear was, among others, hinted in the statement of the Chief Rabbi in Turkey who hoped that the conference would exclude the Armenian participants, repeating their effort a year earlier to bar Armenians from a meeting regarding the Holocaust Museum in Washington.241 Elie Wiesel, who was among the conference organizers and about to chair the conference in 1982, recalls the episode as the following: After all, they have ideas on this subject which has touched them closely. How could one forget the massacre of their parents and grandparents at the hands of the Turkish army? At the last moment, we encounter a major hurdle. Under pressure from Turkey, the Israelis urge me to revoke our invitation to the Armenians. I refuse. It would be too humiliating. And to humiliate is to blaspheme. The pressure increases. I am given to understand that even if a single Armenian participates in the conference, Israeli-Turkish relations will suffer. And that there would be consequences for Jews in certain Arab countries. Jewish emissaries from Istanbul confirm this to me with documents. No matter. I will not offend our Armenian guests. I resign as chairman. To Richard Eder, the New York Times correspondent in Paris, I explain why: “A human life weighs more than all the books written about human life.” … I know that Israel had to heed Turkey.242 Wiesel had attempted to convince Charny and Davidson to either postpone or move the conference outside Israel, but in vain. A compromise, proposed by the Armenian leadership in Jerusalem and accepted by Wiesel as well, would be to “discuss the Armenian genocide unofficially in the conference while dropping the six papers (out of more than one hundred and fifty) from the official program.”243 Nonetheless, the compromise was vehemently rejected by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.244 In the end, Wiesel chose to resign as a co-organizer and chairman of the conference and actively persuaded other participants to reconsider their own participation.245 The pressure produced results. Shortly after, upon the Israeli government’s urging, several major participants, among other Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, and organizations such as the American Jewish Committee and Yad Vashem withdrew from the conference.246 Charny recalled that “Jewish organizations worldwide, and particularly in the United States, cancelled checks they had given as donations to support the operation of the conference.”247 The US Holocaust Museum council “retracted a financial pledge of $10,000 for the conference.”248 By withdrawing official sponsorship for the conference and urging participants to do the same, Tel Aviv was hoping that “the organizers would decide to cancel the conference, scheduled to open June 17, if it turned into a small private seminar without official backing.”249 Yehuda Bauer, Leo Kuper and other prominent genocide scholars, who were supposed to lead the seminars between the main sessions, were persuaded to opt out.

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With such major participants and sponsors leaving the project, the entire conference was at risk of being cancelled. Notwithstanding, Charny pushed on and refused to yield. His conviction about the universality of the crime of genocide and its prevention in the name of whole humanity was reflected in Rabbi Hillel’s famous quote: “If I am not for myself who will be, but if I am only for myself, what am I?”250 The conference opened on June 21. The actual participation turned out to be around 300 from the originally registered 600, which Charny nonetheless considered as a “wonderful triumph because the pressures were enormous.”251 Once the problem had arisen, the New York Times had called Charny from Paris to ask him whether he was going to cancel the whole thing. Charny had replied “No, I will continue with the conference even if we have only ten people attend,” alluding to the number of people required for a traditional Jewish prayer service.252 The Armenian participation, coordinated by the Armenian Assembly of America and under the leadership of Richard G. Hovannisian,253 was naturally a major achievement for the recognition process of the Armenian Genocide, especially in regard to the prevailing circumstances. But not all participators were at ease and joyful. The negative prelude to the conference, especially in the wake of the ongoing Armenian armed attacks on Turkish diplomats and the risk of retaliatory actions made some of the Armenian participants apprehensive. Charny remembers the evident and tangible fear among some of the Armenian participants of the conference, notable in the statement of one of them (who Charny recalls was literally shaking of fear) that there was no police protection.254 Political considerations undoubtedly had a significant impact on the scholarly venue. Several hundred media stories around the world had been covering the upheaval surrounding the conference and its Armenian dilemma.255 Charny duly pointed out the irony of the situation that while, thanks to the media coverage, “the Armenian genocide was more public than ever,” the Israeli government was still insisting on silencing any talks about it in the conference.256 Inevitably the whole ordeal had resulted in the Turkish-Armenian problem being in the focus and viewed by some to have overtaken the whole conference, dominating the meetings.257 The episode had also obvious impacts on Armenians and their expected support from the Jewish community, both in regard to the Holocaust experience but also those aiding the Armenians during and after the genocide. Charny cites an Armenian scholar who later told him that “We witnessed a betrayal of the glorious legacy established by Ambassador Morgenthau, Rabbi Wise and author Franz Werfel.”258 Despite these difficulties, the inclusion of the Armenian case into the conference must be viewed as breaking a major threshold and becoming a turning point in the re-introduction of the Armenian Genocide to the general public. However, the conference, at least indirectly, also set a dangerous precedent and gave impetus to the Turkish argumentation, especially in regard to differentiation between the Jewish and the Armenian cases of genocide. On the issue of Israeli resistance in recognizing the genocide, Bauer admits that their initial hesitance (as genocide scholars) to take a stand has contributed to this issue,

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stating that “I’m partly guilty of, at least for a certain element.”259 In 1982, Wiesel had convinced Bauer not to participate in the conference arguing that the Turks, who were enabling Jews to migrate from Iran via Cyprus to Israel, would put a stop to this. Bauer did not participate, which he was “terribly sorry for.”260 In the context of the politics of memory, the damage had been quite substantial. The political aspects of the quandary had made some prominent scholars such as Bauer and Kuper, who are considered as pioneers and tone-setting scholars in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies, infuse doubt into the discussion in the early stages of the recognition process. This was a blow which would affect the matter for decades despite their future contributions to the subject, clearly verifying their acknowledgement of the events as genocide. As discussed later, the Israeli lobby in the USA would play an additional pivotal role in this matter. Along with the scholarly rediscovery of the WWI events, the denial of the Armenian Genocide had by this time entered a new stage as well. The previous silent treatment by the Turkish State was evidently not sufficient anymore and the awakened interest within the academy needed to be heeded. Once again, it was the political actors who had taken the initiative in actively affecting the issue of the recognition, or rather the denial. Reflecting over the basis of the denial and whether it is a strict psychological issue concerning the perpetrator wanting to suppress the committed crimes, Charny replies No, of course not. Denial is clearly a political manipulative strategic mechanism used consciously by many, used less than consciously by many others; but it is also very much a psychological mechanism. And even the political ones are activating the psychology of denial. They are playing on the readiness of people to be fooled, duped and lied to mythologies.261 Although the political actors failed to exclude the Armenian Genocide from the 1982 conference, this would become a starting point for the state sponsored academic denial of the Armenian Genocide. A recurring pattern: official denial at every conference The 1982 conference was thereby the first major international academic gathering in which the Turkish State actively interfered, setting a precedent which would repeat itself at almost every single future conference or lecture considering the Armenian Genocide. This would be yet another distinctive feature of the Armenian Genocide and the denial by the Turkish state. Scholars and lecturers on the subject would become quite familiar with the concept of having representatives from the Turkish Embassy present at each occasion they attended. The politics would accompany the academics in an apparent manner, constantly trying to control and influence it. Yehuda Bauer, who did not participate in the 1982 conference, was to be faced with the same problem not so many years later. The 1982 upheaval did indeed evoke more questions among the genocide scholars about the WWI

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events. If anything, that episode might have been one of the first forums in which the central question of the present study became apparent: why is a supposedly historical issue such a controversial political question? Bauer’s attention to the Armenian case was attracted when he embarked on the comparative studies of the subject. He discovered “the fact that so many years after it happened, there was no real historical study that answered the questions that you asked.”262 In 1988, six years after the Tel Aviv conference, Bauer was himself the main organizer of the Holocaust Conference in Oxford, which gathered around 600 academic participants from the whole world. The conference was financed by the multibillionaire Robert Maxwell.263 One of the workshops dealt with the Armenian Genocide. As expected, the Turkish State intervened again, but perhaps having learned the lesson from the 1982 conference, instead of approaching the organizers, they went directly to the financier.264 The Turkish Ambassador to London had complained to Maxwell about the inclusion of the Armenian Genocide in the program, asserting that it would harm the British-Turkish relations. Maxwell, having been a Labour MP (1964–1970) and familiar with the political relations, then approached Bauer asking for some solution since “the Turks were important” after all. This being an academic conference, Bauer pointed out, the Turkish side could submit a paper which, after the customary peer review by the conference committee, could be accepted, upon which they could very well participate and present their own view on the subject.265 Bauer recalls that the first submitted paper, by a young British junior scholar, was so poor in quality that the committee did not accept it. When Maxwell asked again to somehow solve the quandary, Bauer proposed that the Turkish side could perhaps send someone to the seminar who could then during the Q&A session express their view on the matter. The Turkish Embassy indeed sent some representatives to the seminar. Narrating the standard official story, the Turkish representative had expressed the view that the whole ordeal had been because of Armenian collaboration with the Russian Army, endangering the front etc. Bauer recalls that a British professor rebuffed the Turkish argumentation in such a manner that it ended “with a tremendous laughter in the audience” due to the irrelevance and incoherence of the Turkish argumentation.266 Nonetheless, similar rebuffing did not deter the Turkish state from constantly repeating their insistence on being represented on future conferences and seminars, thus institutionalizing the genocide denial itself. Zoryan and ITS: two institutions on either side of the issue 1982 was also the year in which two institutions, the Zoryan Institute and the Institute of the Turkish Studies (ITS) entered the academic arena, each on either side of the discussion. Although both organizations’ mission statements enumerate a wide range of activities and research fields, both have foremost become known for research into the Armenian Genocide and its denial, respectively.

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The idea of the Zoryan Institute was created in late 1970s among a small group of Armenian diaspora intellectuals reflecting over issues related to the Armenian identity, its history as well as the future.267 Although no specific references are made to the ongoing events such as the terrorist attacks, the Ruhashyankiko Report or the Tel Aviv Conference, George Shirinian, Executive Director of the institute, agreed that the idea about the institute “grew out of the same ferment and zeitgeist.” He elaborated that One of the key questions to be addressed by the institute was in the Armenian Diaspora: What makes up Armenian identity? Where do we come from? Where are we now? And where are we headed as a collective? The answers to those questions naturally led us to the study of the Armenian Genocide, genocide studies, comparative genocide studies, diaspora studies, and diaspora-homeland relations.268 Clearly, the genocide played a central role in the necessities giving birth to the institute and remains one of its main research areas. Writing about the general post-genocide mode of the Armenian nation, K. M. Sarkissian pointed out that intellectual activities and responses were a luxury for a people whose primary concern was rather about survival and adaptation to their new homes. In a statement which could equally fit into the then ongoing terrorist actions, Sarkissian wrote that “The tendency was rather to take action of some sort, but without clearly strategizing what those actions should be.”269 Once established, the institute became one of the leading academic centers, starting already in 1983 with its Oral History Project, to research and gather information about the Armenian communities in Turkey, before, during and after the genocide. Affiliations with other Holocaust and genocide study centers (e.g. the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota) as well as directors such as Vahakn N. Dadrian, have contributed to the Armenian Genocide being the focus of the center. More than a decade later, in 1997, Armenian Assembly of America founded The Armenian National Institute (ANI), dedicated exclusively to the Armenian Genocide, both in regard to research but also its affirmation.270 On the opposite side of the spectrum, ITS was founded by a three million USD funding by the Turkish government.271 Although ITS too describes its mission as promoting Turkish studies in general without any references to the genocide, it came to be known as the standard bearer of academic denial of the Armenian Genocide. But perhaps more importantly, ITS has been perceived as a significant actor in using local academics in thwarting attempts for US recognition of the genocide. One such flagrant case was an ad campaign (December 2 1985) in The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The New York Times, signed by sixty-nine American academicians claiming the text of House Joint Resolution 192 to proclaim April 24 1985, as “National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man” being “misleading and/or inaccurate” and calling on US Congress to reject it.272 Research on

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the background of the signatories made by the Armenian Assembly of America showed that “better than a fifty percent correlation between the signatories and their university departments and the receipt of an ITS grant.”273 That it was once again realpolitik considerations at the core of the issue was emphasized by one of the signatories, Bernard Lewis, a renowned historian of oriental studies with expertise on history of Islam and the Ottoman Empire. In a letter to Gérard Chaliand to explain why he signed the petition, Lewis noted, among others, that “[t]he only sure result of the resolution would be the disruption of U.S.-Turkish relations,” while also calling on Turkey to open its archives to international scholarship.274 As Chaliand pointed out in his reply, it was not the lack of evidence, but a fear that a recognition would be rather an “attempt to destabilize NATO.”275 However, the denial and the rationalization of the Armenian Genocide, was nothing new within the academic field, although it was quite scarce. Such a need had already arisen during the 1950s and in relations with the NATO integration of Turkey in order to accentuate the importance of the Turkish Republic. Rouben Paul Adalian observes that the deletion of the unwanted pages of history from modern Turkey was “spawned in 1952 by Lewis V. Thomas of Princeton University who intellectually legitimized the racial homogenization of Turkey by arguing that despite the violence, the process contributed to the development of a stable nation friendly to the United States.”276 Thomas did not deny the measures undertaken against the Armenians and indeed recalled both the massacres and the deportations and their consequences for the Armenians.277 However, commenting on the Turkish perception of Armenians as “fifth column,” Thomas concluded that although the accusations about the committed atrocities were exaggerated “it had enough basis in fact that one can only dismiss it if one is willing to argue that the Turks should not have moved to save themselves.”278 The “definitive excision of the total Armenian Christian population” had contributed to the homogeneity of Turkey, “a state which is now a valued associate of the United States.”279 Thus, within the framework of the politics of memory, the political and military strategical importance of Turkey was even during the 1950s invoked as an argument which outweighed the known facts about the committed wrongdoings. The history revisionism was achieved by trivialization of the events and their relativization in relation to the newly established Turkey which turned out to be a valued NATO ally. The denialism of the Armenian Genocide within the academic field, as it is known today, was perhaps introduced foremost by Stanford Shaw and his two students, Heath Lowry and Justin McCarthy.280 In the second volume of History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Reform, Revolution, and Republic (co-authored with his wife Ezel Kural Shaw), Shaw put forward the claim that the events in question were nothing but a result of an Armenian revolt against the Ottoman authorities, justifying the measures taken during WWI.281 Shortly after, on October 3 1977, Shaw’s home was subjected to a bomb attack, causing material damage to the

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building. According to the media, several Armenian groups, but also a Greek militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack.282 According to Michael M. Gunter, Shaw’s office at the university was also subjected to intrusion and the “frequent verbal and written threats of violence hurled at him … forced [Shaw] to cancel his regularly scheduled classes and go into hiding.”283 Shaw also went beyond the denial of the Armenian Genocide by simply dismissing the events and their nature. The discovery of the Armenian case by Holocaust scholars and the increasing comparisons with the Holocaust (e.g. within the process of the creation of the US Holocaust Museum) had also emphasized the need to drive a wedge between the Jewish and the Armenian genocides while strengthening the Jewish-Turkish relations. Shaw tried to achieve this by asserting that while Armenians had collaborated with the Nazis to establish “an Armenian state in southern Caucasus and eastern Anatolia,” Turkey had risked its neutrality and a subsequent German invasion to save Jews from certain death.284 By mentioning the Armenian connections to the Nazi Germany, Shaw even drew the asserted Armenian antiSemitic tendencies back to the Ottoman Empire: “During the 1930s and in reaction to Nazi propaganda, as was the case in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was not so much Turkish Muslims but rather, Christians, who persisted in their anti-Semitic attitudes and activities.”285 Armenians were the example Shaw used throughout the book. Shaw’s book, Turkey and the Holocaust: Turkey’s Role in Rescuing Turkish and European Jewry from Nazi Persecution, 1933–1945, was perceived as quite legitimate and the Turkish benevolence towards the Jews which it asserted became a scholarly fact which found its way into the academics as well as, perhaps more importantly, into the political arena and has been used frequently by the Turkish Government circles.286 However, Shaw’s book and the image it conveys has not been devoid of criticism. In his literary review, Bernard Wasserstein criticized Shaw’s conclusions, asserting that in reality the book “has nothing to do with Jews. The work is, in fact, the latest chapter in Shaw’s long-running battle with the Armenians and, by extension, with other Christian minorities in Turkey.”287 Wasserstein states that Through the fog of illiteracy, the object of all this is plain: by demonstrating Turkey’s supposedly exceptional, humanitarian policy towards the Jews, and by contrasting it with the alleged pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic racialism of the Armenians and Greeks, Shaw seeks to buttress his vehemently anti-Armenian and Hellenophobic interpretation of modern Turkish history.288 This fact is also pointed out by Corry Guttstedt, who agreeing with Wasserstein’s criticism, notes that the academic denialism of Shaw had indeed been quite successful and had been adopted by the international community:

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According to Shaw, Turkish diplomats all over Europe did their outmost to save Turkish Jews from persecution, “often at the risk of their own lives.” These arguments struck a chord in Turkey’s politics, and their constant repetition and exaggeration in official rhetoric has turned them into an ossified, self-perpetuating myth which is frequently propagated in international publications.289 In her conclusion, Guttstedt specifically pointed to Turkey’s denial of the Armenian Genocide, stating that The Jews whom Turkey refused to rescue during the war are now being used to fend off international criticism of Turkey. And frequently, Turkey’s alleged support of the victims of the Holocaust is used as an argument for denying the genocide of the Armenians.290 The interdisciplinary nature of the issue was made quite apparent by Shaw’s student, Heath Lowry, who took this strategy a step further, exemplifying the perfect marriage between academic and political denial of the Armenian Genocide. In what is nowadays considered a classical case, Lowry was caught red-handed shadow-writing for the Turkish Ambassador to the USA in denying the Armenian Genocide. The story had its origin in Robert Jay Lifton’s book, The Nazi Doctors, Medical Killing and The Psychology of Genocide (1986),291 which included several references to the Armenian Genocide as an example.292 In 1990, Lifton received a letter from the Turkish Ambassador to Washington, Nuzhet Kandemir, criticizing the inclusion of the “socalled ‘Armenian Genocide’” in his book. Iterating Turkey’s role in saving Jews and the incomparability of the Jewish and Armenian cases, Kandemir wrote: It is particularly disturbing to see a major scholar on the Holocaust, a tragedy whose enormity and barbarity must never be forgotten, so careless in his references to a field outside his own area of expertise. For Turks, who are justifiably proud of our long and continuing role as a haven for minorities (including the Jews evicted from Spain by the Inquisition), it is particularly disquieting to find our own history distorted in works devoted to the Holocaust of World War II.293 The Turkish Ambassador had also enclosed “works by two American experts on the history of Turco-Armenian relations,” namely Justin McCarthy and Heath Lowry. Thus far it would have been perceived as an expected Turkish official reaction to Lifton’s description of the WWI events, had it not been for a tactless mistake by Kandemir, who also attached a draft copy of the letter written by Lowry. Additional enclosed correspondence also witnessed that Lowry, as an academician, had been engaged for quite some time in shaping, or at least trying to affect, the Turkish state denial of the Armenian Genocide.

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This was apparent, for example, in the fact that he had “repeatedly told, verbally and in writing, those in power [in Turkey] that they must attack and discredit articles or books by Dadrian, Fein, Kuper, and others, yet not a single attack has been written.”294 In addition, Smith, Markusen and Lifton pointed out in their article that the secondary purpose of the letter was “to draw a sharp and decisive distinction between the Holocaust and the experience of the Armenians in 1915,” by simply stating that “to make any comparison of the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide is ludicrous.”295 However, by this time (the early 1990s) the comparative research in the field of genocide had caught up with the Armenian case and works by prominent Holocaust scholars such as Robert Melson and Yehuda Bauer, although pointing out the differences, drew attention to many similarities and parallels between the two cases of genocide.296 Thus, by the early 1990s there were institutionalized structures for promoting the recognition of the Armenian Genocide as well as its denial. The United States was the foremost battleground in this respect, involving both American and Turkish state officials together with Armenian and Jewish communities. This would become quite obvious in the process for establishing the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, turning the whole project into a heated and partly embittered political struggle.

Which memory to preserve: the US Holocaust Memorial Museum The introductory statement to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) reads as following: “A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.”297 The project, a prime example of the process of the politics of memory, became a battleground concerning which memories should be included, and thus allowed to be alive in the collective memory, and which were to be excluded. The Armenian Genocide was, along with the issue of Roma people/Gypsies, one the main, hot subjects in that consideration. Furthermore, and perhaps even more significantly, the ensuing arguments transcended the issue of the museum itself. The exclusion of the Armenian case and the arguments therein were not only transformed into the political arena (primarily the USA), engaging the Jewish community and its lobby organizations in opposition to such recognition, but the debate probably also gave new impetus and reasoning to the Turkish state denial. Thus, the asserted disparity between the Holocaust and the Armenian case became one of the main arguments against labeling the Armenian events as genocide, namely the incomparability of the Holocaust to the other cases of genocide, especially the Armenian. The initiative for the creation of the US Holocaust Museum was born in April 1978 during the Carter Administration, but it was not inaugurated until April 22 1993, during the Clinton Administration. The planning of the

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museum and its exhibitions proved to be a long journey and the issue of including non-Jewish victims soon became a heated and embittered political debate, in which the Armenian Genocide occupied considerable space.298 The resistance towards including the Armenian Genocide, apart from the issue of the Holocaust’s asserted uniqueness, was yet again mainly due to the political implications and not to the contested factual grounds. It would entangle the museum in “endless political complications.”299 These political implications were introduced long before the issue of the inclusion of the Armenian Genocide was even considered. Even upon awareness of the composition of the council in charge of the planning of the future museum, Turkey warned the White House for “any Armenian involvement in the project.”300 This cautioning was due to the proposal of including Set Momjian, a first generation Armenian American whose parents had been orphaned in the genocide and who had served as an adviser to President Carter, a representative to the United Nations, and a White House representative to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.301 Nonetheless, the organizers stood firm by the decision of including Momjian as a council member. Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor who was appointed by U.S. President Jimmy Carter to head the newly created Holocaust Memorial Council, recalled that one of the conflicts which arose between him and the White House was due to Momjian’s participation in the Council. Wiesel wrote that Set Momjian is among my closest collaborators. He is helping us commemorate the tragedy endured by his people during World War I. This, of course, angers the Turkish government, which threatens to revise its policy toward the United States and NATO. So here I am, to my great chagrin, mixed up in international politics. What a joke: If NATO falls apart, will it be our fault? But that’s Washington; there is no way to escape politics or comedy. Personally, I am pleased that an Armenian has a seat on the Council. I would be even more pleased if a Gypsy were here too.302 The Turkish threats in this regard were preceded by warnings to the Carter Administration for the repercussions “should the president mention the Armenians in his remarks” during the commemorative ceremonies on April 24 1979, which coincidently would be during the first Days of Remembrance, designated for commemorating the Holocaust.303 In what was to become a hallmark for all subsequent US administrations’ attitude towards the Armenian fate, the threats were yielding evident results. While Carter had spoken openly about the Armenian Genocide at a White House reception for American Armenians on May 16, 1978 – ‘There was a concerted effort

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as among those people who have suffered similar destructions during the past century.304 This pattern would repeat itself consistently in the following annual presidential statement on April 24. In parallel to the pressure on the White House, the Turkish representatives in Washington exerted “incessant pressure on certain members of the council and the Congress to exclude the Armenians.”305 In Monroe Freedman’s (first acting executive director of the council) words, “As much as anyone wanted to be represented in the museum, that’s how much the Turkish government wanted the Armenians out.”306 One such argument, as mentioned earlier in regard to the 1982 conference, was threats towards the Jews in Turkey.307 While the initial pressure for the exclusion of the Armenian case came from official Turkey, soon the resistance was raised from Jewish circles as well, both from the Jewish community in the USA, but also from Turkey and Israel. The main quarrel here was about the boundaries of the Holocaust and about whose memory should be preserved by including them in the exhibition. This discussion comprised both the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, mainly the Roma, but also the victims of other genocides, among others the Armenians. Thus, the issue of the uniqueness of the Holocaust came to the forefront. Nonetheless, one of the most prominent figures in the commission as well as a leading authority in Holocaust studies, Raul Hilberg,308 although inclined to emphasize the uniqueness of the Holocaust, argued that this should not be done at the expense of entirely excluding the “fates of other peoples, be they Armenians, or be they, during the events, the Soviet prisoners of war that died during captivity, or … other victims.”309 Consequently, the inclusion in the museum, thus being part of the collective memory, became a struggle mainly for Armenians and Roma people during the 1980s. Realizing the symbolic significance of being included in the Holocaust Museum, the Armenians seemed to be willing to accept any representation in the museum or its exhibitions as a firm stand against the Turkish denial of the Armenian case as genocide.310 To this end, they argued that an institution “dedicated to the preservation of truth in the face of historical denial and the cultivation of redeeming memory had to lend a sympathetic ear to their claim.”311 Omitting the Armenian case would be devastating for its memory and recognition prospects. The issue of inclusion of the Armenian Genocide was brought up during the first meeting of the council in February 1979, in which “Raul Hilberg had declared that ‘it would not be fulfillment of the overall task’ to ignore Armenians or other victims.”312 Later on, Bauer too would point this out in a correspondence with Benjamin Meed, Warsaw Ghetto survivor and chairman of the content committee. Bauer cautioned him that “the denial of other

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people’s genocides would expose us to a tremendous wave of criticism, and would be morally absolutely contemptible.”313 However, there were worried council members who argued that the inclusion of the Armenian case, a nonHolocaust-related genocide, would soon result in the dilution of the whole concept by including all possible cases.314 The whole project of the Holocaust Museum thus became an issue of whom and what events should be included in the collective memory. Edward T. Linenthal writes that “Hilberg wanted to stretch the boundaries of memory back to include the Armenians, victims of Turkish genocide in 1915, and he wanted to stretch the boundaries outward, to include non-Jews murdered by the Nazis.”315 Hilberg’s views were met by objections, among others by Lucy Dawidowicz, who pointed out the uniqueness of the Holocaust, making it “crucial to maintain the Jewish core of the Holocaust, although ‘others’ could perhaps be allowed to penetrate the outer edge of the boundaries in a carefully managed hierarchy of victims.”316 The layout of USHMM was suggested to be the following: “a Hall of Witness to tell the story, a Hall of Learning to confront the contemporary implications of the Holocaust through education, and a Hall of Remembrance to mourn those who were murdered.”317 The layout was meant to guide the visitors through a reversed journey, in which the last hall, depicting “the world before,” would take them through “paths of memory, retracing and recovering the sparks of life, until the worlds that were, and are no more come into view.” It was in the Hall of Learning that exhibitions dedicated to non-Jewish cases, among others the Armenian, were envisioned to be displayed.318 However, already at this stage, there were disagreements in the council in regard to “who was to be remembered.”319 One future suggestion for attaining this hierarchy would be putting the proposed Armenian and Roma exhibitions as temporary and rotating ones, in contrast to the permanent exhibitions about the Jews.320 Nonetheless, even this peripheral inclusion became an intensely debated issue for the council. The whole episode clearly demonstrated that the synonymy between the term genocide and the Holocaust does not only haunt the Turks; it is also true about the Jews. The linkage of the term genocide to the Holocaust made it utterly difficult for some survivors to consider the application of the term to any other case. The reluctance to do so became even greater when a case, such as the Armenian, was implied to have been “a precursor and perhaps even a model for the Holocaust.”321 This would indeed threaten the very uniqueness and the singularity of the Holocaust. Notwithstanding this, even wordings such as “precursor” or “prelude” seemed to have been carefully weighed in: The 1981 museum plan characterized the Armenian as a “prelude” to the Holocaust. The language is revealing. It is not to be presented as a model of genocide in the twentieth century, or the first in a series of genocides, but a prelude – that is, an introductory performance setting the stage for the “real” genocide to come.322

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Vividly exemplifying the process of the politics of memory, especially in regard to the reciprocal relation between memory and politics, the Holocaust Museum project illustrated how the exclusion of the Armenian case from similar institutions, academic in character, had a ripple effect into the political arena as well: Just as the memory of the Armenian genocide in an institution devoted to the redeeming and transformative power of memory was contested, so too was its memory in governmental bodies already congratulating themselves for being willing to support the Holocaust museum and therefore cultivating memory of genocide as important for reflection on public policy.323 Nonetheless, it was not only the Armenian case which was affected by the dilemma between historical lessons and its presumed usage in contemporary politics and decision-making. On the contrary, the Holocaust Museum project presented a striking example about how contemporary policymaking could very well be detached from historical experiences. This revelation was expressed by one of the committee members who reflected the following: “Our proposals were fine as long as they did not ask the government to extend the lessons of the Holocaust to our current foreign and national security policies.”324 By the mid-1980s, the deeds of the Armenian terrorist groups had presented a viable reason for the politicians to avoid genocide recognition. In the face of the ongoing Armenian terrorism, the US State Department labelled the nature of the 1915 events as “ambiguous” in order not to endorse “allegations that the Turkish Government committed genocide against the Armenian people.”325 The political implications, rather than the factual grounds, were once again referred to when Ronald Reagan, on March 29 1985 told a Turkish journalist that “he opposed the congressional resolution because it would ‘reward’ terrorism, and ‘could harm relations with an important ally.’”326 Others, as the Republican Senator William L. Dickinson, were quite frank about their reasoning and stated en clair that had such a recognition had a positive impact on the relations with a NATO ally, then the US should endorse it; if not “let us forget it and go on to something else.”327 As the discussions in the museum planning proceeded, the impending exclusion of the Armenian case started to be perceived by the Armenians as setting a dangerous precedence. Linenthal notes that Leo Sarkasian [sic] of the Armenian National Committee pleaded that, if the commission could not recognize that “somewhere, somehow, the Armenian Genocide, at least as a backdrop, has a role in [your] work … then we are indeed in trouble.… Who will listen if not you?”328 This whole episode was in a flagrant manner demonstrating how political and national interests were dictating the usage of memory and were actively

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choosing which memories to preserve in the grand narrative and eventually history itself. These political negotiations within the politics of memory illuminate the fact that not only can memory be politicized and subjective, but history too might, even in our time, end up in murky waters where the political agenda, not the facts, dictates the “reality.” The process of the creation of the US Holocaust Museum bluntly illustrated the dangers of how contemporary state interests and political agenda can selectively shape our memories; even revising or deleting existing ones.329 By 1990, the call for Armenian presence in the Holocaust museum had been reduced to requesting that At a minimum, the Hitler quotation should be prominently displayed and addressed. Failure to do so would be craven pandering to the mandarins of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, for whom Turkish-Israeli relations are more important than dealing with the subject of genocide.330 However, even that minimalist demand, insisted on by project director Michael Berenbaum, was to be called into question; any reference to such precedents was contested since “the Holocaust is unique.”331 Berenbaum’s insistence on including the Armenian case enraged some of the influential and prominent Holocaust survivors in the commission to such a degree that it would cost him the prospect of becoming the museum director. Nonetheless, he managed to include the Hitler quote in the permanent exhibition.332 Linenthal implies that it was indeed this process which introduced Turkey to one of their widely used arguments in the denial of the Armenian Genocide: “Ingeniously, Turks used the uniqueness argument as a persuasive tactic.”333 Regardless of whether Ankara learned this from the USHMM process or not, they have demonstrably been fully aware of the Israeli and Jewish sensitiveness about the uniqueness of the Holocaust, invoking this argument quite often and successfully.334 An institution/museum dedicated to the preservation of memory and a global condemnation of genocide had effectively become the site in which some “Israeli and American Jews, supposedly sensitive to the virtues of remembrance, joined forces to prevent the United States Congress from officially remembering the Armenian Genocide.”335 They were joined by American politicians who established the fact that once “integrity of historical memory clashed with the need to mollify a NATO partner, Holocaust memory was a burden that should be jettisoned.”336 In Berenbaum’s words, the “only reason for the exclusion of precedents for mass murders … has been the politicization of the Armenian question in part by well-paid and seemingly effective lobbyist.”337 This attitude was then equally noticeable in the notes of Capitol Hill and Peter Novick concerning how Israeli diplomats, together with influential Jewish activists, managed to successfully aid the defeating of a congressional resolution for remembrance of the Armenian Genocide.338 The lobbyists had managed to convince major Jewish organizations to drop their previously

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announced support for recognition and remain silent upon urgings from Israel. The argumentation was quite straightforward and involved preserving the asserted uniqueness of the Holocaust: One veteran Jewish leader explained what motivated his lobbying against the resolution: “Many contend the Holocaust was simply a terrible event, neither unique nor particular. To compare … Armenians [in 1915] to the situation of Europe’s Jews in 1933 or 1939 is a dangerous invitation to revisionism about the Holocaust.… If Jews say every terrible event … is genocide, why should the world believe the Holocaust is distinctive?”339 Thus, the “uniqueness” of the Holocaust became a frequently used argument employed by the Turkish denial. Similar attempts of shielding the Holocaust and its memory have indeed had an unfortunate effect on the perceived universal nature of the term genocide and perhaps even more significantly, on its prevention. This is best captured by the statement that “it seems that the vow ‘never again!’ has meant only that ‘never again would Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940s.’”340 This entire episode was imbued with the politics of memory, where the usage of the correct set of memories was heavily influenced by the prevailing political agenda, while the very same created narrative came to be invoked in the future political processes regarding the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. It would take almost two decades before a major Jewish organization, namely the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), would make a change in its policy of avoiding calling the Armenian fate as genocide.341

Hearing the neglected victim: the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, 1984 By mid-1980s, the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide had engaged the full interdisciplinary spectrum of political, legal and academic actors, both from a top-down and a bottom-up perspective. The growing scholarly research, foremost within the field of history, was now paving the way for broadening that assessment based on the growing knowledge of the WWI events. Due to the very nature of the events, the issue of a legal examination of the question was bound to follow suit, especially considering that the Armenians had not been given such an opportunity, a Nuremburg of their own. The legal examinations conducted immediately after WWI, both as trials inside Turkey,342 and the war crime commissions during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and later in the UN War Commission’s Report in 1948, remained pretty much within the official and expertise circles without any wider public attention. Thus, by early 1980s, at the height of the ongoing armed attacks on Turkish diplomats for “demanding justice,” it seemed timely proper to hear the case of the Armenians who had been denied this opportunity in the court of law. The first explicit legal examination to this end, although by an unofficial tribunal, was conducted in 1984 by the

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Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal which convened in Paris. The tribunal was a continuation of the Russell Tribunal (called after its initiator, Bertrand Russell) which convened for the first time in 1971, for dealing with the crimes committed during the Vietnam War. Although the Tribunal has been criticized for having employed a quite broad interpretation of the term genocide, its analysis and work have, nevertheless, been of significant importance. In Leo Kuper’s words, The First Russell Tribunal made a very strong impact on international public opinion, and its proceedings reinforced the peace movement in the United States. Later trials have been far less resonant. Still, they do serve to direct attention to major international crimes and are a means for documenting genocidal and political murders.343 The nature of the Tribunal and its aims were clarified by Bertrand Russell himself, who stated the following during the second session of the First Russell Tribunal: “We are not judges. We are witnesses. Our task is to make mankind bear witness to these terrible crimes and to unite humanity on the side of justice in Vietnam.”344 As such, the Tribunal was indeed neither an official instance nor a perfect venue, with the outcome often perceived as predefined long before any verdicts were made. This was also quite valid in the case of the 1984 Tribunal, examining the Armenian events. Nonetheless, Kuper argues that despite the shortcomings of the tribunal, it did to some degree contribute to limiting the realpolitik in order to be able to take action on punishment of genocide.345 More significantly, it provided the opportunity for the victim’s case to be heard and tried when official courts had been unwilling to grant them this. The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal of 1984 had been called upon by the request of three organizations (from the US, Germany and France) to review the case of the events during WWI.346 The Tribunal had been requested to answer three main questions: 1) whether Armenians had been subject to massacres and deportation during WWI; 2) whether the events constitute a case of genocide as defined by the UN Convention; and 3) what consequences does it imply, for the concerned parties as well as for the international community.347 The Tribunal accepted the application and informed the Turkish government, inviting it to send “representatives or written documents to make its position known.”348 Since the Turks, somewhat expectedly, did not reply at all, the Tribunal chose to include two documents reflecting the view of the Turkish State.349 The Tribunal convened between April 13 and 16 at the Sorbonne in Paris. Before stating its verdict, a panel of thirteen judges, the majority being experts in international law, including three Nobel Prize Laureates, but also former ambassadors and members of parliament, heard reports from a number of scholars and experts, as well as presentations of additional documents and memorandums.350

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In the preface of the tribunal proceedings, Pierre Vidal-Naquet stated that “As the Hitlerian genocide contributed to fix, even to freeze, Jewish identity, the genocide 1915 … contributed in a decisive fashion to fix or freeze Armenian identity.”351 In addition, Vidal-Naquet pointed out that the most serious issue about the Armenian case was how the Turkish state version of events had gained footing on an international level: the omission of the case from the 1979 UN report; US State Department’s denial of the genocide in 1981; Israel’s withdrawal of sponsorship of the conference in 1982. Further, the Russell Tribunal itself was mentioned, which had in its 1967 session in regard to the Vietnam War excluded the Armenian case from the list of genocides in history “in order to satisfy the Turkish judge who, in turn, was sustained by the Pakistani judge in the name of Islam.”352 The latter argumentation was quite recognizable from the review sessions of the Ruhashyankiko Report. As already seen, by the early 1980s the Turkish state denial (through its diplomatic representation at any occasion dealing with the Armenian Genocide, be it official or public) had reached its full scale, becoming a hallmark of the Armenian Genocide. By doing so, the all-out state denial in almost every venue the issue appeared in, had propelled the Armenian case to a new level of genocide denial, in ways even surpassing the Holocaust denial. This aspect was best captured by Vidal-Naquet depicting the following rhetorical quandary: Let us imagine Faurisson (the leading French revisionism) as Minister, Faurisson as President, Faurisson as general, Faurisson as ambassador, Faurisson as president of the Turkish Historic Commission, Faurisson as a member of the university senate in Istanbul, Faurisson as an influential member of the United Nations, Faurisson responding in the press every time there is mention of the Jewish genocide.353 The Turkish state-nation was simply saturated with an institutionalized denial expressed by almost every single position in the official and public offices, even exporting the denial into the international arena. Deliberating on the reason why they accepted the case, François Rigaux, President of the Tribunal, alluded to the temporal distance of the WWI events, especially while there were so many other more compelling contemporary cases at hand to attend to.354 Rigaux enumerated three reasons: the first was the failure of the international community to have secured the protection of the Armenian people as stated in the Article 61 of the 1878 Berlin Treaty and that they “had never found a tribunal willing to listen.”355 The second and third reasons were, the elaboration of the International Law Commission of United Nations in regard to the notion of “international crime” and its relation to International Responsibilities of States, based on the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters. Thus, this involved the issue of the succession of responsibility from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic and the issue of reparations.356 It is certainly noteworthy that these reasons are fairly in line with what the ASALA leader, Hagopian, had asserted during

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an interview in Lebanon in August 1983, namely to reintroduce the Armenian cause to the world public opinion and to demand justice for the abandoned “desolate people that lacks homeland or identity.”357 The task of the Tribunal was to hear the nature and the extent of the rights of the Armenian people recognized by the international norms since 1878 and to assess the impact of their violation by the State of Turkey.358 Rigaux reminded the Tribunal that their specific function was to bring justice, in accordance with the statue of International Court of Justice, to peoples who “are deprived of access to interstate judicial institutions or even to states victimized by illegal acts committed by other states if these have evaded their duty to answer for them before the competent judicial institutions.”359 This statement indeed reflected several aspects of the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide: the obvious default of legal repercussions for the WWI events; the victims’ feeling of abandonment by the international community and justice; the reality that despite the de jure existence of a Soviet Armenian Republic, Armenians were de facto missing an official representation on state level in the international community. Armenians were a people without an official voice on the international level. Interestingly enough, one of the participants in the Tribunal hearings was Théo Van Boven, the former representative of the Netherlands to the UN Commission on Human Rights, later a member of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, and finally the director of the United Nations Division of Human Rights. As already mentioned, Boven was present during the discussions regarding the Ruhashyankiko Report and could confirm that the political “ill-conceived governmental interests” in the diplomatic campaign prior to and during the 1974 session “played such a dominant role in efforts to obscure the plight of the Armenian people.”360 After having heard a number of historians and other experts on the subject, the tribunal announced its, one might add, quite expected, verdict of the events being a state-mediated plan to exterminate the Armenian nation, i.e. genocide.361 It also made a note that “the frustration arising from this denial of acknowledgment has seemingly contributed to the recourse to terroristic acts against Turkish diplomats and others.”362 Its unofficial role notwithstanding, the verdict and the tribunal’s role in presenting a gathered research testimony on the subject was of considerable importance and it came to be used as a reference in political debates in the near future. One such significant report, which has itself become a matter of quarrel and is associated closely with the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, is the 1985 UN Genocide Study Report, commonly known as the Whitaker Report.

The UN Genocide Convention revisited: the Whitaker Report, 1985 Not long after the conclusion of the Ruhashyankiko Report, the Armenian Genocide came up again in the United Nations. William Schabas ascribes the

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unusual request to review and update a recently conducted study to the “hostile reaction to Ruhashyankiko’s report on the Armenian issue,” which was also a reason for the Sub-Commission to considered revising the report.363 The revision was initiated in 1982, only three years after the completion of the Ruhashyankiko Report in 1979, when the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities proposed a resolution calling for the revision and updating of the previous study.364 ECOSOC decided in its resolution E/CN.4/1983/33, dated May 27 1983, to request the Sub-Commission to appoint a Special Rapporteur “with the mandate to revise, as a whole, and update the study [emphasis added] on the question of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.”365 The British member of the SubCommission, Benjamin Whitaker, a human rights lawyer and former law lecturer at London University was appointed as Special Rapporteur.366 First Draft Review, August 13 1984 In his first drafted report, Whitaker, reflecting on the Ruhashyankiko Report, noted that: The study contained in document E/CN.4/Sub.2/416 was an excellent one, but there were some omissions which were due to political pressure exerted on the Special Rapporteur who had prepared it. In the historical survey at the beginning of the study, certain aspects of genocide in the twentieth century had been passed over in silence; the most flagrant omission was that of the genocide of the Armenians. Rectifying such omissions was a matter of integrity and independence for the Sub-Commission. It should, of course, listen to the arguments of both sides, but it should also resist any pressure.367 Whitaker had obviously set the bar and was indicating early on that he would not give in to political pressure. As such, he hoped to be able to avoid “political controversy while drawing conclusions from historical events.”368 The terrorist acts had by this time become a tangible variable in the equation, which was evident in Whitaker’s comment that “[t]he possibility of a new inquiry on the facts of the genocide of the Armenians in Turkey should be considered in view of the risk of acts of terrorism in reprisal.”369 This wording, however, did not seem quite proper and in the corrigendum of the report, the following sentence had replaced the part referring to the terrorism: “Establishing the truth could sometimes help by cutting the ground from under the feet of terrorists.”370 The report and the content therein were not to be a reaction to the terrorist acts, but a solution for it. Once the review debate commenced, the same arguments from the Ruhashyankiko report process were repeated. Everything prior to 1948 was not only history but, according to some, the temporal distance also meant that it was virtually impossible to be certain of these facts. The Armenian

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Genocide was being categorized ever more as a strictly historical dispute, while the legal aspects and earlier findings, including the highly topical and relevant War Crime Commission’s report from 1948, were conspicuous by their absence. Hardly surprisingly, the Armenian Genocide became yet again the most debated issue and whether it should be included in the report or not. Recognizing the independence of the Rapporteur, Louis Joinet (expert member, France) stated that the question of inclusion of the Armenian case was up to Whitaker to decide.371 However, the next day Joinet suggested that the scope of the report should be limited to the period after the adoption of the 1948 Convention since “it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to obtain reliable information relating, to earlier events.”372 Commenting from a more strict legal perspective, Evi Underhill (Observer for the International Association of Penal Law), sharing Joinet’s view, stated that since it was the task of the Sub-Commission and the International Law Commission to define genocide, and it might be counterproductive to become involved in questions with a political connotation that could distract attention from the possibility of sanctions and the need to establish criteria for a definition acceptable to all countries. If such criteria could be found, it would then be possible to determine whether a particular incident was a massacre or genocide.373 However, the opposite was also said in regard to the historicity and the politically motived narrative and molding the collective memory. C. M. EyaNchama (International Movement for Fraternal Union Among Races and Peoples) claimed that Those responsible for genocide tried to profit in two ways. They massacred their enemies and then tried to ensure that their crimes would not be reported in the history books. In a way, that was double genocide. It was strange that an event which had occurred in 1915, the genocide of the Armenians, should so often be passed over in silence today. The International Movement for Fraternal Union Among Races and Peoples appealed to the international community to recognize the genocide of the Armenian people and the sufferings of peoples who had undergone similar ordeals.374 There was, however, a noticeable difference compared with the discussion during the 1970s on the Ruhashyankiko Report, namely the fact that the growing amount of conferences and published academic works, even though these were still relatively limited, were now at the disposal of the debaters. This observation was aptly reflected in Mrs. Graf ’s (International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples) statement, who, regretting the omission

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of the Armenian Genocide in Paragraph 30 of the Sub-Commission’s previous report, noted the following. [The] omission was even more surprising since the massacre had been quoted as an example at international meetings where experts were trying to find a special designation for massacres aimed at the extermination of an entire people. It was then that the term “genocide” had been proposed by Professor Lemkin to describe such extermination. In his report of, 1946, which had formed the basis of the 1946 Convention, Professor Lemkin had ended his list of various massacres which constituted genocide with the words “… and, even closer to us, that of the Armenians”. The fact and scale of that genocide were incontestable and abundant proof had come from diverse sources such as the German, United States and United Kingdom diplomatic archives and in numerous accounts and descriptions from citizens of all nationalities. The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, which had just held a meeting in Paris on the case of the genocide of the Armenians in Turkey, with the participation of three Nobel prize winners, had concluded that the extermination of the Armenian population constituted an imprescriptible crime of genocide within the meaning of the Convention of 9 December 1948. Genocide was an international crime and an authoritative body such as the Sub-Commission should make specific reference in its reports to the genocide of the Armenians in Turkey.375 The Greek expert, Mrs. Daes, who happened to be one of the co-sponsors of the resolution requesting the new study suggested that the new “revised and updated study” should indeed cover all cases of genocide committed during the twentieth century, “in particular the Armenian episode.”376 Pointing to the topical status of the 1915 events, she stressed that [a]s had been said at the thirty-fifth session of the Commission, the events of l915–19l6 were not only historical facts; they remained fresh in the memory of the peoples, and the absence of any reference to them would not only call into question the study’s objectivity and accuracy, but would remove from the record of the United Nations the tragic experience of the Armenian people.377 The Whitaker report would turn out to be anything but a simple revision and updating task. Revised and Preliminary Report, July 2 1985 While Paragraph 30 had become the focal point of the Ruhashyankiko Report, it was Paragraph 24 that caused the stir in Whitaker’s report. The paragraph read

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The Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been the only case of genocide in the twentieth century. Among other examples which can be cited as qualifying are the German massacre of Hereros in 1904, the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915–1916, the Ukrainian pogrom of Jews in 1919, the Tutsi massacre of Hutu in Burundi in 1965 and 1972, the Paraguayan massacre of Ache Indians prior to 1974, the Khmer Rouge massacre in Kampuchea between 1975 and 1978, and the contemporary Iranian killings of Baha’is.378 Thus, Whitaker had not only re-introduced the Armenian fate among the enumerated cases of genocide, but he had also widened that list to include several other cases which were not mentioned by Ruhashyankiko at all. Whitaker opened his statement by saying that “Genocide is the ultimate crime and the gravest violation of human rights it is possible to commit.”379 He continued to justify the inclusion of the historical survey by stressing the importance of history itself: It has rightly been said that those people who do not learn from history, are condemned to repeat it. This belief underpins much of the Human Rights work of the United Nations. In order to prescribe the optimal remedies to prevent future genocide, it can be of positive assistance to diagnose past cases in order to analyse their causation together with such lessons as the international community may learn from the history of these events.380 Meanwhile, Whitaker was careful in distancing himself from the political aspects of the issue and especially the implications of the terrorist actions: It is certainly not the intention of this Study in any way to comment on politics or to awaken bitterness or feelings of revenge. The purpose and hope of this Study is exactly the opposite: to deter future violence by strengthening collective international responsibility and remedies. It would undermine this purpose, besides violating historical truth as well as the integrity of United Nations Studies, were anybody guilty of genocide to believe that international concern might be averted or historical records changed because of political or other pressure. If such an attempt were to succeed, that would serve to encourage those in future who may be contemplating similar crimes. Equally, it is necessary to warn that nothing in these historical events should be used to provide an excuse for further violence or vendettas: this Study is a warning directed against violence. Its object is to deter terrorism or killing of whatever scale, and to encourage understanding and reconciliation. The scrutiny of world opinion and an honest recognition of the truth about painful past events have been the starting-point for a foundation of reconciliation, with for example post-war Germany, which will help to make the future more secure for humanity.381

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Evidently aware of the potential rebuking of the states implicated by the mentioned cases in the paragraph, Whitaker referred to the Holocaust and the example of the two German governments which had been “unflinching in their acknowledgement and condemnation of these guilty events, in their efforts to guard against any repetition of them or of Nazism.”382 Turning to the parallel with the Armenian case in regard to the succeeding Turkish state’s handling of the issue, Whitaker noted that although the succeeding Turkish government did establish trials for a few of the perpetrators of the massacres, the present official Turkish policy was rather one of denial and dismissal of the evidence, considering it mere forgeries.383 In substantiating his claims, Whitaker too referred to the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal with the presented evidence and the published verdict.384 But Whitaker went even further: It is important that the historic momentum of the spirit of international unity against genocide displayed by Nuremberg and the Convention should not be allowed to falter or lapse. Failure to make effective international legal provisions is likely to threaten peace, to drive nations to desperate unilateral measures (such as the abduction of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina to bring him to trial in Israel for genocidal acts in 1961), or to open excuses for the deplorable violence of terrorist reprisals.385 Thus, Whitaker took the opportunity to mark an apparent separation between, on the one hand a recognition of the genocide and the same demand implied by the committed terrorist acts on the other. He substantiated this separation by stating that More than 50 Turkish diplomats, who certainly were innocent of any possible involvement in the Ottoman Empire’s treatment of Armenians, have been assassinated by terrorists. The reform of legitimate international measures to deal with genocide would be a highly constructive way to cut support for terrorism.386 Final review of the draft, August 21 1985 The Armenian question had gone from an international legal case in 1920, and as a precedence case in 1948 for the Nuremburg and Tokyo Charters, to become a disputed historical issue in 1985. While the inclusion of the historical survey in the Ruhashyankiko Report was attacked mainly in regard to the Armenian case by alluding to the scarcity of the scholarly sources on the matter, Whitaker had opened up for a much more varied barrage against his report. Apart from the reintroduction of the Armenian case, Whitaker’s broadened view of the term genocide and the inclusion of several cases during the twentieth century had given impetus to a heated discussion on all fronts. In fact, by the second day of the lengthy debate session (four days in total), the Chairman (Daes) was evidently obliged to ask the speakers to show respect for one another, “particularly for the officers and members of the Sub-

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Commission.” Yet another noticeable difference was how nuanced argumentation had become since 1979. Questioning the historical accuracy: it was not genocide As in the Ruhashyankiko Report, it was the Turkish representative who outspokenly contested the validity of the presented facts about committed crimes against the Armenians. In a lengthy statement, Mr. Yawzalp (observer for Turkey) accused the reintroduced Armenian case in “paragraph 24, and the long footnote thereto,” not only for being biased but also presenting “an erroneous and unjust conclusion apparently based on only a cursory study of the question. The reintroduction was also a dangerous step since it would constitute a reward to terrorism and thus give a new impetus to violence.”388 The exclusion from the previous report, Yawzalp contested, was not only in order to “maintain unity within the international community in regard to genocide,” but also because delving “into the past might reopen old wounds which were healing.”389 He continued to state that such a claim could only be substantiated by researching the archives and not by “reading some wellknown books that reflected a one-sided version. The reintroduction of the issue would thus put the Sub-Commission in the position of passing judgement on a complex and controversial issue without complete documentary evidence.”390 Furthermore, contemplating the text of the Genocide Convention, Yawzalp pointed out that there was no binding evidence about the issue of intent and the outcome was simply a result of Armenian rebellion cooperating with the enemy and killing civilians behind the lines. “The Armenians had been acting within the framework of a terrorist strategy they had set up for themselves,” and there were “thousands of documents available in the archives to prove that the Government had sought to apply the necessary measures without human suffering and many officers found guilty of negligence had been punished, some with the death penalty.”391 The asserted uniqueness of the Holocaust, increasingly becoming one of the strongest arguments in dismissing the Armenian fate as not being a case of genocide, was now being employed in earnest. Yawzalp stated that There was no analogy between the holocaust of the Jews and the events of 1915. The Jews had been massacred simply because they were Jews, and the intention to destroy them had been firmly established at the Nuremberg Trial by an international verdict based on evidence obtained from official documents. The events in Turkey in 1915 had begun with an armed rebellion against the State, that had had to be repressed and both sides had suffered consequent losses. No action had been taken against the Armenians simply because they were Armenians, and there was not a single authentic document to prove that the Government had intended to destroy them, although there were many to prove the contrary. Armenian terrorism had, in recent years, taken the lives of many innocent persons

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The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide and the terrorists regarded the condemnation of Turkey for the crime of genocide as a stepping-stone to the realization of their ultimate objective of creating an Armenian State within the existing borders of Turkey. The reintroduction of the question into the report would considerably boost the position of those who advocated violence as the most effective method to be followed, thus encouraging terrorism in general, and he hoped that no one would assume such an awful responsibility.392

Vividly exemplifying the self-perpetuating process of the politics of memory, Yawzalp had connected the present acts of terrorism to the past, justifying the past through the present context, while condemning the present actions through substantiation of the past accusations. Armenians were still being accused of having committed treason back in 1915 as well as harboring the same plans now in the present. Little had changed in the relation between perpetrator and victim during the past seven decades. Yet another elaborative argumentation against the inclusion of the Armenian case was delivered by Türkkaya Ataöv, the representative for the International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and Professor of International Relations at Ankara University. Employing a more academic approach to the subject, he commented on Whitaker’s methodology in including the sources used. Ataöv claimed that the Armenian subject was not only a controversial subject between some Turks and some Armenians, but also among historians and researchers. The problem was, therefore, far from being resolved by the brief comments on the subject in the Special Rapporteur’s report and a study of that question demanded special skills and knowledge.393 While dismissing the “Andonian documents” as forgeries,394 Ataöv stated that the US Ambassador, Morgenthau, “well known for his hatred of the Turks” was a Zionist, who “desired the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, which would encourage the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine.” As further confirmation, Ataöv noted that the two succeeding American Ambassadors to Turkey had entirely different views on the subject. Turning to the usage of the verdict by the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, Ataöv concluded his statement by pointing to the importance of objectivity, saying that All that did not, of course, mean that no massacre had occurred, but it was obvious that there were contradictions and disagreements among the foreign writers themselves over inter alia the role of the independent (non-Communist) Republic of Armenia. Caution was required when one approached the question. Thus, Jean-Paul Sartre had stated before the Russell Tribunal that an objective study of all the facts was necessary before it was possible to prove the existence of genocide, which depended to a very large extent on proof of intent. Of course, to accept a human

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tragedy was a moral duty for all historians, but the United Nations should not focus attention on some cases and pass over others in silence.395 Akram (Pakistani observer) repeated the Turkish logic about the term genocide not being applicable to “the unfortunate conflict between Turks and Armenians in 1915 and 1916.”396 Dismissing the presented sources in the report, Akram claimed that the earlier report had made it clear that only those instances of genocide for which impartial and substantiated evidence could be compiled would be taken into consideration, and that cases that might reopen old wounds would be omitted.… If the references to the Armenian question remained in the study, he feared that they would be seen as vindicating a claim that had been pursued internationally through the use of terrorism and that they would encourage further terrorist attacks on innocent people.397 We do not know enough; we are not historians nor judges Other speakers were more nuanced in their argumentation. The American representative, Cary, commenting on the issue of the non-retroactivity of the Convention for punishing crimes committed prior to the codification, cautioned against using genocide terminology too loosely.398 Although there was a wide documentation of the Armenian massacres and their large number of victims, Cary asserted that genocide “was still, however, a special form of massacre and the question was not to be treated lightly.”399 Bringing forth the issue of objectivity, Cary noted that the footnotes to Paragraphs 20–24 of the report had seemingly not taken all available sources into account and that they should be complemented in order to present a more nuanced picture of the events.400 Marc Bossuyt’s (expert member, Belgium) comment was aligned with that of Cary. Bossuyt agreed with Whitaker that political pressure shall not alter the history, but stated that while Whitaker had “striven to be absolutely dispassionate” on an issue which “awakened bitterness and feelings of revenge,” the inclusion of references to the sources cited in the Ottoman archives would certainly improve the report.401 While a UN report on the subject could hardly ignore the reference to the Armenian massacres, Bossuyt claimed that the point of view of the concerned government, i.e. Turkey in this case, should be justified to be included in the report.402 The impact of the terrorist actions was much more tangible now compared with the compilation of the Ruhashyankiko report, which was already apparent in the previous speakers’ notes as well as the Rapporteur’s introduction, and it came to be a recurring argument in several more addresses. Stressing the conciliatory nature of the UN, the Egyptian expert, Khalifa stated that [t]he role of those it represented was to heal the wounds of history, not to keep them open. It would be paradoxical if a United Nations report

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The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide should have the effect of reviving certain forms of hatred and perhaps even further fanning the flames of terrorism. Referring again to paragraph 24, he wondered whether the contemporary Turks were to be held responsible for the faults of their Ottoman ancestors. Attributing to them such a responsibility might well involve the risk of further multiplying the murders of Turkish diplomats throughout the world. The Turks and the Armenians were proud peoples who should rather seek to heal the wounds of the past and to make peace between themselves. The mention of the case of the Armenians in the report was not relevant and might even be harmful in so far as it might be considered that that [sic] reminder of the events of 1915–1916 was the main reason for updating the report on genocide.403

Although Khalifa certainly pointed out the obvious dilemma of how to relate a possible recognition to the ongoing terrorism, it again implied that the main reason was instead to refrain from insulting present-day Turkey while falling short of addressing the issue of active denial of the known facts. The fact that Whitaker had, at an early stage, used the post-WWII example of Germany in handling the legacy of the Holocaust seemed to have been lost, or perhaps ignored on purpose. This promoted the legal argument of tabula rasa (clean slate), i.e. a policy of forgive and forget. The core of the entire problem, being how to “heal the wounds,” seemed to be a minor issue overlooked in the argumentation, especially since the very acts of terrorism were an apparent evidence of that the policy of forgive and forget did not work. Agreeing with Khalifa, the Mexican expert Martinez Baez suggested that one perhaps would be better off omitting the historical references altogether. In doing so, neither Khalifa nor Baez questioned the accuracy or authenticity of the sources, but the omission was again rather due to the feelings and the embitterment the invoked memories seemed to have caused.404 In addition, Baez too adhered to the view that the Sub-Commission could not act as judges and “it was not for them to pronounce the harsh verdict of posterity.”405 Unwilling to share the responsibility for such a judgment, he concluded his remarks with a rather peculiar statement, which partly disavowed the nature of the Commission, namely a group of legal experts on the subject rather than diplomats and politicians, saying that it “would not be prudent, since the past had shown that what was called the judgment of history was often nothing more than the opinion of the victor.”406 The Jordanian expert member, Al Khasawneh concurred with the view that Paragraph 24 in general and the Armenian massacres in particular had “given rise to considerable controversy and had diverted attention from other areas that were more closely related to the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.”407 He, too, argued that the Sub-Commission was “not a body of historians and establishment of the crime of genocide – the greatest of all human rights violations – led to extremely grave legal consequences.”408 He argued that one should distinguish between “massacre, however serious and whether or not accompanied by

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official negligence, and the crime of genocide,” he added. Until such time, it would be better to omit the historical references altogether.409 The politicization of the discussion took a new turn when the representative for the World Muslim Congress, Daqualibi, a native of Syrian Aleppo, recalled that by the end of WWI, there had been an attempt to “exterminate the Armenian refugees,” which had been averted by the intervention of local Arab notables. However, Daqualibi suggested that such allegations should be directed towards the UK and France as part of a “conspiracy which had been hatched not only against the Armenians but also against Sherif Faisal so that France could occupy Syria, as secretly agreed between that country and the United Kingdom.”410 Nonetheless, Daqualibi too concluded his comment with an equivocal statement, saying that [i]t was obvious that things were still unknown about the events of 1915 and hasty conclusions should be viewed with suspicion. In due course, history would establish the truth, which might well be different from that which was currently said to be the truth.411 History was indeed a developing and changeable medium that would eventually cast its verdict, although in an undefined future. Chowdhury (expert, Bangladesh) seconded the earlier speakers, emphasizing that the omission of the Armenian Genocide from the Ruhashyankiko Report was not due to the Rapporteur’s “absent-mindedness” but rather as a result of a deliberate decision after a lengthy debate.412 Criticizing Whitaker for going beyond his terms, Chowdhury exclaimed that “[t]he aim should be to look to the future, not the past, and to seek reconciliation not bitterness.”413 The fact that the last review meeting in 1978 had explicitly called upon Ruhashyankiko to re-include the Armenian case into the report seemed to have been disregarded. Neither did Chowdhury, nor several other speakers, seem to have noticed the clear mandate stated in the task assigned to Whitaker, namely to “revise, as a whole, and update” the previous study in 1979. Recognition based on the known facts The French expert Joinet disagreed on disqualifying the Sub-Commission’s competence to label different violations. Referring to Paragraph 24, “he did not agree that the Sub-Commission could not qualify acts, events or situations as examples of different categories of human rights violations. That was part of its normal task, as, for example under agenda, items 5 and 6.”414 However, he too alluded to the difficulty of assessing historical events, but interestingly enough not due to their distance but rather to their relative recentness, adding that “[t]ime alone would enable historians to carry out studies from a variety of standpoints which would, in turn, make it possible to reach, a personal conviction.”415 Having said that, Joinet remarked that the Jewish and the Armenian cases were well documented. “However,” he continued,

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The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide the real question to be resolved by the Sub-Commission was not that of historical truth but what was good or bad for the cause of human rights. The United Nations had, indeed, been established to encourage understanding among peoples and understanding meant reconciliation, which implied forgiving and forgetting. None the less, the historian had to carry out his work and the lessons which he drew from the past would serve to prepare for the future. An understanding of what had happened in the past should permit the international community to avoid future violations of fundamental rights. That was an objective which must take priority over all other considerations.416

In that sense, Joinet recalled that although it had been argued that an official recognition would potentially encourage the Armenian terrorism, in his mind a recognition would have the opposite effect.417 Referring to the prevailing scholarly research, Mrs. Tuckman (Minority Rights Group), pointed to the substantiated knowledge from eye-witnesses, the diplomatic reports and the ever-growing data as more archives were consulted on the matter.418 Disagreeing with the assertion that it would be “retrogressive to refer to past genocides” prior to the adoption of the Convention, she mentioned that the General Assembly itself had done so in December 1946.419 “In any case,” she concluded, “the major concern of the Sub-Commission should be to help the victims, and not to protect the Governments. To rewrite history was certainly not to work for the prevention of new tragedies.”420 Harut Sassounian (Indigenous World Association) and an ethnic Armenian himself, speaking in support of Whitaker’s inclusion of the Armenian case, was the only representative who brought attention to the 1948 War Commission Report. It seems, however, that the mentioning of the War Commission Report passed quite unnoticed and was neither added to the report nor used as argumentation for the inclusion of the Armenian case. Sassounian speculates that this was probably due to the fact that his remarks were made during the review of the final draft and that NGO representatives were not allowed to present amendments to the report.421 Sassounian also drew attention to a parallel process for recognition, which was going on in the European Parliament, mentioning that the European Parliament’s Rapporteur, Jaak Vandemeulebroucke, had in the draft report stated that the Turkish Government could no longer deny the history of the TurkishArmenian question or the element of genocide and would urge the 10 member States of the European Community to speak out with one voice in the United Nations to ensure that the Commission on Human Rights included the Armenian Genocide in its report on the prevention and punishment of genocide.422 Laurin (International Federation of Human Rights) reminded the other speakers that his organization had protested in both the Commission on

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Human Rights and the Sub-Commission regarding the deletion of the Armenian case from the previous report. Laurin “welcomed the fact that Mr. Whitaker had covered that topic in his latest report.”423 Asserting that the body of evidence was sufficient to call the massacres as genocide, Laurin pointed to the legacy of the genocide and that its denial was aggravating the genocide legacy: Armenians were still suffering from the tragedy that had befallen them at the beginning of the century, since they were still deprived of the right to their history. The silence of the international community added to their sufferings. To recognize the right of a people to its history was also to recognize its right to existence, and that concept should form part of the overall concept of human rights and the rights of peoples. The genocide of the Armenians formed part of the universal conscience and the collective memory.424 According to Laurin, recognition was thus a prerequisite for its prevention.425 When Whitaker was given the floor to conclude the review, he ensured that the inclusion of the historical survey, although not exhaustive, was there to “show the many faces of genocide,” offering comprehension of the origins of the phenomenon.426 As for the Armenian massacres in particular, the issue was to be “approached with caution just because it was so important. He had been studying that question for over eight years, and had discussed it with Turkish diplomats, intellectuals and research workers, as well as with many persons of other nationalities.”427 After having given some examples of German diplomatic testimonies as well as Turkish court verdicts, he turned to the issue of terrorism: Everyone deplored terrorism, but there were many people who thought that it was providing an excuse for terrorists not to admit frankly the facts of history. Lessons should be drawn from what the two Germanies had done after the Second World War in not hesitating to admit and condemn events that were still recent. Since the current Turkish Government was not the Ottoman Government which had been in power at the time of the Armenian massacre, it should be all the more easy for it to displayed objectivity. To be able to close that chapter of history, as everyone desired, it had to be closed with honour. If experts did not have the courage to speak the truth, there was no point in their participation in the work of the Sub-Commission, which had the duty to protect not Governments but victims. Mr. Despouy had rightly stressed that wounds should be healed and not reopened, but that implied precisely that justice and truth had to be respected.428 Whitaker had clearly taken a firm stand on the issue and was not about to reconsider his text. At this stage the Turkish observer asked for taking the

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floor but was denied by the chairman who pointed out that the debate was over, upon which Mr. Yawzalp “said he would comply with the Chairman’s decision, but deplored the fact that the Sub-Commission should base itself simply on the statements of a Special Rapporteur to accuse a country of a crime it had not committed.”429 There is one important note to be made here. The Armenian case, although the one at the center of attention and the issue which the Whitaker report came perhaps most to be associated with, was far from alone in causing protests, especially from the respective state representatives. Rather, the heated session was an all-against-all debate where every observer or member affected by the report was now out defending the innocence of their respective state. The stigmatization of the term genocide clearly mattered and was by no means reserved for the Turkish reaction. This became evident in the barrage of criticism fired by several representatives whose state had been mentioned in the report. Mr. Sanze (Observer for Burundi) hoped that “further efforts to compare the events in his country with Nazi genocide would be avoided, since they might well undermine the concept of genocide.”430 The observer of Paraguay criticized the mentioning of a “non-existing” genocide against the indigenous people of Aché-Guayaki.431 The same refutation was made by the observer for Guatemala.432 Mrs. Рoc, the Observer for Democratic Kampuchea, likewise chastised the report for claiming that there had been a genocide committed in Cambodia, defending Pol Pot and the Khmer fraction which was part of the ruling coalition government at the time of the review.433 Mr. Dowenk (Observer for Israel) was noticeably upset about the allegations brought forth by Mr. Sofinsky and Mr. Khalifa about committed genocide against Palestinians,434 while Shahabi Sirjami (Observer for the Islamic Republic of Iran), “categorically rejected any allegations that genocide had taken place in Iran, ascribing the inclusion of the reference to the Iranian Baha’is to false propaganda.”435 In short, few were satisfied with Whitaker’s list of examples of genocide committed in the recent past. The fact that several of those cases are nowadays considered as acknowledged committed crimes, even genocide, is beyond the point. It is safe to assert that the initial aim to rectify the mistakes committed in the Ruhashyankiko Report by updating and revising the study had not turned out quite as envisioned. Whitaker had gone rather too wide, including so many different aspects and cases that further approval of the report was made difficult. Schabas has correctly noted that Whitaker, in sharp contrast to Ruhashyankiko’s conservatism, had “made a number of innovative and controversial conclusions,” trying to include such cases as cultural genocide as well as “ethnocide” and “ecocide” in his report.436 The Soviet member, Sofinsky, paraphrasing a Russian proverb, stated that the Special Rapporteur had “thrown the ship’s compass overboard.”437 He joined the US representative, Carey, in stating that the report in its present form was “inadequate” and should be updated. Most importantly, the 1948 Convention should be understood as it was written without attempting to interpret it in one way or another.438

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The adoption of the report and its shelving The final report from the Sub-Commission reflected how divided the members were: several speakers agreed that the Special Rapporteur had interpreted his mandate accurately and was justified in exemplifying some specific cases of genocide in the past. These members valued the significance of history as the conveyer of past mistakes and the global narrative in order to prevent repetition.439 Others considered that the assignment at hand was about the prevention of future genocides “without referring to past events which were difficult or impossible to investigate.”440 Interestingly, yet again the Armenian case was singled out and the report noted how WWI divided the Sub-Commission in two clear camps: one insisting on that “such massacres indeed constituted genocide, as was well documented by the Ottoman military trials of 1919, eye witness reports and official archives,” while others, “[o]bjecting to such a view, … argued that the Armenian massacre was not adequately documented and that certain evidence had been forged.”441 It seems highly ironic that the premises used by Raphael Lemkin in coining the term, and his reflection on the 1915 events as a stepping stone towards the UN Convention, were totally lost on the members of the Sub-Commission. Despite these objections, the Sub-Commission adopted the draft resolution as a whole, by 14 votes to 1, with 4 abstentions.442 However, the SubCommission’s addition of the sentence “Takes note of the Study of the Special Rapporteur,”443 added even more controversy to the report, since everyone argued whether this meant that the UN had or had not recognized the Armenian Genocide. Annex IV of E/CN.4/1986/5 reveals not only the controversy of the report and why it was not submitted to the Commission, but also that, contrary to common belief, it was not exclusively due to the mentioning of the Armenian case (even though this was one of the major issues), but rather due to Whitaker’s widening of the UN Convention definition and exemplifying it by including several contemporary cases. In a final attempt to exclude the Armenian case, Chowdhury claimed that the majority of the expert members had during the debate asked Whitaker to omit it, but the Rapporteur had not complied.444 Disagreeing with Chowdhury, Joinet claimed that those against the inclusion of Paragraph 24 were in minority.445 Mubanga-Chipoya (expert member, Zambia) also disagreed with Chowdhury about the majority of experts being against the inclusion of Paragraph 24 and went on to point out the obvious: the Sub-Commission had preferred not to take a decision on transmitting Mr. Whitaker’s report to the Commission for a number of reasons, not only because paragraph 24 had raised problems. Some of Mr. Whitaker’s proposals would in fact have made the Sub-Commission look ridiculous, more particularly the suggestion that the Economic and Social Council might make amendments to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Economic and Social Council

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Indeed, the Sub-Commission did not transmit Whitaker’s report to the Commission.447 While the Armenian case did certainly constitute the most conspicuous reason for the most heated discussion in the Report, it was hardly the single reason why the Sub-Commission did not fully endorse it. It was rather the sum of the above-mentioned cases which, although several of them are today regarded as cases of atrocity and even genocide, were considered too controversial to be labelled as such back in 1985. It was noted that “unfortunately, some of the parties to that discussion had mistakenly regarded the Sub-Commission as an international penal tribunal or an academy of historians. In the final resort, the Sub-Commission had not transmitted that report to the Commission.”448 Although the Whitaker Report did not quite reach the official status which its proponents wished for, its almost unanimous adoption in the Sub-Commission, especially in the face of prevailing discussions and the criticism, should be viewed as a substantial step in the right direction for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The conveyed discussions and the presented arguments served as a clear indication about how the process of the politics of memory with its actors and mechanisms had contributed to the evolution of the question. The terrorism during the past decade had clearly propelled the issue into the political area, directly or indirectly enticing the scholarly and NGO’s interest in the issue. These bottom-up measures had in turn compelled a top-down counter-reaction, most notably by the Turkish state which counteracted the allegations through diplomatic channels, but also by initiating its own narrative within the academy. Although the Whitaker Report by a UN Sub-Commission is probably one of the highest official instances which the recognition process of the Armenian Genocide has reached, it was the ensuing discussions and the subsequent recognition by the European Parliament in 1987 that would mark the peak of its politics of memory.

The pinnacle of the recognition process: European Parliament, 1987 The Armenian Genocide and its international recognition reached its pinnacle in 1987 when the European Parliament officially recognized the events during WWI as an act of genocide. 1987 became another borderline too; this was the year when the last armed actions with deadly outcomes were committed by an Armenian group before subsiding almost entirely. From a more global point of view, the political scene in Europe was about to change dramatically with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That process would, in turn, set in motion a chain of events resulting in the reemergence of an independent Armenian state as an official voice of

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the Armenian question, but also the resurfacing of territorial disputes dating back to WWI and memories connected to the genocide. By 1987, the recognition process of the Armenian Genocide had gathered considerable momentum, especially in regard to academic works on the subject – there were plenty of publications to refer to. Although still limited in comparison with the Holocaust, the research on the events of WWI had increased considerably compared to the previous decade, with numerous books and articles concerning the Armenian Genocide published by renowned scholars such as Lifton, Bauer and Kuper but also Dadrian and Hovannisian. In addition, the reports and their related debates in the UN and the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal had indirectly contributed to a survey of the available literature and sources on the subject. A bibliography now circulated within the political sphere. The interdisciplinary nature of the Armenian Genocide stood out ever more conspicuously as the process of the politics of memory engaged more actors and areas into the discussion. The circumstance that the Armenian terrorist acts, condoned or not, had played a pivotal role was quite tangible in the review sessions of the Whitaker Report; it became even more apparent right from the very beginning stages of the European Parliament’s recognition process as well. While the UN reports were supposed to be devoid of political overtones and considerations (although the reality proved otherwise), the same debate in the European Parliament was taking place in the political arena. Already at its sitting of October 23 1984, the European Parliament referred to a motion for a resolution by Mr. Saby with the title of “A political solution to the Armenian question.”449 The circle was now complete. The claimed historical dispute, almost a century after it emerged as a political one on the international arena at San Stefano Conference in 1878, had once again expressly necessitated a political solution. This motion was later accompanied by another motion for resolution on June 13 1985, to declare April 24 as Armenian Genocide Day, whereby both motions were addressed to the Political Affairs Committee.450 On November 26 1986, the committee decided to draw up a report. On December 20 in the same year, Jaak Vandemeulebroucke, a Belgian member of the European Parliament, was appointed rapporteur.451 Vandemeulebroucke’s draft report referred to five different motions for resolutions,452 of which all but one (submitted by Kolokotronis, Greek Communist) called attention to the terrorist acts committed against the Turkish diplomats as well as the general public. Besides the differences between the Vandemeulebroucke Report (a clearly political resolution) and those of Ruhashyankiko and Whitaker (focusing on international law), the backgrounds of the reporters were also reflected clearly in the respective report. While the historical background in both of the UN reports were limited to some source references in the footnotes, the thirtypage EP Report by Vandemeulebroucke was almost a fully-fledged historical survey. Going back to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, depicting the structure of the Ottoman Empire, the status of the non-Muslim nations, the

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report also depicted the role of the empire in the “geopolitical chessboard” used by the Major Powers and finally the rise of the Turkish and Armenian nationalism during late nineteenth century.453 The explanation behind the composition of the report was quite simply the fact that Jaak Vandemeulebroucke himself was a professional historian and had compiled the report “with the help of leading Flemish historians.”454 The opening statement of the report pretty much posed one of the central dilemmas of this study: “Seventy years after the dramatic events concerning the Armenian, the Armenian Question is still topical. It is kept alive both by the Armenians and by the Turks” since both were diametrically opposed to each other “in terms of current relevance as well as with the regard to the historical analysis of the events in question.”455 Simply put, the politics of memory lay at the heart of the issue. Not only the past memories but the contemporary interpretation of them was the reason why the WWI events were still a topical issue. In addition, Vandemeulebroucke emphasized that [t]his conflict is accentuated by the unacceptable phenomenon of Armenian terrorism, by the Turkish denial of massive Armenian deportations in time of war, and the official Turkish justification of such deportations, and by the unique existence of an Armenian identity that has remained a unifying factor throughout the entire world.456 Several aspects of the process of the politics of memory shone through in the report. There was particular mention of a younger generation in diaspora, “the third generation,” which having rediscovered its Armenian identity, was now demanding the justice promised in the Sèvres Treaty.457 “Their first demand,” Vandemeulebroucke stressed, “is for the moral recognition of the fact of genocide for themselves and for the victims of the events of the First World War.”458 More importantly, this demand had grown in proportion to the Turkish Government’s denial and exoneration of its Ottoman predecessor.459 Remarking on the terrorist actions, Vandemeulebroucke stated that in addition to these youths there was the radical group who had resorted to terrorist acts, targeting “everything emanating from the Turkish State,” thus indicating a separation between them and the mainstream sentiments demanding recognition. This aspect was accentuated further by remarking that ASALA had “lost all links with the Armenian nationalists in the Diaspora after the attack at Orly in 1982.”460 Vandemeulebroucke presented his report as “an attempt to understand both positions” and seeking “a possible rapprochement between the opposing Turkish and Armenian positions” trying to “identify the task of the European Community in contributing to peace through justice, legality and international cooperation.”461 Striving to achieve a nuanced report presenting both views, Vandemeulebroucke used historic accounts given by Yves Ternon (French physician and medical historian) and Gérard Chaliand (French expert in geopolitics), but also Bryce, Lepsius and Morgenthau while using

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K. Gürün (Turkish diplomat and per se an interesting reflection of the nature of the existing literature) for rendering the official Turkish version.462 The twenty-six-page historical survey, including “The international legal aspect of the Armenian question” was summed up by two concluding pages stating that the acts were a deliberate plan of elimination of the unwanted elements, amounting to “nothing else than the opportunity for genocide,” in compliance with the definition of the 1948 UN genocide convention.463 The wording of the conclusion was in itself quite interesting, as if being a polite regretting that the outcome could not quite dismiss the allegations: It is, therefore, unfortunately impossible to describe the injustice suffered by the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire as anything else but genocide in the sense intended and described in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.464 This, rather “unfortunate” conclusion would be partly reflected in the next step of the report’s process, hinting that some seemingly anticipated a rather different outcome. The review of the report and attempts to shelve it at once The committee considered the draft report on four occasions (September 25 1985; January 22 1986; March 19 1986 and June 26 1986).465 However, once the revised report came up for discussion at the last meeting (June 26 1986), speaking on behalf of the Liberal and Democratic Reformist Group, Vincenzo Bettiza, referring to Rule 84 of the European Parliament’s Rules of Procedure,466 called for the inadmissibility of the document.467 This motion actually prevailed (by twenty votes to nineteen), whereupon the entire report and its amendments were dropped from the agenda.468 Challenging the decision, Vandemeulebroucke wrote a letter to the President of the European Parliament, Pierre Pflimlin, arguing that it seemed quite illogical to invoke Rule 84 at the very final stage when there were indeed prior decisions within the very same committee to draw up a report, assigning a rapporteur to the task and deciding deadlines for submitting and voting on proposed amendments.469 Vandemeulebroucke cautioned that A very important precedent has thus been set and in future any chance majority in any parliamentary committee will be freely able to have minority views removed from the agenda, even before there has been a chance to discuss the amendments that have been tabled and printed.470 By doing so, the rapporteur asked the President to forward the issue to the enlarged Bureau for arbitration. The Chairman of the Committee, Roberto Formigoni, sent a letter on July 1 1986, asking the President to submit the issue to the Committee on the Rules of Procedure and Petitions to “assess the

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appropriateness” of Rule 84.471 On November 27 1986, the enlarged Bureau, “after having a wide-ranging exchange of views,” decided that the Rule 84 “could only be tabled in committee when the debate on a given report began.”472 Thus, by a vote of nine to four, the enlarged Bureau decided that Rule 84 was not applicable in the mentioned case whereby the Political Affair Committee should resume consideration of the Vandemeulebroucke Report.473 Finally, on February 25 1987, the draft report was adopted by twenty-five votes to twenty-three (two abstentions).474 The report was submitted for consideration on April 3 1987.475 Here, it would be highly proper to point out a significant ongoing political process in the European Parliament, namely Turkey’s aspiration to join the European Community. Although the underlying motions resulting in Vandemeulebroucke’s report dated back to 1984, it would be naïve to disregard the timing of the debate in the European Parliament without referring to Turkey’s submission of application, on April 14 1987, for formal membership to the European Economic Community. As it would turn out, this would be the first of many similar future resolutions regarding the Armenian Genocide that resurfaced on the Europeans Parliament’s agenda (later in relation to Turkey’s EUaccession negotiations).476 This would also illustrate how the “historical” WWI events can be used as political leverage. This has in fact played an important role in forcing Turkey to change its traditional denialist policy, even though it has instead resulted in an evolution of the denial becoming a more sophisticated one. The debate in the European Parliament The report was put forward to debate on June 18 1987. As in the UN, it was the historicity of the issue that lay at the core of the debate, an argument which had now established itself as the main dilemma for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The historicity aside, the debate was a palpable demonstration of many of the factors and means functioning in the politics of memory: the relation between memory and democracy, the molding of collective memory and history, the confrontation by the third parties, the relation between history and politics, the necessary steps for a sincere reconciliation etc. The records state that Vandemeulebroucke could not participate due to health reasons.477 Pleading in favor for recognition, Saby (Socialist, France) gave two main reasons why they should approve the resolution: “The first is that the collective memory of mankind belongs neither to a government, to an individual, or a group of individuals, it belongs to everyone.”478 It seemed also that the resolution was an issue of prestige and would act as a token of the EC’s international status regarding human rights, “to make up the ground it has lost to the international organizations – by which I mean the UN.”479 His second reason was directly tied to the recent Turkish EC membership application and the relation between democracy and memory: We said to Spain and Portugal: you can only join when you have returned to democracy, when your people have democratic system and can

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contribute the full wealth of their culture. We must now have the courage to tell our Turkish friends that Turkey can only join the Community when it too has achieved democracy, when it too has managed to come to terms with the wealth of its ethnic and cultural diversity. By that I mean the Armenian and Kurdish peoples.480 As it would turn out, the discussion was replete with references to the European collective memory, especially and understandably, with WWII and the Holocaust in mind. Referring to the relation between the past and the future, Jef L. E. Ulburghs (Independent, Netherlands) claimed that “[a]nyone who fails to understand his own history cannot build history.”481 Enumerating the issues related to lack of democracy and human rights in Turkey, Ulburghs stated that “a policy which misrepresents history and suppresses the rights of minorities oppresses its own people. For all these reasons Turkey is not acceptable as a candidate for European Community membership.”482 Drawing a parallel with the Holocaust, he asserted that “[t]he pretext of prudence, of strategic calculations, has often led to conspiracy of silence, about the Jews yesterday, about the Armenians today.”483 Georges Sutra da Germa (Socialist, France) duly noted that the MPs should not assume the role of historians. The recognition was not about writing history but rather acknowledging the existing scholarly findings as well as confronting the Turkish state denial: History has been written. We were not needed for that. Everyone has agreed that this was how things happened. The problem is that the history taught in Turkey is like the photographs of the Stalinist era in which there is one shoe too many, because a face has been blanked out. The face which is missing is the face of the Armenian people.484 The recognition of the known scholarly research, according to Sutra da Germa, would not only strengthen the future of Turkey, but it would also strengthen her relations with the European community. “What would relations with Germany be like today if she had denied the Nazi crimes?” asked Sutra da Germa rhetorically, adding that “[t]here are many people here who refuse to render Turkey a service by refusing to tell her that she must recognize reality.”485 Sutra da Germa’s observation here was a rather striking one, which has been quite constant since the ending of WWI and seems to continue in the same manner in our days. By condoning the Turkish denial of the genocide and atrocities committed during WWI, the international community had not only failed in helping Turkey to face the reality, but they had in fact contributed to the fortification of historical revisionism, which has become official policy in Turkey. Needless to say, this had hardly contributed to either a deeper democracy, or better respect towards ethnic minorities in Turkey. Not all agreed with such argumentation though. Emilio Duran (European Democratic Group, ED, Spain), in a written statement, asserted that the

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European Parliament was setting a bad precedent, wondering “What is the point, in 1987, in condemning the Sublime Porte atrocities? What does it mean if today we condemn the Ottoman Empire?”486 Gerd Ludwig Lemmer (European People’s Party, EPP, Germany) disagreed with such a resolution, calling it “a subject for historical study but not of present-day political debate … this would set a precedent which might keep us busy for years to come.”487 According to Lemmer “[t]he historical presentation of the past, including our own recent past, cannot and must not be the business of a parliament whose duty it is to be the driving force behind European union and thus to shape the future of Europe.”488 In other words, the past had little to do with the future. Therefore, Lemmer announced that his group (Christian Democrats) would neither participate in the debate nor in the voting. Michael J. Welsh (ED, UK) expressed a similar view, stating that the European Parliament was not a tribunal competent of passing judgement on historical events. His group had not only argued against the original appointment of the rapporteur, but they had “consistently held the view that this report should not be submitted to the European Parliament.”489 They too renounced any further participation in the debate and the voting. It is quite noteworthy that despite disagreeing with the resolution, almost no group or MP explicitly voted against recognition, but simply chose to refrain from further participation in the voting and to abstain. This observation was perhaps most peculiar in the case of Jacqueline ThomePatenotre (European Democratic Alliance, EDA, France), at the time, member of the Delegation for Relations with Turkey. She criticized the report for setting a precedent from which “there would be no end to its reports on the tragic events which all the countries of Europe have experienced in the past.”490 In her mind, politics, democracy and peace, not historical judgment, were the concern of the Parliament. She then concluded her statement by announcing that her group would not be part of a “clear political maneuver which has nothing to do with the current situation of the Armenians and which is designed purely to exert a destabilizing influence on the Turkish people and its representatives.”491 Some MPs were more split on the issue. Klaus Hänsch (Socialist, Germany) claimed that both the report and the resolution contained “a number of political and legal absurdities and historically unjustifiable assertions which could better be decided by a historical congress or a court of law.”492 Nonetheless, Hänsch was in support of a recognition, since “from a political standpoint the undisputed massacres of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were tantamount to genocide.”493 A recognition, in Hänsch’s view, could “help the Armenians in diaspora to preserve their historical identity.” However, due to other amendments, mostly in regard to the implication of present-day Turkey and the issue of possible indemnity, Hänsch abstained from voting, exclaiming that “It is impossible, and will continue to be so, for us to approve an Armenian Balfour declaration today!”494 Alain Bombard (Socialist, France), stated that even though he would vote for the report, he was doing so “with a heavy heart” due to the usage of the term genocide and

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the fact that present-day Turkey should not be held responsible for the crimes committed by past Turkish governments. Notwithstanding, it was important to call the events by their real name, i.e. genocide. He too saw the recognition as a venue to ease the tension between the Turkish and Armenian nations, concluding that “[t]his debate was needed to exorcise the past.”495 Other MPs in favor of recognition also pointed out the connection between the past and the future. Gustave A. Pordea (European Right, France), recalling the recent past, stressed that a democratic Germany did not feel a need to deny the crimes of the Nazi era. He then turned to the future and in a prophetic prediction added: “And if we cast a glance eastwards into the future, we should not be best pleased to see a politically and socially healthy Russia refuting the errors of communism.”496 He asserted that “History can never be rewritten and it is pointless trying to correct it by artifice or by silence.” To him the conclusion was not only obvious, but also taking a stand in the matter: “Given the essentially moral aspect of the matter, abstention seems to me to be indefensible.”497 Sharing this view, Marco Pannella (Independent, France), regarded abstention to be a vote too. He was quite harsh in his wording, saying that the Christian Democrats are adopting the attitude of Pontius Pilate, saying that this is a fact of history and not something for a parliament to deliberate.… So in ten or fifteen years from now, if there is a democratic Russia, will it be able to tell us that because the misdeeds of the 30s, 40s or 50s are historical fact we cannot pass political judgment on them?498 He was quite prophetic in this regard, since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union were much closer in time and as we have witnessed in the theoretical review, the post-Communist era would, much alike the post-WWII and the Holocaust, have an immense impact on the entire field of memory studies and the politics of memory. However, he did not agree with the amendment noting the Jewish genocide, since according to Pannella, the two events were not comparable.499 Willy Kuijpers’ (Rainbow Group, Netherlands) statement was quite revealing for several reasons. In regard to the compilation of the report, Kuijpers noted that Vandemeulebroucke, a historian himself had compiled the report “with the help of leading Flemish historians” before submitting it to the Committee.500 Soon after, a series of obstacles suddenly arose as “[p]art of Parliament tried simply to declare the report unacceptable after a year and a half of discussion and expiry of the deadline for tabling of amendments in the Political Affairs Committee. A quiet burial then.”501 The hostility towards the report even turned into intimidations, forcing Vandemeulebroucke actually to request replacement as rapporteur, nominating Ernest Glinne as his successor, but was denied this by the right-wing MPs.502 Vandemeulebroucke had not only met resistance within the Parliament, but he had also been targeted by much more tangible assaults, receiving a “number of threatening letters from

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an unidentified quarter.”503 Vandemeulebroucke had been “vilified as an intriguer and an enemy of Turkey,” but what was much more troublesome and worrying was Kuijpers’ claim that Vandemeulebroucke’s life had been in jeopardy as he “was threatened with the same fate as befell Olof Palme.”504 The threats had allegedly been directed the other way as well. Rudolf Wedekind (EPP, Germany), who had previously expressed his objection to such a resolution, said that he too had received death threats from an Armenian woman who had approached him during a press conference, a threat which he found “incredible, but I am taking it seriously.”505 He then asserted that three other MPs had also received verbal threats over the phone from the same people. Under such circumstances it was impossible for him to vote on the report and he requested the President to remove the report from the agenda entirely.506 Capturing the essence of the politics of memory, Otto von Habsburg (EPP, Germany) stated that in case the report was adopted it would create a dangerous precedent. It is nothing more nor less than a foolish attempt to establish past events as historical truth by means of a majority decision. A question which should be examined and evaluated exclusively by objective historians is here being settled on the basis of party decisions according to political inclinations. It is an attempt to rewrite the past in terms of present opportunity – what we in Parliament are now possibly about to do is a further step in the direction of the Orwellian world of the Ministry of Truth which a writer of genius predicted years ago.507 As such, Habsburg was indeed quite justified and accurate in his argumentation, save for the fact that, unlike the same procedure in the UN, the debate was not based on some bare references, but was founded on a compiled report exclusively examining the historical and legal aspects of the matter. It was by no means a fully-fledged academic research report, but it did indeed employ such an approach, using then available scholarly material for weighing in both sides of the story. In addition, what Habsburg and others who use the same argumentation failed to elaborate was how would one then be able to remedy the same “Ministry of Truth” implemented by the Turkish State? Parliaments are indeed not the suitable institution for similar decisions, had it not been for the official denial implemented by Turkey. Thus, these recognitions, which was duly noted by, for example, Sutra da Germa, become a statement against the denial of scholarly proven facts rather than writing their own “historical truth.” Only equivalent democratic states and their institutions possess the authority and the position to pursue another democratic state, in this case Turkey, to persuade it to refrain from its denialist policy. Evidently, neither scholars nor the diaspora possess the authority to do so, unless by indirect pressure, which is also foremost through their own national governments and legislative institutions. Furthermore, deciding on such an issue based upon well-established scholarly data is not much different than

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e.g. parliamentary statements and decisions pertaining to global warming and the environment where the parliamentarians making the decisions are hardly experts on the subject, but instead rely on presented reports by experts. There is hardly an absolute consensus on the latter issue either, but somehow the politicians still rely on an existing majority consensus on which to base their political decisions. Habsburg continued his speech with the peculiar statement that “Unfortunately very few people are aware that the report is solely the responsibility of the rapporteur and does not represent the view of [the] Parliament.”508 He was, however, far from the first person who had argued in this manner and the same argumentation had also been uttered during the UN debates. Bearing in mind that the rapporteur had indeed been empowered by the responsible assembly to conduct a study, draw conclusions and recommend actions accordingly, simply made similar statements superfluous and void. Vandemeulebroucke, much like Whitaker and Ruhashyankiko before him in the UN, had done exactly as explicitly requested by his assembly. Habsburg then concluded his statement by asserting that the “Armenian question can be resolved only by mutual understating, and not by unilateral condemnation. Anyone who attempts to do anything else is worsening the situation and becomes answerable for further terror.”509 That the terror, for one reason or another, ceased almost immediately after European Parliament’s recognition should at least have eased this concern. Reflecting on the evident political nature of the Armenian Genocide and its politics of memory, keeping it highly topical, Arthur Stanley Newens (Socialist, UK) noted that although the opponents of this report dismiss it as an academic and historic exercise and say it is not the task of this Parliament to consider this issue, the plethora of circulars, pamphlets, books and other communications distributed on this subject contradict this view.510 Emphasizing the topicality of the problem, Newens justifiably pointed out that the anxiety of the Turkish Government was quite reasonable since the Armenian issue had not been buried by the sands of time, but the fact that the memory of those sufferings continues to form a vital part of the communal consciousness of the Armenian community of today.… The problem is therefore essentially contemporary, though its roots, like those of other political issues go back into history.511 Remarking on the terrorist acts, Newens pointed to the significance of recognition as a first step towards an anticipated reconciliation, concluding that “No one supports terrorism, but we must take a clear step today and approve this report if we want reconciliation between Turks and Armenians in the

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future.”512 Thus, while some worried that recognition would entice further terrorist activities, other saw recognition as a means to defuse the terrorists. The significance of recognition as a logical first step towards reconciliation was exemplified by other MPs as well. The example of post-WWII politics of memory and the role of the Holocaust in the collective memory of Europe was yet again recalled as Coste Floret (EDA, France), pointing out the core issue at hand, stressed that the debate was rather about “the problem of whether reasons of State can override human rights and whether Realpolitik can disregard moral values.”513 He recalled that the German government had in 1952, even though not responsible for the holocaust, acknowledged the wrongdoings, “first as an example, the second as a lesson.” By acknowledging its past, Germany had “signed a treaty of moral reparation with the State of Israel.”514 He continued that “[i]f the violence by Asala, which we utterly condemn, is to cease, if passions are to cool and dialogue to start, there must first be a recognition of the facts.”515 Continuing on the same subject, Jacques Mallet (EPP, France) was more frank about the main reason which had produced the current recognition process, namely the fact that there was a “matter of current political concern.” He believed that the recognition of the genocide, while an essential factor for facilitating a dialogue between Armenians and Turks, was also one way of “eliminating Armenian terrorism, which we formally deplore.”516 Mallet concluded that “[a]t a more profound level we are calling for the right of memory. By forgetting a past genocide one encourages genocide in the future,” although no one held the present-day Turkey responsible for the crimes committed by its Ottoman predecessor. A recognition, in Mallet’s view was “a straightforward moral reparation.”517 The statement by Tzounis (EPP, Greece), confirming the role and the significance of similar parliamentary acknowledgements, showed also that there were disagreements within the same political groups. Recalling that the “matter is not one of interpreting history,” it had been preferable that Turkey herself would voluntarily “acknowledge the sad page in its history,” but since she refused, the Parliament was calling on her to change this policy.518 In addition, the issue at hand was “intensely relevant in today’s terms, not only because it can act as an escape valve for the turmoil which has led thus far to many acts of terrorism.”519 As such, he argued that the present-day Kurdish problem was rooted directly in the “mentality which led up to the genocide of 1915.” Before he was cut short by the meeting president due to exceeding his time limit, Tzounis stated that “[i]n refusing to repudiate the Armenian Genocide, Turkey is asking us to accept her into our ranks stained by her guilty past.”520 While most of the criticism against recognition came from the conservative bloc, the Communists were not entirely happy with the resolution either, but for quite other reasons. Piquet (Communist, France) argued that the text in its current form would be an understatement and approving it would be “sweeping genocide under the rug.”521 He pointed out that although presentday Turkey may not be responsible for the genocide, it was certainly

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responsible for the carried out denial, and the resolution’s aim was to compel Turkey to alter this policy.522 He, too, asserted that recognition would entail better awareness in order to prevent future genocides.523 Ephremidis (Communist, Greece), while in favor of the recognition of the genocide, criticized the report for going astray by making references to “supposed violations of citizens’ rights in the Soviet Armenian Republic,” which according to him were nothing but a distortion of reality.524 This alone was the reason that his group would not be able to vote for the resolution, even though they were quite confident that the resolution would be accepted.525 Wedekind was given the last speech of the debate prior to voting. He reiterated the assertion that the European Parliament could not act as a court of law or even pass judgement on history, especially since its members did not possess the required expertise.526 His concluding remarks were an echo of one of the main arguments of present-day Turkey against recognition of the genocide, namely that the Armenian losses were only one side of the tragedy, while “innumerable Turks were killed by Armenians” as well. A similar recognition would thus be unjust since it would ignore the Turkish losses.527 The only reason, Wedekind argued, why the Armenian question was relevant was due to the terrorist actions carried out in the name of Armenia as well as the rights of Armenians around the world.528 The Resolution (A2–33/87) was approved almost unanimously on June 18 1987.529 Ankara responded in the same manner as it has done in numerous similar recognitions during the following decades, namely by recalling its ambassador and threatening political and military reprisals by freezing its NATO cooperation.530 The Turkish President, Kenan Evren, “warned that Turkey would review its membership in NATO – a retort to a European Parliament resolution which not only supported Armenian claims of past genocide but also referred to Turkey’s present Kurdish problem.”531 In Ankara’s eyes, the recognition by the European Parliament was a threat towards the integrity of the Turkish Republic “because they appear to lend moral support to those within Turkey (Kurds) and without (Armenians) who would break up the republic established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the aftermath of the First World War.”532 The past (the genocide) and the present (the Kurds) were very much entangled into the same space within the politics of memory; Ankara associated any hint of accusation of committed wrongful acts during WWI to the subsequent Sèvres Treaty and its envisioned territorial concessions to both Armenians and Kurds. We will come back to what has been called the Sèvres Syndrome. With the recognition by the European Parliament, 1987 would come to mark another borderline event in the process of the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, coinciding with the ceasing of the Armenian armed assaults. Although the terrorist attacks had already started to subside in the previous years and one cannot attribute the end of the terrorist attacks solely to the European Parliament’s recognition, it certainly played a role in partly satisfying the Armenian demands and somewhat cooling down the accumulated frustration. Reviewing the development since WWI within the context

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of the politics of memory, the process had vividly demonstrated the increased involvement of both top-down and the bottom-up actors in this negotiation, employing different means and measures at their disposal in order to achieve their desired aims. Adding new layers of information had not only expanded the knowledge of the Armenian Genocide in depth, but as new disciplines joined into the discussion their perspectives and interactions with each other widened the process, thus contributing to the greater complexity of the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide. The year of 1987 was also preceded by two important reforms – perestroika and glasnost – which came to change the global political arena and give new impetus to the Armenian cause. Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms about openness and freedom of speech were about to unleash seven decades of suppressed expression of mind which would eventually dissolve the entire Soviet Union. The very first popular movement which soon would erupt in an outright regular war was a remnant from WWI and closely related to the aftermath of the genocide, namely the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The events would also evolve and result in the resurrection of an independent Republic of Armenia, giving an official voice to the Armenian cause on the international arena which had gone missing since the 1920s.

Notes 1 Yanikian. The quotes stated here are my own translations from the original Armenian in the book. 2 Ibid., pp. 31, 57. 3 Ibid., p. 31. 4 Ibid., pp. 11–12, 31, 48. 5 Ibid., pp. 13–14. 6 Ibid., p. 17. 7 Ibid., pp. 137, 142. 8 Ibid., p. 17. 9 Ibid., pp. 30 and 34. 10 Ibid., p. 13. 11 Ibid., p. 32. 12 Ibid., p. 33. 13 Minow, p. 11. 14 Levi, pp. 86 and 150. 15 Yanikian, p. 57. 16 Ibid., p. 36. 17 Ibid., p. 34. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., p. 26. 20 Ibid., p. 33. 21 Göçek, 2014, p. 429. 22 Ibid., p. 46. 23 Ibid., p. 429. 24 Yanikian, p. 91. 25 Since 1999 renamed to Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

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26 Schabas, 2000, p. 464. 27 “Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.565, p. 1. 28 E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.565, pp. 6–9. 29 E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.583, June 25 1973, p. 10. 30 Kuper, 1981, p. 119. 31 The reference note 19 reads: “Victor Gardon [born Vahram Gakavian], ‘Le premier génocide du XXème siècle’, Etudes internationales de psycho-sociologie criminelle, No. 14–15, 1968, pp. 57–65. See also, inter alia, Prof. M. G. Nersisian ed., Genotsid armyan v osmanskoy imperii: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, Izdatelstvo AN Armyanskoy SSR, Erevan 5 1966; Dickran H. Boyajian, Armenia: The Case for a Forgotten Genocide, Educational Book Crafters, Hestwood, New Jersey 5 1972. Some of the documents reproduced in the above-mentioned works also relate to persecution, and massacres of Armenians during the nineteenth century.” See E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.583, p. 10. 32 The most recent literature in Ruhashyankiko’s references was Dickran H. Boyajian, Armenia: The Case for a Forgotten Genocide (Westwood: Educational Book Crafters, 1972). The book, although quite naturally sparse in sources which are available today, did include a number of references and sources which are still considered as valuable evidence about the nature of the Armenian events, among others Henry Morgenthau, James Bryce, Arnold Toynbee and Johannes Lepsius, but also Encyclopedia Britannica as well as German diplomatic correspondence and several other articles and book chapters confirming the Armenian fate during WWI. See Boyajian. 33 See Göçek, 2014, p. 46. 34 Ferro, p. x. 35 E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.684, p. 154. 36 Ibid. 37 See, for example, Capotorti (Ph.D. Law, Italy), ibid., p. 155, but also Murg, p. 165, Daes, p. 166. 38 Hector Gros Espiell (expert, law, Uruguay), E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.684, p. 160. 39 E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.685, 19 September 1973, p. 167. 40 Ravan Farhadi, in E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.684, p. 155. 41 Ibid., p. 157. 42 Vicente Diaz Samayoa (expert, law, Guatemala) in ibid., p. 159. 43 E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.685, p. 169. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., p. 170. 46 See E/CN.4/1128 for a summarization of the views stated in the review held during September 18–19 1973. 47 E/CN.4/SR.1286, p. 210. 48 Ibid. 49 E/CN.4/SR.1286, pp. 210–211. 50 Ibid., p. 211. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., p. 212. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., p. 213. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., pp. 213–214. 58 Ibid., p. 215. 59 Ibid. This kind of, either deliberate or unintentional, misinterpretation of the term genocide, equating it to the destruction of every single member of the target

198

60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78

79

80 81

The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide group, has been made even in later occasions, e.g. during Saddam Hussein’s campaign against Iraqi Kurds in 1988 when US Assistant Secretary Murphy in response to labelling the Kurdish massacres by Saddam Hussein as genocide argued that “We knew he was doing brutal things to the Kurds, but you have to use the term ‘genocide’ very carefully, and it was clear to me that Hussein had no intention of exterminating all Kurds.” See Power, p. 225. In fact, while Article II defines the crime of genocide, Article III stipulates that the punishment of the crime defined in the previous article does not necessitate killing anyone, but any of the following acts shall be punishable: (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide. See Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, UN. E/CN.4/SR.1286, pp. 215, 217, 220. Ibid., p. 218. Ibid., p. 214. Ibid. Ibid., p. 216. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 218. Ibid., p. 217. E/5464, pp. 41–42. See item 7 in E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.597, p. 4. E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.736, p. 195. Paragraph 28 mentioned the burning of heretics during Middle Ages as example of religious genocide during the Spanish Inquisition; Paragraph 29 mentioned the destruction of the religious sects Albigenses and the Waldensions during 1173 and the persecutions of Jews by crusaders; Paragraph 31 mentioned the Nazi crimes during WWII. See E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.583, pp. 9–11. E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.736, p. 196. Ibid., p. 197. Ibid Ibid. “Information Concerning Human Rights Arising from Trials of War Criminals,” United Nations, E/CN.4/W.19, May 15 1948, New York. The Document was later renamed E/CN.4/W.20 (see E/CN.4/W.20/Corr.1, dated May 28 1948). The document was marked “Restricted,” which might explain why it was unknown to the Rapporteurs. As such it was circulated to the member states but was not made public. However, since it was commissioned by the very same UN body that has later commissioned the studies about the genocide convention, it seems odd that neither of the reports even mentions it. The commission consisted of representatives from all countries fighting against the Axis Powers, 17 nations in total (USA, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, UK, Greece, India, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zeeland, Norway, Poland and Yugoslavia. Soviet Union did not participate in the commission since Moscow insisted that each republic in the Soviet Union should have its own representative.) and was instigated by the British Government. See E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6, p. 39 and Pedaliu, pp. 504–505. E/CN.4/W.20, p. i. Ibid.

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82 Ibid., p. viii. The Legal Committee included representatives from the UK, the USA, Norway, Poland, Denmark, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and was chaired by the Sir Robert Craigie. 83 Ibid., p. 1. 84 Ibid., p. 4. 85 Ibid., p. 7. 86 Ibid. 87 E/CN.4/W.20, pp. 8–9. 88 Ibid., p. 9. 89 Ibid., pp. 9–10. 90 Ibid., p. 10. 91 Ibid., p. 11. 92 Ibid., p. 13. 93 Ibid., p. 15. 94 Ibid. Article 5 (c) of the Tokyo Charter (also called the Far East Charter) and Article 6 (c) of the Nuremberg Charter, as amended by the Berlin Protocol of October 6 1945, were identical and read: “Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated. Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.” See E/ CN.4/W.20, pp. 26–27. 95 Ibid., p. 15. 96 “Official Records, Third Year: Sixth Session, Supplement No 1, Report of the Commission on Human Rights,” E/600, paragraphs 44 and 45, 1948, p. 13. 97 Document FO 371/72810. 98 Letter from R. P. Heppel to Foreign Office, dated July 30 1948, part of FO 371/ 72810. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 United Nation (Economic and Social) Department, UNE 3236/16/96, Letter dated July 30 1948, part of FO 371/72810. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. 105 See “Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals,” United Nations, p. x. 106 Letter dated August 3 1948, in FO 371/72810. 107 Ibid. 108 R. P. Heppel, Telegram dated to August 5 1948 from Foreign Office to Geneva United Kingdom Delegation, in FO 371/72810. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid. 111 Sassounian, 1995, pp. 43–44. 112 “Recognition, International Organizations” and “United Nations War Crimes Commission Report” respectively. 113 See Messerlian, pp. 431–465. 114 Ibid. 115 E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.736, p. 198. 116 Ibid., p. 199. 117 Ibid., p. 201.

200 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136

137 138 139 140 141 142

143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide Ibid. Ibid., pp. 202–204. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 203–204. E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.737, p. 210. Ibid. Ibid. E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.736, p. 199. Ibid. E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.737, p. 211. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 212. Ibid., p. 213. Ibid. Ibid., p. 212. Ibid., pp. 213–214. Although ASALA had performed two bombings by this time (January and February 1975 in Lebanon), the first assassination, that of the Turkish Ambassador in Austria, would occur on October 22 that year (claimed by both ASALA and JCAG). See among others UN Security Council Resolutions S/RES/353 (July 20), S/ RES/354 (July 23), S/RES/355 (August 1), S/RES/357 (August 14), S/RES/358 and 359 (August 15) and S/RES/360 (August 16), all in 1974. E/CN.4/SR.1286, p. 215. On the issue of the UN Commission of Human Rights being highly politicized see, for example, Power, note 88, p. 539. “Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” E/CN.4/Sub.2/416. E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.822, September 15 1978. Prior to Fisek’s membership in the Sub-Commission, Turkey had only been represented by an observer. Fisek had been nominated by the Government of Turkey to the Sub-Commission in 1978. See “Report of the Economic and Social Council,” A/33/3. See also “Election of the Members of the Sub-Commission,” E/CN.4/1446, Annex I, p. 26 and Annex II. E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.822, p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., pp. 4–5. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 6. The Syrian expert member, El Khani was also affirmative in this regard. See p. 6 of the same document. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 8. Kuper, 1981, p. 220. E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.822, p. 9. Kuper, 1981, p. 220. E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.822, p. 9. Ibid. E/1979/36, p. 81. Ibid.

The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide 160 161 162 163 164 165

166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196

197

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Ibid., p. 82. Ibid. Schabas, 2000, p. 465. E/1979/36, p. 135. Schabas, 2000, p. 466. Yanikian, pp. 5, 9. The mentioned date, February 20 1988, was the day on which the Soviet of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO), with the votes 110 against 17, applied to the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan SSR and Armenian SSR for NKAO’s transfer from Azerbaijani SSR to Armenian SSR. Kurz and Merari, p. 3. Hyland, pp. 23 and 57. Wilkinson, “Foreword,” p. xvi. See Kurz and Merari, p. 16. For the corroboration of the Ruhashyankiko Report’s part in the radicalization of the Armenian youth see Melkonian, pp. 37– 38. De Waal, p. 152. See Kurz and Merari, p. 53. See de Waal, pp. 152–153. See also Dugan, Huang, LaFree and McCauley, p. 233. See “The Highest Title of the Republic of Armenia.” Topalian, p. xii. Melkonian, p. 12. Ibid., pp. 26–27. Ibid., p. 34. Kurz and Merari, p. 3. See ibid., p. 53. Hyland, p. 15. Ibid., p. 1. Reinares, p. 122. Cordes, p. 323. Thackrah, p. 30. Kurz and Merari, p. 2. Wilkinson, “Pathways Out of Terrorism for Democratic Societies,” p. 457. Feigl, p. 7. Pendleton, p. 219. Tölölyan, p. 90. Ibid., p. 102. The Armenian quote reads “Mah voch imatsyal mah e, mah imatsyal anmahutyun e.” Hovannisian, 1967, p. 193. Karlsson, 1999, p. 11. See also Lebow, p. 17. Karlsson, 1999, p. 25. Ibid. The monthly newspaper was first published in 1985 in Beirut, Lebanon, containing articles in regard to the ASALA operations and ideology with a special section dedicated to Turkey. From 1988–89 it started containing articles about the Karabakh Movement. From 1989 it has become part of the “Spyurk” (Diaspora) magazine, the Organ of the Armenian Popular Movement, generally perceived as the political mouthpiece of ASALA. The nom de guerre Hagop Hagopian, leader of ASALA, whose birth name was assumed to be Harutiun Takoshian, was seemingly yet another clear reference to the history: Hagop Der Hagopian was the birth name of Shahen Natali, the principle organizer of the Operation Nemesis during 1920s. Melkonian, p. 36.

202 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228

229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247

The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide Ibid. Berry, p. 293. Crelinsten, p. 6. Ibid., p. 443. Ibid., p. 7. “The Armenian Secret Army for The Liberation of Armenia,” p. 9. Ibid. Üzüm. De Waal, pp. 159–163. Ibid. Melkonian, p. 92. See Göçek, 2014, p. 46. Gunter, 1986, p. 101. See Topalian, p. 36. Thackrah, p. 32. See, for example, Clifford-Vaughan, p. 271. Gunter, 2011, p. 58. In Gunter, 1986, p. 99. See Kurz and Merari, p. 68. Interview with Archbishop Aris Shirvanian. See also Kurz and Merari, p. 5. Interview with Shirvanian. Ibid. Ibid. Ben Aharon, p. 2. Interview with Israel Charny. Ibid. Ibid. Ben Aharon, p. 9. Charny, 1984, p. 275. “Israelis Said to Oppose Parley after Threat to Turkish Jews.” Although aware of the information, the US State Department denied any knowledge and prepared a recommended reply to potential media questions by referring to Israeli or Turkish governmental agencies for answer. See “International Parley on Genocide.” Ibid. “Around the World: Armenians to Take Part in Tel Aviv Seminar.” Howe, “Turkey Denies It Threatened Jews over Tel Aviv Parley on Genocide.” Ibid. “Turkey’s Jews are Under No Threat.” “Genocide Seminar, Opposed by Israel Opens.” Ibid. Howe, “Turkey Denies …” Ibid. Ben Aharon, p. 12. Ibid., p. 7. Linenthal, p. 239. See also the note from the Israeli Consul in Istanbul, Avner Arazi, in Ben Aharon, p. 10. Howe, “Turkey’s Jews See Lebanon Hazards.” Wiesel, p. 92. Charny, 1984, p. 282. Ibid., p. 284. Wiesel, p. 92. Finkelstein, pp. 69–70. Ben Aharon, p. 9.

The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289

203

See Linenthal, note for page 231, paragraph 1, p. 312. Howe, “Turkey Denies …” Quoted in Charny, 1984, p. 311. Interview with Israel Charny. Ibid. See email conversation with Hovannisian, 2018. Ibid. The statement was made by one of the participants upon arrival to the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv. Charny, 1984, p. 296. Ibid., p. 300. See Peskin, p. 327. Charny, 1984, p. 313. Interview with Yehuda Bauer. Ibid. Interview with Israel Charny. Interview with Yehuda Bauer. Born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch to an Orthodox Jewish family in then Czechoslovakia. See Whitney. Interview with Bauer. Ibid. Ibid. Sarkissian, p. 1; George Shirinian, Executive Director of the institute, is more specific and mentions 1979 as the year in which the idea was born. Reply in an email conversation with Shirinian. Shirinian, 2015. Sarkissian, p. 1. “About ANI.” Bloxham, p. 220. Adalian, 1997, p. 100. For the resolution text see “H.J.Res.192 - A joint resolution to designate April 24 1985, as ‘National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’.” Adalian, 1997, pp. 114–115. For a detail list of the signatories, their expertise and received grants from ITS see “U.S. Academicians and Lobbying: Turkey Uses Advertisement as Political Tool,” pp. 5–8. Ternon, p. 241–242. Ibid., p. 242. Adalian, 2000, pp. 177–178. Thomas and Frye, p. 61. Ibid. Ibid. For an elaborative study on the issue of denial and denialism of the Armenian Genocide see Maria Karlsson. Shaw and Shaw. Among others see pp. 190–191 about the Berlin Congress in 1878; sub chapters “The Armenian Question,” pp. 200–206 and “The Northeastern Front, 1914–1916,” pp. 314–317. “Crude Bomb Explodes at UCLA Professor’s Home.” Gunter, 1986, p. 3. Shaw, 1993, p. 305. Ibid., p. 27. Among others see “A Conversation with Ahmet Davutoglu.” Wasserstein, p. 5. Ibid. Guttstadt, p. 1.

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290 Ibid., p. 317. For a Turkish-Jewish perspective on this issue see Benhabib, pp. 363–372. 291 Lifton. 292 Ibid., pp. XII, 466–7, 470, 473, 476, 488 and 493. 293 See copy of the letter in Smith, Markusen, Lifton, p. 9. 294 Ibid., p. 8. 295 Ibid., p. 12. 296 See Melson; Bauer, 1987. One contrasting example is that of the prominent Islam and Oriental historian Bernard Lewis who was found guilty of genocide denial by a French court. See e.g. Maria Karlsson’s Ph.D. thesis on the subject. 297 “About the Museum.” 298 See Linenthal, p. 20. 299 See ibid., note for page 119, paragraph 2, p. 297. 300 Ibid., p. 48. 301 Ibid. 302 Wiesel, p. 211. 303 Linenthal, p. 229. 304 Ibid., p. 230. 305 Ibid., p. 232. 306 Ibid. 307 Ibid. 308 Hilberg’s three volume magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is still considered one of the pioneering works within the field. See Hilberg, 1967. 309 Linenthal, p. 113. 310 Ibid., p. 229. 311 Ibid. 312 Ibid., p. 235. 313 Ibid. 314 Ibid., pp. 229, 232. 315 Ibid., p. 113. 316 Ibid. In regard to the attempt to diminish other cases of genocide by comparing them with the Holocaust see, for example, Tatz, pp. 131–132. 317 Linenthal, p. 79. 318 Ibid., p. 124. 319 Ibid., p. 79. 320 Ibid., p. 116. 321 Ibid., p. 236. 322 Ibid., pp. 236–237. “A museum theme, ‘Deaths does not have limited targets,’ adopted on April 30 1981, included the Armenian genocide as ‘prelude to the Final Solution.’.” See ibid., p. 233. 323 Ibid., p. 237. 324 Hirsch, p. 29. 325 Ibid. 326 Linenthal, p. 238. 327 Ibid. 328 Ibid., p. 229. 329 Ibid., pp. 239–240. 330 Ibid., pp. 233–234. 331 Ibid., p. 234. 332 Ibid. 333 Ibid., p. 239. 334 See. e.g. Ben Aharon, p. 11. 335 Linenthal, p. 263. 336 Ibid.

The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349

350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378

205

Ibid., p. 235. Novick, p. 193. Ibid. The statement is cited by former US Ambassador to Armenia John Evans and ascribed to the American non-fiction writer and policy analyst David Rieff. See Evans, p. 163. For example, see “ADL to recognize massacre of Armenians as ‘genocide’.” See, for example, Dadrian and Akçam. Kuper, 1985, p. 193. Ibid. Ibid. The three organizations were Groupement pour les Droits de Minorités (Paris, France), Cultural Survival (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) and Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker (Göttingen, West Germany). See Libaridian, 1985, p. xii. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. xii. The two documents were “The Armenian Problem: Nine Questions, Nine Answers,” Foreign Policy Institute, Ankara and testimony given by Professor Ataov of the University of Ankara to the Criminal Court in Paris in January 1984, both reflecting the views of official Ankara. See ibid., p. xiv. For the composition of the panel see ibid., p. xi. Vidal-Naquet, p. 3. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid. Rigaux was Professor at the Faculty of Law, Catholic University of Louvain. See Rigaux, p. 9. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., pp. 9–10. See Kurz and Merari, p. 19. Rigaux, p. 10. Ibid. Van Boven, pp. 171–172. See “Verdict of the Tribunal,” in Libaridian (ed.), 1985, p. 212. Ibid. Schabas, 2000, p. 466. See E/CN.4/Sub.2/1982/SR.14, p. 3. For the draft resolution see “Report of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities on its 35th Session,” E/CN.4/1983/4, p. 1. “Resolutions and Decisions of the Economic and Social Council,” E/1983/83, p. 24. See also E/CN.4/Sub.2/1982/43, pp. 1, 34 and 72. For a brief biography of Whitaker see Robertson, 2014. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1984/SR.3, p. 3. Ibid. Ibid., p. 9. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1984/SR.1–39/Corrigendum, p. 3. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1984/SR.3, p. 8. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1984/SR.4, p. 4. Ibid., p. 12. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1984/SR.3, p. 8. Ibid., p. 9. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1984/SR.4, p. 2. Ibid. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6, p. 9. Note 13 on the same page, mentions “This is corroborated by reports in United States, German and British archives and of

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395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412

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The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide contemporary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally Germany.” Whitaker cites not only Toynbee, Chaliand, Ternon, Morgenthau, Lepsius, Hovannisian as well as the newly held “Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal,” but also includes the Turkish view by citing Gurun, Simsir, Ataov and others. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6, p. 5. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 9, note 13. Ibid., p. 28, note 50. Ibid., p. 38, note 55. Ibid. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.19, p. 1. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.21, p. 4. Ibid. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., pp. 4–7. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.20, p. 13. It should be noted that Ataöv’s own work was among the cited references in Whitaker’s report. The list also included other sources reflecting the Turkish point of view. See footnote 13 on page 9 in E/ CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6. The “Andonian Documents” also known as the “Talaat Pasha telegrams” refer to a collection of telegrams published in a book by Aram Andonian in 1919. For discussions regarding the authenticity of the documents see among others Dadrian, 1986; Lewy, pp. 65–73. For a more recent publication see “Akcam: The Authenticity of the Naim Efendi,” 2016. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.20, p. 14. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.21, p. 8. Ibid. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.18, p. 3. Ibid. Ibid., p. 4. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.17, p. 5. Ibid. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.18, p. 6. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 7. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.19, p. 3. Ibid. Ibid. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.20, p. 17. Ibid. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.19, p. 6. However, it might seem a bit ironic that the session referred to by Chowdhury, designated E/CN.4/Subb.2/SR.822, was perhaps the one session in which an overwhelming majority of the members of the SubCommission requested the re-inclusion of the Armenian case into the report. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.19, p. 7. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.17, p. 7. Ibid. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.18, p. 7. Ibid., p. 8. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.20, p. 4.

The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452

453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465

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Ibid. Ibid. Interview with Harut Sassounian. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.20, pp. 9–10. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.17, p. 10. Ibid. Ibid. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.22, p. 5. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.21, pp. 7–8. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., pp. 10–11. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., pp. 12–13. Schabas, 2000, p. 467. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/SR.18, p. 9. Ibid. Е/CN.4/1986/5, p. 26. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 89. Е/CN.4/1986/5, Annex IV, p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 2. For the list of transmitted reports see E/CN.4/1986/65, p. 248. E/CN.4/1986/SR.16, pp. 8–9. See Vandemeulebroucke, Part A, p. 3. Ibid. For the respective motion see “Motion for a resolution tabled by Saby et al” and “Motion for a resolution tabled by Kolokotronis on the Armenian question.” Vandemeulebroucke, Part A, p. 3. Other than the already mentioned motions by Saby and Kolokotronis, the following motions were included in the report: “Motion for a resolution tabled by Mr Jaquet,” “Motion for a resolution tabled by Mrs Duport and Mr GLinne,” “Written Question No. 227/84 by Mrs Duport.” Vandemeulebroucke, Part B and C, pp. 7–8. See remark by Kuijpers, in “Debates of the European Parliament, Item 4. Armenian question,” p. 248. Vandemeulebroucke, Part B and C, p. 5. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., pp. 19–20. Ibid., p. 21. See respective minutes of meeting of the Political Affairs Committee see “Minutes of Meeting 24, 25, 26 September 1985,” “Minutes of Meeting 21, 22 and 23

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467 468 469 470 471 472 473 474 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482 483 484 485 486 487 488 489 490 491 492 493

494 495 496 497 498 499 500 501 502 503 504 505

The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide January 1986,” “Minutes of Meeting 18, 19 and 20 March 1986,” “Minutes of Meeting 25, 26 and 27 June 1986.” “Minutes of Meeting 25–27 June 1986,” p. 5. The Rule 84 of the Rules of Procedure, entitled “Moving the inadmissibility of a matter” reads: “1) At the beginning of the debate on a specific item on the agenda, its inadmissibility may be moved. 2. If the motion is carried, Parliament shall immediately proceed to the next item on the agenda.” See “Rules of Procedures: Chapter X: Interruptive and procedural Motions,” p. 55. “Minutes of Meeting 25–27 June 1986,” p. 6. See also “Letter from Vandemeulebroucke to P. Pflimlin.” “Letter from Vandemeulebroucke to P. Pflimlin.” Ibid. Ibid. “Letter from Roberto Formigoni to P. Pflimlin.” “Minutes of Meeting, 7,” Enlarged Bureau, p. 12. Ibid. “Minutes of Meeting 24–26 February 1987,” p. 4. See also Vandemeulebroucke, Part A, p. 3. Vandemeulebroucke, Part A, p. 3. See Bayraktar, 2010. See “Debates of the European Parliament, Item 4,” p. 246. Ibid., p. 247. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. p. 251. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 263. Ibid. Ibid., p. 262. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 251. Ibid. Ibid., p. 260. Ibid. Hänsch’s reference to the Balfour Declaration (dated November 2 1917) was in regard to a letter from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, expressing that the British government was in favor for establishing a home for the Jewish people in Palestine. See, for example, Yapp, p. 290. Ibid. “Debates of the European Parliament, Item 4,” p. 261. Ibid., p. 249. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 249–50. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 249. Ibid. Ibid. Olof Palme, Social Democratic Prime Minister of Sweden, 1927–1986, was assassinated on a street in Stockholm on February 28 1986. “Debates of the European Parliament, Item 4. Armenian question,” p. 260.

The rediscovery of the suppressed genocide 506 507 508 509 510 511 512 513 514 515 516 517 518 519 520 521 522 523 524 525 526 527

528 529 530 531 532

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Ibid. Ibid., p. 262. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 252. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 248. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 261. Ibid. Ibid., p. 250. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 248. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 251. Ibid., p. 261. Ibid., p. 263. Bernard Lewis and Guenter Lewy adhere to the group who base their dismissal of the Armenian case as genocide on the argumentation that it was the outcome of the struggle between two nations. See Lewis, p. 351 and Lewy, 2005, pp. 115– 122, 221–233, 251. Other scholars such as Robert Melson, Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn criticize this comparison. See Melson, pp. 154–155; Chalk and Jonassohn, p. 273. “Debates of the European Parliament, Item 4. Armenian question,” p. 264. “10. Armenian question, Doc. A2–33/87, Resolution on a political solution to the Armenian question.” “Editorial: The unity of Turkey.” Ibid. Ibid.

4

Memory, history and justice Towards reconciliation

Another borderline event in the history of the Armenian question was marked in 1988. Following the historical recognition by the European Parliament in the preceding year, 1988 introduced a new impetus for the Armenian question, setting in motion a number of processes which in turn acted as catalysts, heralding the Armenian Genocide even further as a topical issue onto the international arena. One could say that the unfolding events in 1988 and onward not only shifted the focus of the Armenian question but also broadened the definition of the “Armenian cause,” intertwining the issue of the genocide recognition ever more closely with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This would place the genocide at the center of the web of relations between Armenia, its diaspora, Turkey and the international community. The wave of truth-finding and reconciliation commissions, TRCs, around the world during the 1980s and the 1990s also contributed to this process by setting focus on the interrelations between memory, history and justice as important factors within the process of the politics of memory. Attempts to create similar TRCs for tackling the Armenian-Turkish relations, however, have proven to be quite difficult in succeeding to reach their goal. The shortcomings of these attempts are both due to some fundamental differences between the Armenian case and other similar TRCs, mainly in regard to temporal distance, but also the aforementioned incorrect approach to the Armenian-Turkish case, especially in regard to the issue of genocide. In turn, this illustrated how intricate the process of reconciliation is and the role the third-party mediator, i.e. the international community, plays in it. With the emergence of a sovereign Armenian state, Turkey was no longer sharing its borders with the Soviet Union, but with the Republic of Armenia, thus having to deal with Yerevan instead of Moscow. Independence also transformed the relationship between Armenia and its diaspora since both partners could now engage in an entirely different manner with regard to security and foreign relations issues compared with the time when these were directly controlled by Moscow. This would, in turn, imply that the voice of the Armenian diaspora, which up till now had been conveniently dismissed by Ankara as abstract and unofficial, when merged with Yerevan, became a force to be reckoned with in quite a different way. The reborn Armenia and the shared borders

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also necessitated the normalization of relations between the two neighbors, thus elevating the issue of reconciliation. The path to the envisioned reconciliation proved to be much more complex, however, than one would hope for; or rather, the political attempts to achieve it have been naïve and inadequate, approaching it by incorrect assumptions, foremost by avoiding dealing with the quite fundamental basis, namely a consensus regarding the genocide.

The Karabakh conflict: the legacy turned catalyst for independence Mikhail Gorbachev’s appointment as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985 resulted in a period of daring reforms meant to revitalize a stagnated Communist Party as well as the Soviet Union as a whole. The reforms, however, soon set in motion changes which turned out to be unstoppable, dissolving the Soviet Union itself, creating an entire new set of states and with them a new dynamic, often saturated with old historical disputes which had been held in check for the past seven decades of central rule. Gorbachev had already spoken of perestroika (reconstruction and economic reform) in 1985, introducing the policy of glasnost (openness and freedom of expression) in 1986. While the former reform aimed to restructure the Soviet political and economic system, the latter promoted increased openness and transparency in government institutions and in society at large. However, the reforms did much more than that. Opening the flood gates which had been sealed for over seven decades, they unleashed forces which the central government was simply not capable of taming. Three years after Gorbachev’s assumption of leadership in 1985, the effects of perestroika and glasnost were still modest, but had nonetheless sparked the expectations of Soviet citizens. The first dissident movement flared up into the open in the Caucasus, more specifically in Nagorno-Karabakh. The reemergence of the Karabakh conflict in our days is usually traced to the effect of glasnost when the population of the Armenian-dominated village of Chardakli in northwestern Azerbaijan refused to accept the appointment of an ethnic Azeri as the village’s director (October 1987). This led the local Azeri authorities to impose harsh measures on the Armenian villagers. Armenian sources state that the purpose of these measures was to force out the Armenian population. It all ended in clashes between Armenians and Azeris.1 The news lead to about 1,000 demonstrators in Yerevan protesting against the treatment of Armenians in Azerbaijan.2 The seemingly small group, however, grew rapidly in size and it was not long before Azerbaijanis in Armenia began to feel the ethnic tension in the country and many eventually chose to emigrate or were forced to abandon their homes in fear of the negative developments in Armenia. The first wave of these refugees reached Azerbaijan by the end of January 1988 and settled down in the industrial city of Sumgait, the country’s third largest city and its second largest industrial center on the Caspian Sea shore. Thus, Sumgait was a

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potential powder keg of frustrated Azerbaijani immigrants which could explode at the hint of a spark. On February 13 1988, Karabakh Armenians began to demonstrate in their capital, Stepanakert, calling for reunification with the Armenian SSR. Six days later, they received the support of mass demonstrations in Yerevan. On February 20 1988, the Karabakh Soviet of People’s Representatives (the equivalent of a local parliament), with 110 votes to 17, passed a resolution transferring the region to Armenia. This action of a regional autonomous soviet was unprecedented in Soviet Union history. While Baku ardently dismissed the process as unconstitutional, others claimed it to be in conformity with the prevailing USSR laws concerning secession from the union.3 The decision brought out tens of thousands of demonstrators, both in Stepanakert and in Yerevan, but Moscow eventually decided to reject (March 23) Karabakh’s demands for reunification with Armenia. A similar decision in favor of the Armenians would indeed be a dangerous precedent, initiating a disastrous chain reaction in many other similar artificially designed (mostly during the Stalin era) regions in the Soviet Union. The unfolding events in the Soviet Union would soon reveal that Moscow’s fears for such a snowball effect were justified. Stepanakert’s decision became the spark which fully ignited the conflict. In Azerbaijan, the response to the request for transfer came through brutal deeds, carried out on February 26 1988, by Azerbaijani nationalists in Sumgait. The Armenians of Sumgait were attacked in their homes, at their work places and on the streets. The violent persecution of the Armenians lasted for two days without the slightest intervention of the Azeri authorities. According to official figures, at least thirty-two people (twenty-six Armenians and six Azerbaijanis) lost their lives before Soviet troops put an end to the carnage. The massacres in Sumgait were the first of their kind in Soviet history. Many Armenians interpreted these troubling tokens as certain indications that the assaults were not only a spontaneous action of a limited mob, but also were backed up by the authorities. Reports in the media claiming that the Azerbaijani authorities and intellectuals had encouraged the assaults as well as deliberately refusing to protect and help the victims only heightened the Armenian accusations.4 After the events in Sumgait, a peaceful transfer of Karabakh to Armenia became virtually impossible. The Sumgait pogroms had awoken decades of old misgivings of the “evil Turk,” which had been held at bay by the Soviet rule and the notion of “brotherhood among the republic nations.” To many Armenians, these deeds were a reminder of the prelude to the 1915 genocide. This time, however, the history was not to be allowed to repeat itself. This perception was accentuated further when similar assaults on Armenians in the Azerbaijani cities of Kirovabad (present-day Ganja) and Baku followed suit. The upward spiral of interethnic clashes soon developed into a full-scale armed combat between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, resulting in a war which would claim over 30,000 victims, leaving over a million people as refugees. The omnipresent genocide was once again playing a central role in the present context and the interpretation of the past. An Israeli-American

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journalist interviewing Souren Zolian, a member of the inner circle of the Karabakh Committee, captured the centrality of the genocide as following: The Armenians needed a current grievance that would evoke the ultimate past grievance, the 1915 genocide. They remembered, Zolian said, that back in 1965, the anniversary of 1915 brought Armenians to the streets in a spontaneous display of national fervor. (Moscow was unhappy but uncharacteristically tolerant.) “Karabakh was initially an abstract notion,” Zolian recalled. “People said ‘Karabakh,’ but what they really meant was ‘genocide.’”5 The Sumgait events had reawakened not only the images of the genocidal Turk among the Armenians, but also a distrust towards Moscow. The loss of independence and submission to Bolshevik Moscow in 1920 was an evil necessary to escape total annihilation by the hands of the advancing Turkish Nationalist army. To many, Yerevan had traded independence, freedom and democracy for shear physical existence and security under Soviet rule. Now, the pogroms in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku nullified that assurance. The relations between the genocide and the Karabakh movement was also apparent in the latter’s decisive impact on the already subsiding terrorist actions, especially within ASALA. Disillusioned with the initial goals of demanding the return of the Western Armenian territories,6 several ASALA members saw the emerging Karabakh movement and the subsequent armed conflict as a much more urgent and achievable part of their declared cause. Until that point, ASALA had held a favorable attitude towards the Soviet Union due to the perception of Soviet Armenia as the only “independent” part of the Armenian homeland. But the ignited Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes changed that attitude. In one of its last official statements, ASALA demanded that Moscow should bring “a just solution to the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh and reunite it with Soviet Armenia without further delay.”7 However, deeply divided in the organization, several former ASALA members, including Monte Melkonian, sought their calling in the ongoing Karabakh movement rather than in the demands aimed at Turkey, joining the armed movement in Caucasus.8 Thus, the newly emerged Karabakh movement in 1988 amplified the effects of the European Parliament’s genocide recognition one year earlier, contributing to the definitive subsidence of the terrorist actions by simply depleting ASALA of its members. Karabakh’s armed conflict had an immense impact on Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as the region as a whole. In addition to the human casualties and sufferings, it also became the main obstacle for comprehensive trade and economic development in the region, embodied foremost in the embargo imposed by Turkey and Azerbaijan to freeze Armenia out of regional trade and energy cooperation. The isolation was simply meant to force Armenians into submission through economic starvation as they were given the choice between “prosperity without Karabakh or poverty with Karabakh.”9 The

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expectation was that “people will even stop thinking about Karabakh.”10 This policy was reminiscent of Ankara’s statements regarding Armenia’s prosperity as dependent on giving up the strife for international recognition of the genocide. This argument has often been invoked, asserting that it is the diaspora Armenians who, unattached from the realities and hardships faced by the people in Armenia, are the sole drivers of the issue of recognition. In contrast, according to this assertion, the citizens of Armenia would instead like to put the question of genocide aside and reestablish contacts and trade with Turkey. The divide-and-conquer tactic of forcing Armenia into submission has been pursued in other manners than the imposed embargo and closed borders as well. One such measure by Turkey has been to deny passage through its airspace to planes bound for Armenia, a policy which has been implemented recurrently whenever it fitted the purpose.11 This happened as late as in 2015, when the plane carrying the President of Republika Srpska (one of two constitutional and legal entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina), Milorad Dodik, on his way to participate in the ceremonies in Yerevan marking the centennial of the genocide, was denied entry into Turkish air space, forcing Dodik to cancel his participation.12 Similar steps have only heightened Armenian suspicion of Ankara’s continuous pursuit of the old policy of eliminating Armenia, in one way or another. The perceived animosity from Turkey and Azerbaijan has also been abused by the political leadership inside Armenia and has become a real impediment for the development of democracy in the country. This is perhaps most tangible in the fact that the opposition in Armenia is restrained in its efforts to challenge the ruling elite. Fearing that any confrontation could potentially lead to public protests or, even worse, in clashes and political upheaval, the general notion is justified in being wary that a similar turbulence would be exploited by Azerbaijan in the ongoing Karabakh conflict. After all, similar political chaos in Azerbaijan during early 1990s, with several coup d’états during the crucial stages of the Karabakh armed conflict, indeed helped in swaying the tides of the war in favor of the Armenians. Similar experiences have only amplified the well-known Armenian proverb of “rather our sick lamb, than the enemy’s healthy wolf,” a lesson of two millennia of statehood, balancing in a geopolitical position jammed between super powers. This lesson from the perpetual process of the politics of memory is, however, neither new nor unique for Armenia. One such recent example was how Germany’s role in invading Greece during WWII was interlaced with Berlin’s role in the Greek financial crisis in the late 2000s. The German WWII role was used to reflect upon the tough terms for financial aid in order to deflect any attention from the failed domestic politics which had got Greece in the dire situation in the first place.13 Given the prevailing circumstances, Armenia has certainly displayed more flexibility in its approach to Turkey than the other way around, which also accurately reflects the balance of power between the two states. Turkey, unlike Armenia, is in no obvious rush to compromise on its stand in regard to the

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genocide for the sake of the normalization of relations. Armenia, at least until late 2014, had officially adhered to the strict policy of “relations without preconditions.” In actual fact, however, it has not been quite able to articulate its position on excluding the reality of the genocide as a matter for negotiation within the diplomatic framework. During the independence movement and the two following decades, almost all attempts to normalize relations with Turkey kept an open door to “reviewing” the 1915 events. Although, in all cases the genocide was officially intended to be left out of the discussions, it soon became the concealed mine which eventually detonated, effectively halting respective attempt as we will see shortly. Conversely, one could also argue that the lingering issue of the genocide recognition had a decisive role in the Karabakh tragedy. For some, such as Vicken Cheterian, journalist and political analyst, the Karabakh conflict was not only a legacy of the post-genocide era, but the solution of the Karabakh conflict was intimately interlinked with the recognition of the genocide in present time. Had Turkey recognized the genocide back in early 1990s, Cheterian argues, the escalation of the Karabakh conflict into an open war following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 would have been avoided.14 While the outbreak of the Karabakh conflict had evident genocide-related allusions, its outcome, although as yet not finalized, had an immense impact on Armenian identity as well as the prospects of the Armenian cause. The victory in Karabakh, with a de facto self-governing Stepanakert as well as the control over an equal area in the adjacent regions as a buffer zone, was the first territorial gain in Armenian history since WWI. While the territorial aspect certainly had its own impact on the Armenian identity, it was the notion of victory which had even greater significance, breaking decades of victimization by the genocide, its related territorial losses as well as the subsequent ones caused by the Stalinist policies during the 1920s.15 For the first time since WWI, Armenians were victors, not victims. The Armenian victory in Karabakh has also had an indirect, although quite apparent, effect on Turkey’s relationship towards Armenia. In addition to the Turkish-Azerbaijani affinity as “one nation in two states,” referring to the ethnic, linguistic and religious bonds between the two nations, other more subtle factors are at play in Turkey’s reluctance to the resolution of the Karabakh conflict in Armenia’s favor, and in Ankara’s invested interest in the conflict.16 In fact, the Turkish involvement was confirmed quite early with instances of direct participation of Turkish ranking officers as well as entire units comprised of ultra-nationalists (Grey Wolves members) in the Karabakh armed conflict.17 In addition to the obvious blow to Azerbaijani territorial integrity, such Turkish repugnance is based on the suspicion that the Armenian (nationalist) gaze will now roll towards the west onto eastern Turkey with even more determination, incited by the successes in Karabakh. However, such claims towards Turkey will certainly be quite different from the Karabakh problem, for obvious reasons excluding any armed engagements, thus elevating the significance

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of historicity as a potential weapon, instead of the conventional arms used in land-grabbing attempts in the recent past.18 The Karabakh conflict had thereby officially become an inseparable part of the Armenian question, intertwined with the genocide. The Karabakh movement and the demands for reunification with Armenia, however, paved the way for a more daring but at the same time tangible and realistic project: independence. The creation of the Karabakh Committee in Yerevan and Krunk (“Crane”) in Stepanakert, brought together Armenian political and popular figures, creating the nucleus political platform for the subsequent demand for independence in September 1988, introducing a new official voice for the Armenian cause on the international arena.

Independence and the genocide as rule setter The torrent set free by the policy of perestroika and glasnost, having unleashed the ethnic clashes in Caucasus (other than in Karabakh, similar conflicts started in Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but also later in Chechnya), soon came to be untamable, tearing the Soviet Union apart. In less than four years, the reforms which were meant for the democratization and rejuvenation of the decaying Soviet Union caused Moscow to entirely lose control over the situation in several of the republics. By the beginning of 1989, there were popular movements in the Baltic States as well as in Armenia and Georgia, demanding total independence. The Karabakh movement provided the core of the popular front which started demanding Armenian independence. Among the leaders of the Karabakh Committee was the future president of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan. As Chairman of the newly created Armenian National Movement Party (ANM), he became the first non-Communist Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Armenia (August 4 1990). Ravaged by the earthquake in 1988 and the ongoing conflict with Azerbaijan, Armenia’s road to independence was paved with numerous practical and diplomatic hurdles. In view of the prevailing situation, the Ter-Petrosyan administration was in dire need of containing the Karabakh conflict as well as establishing diplomatic and trade contacts with its neighbors, including Turkey. With the ongoing Azerbaijani blockade and closed borders towards Armenia, Yerevan was keen on fostering good relations with the Turks who shared close national and religious bonds with their Azerbaijani cousins. As such, the issue of the genocide and the historical animosity towards Turkey was a quandary for the Ter-Petrosyan team to handle, especially in regard to the relations with a diaspora which, especially in those days, was an indispensable asset, diplomatically as well as financially. Interestingly enough, the enthusiasm regarding the independence aspirations inside Armenia were not shared by the main political parties in the diaspora. The historical experience of the Dashnaktustyun (ARF), Hnchak and Ramkavar parties, i.e. the three main parties from the previous independence period, were evidently still quite vivid in the memory of their leaders.

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To these parties, especially ARF which became the party of government during 1918–1920, the prevailing conditions in late 1980s were too reminiscent of the situation back in 1918. Back then the Armenian National Council was forced, more or less reluctantly, to declare independence in the midst of a highly instable region and unfavorable conditions (in the turmoil created in the wake of the Russian revolution and the dissolution of the Russian Empire), quite similar to those Armenia was facing now in 1988.19 In the light of this past experience, ARF was of course the loudest critic of a hasty independence process. While ARF, ever since the loss of the independence in 1920, had traditionally harbored an anti-Soviet stance, the party had shifted its view during the early 1970s. Instead, the party considered the Soviet Armenia as a basis for creating an independent country, but more significantly, a united Armenia.20 In a quite unique and unprecedented move, the three diaspora parties issued a joint declaration in October 1988, “urging compatriots in Armenia not to secede from the Soviet Union.”21 The statement argued that the potential threat from Turkey, and the harboring of PanTurkism expansionist ideology, demanded securing Russian protection.22 Furthermore, some Armenian leaders and intellectuals were certain of similarly concealed Azeri designs and aspirations towards Pan-Turkism.23 The ANM leadership nonetheless seemed determined to establish friendly relations with all its neighbors, thus minimizing the post-WWI doctrine of reliance on the major power’s benevolent protection. The same logic, in the ANM leadership’s mind, argued that these powers would not act on behalf of Armenia, demanding justice from Turkey.24 According to ANM leaders such as Ter-Petrosyan and his security adviser Gerard Libaridian, such a shift was a necessity since Armenians, preoccupied with the images of the past, had lost their perspective on the present realities.25 According to the new leadership in Yerevan, the old image of Turkey was rather a stereotyped perception, locked into the image of WWI Turkey which did not correspond to the realities of the contemporary world. This perception was also a remnant of the Cold War era and Turkey’s relationships with NATO. With the end of the Cold War, many thought that the significance of Turkey would diminish with it. However, while the Warsaw Pact disappeared, NATO lived on and with the emergence of the “war on terror,” Turkey continued to play an important role in US and NATO operations in the Middle East. From a Turkish point of view, the significance of NATO might even have increased in regard to their nation’s relations to the West since they perceived NATO membership, especially now when the Cold War had ended, as a “symbolic link with the West.”26 Nonetheless, with the end of the Cold War and NATO’s inclusion of former Warsaw Pact members in Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey was no longer a frontier of NATO towards Soviet Union, but with the emerging “war on terror” Turkey became also an epicenter. The most recent incident to demonstrate this fact was the downing of the Russian SU-24 bomber on November 22 2015. The incident provided new impetus to Pan-Turkism dimensions when experts claimed that Turkey was

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once again being utilized as a tool for waging strategic war against Russia. The Turkish-speaking people in Central Asia and North Caucasus would potentially be utilized as a lever against Moscow.27 One can perhaps not entertain the idea of the creation of a physical Pan-Turan, but evidently the potential for alternative usage of those relations is still highly viable and is perceived as real threat among Armenians. This perception is definitely accentuated by the fact that official Turkish genocide denial often, if not always, is still justified by repeating the accusations of treachery, cooperation with the enemy and massacring the Muslim population. This rhetoric of accusation indeed “enunciates an ongoing if latent threat of Turkish ‘revenge.’”28 Thus, however hypothetical the plan for Pan-Turkism might be, it is still perceived as a potential threat by Armenians. The discussion of renewed plans for Pan-Turkism was quite topical during the collapse of the Soviet Union as well. Later it was known as the policy of neo-Ottomanism, more recently ascribed to the domestic as well as the foreign policy of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), adopted since around 2002.29 One could also view neo-Ottomanism as a result of Turkish frustration and disillusion in regard to the EU membership process, which has not proceeded as smoothly as Ankara would have hoped. This policy of reverting to the nostalgic heydays of the Ottoman era is also a sort of psychological self-defense in the pursuit of security.30 As such it brings to mind the very same politics of memory, employed in the 1920s for reviving memories of the glorified past, to create a continuity in present-day actions and policies, laying the path towards an envisioned future. In order to understand the contemporary usage of neo-Ottomanism, one needs to go back to Turgut Özal’s time in power during late 1980s and early 1990s when this policy emerged in Turkish politics, signaling a fundamental shift from the Kemalist doctrine of the Republic, striving towards the West rather than the Middle East and Asia.31 Özal, much alike his predecessors prior to WWI, envisioned creating a new union under Turkey’s leadership which would stretch from “the Adriatic Sea to the Chinese Wall.”32 With visible signs of an impending dissolution of the Soviet Union, this policy seemed quite tangible, especially in the emerging competition between Turkey, Iran and Russia for securing their influence among the Muslim and dominantly Turkic peoples of Central Asia and Caucasus.33 Although analysts deemed the outlook for the creation of a physical Turkic union as gloomy, especially from an Armenian point of view, the political and military collaborations between Turkey and Azerbaijan were highly substantial. Turkish nationalist circles questioned the decades-long Kemalist policy of contentment with the current republic borders, calling for the adaptation of the expansionist policy of the pre-Republic era. Others, mainly government officials such as the then Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs Ozdem Sanberk, while downplaying the territorial aspirations, emphasized the “golden opportunity” to establish new bonds with the “brotherly people,” from sentimental, strategic and political reasons.34 Regardless of the prospects of realizing the

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Pan-Turkism plans, the Turkish political leaders alluded frequently to such schemes in order to intimidate. Commenting the end of the Cold War, Özal, with a clear reference to the peak of the Ottoman Empire’s expansion, claimed that “‘the shrinking process that began at the walls of Vienna’ had been reversed.”35 Such statements and plans awoke worrisome memories indeed from the past in Armenian circles, especially in regard to the circumstances and the outcome of the first Republic in 1918. Much like the 1918 administration, the ANM was also overwhelmingly composed of relatively young, politically inexperienced revolutionaries (or rather visionaries) who suddenly were propelled to the helm of a government. Now, in very similar conditions to 1918, ANM was trying to navigate through a stormy Caucasus towards the looming safe haven of independence. The signals from Ankara were nonetheless quite mixed. During the period preceding the events in the 1980s, Özal seemed to have contemplated a rapprochement with the Armenians. In an interview in 2012, Vehbi Dinçerler, former education minister and minister in Özal’s Cabinet, stated that Özal was conducting negotiations with the Armenians behind closed doors.36 More significantly, Özal was about to initiate a two-track plan: first, the aim was to consider the Armenian demands and the political and financial costs of a near future recognition of the genocide. Second, it included another more long-term plan for the coming twenty to thirty years “if Turkey is forced to accept it one day.”37 However, fierce opposition from the nationalist and the military regarding any concessions to the Armenians, especially in the light of the then still ongoing ASALA actions, forced Özal to shelve the initiative for some future more appropriate time.38 Despite the mentioned initiatives by the liberal Özal, who seemed to be willing to make concessions to Kurds, Alveis and Armenians, he made other statements which equally adhered to the nationalist rhetoric. In a statement on March 6 1992, referring to the ongoing Karabakh conflict, Özal was quoted saying that “on the matter of Karabakh, it is necessary to scare the Armenians a little bit.”39 Soon after, upon Armenian military successes in Karabakh, capturing the strategic town of Shushi, Özal threatened to intervene militarily, having just recently deployed fifty thousand soldiers along the Armenian border. The situation escalated worryingly when Marshal Evgenii Shaposhnikov, the commander-in-chief of the Joint Armed Forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), warned Turkey for such a move which could potentially “lead to a third world war.”40 The Turkish-Armenian rapprochement did not recover from this, and their diplomatic ties remained severed. Thus, the historical view of past experiences came to directly influence the molding of the emerging Armenian foreign policy, into which the unavoidable issue of the genocide and its related experiences were soon included. As a matter of fact, the issue of the genocide made itself conspicuous quite early in this process, namely when the contents of the Declaration of Independence were discussed. The Supreme Soviet of Armenia was far from unanimous in regard to the issue of the genocide and its place in the declaration. While

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some wanted to make the genocide the centerpiece of the document, others, including Ter-Petrosyan, wanted to omit it completely and focus on independence alone.41 The fierce debate resulted in a compromise in which, leaving out any explicit demands for territorial restoration, the eleventh item of the DOI read: “The Republic of Armenia stands in support of the task of achieving international recognition of the 1915 Genocide in Ottoman Turkey and Western Armenia.”42 The implications of the very mentioning of “Western Armenia” would hardly pass Ankara unnoticed. However, as Khatchik Derghoukasian notes, the inclusion of the genocide in the DOI did not imply its translation to an item on Armenia’s foreign policy.43 On the contrary, the genocide was placed in a distant periphery in the hope of being able to establish normal relations with Turkey. It seemed that the Armenian leadership bluntly assumed that if Yerevan put the genocide aside, so would Ankara; and other burning issues such as the Karabakh conflict could be resolved, while at the same time establishing relations with Turkey. This would turn out to be a miscalculation on behalf of the Ter-Petrosyan administration. An independent Armenia itself also presented changes in Turkish perception. Until 1991, Turkey ascribed the demands for genocide recognition almost exclusively to the diaspora, dismissing them as unofficial and void, while referring to Soviet Armenia and the de facto absence of the genocide on Yerevan’s official foreign agenda. In 1991, however, Ankara was presented with a new official negotiation partner in that aspect. There were also quite palpable indications that Ankara indeed perceived the genocide as a central issue in the relations with Armenia and not only a hypothetical nostalgia harbored by the diaspora. Libaridian asserts that in 1992, upon initiating the normalization of the Turkish-Armenian relations Turkish diplomats insisted, in un-official statements, that the establishment of diplomatic relations with Armenia would have to be preceded by a promise by Armenia that the Armenian state would not raise the issue of the Genocide and Genocide recognition and would take it upon itself to convince the Diaspora to also desist from doing so.44 Although Turkey soon dropped these preconditions due to the Armenian government’s reluctance to give such promises, the genocide, along with the Karabakh conflict, would soon enter the official Turkish-Armenian normalization process in earnest, becoming a firm wedge between the two neighbors.

Armenian-Turkish relations and the old ghost of genocide If there was any period for the saying “history is present,” it was during the infancy of the third Armenian republic and the molding of its politics, especially those pertaining to foreign relations. The memories of the genocide and its aftermath during the creation of the first republic, as well as the loss of independence in 1920 and Armenia’s relation to both Turkey and the major

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players during that period, were still highly topical in shaping the policies of the emerging third republic. The politics of memory were highly tangible in 1990, when the ANM leadership had declared the genocide as a historical rather than a political issue. The Ter-Petrosyan administration contended that the opposite view would constrain Yerevan’s options in her strife for independence and that it even “might lead to a repetition of historical mistakes.”45 The immense role of history in Armenian politics was not just an abstract matter of collective memory and identity, but also due to the concrete fact that Ter-Petrosyan and several of his closest collaborators and advisors, among others Libaridian, were senior historians. This background demonstrably played a decisive role in shaping Armenia’s foreign policy, especially in regard to the reliance on foreign powers, but also the issue of the genocide and relations with Turkey. Thus, the history of the first republic and the genocide were influential factors when considering how to perceive the alternatives laid before them for the future.46 It is hard not to reflect on this constellation of professional historians turned policymakers, who indeed looked to the historical records, trying to interpret the past within the context of the present geopolitical hurdles. As such, they seemed to perceive the genocide purely from a historical point of view, almost disregarding the political connotations of the historical subject, but even more important, its obvious inseparable duality. Furthermore, all the mistakes from the first republic era – reliance on Russia etc. – were beacons of warning which were not supposed to be repeated. Indeed, when it comes to human rights issues, it is history that is often the more insightful tool, not the politics, which tend to be much more cursory. In that aspect, one would agree with Raphael Lemkin who asserted that history “was ‘much wiser than lawyers and statesmen.’”47 The criticism of the ANM policies notwithstanding, in 1991, navigating through the troubled waters of the collapsing Soviet Union, Ter-Petrosyan seemed to many to personify the political strategist who, by drawing the correct conclusions from history, was making all the correct decisions, becoming the undisputed popular leader and contender for the post of president.48 The ANM and Libaridian viewed the genocide and the adhering Turkophobia as a liability and arguably one of the main impediments for achieving independence. They argued that Turkey’s denial in combination with the Armenian intense focus on the issue of recognition had crippled the Armenian perception of the future, making it unable to envision itself free from victimization and new possible genocides. This obsessive treatment of the past, Libaridian argued, meant that the purpose of history was “merely to chronicle and legitimize this fear.”49 In this view, the genocide as a discourse together with history as the tool were to be rationalized in order to emancipate the Armenians to establish an independent democratic Armenia with friendly relations with all its neighbors, including Turkey. The downplaying of the past, however, was not limited to the genocide and its related lessons, but was quite general. History, Ter-Petrosyan argued, had

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not only lost its significance but also its semantics when put in the contemporary political context. According to him, the reality was much more erratic and often in need of simple answers rather than complex historical interpretations.50 For the historian turned politician and state leader, all that mattered was the dire need of securing grain, fuel and ammunition deliveries to an Armenia struggling to secure its independence. “This is the kind of information that is not normally recorded by historiography, and I can tell you that my decisions, the most crucial decisions depend on those realities,” explained Ter-Petrosyan in an interview.51 Although this was apparently an overstatement, especially in regard to the cadre surrounding him and their initial choices based on earlier experiences, the politician Ter-Petrosyan seemed to have discarded the intrinsic power of history, which is driven from its complicated relationship with the present.52 From a realpolitik perspective though, the ANM had palpable reasons to justify its policy. In light of Armenia’s prevailing situation, ravaged by the devastating earthquake in 1988 and the ongoing Karabakh conflict, the Armenian leadership was in acute need of revitalizing the economy. Thus, diplomatic relations with the neighbors were understandably an issue of priority for the landlocked Armenia. Establishing diplomatic relations with Turkey, other than the direct matter of trade, would also be of significance regarding the prospects of handling the Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan. The latter aspect had a dual effect, meaning that the issue of economy could be solved substantially without having to settle the Karabakh conflict first, while at the same time weakening the Azerbaijani position in the ongoing negotiations.53 These conditions gave birth to the policy of “relations without preconditions” with Turkey, a policy where the question of the genocide recognition simply did not fit in. As Libaridian recalls, Ter-Petrosyan “considered the Genocide a historical and moral, not a political, issue.”54 This was a substantial shift of standpoint for Ter-Petrosyan in the 1990s. In 1966, he had been arrested on April 24, and jailed for ten days, together with eight other students, for participating in a demonstration commemorating the genocide and demanding recognition of it.55 Two decades later and at the helm of the state, Ter-Petrosyan argued that the reality required a different approach, detached from selective memories and parts of the history. Evidently ANM used past mistakes made by the first republic (e.g. reliance on false hope of foreign aid) quite frequently in substantiating its own policy. However, this approach, as sober as it might seem from a diplomatic point of view, clearly disregarded the centrality of the genocide, not only for Yerevan and Armenians around the world, but perhaps even more for Ankara and the Turks. Libaridian correctly observed that the “[g]enocide and antiTurkish had become so integral to the identity” of the Communist and ARF parties that Ter-Petrosyan’s call for normalcy was perceived as harmful to the very pillars of their identity and perception of both history and the future.56 Subsequently, as a historian, Libaridian was justified in questioning the policies and the methods used in demanding recognition as well as its results, or

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more accurately the lack of them. The decades-long demand for recognition strained the self-perception: Armenians have begged enough, have been humiliated enough, have been victims enough. Genocide recognition by Turkey and the international community cannot be the only way Armenians can recover their identity and pride. At the end, the cure to the wound may be worse than the wound itself.57 These accurate assessments of the genocide and its impact on the nation notwithstanding, the ANM leadership seemed to strive to exorcize the evil daemon of the genocide from the body of the Armenian nation and identity. Such an approach failed to fully realize the connections between history and politics, between memory and reconciliation. In addition, the ANM policy also seemed to disregard, if not refute, the legal aspects of the genocide, which ironically is rather the hallmark of the Turkish denialist policy. Therefore, it might not be surprising that some went so far as to accuse, quite wrongly one has to point out, Ter-Petrosyan and his likeminded colleagues within ANM of genocide denial. The ANM leaders did not refute the events or the committed wrongdoings, but only their place and impact on the Armenian identity and prevailing state politics. Notwithstanding this, the ANM assumption would turn out to be inaccurate, both in regard to the genocide’s symbolism and centrality among Armenians but also for Turkey and the Turks. Libaridian was nevertheless quite accurate in pointing out that it was hardly the lack of knowledge about the event and the historical proof which prevented recognition, but rather the lack of interest from the international community concerning the issue of putting pressure on Turkey.58 This assertion, however, harbors an inherent contradiction to the ANM leadership’s claim that the issue was a historical, not a political one. Clearly it was the lack of political will and not the historical ambiguity that had been, and continues to be, the primary impediment for recognizing the genocide. Furthermore, Libaridian asserted that the international community lacked the adequate resources to pressure Turkey on similar matters and its “reaction to external pressure is, usually, a stiffer response.”59 This, too, is a statement which needs qualification, since the historical records clearly indicate that in similar cases, e.g. in post-WWII Germany, political pressure played a pivotal role in pressing the perpetrator to take responsibility for its actions. In a similar manner, the international pressure was a considerable factor in compelling Switzerland to stop renouncing responsibility for committed errors during WWII and to “create two commissions, one to examine dormant bank accounts and the other to investigate the entire historical relationship between Nazi Germany and Switzerland.”60 The same is valid concerning Japan, perhaps the most relevant parallel case to the Turkish persistent denial of past wrongdoings. Much like post-WWI Turkey, post-WWII Japan had also conveniently exploited its geopolitical position during the Cold War era, as well

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as its emerging economic power, to escape accusations of committed war crimes. It was only during the 1990s, and as result of the fading Cold War, that Japan found itself under increasing international pressure to acknowledge its war time crimes. As Elzar Barkan notes, the external pressure encouraged the domestic debate to elevate the issue into a “central Japanese dilemma.”61 Even though Japan has not yet fully recognized and paid reparation for the wrongdoings, the international pressure did initiate a dialogue and brought up the dormant problem, which Japan had actively avoided, much like Turkey, treating it with silence.62 And finally, let us once again recall the effects of political pressure, such as the European Parliament’s resolutions or the looming EU membership negotiations which we will return to later on, which have at least forced Turkey to abandon its traditional blank denial. This has in turn had an impact on Turkey’s domestic debate and questioning of the official denial, which although relatively limited, has nevertheless awoken in the wake of ever-growing foreign scrutiny of the Turkish state denial of the scholarly researched facts. The foreign policy adopted by ANM regarding the genocide and its recognition did not go unnoticed, especially when compared to their pledges during the initial phase of the political awakening in Soviet Armenia. The party’s parliamentary majority had been gained based on the popular movement and on a platform which, among others matters, stipulated UN recognition of the genocide (Article 6), proclaiming April 24 as a commemoration holiday in the republic (Article 7), and demanding “unification of those territories that were historically part of Armenia and are recognized in international documents as being Armenian” (Article 8).63 Now, however, at the helm of the newly established republic, the ANM government adopted a swift and almost total downprioritization, if not an omission, of these genocide-related foreign policy articles.64 The politics of memory were indeed equally effective in Armenian circles as they were elsewhere. And, at least initially, it appeared that ANM was in fact on the right track and by early 1992 normalization of relations with Turkey seemed to be within reach. The Turkish Foreign Minister, Hikmet Cetin, had mentioned that an accord between the two countries would be signed in the coming days, noting that Armenia had officially waived any territorial claims and that the issue of the genocide was becoming a “historical legacy.”65 Through its embassy in Moscow, the Turkish Foreign Ministry had sent a draft agreement to Yerevan, with these two provisions as a basis for establishment of diplomatic relations.66 The policy of “relations without preconditions” seemed to be yielding fruit. In addition to the policy of “relations without preconditions” (at least on the part of official Yerevan), Ter-Petrosyan also turned to the diaspora, urging them to, at least temporarily, moderate their activities in demanding genocide recognition. This was an invitation which attracted harsh criticism, especially from Dashnaktsutyun.67 This would become one of many policy clashes, eventually bringing ANM on collision course with Dashnaktsutyun, causing the cooling of relations between Yerevan and considerable parts of the diaspora. This

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controversial ANM policy, Libaridian explained, “negated acquired conventional political wisdom, challenged the collective memory, and threatened to make irrelevant much of the politicized discourse around the Genocide in Armenia and the Diaspora.”68 Paraphrasing the renowned British historian Michael Howard’s words, these historians, now in charge of Armenia’s political sphere, were actually enacting their proper role as historians, namely “to challenge and even explode national myths.”69 However, the Ter-Petrosyan administration was moving too fast to perceivably nullify the history in total during that process. While sensible in assessing several aspects of the genocide and its relation to the molding of Armenia’s politics, the Ter-Petrosyan administration made the incorrect assumption of a strict separation between history and politics of the genocide, especially in regard to the reconciliatory approach. As Slye points out, the “[r]econciliation requires that the goals of both law and history be met: that some form of accountability (legal judgment) and understanding (historical judgment) be combined.”70 If these two are interdependent, then one implies the other; their separation will only yield a troublesome process at best or, simply, a futile attempt to achieve closure. Nonetheless, the relations with the diaspora seemed quite promising in the beginning. The new administration strengthened these ties by appointing several ministerial and top advisory positions to diaspora Armenians, among others Raffi Hovannisian, minister of foreign affairs; Vardan Oskanian, deputy minister of foreign affairs and later minister of foreign affairs during Robert Kocharian’s presidency; Sebouh Tashjian, minister of energy; Gerard Libaridian, senior adviser to the president and secretary of the Security Council and later deputy minister of foreign affairs; and Matthew Der Manuelian, chief of the North American diplomatic desk.71 Such appointments were of course not only for the sake of Armenia-Diaspora relations, but also utilized the advantages invested in such a diaspora through their experiences of Western institutions and their contact networks. The courting, however, did not go smoothly and soon started to crack. The most noticeable rift came when Hovannisian was forced to resign from office on October 16 1992, due to his remarks in Istanbul at a meeting of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, less than a year after being appointed to the post. Evidently, the politics of memory regarding the genocide and its implications for relations with Turkey were not as easy to ignore for all cabinet members as the Ter-Petrosyan administration would have liked it to be. During his speech in Istanbul, Hovannisian recalled the committed genocide as a gross violation of human rights, criticizing Turkey for attempting to block Armenia’s admission to the Council of Europe. Such criticism, especially in Turkey, was viewed by the Ter-Petrosyan administration to be conflicting “with Armenia’s general political course” and nothing but sabotaging the conciliatory approach.72 The speech also came during a very sensitive period when Armenia was negotiating with Turkey to allow a desperately needed wheat delivery. Hovannisian’s resignation preceded a widening gap between Yerevan and the diaspora, especially on issues concerning the genocide and Karabakh.

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The strong demotion, or as some would suggest exclusion, of the Armenian Genocide from the foreign policy agenda contributed to the deepening of the rift between the diaspora and the Ter-Petrosyan administration. Unaffected by the growing discord, official Yerevan was resolute on piloting the new republic along the set course towards relations without preconditions with Turkey. To legitimize the ANM posture towards Turkey, the proponents of that policy, including Libaridian, emphasized some degree of Turkish goodwill towards Armenia. As an example it was mentioned that in 1992, when the railroad from Georgia that normally carried wheat imports into Armenia was disrupted because of the Abkhazian conflict, Turkey permitted European donated wheat to reach Armenia using Turkish ports and Turkish rail, in light of the progress made in bilateral negotiations.73 Others criticized this as a rather naïve, even wishful thinking on behalf of the ANM leadership who idealized the description of the situation in order to promote its approach while omitting facts which would refute the Turkish benevolence. Edmond Azadian, a member of the Ramkavar Party (Armenian Democratic Liberal, ADL), recalls the aforementioned scenario quite differently: After many Byzantine tactics and months of delay, Turkey finally agreed to ship Armenia 100,000 metric tons of wheat, which the European community had promised to replace. After humiliating Armenia’s entire population in bread lines, Turkey at last began shipping the wheat across the border, at a very slow pace and at a very high price. The transportation of wheat all the way from Russia to Armenia costs only two dollars per metric ton, payable in devalued rubles; Turkey charged $56 per ton in hard currency. Armenia was forced to deplete her foreign currency reserves to avoid bread riots.74 Finally, following the Armenian military advances in the Kelbadjar region (the region artificially carved out during the Stalin era to physically separate Armenia from Karabakh), the Turkish Armenian rapprochement came to a total halt. In April 1993, Turkey officially joined Azerbaijan in imposing an embargo on Armenia, shutting down its air corridor, blocking all transports to Armenia, including the humanitarian ones heading to the earthquakestricken area. By the end of 1993, intelligence data indicated the possibility that Turkey was looking for an opportunity in the Russian domestic turmoil to shell Armenia from Nakhichevan. This only intensified the fear of the “evil Turk.” Records indicate that the threat was far more real than just a historically rooted notion.75 The ANM policy of downplaying the genocide was poorly reflected in the general sentiments of the Armenian public, in the diaspora but also in Armenia, and especially in the context of the ongoing Karabakh conflict where the Azerbaijanis were seen as similar to the WWI Turks.76 More significantly, the

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policy did not subside with the change of administration but was bequeathed to its successors. Thus, a decade later, when the Sargsyan administration, willingly or forced as we will discuss shortly, embarked on an unpreceded conciliatory approach in 2009, it too repeated the same steps before being more or less compelled to retreat from attempting to treat the genocide as the emperor’s new clothing. Only with the Pan-Armenian Declaration on Armenian Genocide Centennial,77 adopted on January 29 2014, might one say that the ambiguity of the Armenian administration in regard to its position pertaining to the question of the genocide vis-à-vis the normalization of relations with Turkey had been clarified. The core of the problem, nonetheless, remained the same: is there a short cut to reconciliation and what would it require? A short answer would simply be that there is none. As emphasized earlier, reconciliation requires an elaborate set of actions preceding it, synthesizing into the end product of conciliation. Subsequently, the innovative approach to the new foreign policy, bringing it head to head with the centrality and the significance of the genocide in the Armenian identity, took its toll and together with fundamental differences regarding the Karabakh conflict resolution became a major contributing factor to the downfall of the ANM Administration. Levon Ter-Petrosyan, resigned from office on February 3 1998. Considering the politics of memory at work in this process, it is not surprising that one of the first major changes in Armenia’s foreign policy by his successor, Robert Kocharian, was the inclusion of the recognition of the genocide in Armenia’s political agenda, profoundly reviving the strained Armenia-Diaspora relations. When the French National Assembly in June 1998 introduced a draft resolution for recognition of the genocide, many interpreted this as a direct result of that shift, boosting the recognition process internationally. On September 25 1998, for the first time the call for an international recognition of the genocide was made officially by an Armenian head of state when Kocharian mentioned it in his speech at the 53rd General Assembly of the United Nations.78 The demand for recognition had now in earnest entered the foreign policy of Armenia and has since then remained part of it, although having been suppressed at certain occasions, e.g. during the conclusion of the 2009 protocols. Kocharian’s policy-shift regarding the genocide was not only for rapprochement with the diaspora but had political implications for other strategic considerations as well. One of the main factors was believed to be countering Turkey’s increased insistence on resolving the Karabakh conflict (in Baku’s favor) as a precondition to normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations. However, once again contemporary political decisions seemed to have had overlooked or at least underestimated the significance of historical legacy. One such influential factor in this legacy is the so-called Sèvres Syndrome, referring to the inherited Turkish suspicion of any call for genocide recognition as yet another move in a hidden agenda to dismember Turkey. Although the Sèvres Treaty was thwarted by the Kemalist regime, the threats implied by the treaty provisions, especially in regard to the creation of an

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independent Armenia, continued to constitute some of the central pillars of the Turkish security and political thinking.79 This would in turn illustrate that the lack of proper addressing of the WWI events has not only deprived the victims of reaching a sort of closure, but the same is highly valid for the perpetrator as well. As such, the Sèvres Syndrome has resurfaced whenever Turkey has faced an imminent external threat, among others in regard to the Jupiter missile crisis in 1962, the Cyprus crisis in 1964, the Armenian assassinations during the 1970s, as well as in regard to the demanded reforms during the EC (1980s) and the EU membership negotiations (2005).80 Thus, the unattended past seems to become a burden in the present, witnessed in several similar cases such as France’s “Vichy Syndrome,” the “Vietnam complex” in the United States, and the various German terms for working through the past and its associated guilt. As Hirsch points out, in the context of the politics of memory, a “mythological reconstruction of the past involves a retrospective falsification of the real past that leads to a form of disappointment or disillusionment with the present and lack of hope for the future.”81 The past becomes “a disease of sorts, a burden on the present.”82 The Sèvres Syndrome, can thereby be said to be all-embracing: for Turks (warning for dissolution of the fatherland) as well as for Armenians (denied justice and the abandonment by the international community). The foreign policy shift notwithstanding, the Kocharian administration continued to pursue the policy of relations without preconditions, calling on Turkey to adhere to this policy without touching upon the question of the genocide. At first, the strategy might seem futile given the imbalance of power between Armenia and Turkey, since the former has hardly any leverage in terms of realpolitik. On the other hand, one might also advocate this approach due to that very reason, namely the absence of military or economic factors in its diplomatic arsenal. The lack of these resources is obviously reflected in Armenia’s quite insignificant value as a military or economic power, factors which Derghoukasian terms as “high politics.” The remedy would be to compensate this shortcoming by promoting “a high profile of Armenian foreign policy on the agenda of ‘low politics,’ such as international law or human rights.”83 A striking example of such policy was Armenia’s proposal for proclaiming December 9 as the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime, adopted unanimously by the United Nations on September 11 2015,84 as well as instituting the Aurora Prize, honoring an “individual whose actions have had an exceptional impact on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes.”85 The analysis regarding the “low politics” was also confirmed by the Armenian Turkologist, Ruben Safrastyan, who reflected on the advantages of attempting to break the diplomatic stalemate by approaching the issue from a historical and collective memory perspective, rather than a political one.86 That approach, however, is proven a quite complicated one, mainly due to the highly interlaced relations between memory, history, justice and politics and their interaction in order to

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achieve conciliation within the context of the politics of memory. One such reconciliatory measure was initiated in 2000 under the auspices of the US State Department. The Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission, TARC The first tangible attempt for Turkish-Armenian rapprochement was embodied by the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission, TARC, established in 2000. Existing between 2000 and 2004, TARC was endorsed and driven by the US State Department’s initiative as a Track Two diplomacy project. Coined in 1981 by William D. Davidson and Joseph V. Montville, Track Two diplomacy refers to conflict resolution, domestically or internationally, through unofficial, open-minded interactions aimed at building confidence and comprehension of the respective points of view.87 David L. Phillips, the US State Department representative in charge of TARC, who also handpicked the members of the commission, described the goal of Track Two as fostering collaboration “so that [the] conflict comes to be seen as a shared problem requiring the cooperation of both sides.”88 As such, Track Two is a complement, not a substitute, to Track One diplomacy, i.e. official relations through diplomatic and state channels. Thus, the total absence of any reconciliatory approach on official state level between Armenia and Turkey became a significant contributing factor to why TARC fell short of any substantial success. Furthermore, as Phillips points out, while the essence of Track Two diplomacy lies in its detachment from official positions which are often rigid, the success for Track Two activities nonetheless requires backing by the relevant state officials and efforts.89 This, too, turned out to be non-existent. It was hardly any surprise that Phillips’ task proved to be a difficult one since, from the very outset, it became quite evident that the members of the TARC were in close communication with their respective governments, projecting the official positions, particularly on the part of the Turkish members. Philips recalls that “[w]henever we reached a decision point, Gunduz and Ozdem would go outside to use their cell phones. It seemed as though they were acting on instructions from the Turkish government.”90 The political dimensions of the whole issue were simply part of the reality which any mediator needs to cope with, preferably utilizing it as an advantage rather than the opposite. Phillips did partly utilize this knowledge, for example in regard to handpicking the members of the commission. Defending his choice of the Turkish members, who were closely affiliated with their government, Phillips stated that they were chosen precisely for their close connections to the government in order to “neutralize critics of TARC in Ankara.”91 This was a delicate balancing act which seemed to be working, at least during the initial phase of the process. The lack of open-mindedness was also witnessed in the expectations put on TARC. As Europe and the USA welcomed TARC, so did the Turkish media. However, while the Turkish media respected the Turkish members of the

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TARC due to their state connections, they also “anticipated they would not deviate from Ankara’s official position.”92 The outset of the commission was thus diametrical even though Phillips had done his best to mitigate the differences by excluding those deemed as extremists on both sides, including the Dashnaks who would in Philips’ words “obviate any chance for constructive dialogue.”93 Although official Yerevan seemed to have been more restrained than Ankara in the need to control TARC, the Kocharian administration did tacitly approve its creation and naturally followed its process and elaborations.94 Nonetheless, TARC was not immune to criticism from Armenian institutions and parties, especially Dashnaktsutyun, who were virtually barred from the commission. This, of course, caused heavy criticism of TARC’s lack of much needed transparency and representation for legitimizing its process as well as its outcome.95 Soon a majority of the Armenian Parliament followed suit in criticism of TARC, suspecting it as a venue for Turkish denialism.96 Another, perhaps even more decisive factor hampering TARC’s prospects for succeeding in its mission was the quite different approaches of the two sides. Armenian TARC members viewed it as a means of approaching official Ankara, both for establishing normal relations between Armenia and Turkey and for initiating a dialogue regarding the genocide. Turks saw TARC as a tool to stop ongoing attempts for international recognition resolutions and a venue in which they could once and for all settle the issue about the events during WWI not being genocide.97 This was confirmed, among others, by one TARC member, Ozdem Sanberk, who during his visit to Baku stated that “[t]he basic goal of our government is to impede the initiatives put forth every year in the U.S. Congress and parliaments of Western countries on the genocide issue, which aim to weaken Turkey.”98 And it seemed to have worked quite well, since the period immediately after the official announcement of TARC witnessed a number of genocide resolutions being shelved in the USA or turned down in Germany, Switzerland, and Britain with reference to the ongoing reconciliation process.99 As Phillips observed, the Turkish acceptance of establishing and participating in TARC was in fact partly due to the looming US recognition resolution at the time, and was a measure to stop it.100 This would in turn confirm the assertion that international pressure and recognition does compel the perpetrator to at least abandon the strict denialist policy and engage in dialogue and even to face the presented accusations. In TARC’s case it even yielded quite affirmative results in the form of a legal assessment of the WWI events. Thus, while Phillips had managed to get the parties to agree on leaving the genocide issue until later and devote the process to smaller, confidence and cooperation building activities,101 the 1915 events were doomed to push through and take center stage sooner or later. TARC also revealed that, in addition to the centrality of the genocide in the normalization process, Karabakh was and remained an intertwined factor in the core problem, ever present in the periphery of the politics of memory of the genocide. In an apparent parallel to Kocharian’s aforementioned policy in using the genocide

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as political leverage in the Karabakh conflict, the TARC Turkish members utilized the Karabakh conflict and the “occupied territories” as a counter argument when faced with demands for genocide recognition.102 Meanwhile, Azerbaijan was the outspoken opponent to TARC and its activity, perceiving it as a Turkish betrayal of Azeri interests, especially the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, i.e. the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.103 Although the other TRCs, especially the South African, seemed to act as a template or even a role model for the Turkish-Armenian one, there are a couple of fundamental differences between them worth emphasizing. First of all, there were no perpetrators to be confronted and to confess, and a rapidly vanishing number of few survivors, for that matter. Second, while other TRCs dealt with, more or less, exclusively national cases, the Turkish-Armenian case is highly international, not only involving Turkey (including its own affected population and minorities) and Armenia, but also the Armenian diaspora who are citizens of third party states. In addition, one should bear in mind that, for example, in the South African case, the apartheid regime had been defeated and ruled out as flawed and it was the victims of the wrongful regime who were now in power. Gaining authority and all the rights invested in that democratic regime could be viewed, at least partially, as reparation itself. This could not be said in regard to the victims of the 1915 genocide, Armenians as well as the other affected Christian minorities, who were wiped out from their native homelands and now were living outside Turkey. Neither could one really talk about a clean break between the perpetrating state and the successor, but rather a continuity as has been discussed earlier.104 One might actually say that the differences at the outset of TARC outnumbered the similarities with other TRCs. Yet another misconception in regard to the applicability of models such as the South African TRC on the Turkish-Armenian case is underestimating or entirely overlooking the centrality of the genocide, since similar reconciliatory activities, especially Track Two diplomacy, rather focus on addressing the future but not necessarily the past. The South African TRC’s restorative actions and amnesty were more aimed at future co-existence rather than addressing past wrongdoings, which left some aspects (read punishment and demand for justice) unattended and incomplete. Nonetheless, if managed correctly, truth commissions are able to “generate authoritative historical accounts, issue recommendations for institutional change, and direct a national morality play that places the victims of injustice on center stage.”105 The Argentine commission, for example, did not serve only as a truth-finding instance, but “it was also where the truth could be formally acknowledged.”106 In the same manner, the historical commission established in 1996 to examine the history of the WWII era in Switzerland shattered the myth of Swiss neutrality.107 A similar “historical” commission in the Armenian case would, in the face of existing research, probably be more of a political means to help the Turkish authorities to save face rather than unveiling any similar information. In that regard, with the proper approach based on the scholarly

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knowledge without politically saturated compensations and trade-offs, the Turkish-Armenian case would rather resemble the German Gauck Authority and the Study Commission in the early 1990s. They did not result in any revolutionary new findings, but instead in a political and social consensus on the existing scholarly findings as well as some important documentation.108 Thus, the outset and the aim of such a commission in the Turkish-Armenian case would be highly decisive for its success. This was certainly evident in how a scholarly forum, WATS, began its work. The Workshop on Armenian and Turkish Scholarship (WATS) Let us take a short detour to look how one such scholarly forum has functioned. The Workshop on Armenian and Turkish Scholarship (WATS), an informal scholarly forum, was created in 2000 through the initiative of Ronald Grigor Suny of the University of Chicago and Fatma Müge Göçek and Gerard Libaridian of the University of Michigan.109 Suny and Göçek write that “WATS had been founded on the premise that as politicized as the matter of the Armenian Genocide had become, scholars could at least establish the documentary evidence, review the various interpretations, and make judgments about the most convincing arguments.”110 The workshop was intended to be about the analysis of the period in general, but more specifically beyond the issue of the applicability of the “g-word.”111 This cautious approach notwithstanding, much like TARC, WATS came under scrutiny from both sides.112 Some would still point out that WATS, much like other similar “commissions,” made unnecessary concessions up front, more specifically in regard to the applicability of the term genocide, to get the process started and have Turkish counterparts participate.113 Others have chastised the forum for refusing to “invite scholars who refrain from examining events ‘within the framework of genocide.’”114 However, there was a fundamental difference, however subtle it might be, between TARC and WATS, namely the point of departure. Although open to viewing different approaches and explanations for the cause of the “fate of the peoples of the Ottoman Empire,”115 WATS formulated its purpose more wisely, not leaving the entire issue of committed wrongdoings as a blank page. Indeed, the very basis of the forum emanated from the assumption that there was an internationally wrongful act committed during WWI, although not necessarily locking itself to the term genocide. The forum eventually reached a consensus on this standpoint.116 Yet, WATS believed that there were too many unanswered details, most importantly the question of intent, in order to agree upon the usage of the term genocide.117 In the end, the intricate nature of the genocide meant that it could not be approached from one perspective alone. Suny and Göçek note that “[n]o matter how hard we tried to keep the question of genocide confined to scholarship, it could not be kept from the public sphere.”118 But perhaps that was exactly what is needed to move to the next stage.

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In some ways, WATS succeeded much better than other attempts of bringing Armenians and Turks together around the history of the period in general, although the main topic was and continued to be the genocide. Other than becoming a continuous forum for discussion, albeit almost exclusively confined to the scholarly community, WATS’ activity has been credited for a thaw inside Turkey. In 2005, initiated by couple of WATS veterans and sponsored by three major Istanbul universities of Bosphorus, Sabancı, and Bilgi, a conference was planned in late May, entitled “The Ottoman Armenians during the Era of Ottoman Decline.”119 However, one day prior to the conference, it was postponed due to a court order, while Justice Minister Cemil Çiçek described the conference as “stabbing Turkey in the back” and an act of “treason.”120At this time both Foreign Minister Gül and Prime Minister Erdog˘ an accused the court decision of being an “anti-democratic development.” Although the reaction of Gül and Erdog˘ an seemed highly contradictory to that of their own justice minister, one has to bear in mind that this whole episode was unfolding at a very critical phase of Turkey’s EU accession negotiations. Soon the conference became a high-profile case, attracting criticism from the European Commission as well.121 Having waited for almost six years since officially becoming a candidate for EU membership in December 1999, the last thing Ankara needed was being branded as undemocratic and quelling free speech. This would potentially become a real impediment for starting the coveted EU negotiations. After several months of deliberation, the conference was finally allowed to take place in late September at Bigli University, roughly ten days before the Turkish EU accession talks officially commenced on October 3 2005. The conference was heralded as being the first of its kind, breaking a nine-decades long strict taboo of mentioning the Armenian fate during WWI and openly challenging the official state narrative. Nonetheless, it would soon show that the support from certain leading Turkish officials, especially with Erdog˘ an at the helm of the ruling AK Party, would pass and relapse into the same dismissive narrative of the past century. WATS certainly outlived TARC and, using the authority of the educational system, it has given some legitimacy to an alternative narrative which challenges the one promulgated by the state. Yet, without the proper backing from the political sphere for an open and harassment-free discussion, especially inside Turkey, the bridging process remains mainly within the scholarly community. Returning to TARC, one can assert that a truth commission, as a tool or mechanism within the process of the politics of memory, will certainly have an immense impact on the collective narrative and the identity. It should be remembered that the process is by far only beneficial for the victim but affects the perpetrator as well. The search for the truth is not as much for the sake of the victims as to “create a shared history as a basis for social and political cooperation in the future.”122 The commission report is supposed to serve as a roadmap rather than the comprehensive truth.123 This is where the Armenian-Turkish case differs substantially from the rest of documented TRCs.

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Phillips’ account of the outset of TARC reveals that both parties viewed the commission as a means to, once and for all, prove their diametrically opposite versions of the WWI events, especially when the mediator (the international community) has assumed an unwarranted “objectivity” by refraining from pointing out the obvious, principally represented by the scholarly knowledge on the issue. Under such circumstances the prospect for success was, at best, gloomy. Having that said, TRCs could still play a constructive role in cases similar to the Turkish-Armenian one where the disputing parties have diametrically opposite standpoints. However, in such a case it might be useful to introduce a new approach. The political scientist Onur Bakiner proposes one such alternative, in which the goal of a similar commission should actually not be to establish the truth, but the “deconstruction of [the] master-narratives.”124 Bakiner’s argumentation, fitting well onto the Turkish-Armenian case, duly notes that [f]acts by themselves have not eradicated denialism, as can be evidenced by vocal apologists for past policies whose inability to refute facts does not stop them from attacking truth commissions. Nevertheless, these findings have revealed the inconsistencies and blatant lies in the discourse of denial, put into question the legitimacy and respectability of deniers, and consequently made it possible for the broader society to recognize the injustice of ignoring past human rights violations.125 Therefore, when conducted transparently and in a wider context than a closed circle of diplomats or other selected individuals, the commission’s most significant role would be to invite the “society as a whole to assume a selfreflective attitude towards the violent past. Commission processes are presented as an opportunity for the recognition of victimhood, apology, and even forgiveness.”126 In TARC’s case, unlike those in Argentina, Chile, South Africa, Guatemala, Nigeria, Peru, etc., the Turkish members were following a state line, i.e. denial of the scholarly consensus. Thus, a prerequisite for any similar reconciliatory process or commission would be to exclude allusion to any idea that the already established scholarly findings might be a matter of negotiation based on political contingencies. Notwithstanding, this is exactly what has been signaled by the mediators on the onset of the Turkish-Armenian processes, both in 2000 and later in 2009. The Armenian TARC member Van Krikorian, confirming Armenia’s readiness to participate in a truth and reconciliation process, made it clear that the “purpose was not to explore the truth of the Armenian Genocide. That fact was beyond question.”127 However, this was obviously not what the Turkish delegates had in mind.128 The standpoint of the international community indeed plays a significant role in creating and cementing similar stale-mates, in this case in the lack of political acknowledgment of the scholarly knowledge. Had Phillips, as the mediator, had such a confirmation to lean on, he

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could have utilized it to confront the denier. Both in TARC and later in 2009, the inadequate political backing of the scholarly findings contributed substantially to the ultimate failure of the entire conciliatory process due to the issue of the genocide. One can only agree with Belinda Cooper and Taner Akcam who duly note that “[g]iven the extent to which historical experience has traumatized both Armenians and Turks, attempts to promote reconciliation without squarely confronting history are doomed to failure.”129 This does not only pertain to Turks and Armenians, but is perhaps even more important due to the nature of the universality of human rights, thus applying to the international community in whole. Although Phillips and the members of the commission deliberately tried to avoid the issue of genocide, as best as they could, or at least relegate it to the periphery, it soon became unavoidable, both internally and externally, when the expectations of the commission were addressed. Upon releasing a first public statement in regard to the creation of the commission, media’s very first question was in regard to the issue of genocide, clearly illustrating that the outside perception too viewed this single issue as the defining factor for the normalization of the relations between the two nations.130 The article which appeared in The New York Times on July 10 2001, quoted the Turkish member and former Foreign Minister, Ilter Turkmen, describing TARC’s position on the issue of genocide. He stated that “[t]he Commission will not determine the validity of either position. Instead, it will explore ways to bridge the gap.”131 The shores on which the envisioned bridge was meant to be built would prove to be too far apart to be able to sustain a stable construction. The basis of the commission and reconciliation was built on the naïve anticipation of being able to brush the issue of genocide aside or being able to negotiate a middle way. But while this might work in purely political disputes by agreeing to an arbitrated agreement, the accumulated historical findings in regard to the WWI events would in such a case simply require deliberate revisionism in order to be implementable. The intricate process of the politics of memory, including several different disciplines, actors and mechanisms, would simply not agree to such a one-sided politically imposed narrative. Nonetheless, it would be unfair to dismiss TARC as a total failure, since it did indeed achieve a number of goals, among others paving the way for cooperation between several NGOs, educational institutions etc. But perhaps the best tangible outcome of the commission’s work, and probably the single issue TARC has come to be associated with and remembered by, was the legal report compiled by the International Center for Transitional Justice on the issue of the applicability of the UN Genocide Convention on the events during WWI. A legal examination of the 1915 events: the ICTJ Report The interdisciplinary nature of the Armenian Genocide made itself conspicuous anew when the legal aspects of the WWI events again became the focus of this “historical” event. Seeking a definite end to the question of genocide, the

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request for such an analysis did not actually come from the Armenians, but from the Turkish members of TARC. It was Gunduz Aktan who proposed asking ICTJ to conduct an analysis on the applicability of the UN Genocide Convention to the WWI events in the Ottoman Empire. Aktan was convinced that a legal action would be the only way to confront the genocide recognition campaign and wanted TARC to call on Armenia and Turkey to agree on a legal arbitration, which would, once and for all, settle the issue of the genocide. This was a deliberate plan, since prior to his proposal, Aktan had travelled to the Hague and interviewed experts at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).132 For a brief moment, it seemed that a common platform for moving forward had been found. Both Turks and Armenians seemed to be happy with such an analysis and gave it a green light. Soon, however, it became clear that the two sides had very different perceptions of what “applicability” in the anticipated report entailed.133 Suddenly Sanberk and Aktan realized the potential danger in their own request: it would not only be limited to the legal applicability of UN Convention but also to the definition of genocide. This would turn out to be a very problematic situation if ICTJ, moreover at the request of the Turks, should conclude that the events indeed constituted genocide as defined by the Convention. In an apparent act of damage control and without the knowledge of the rest of TARC members, Sanberk contacted ICTJ in an attempt to change the premises of the analysis and the report. He wanted to make sure that ICTJ was to strictly examine the legal applicability of the 1948 Convention on the 1915 events and not whether the events of 1915 could be called genocide according to the definition of the Convention.134 When ICTJ notified the TARC leadership about the request, and once the secret contact was revealed, the Armenian side announced that they were halting their participation until further notice. Almost two years into its work, the genocide, which was supposed to be kept at a distance, in the periphery, almost terminated the process at its very first mentioning.135 The episode was, of course, quite embarrassing for Phillips and for TARC as a reconciliatory process based on the building of confidence and trust. It took him half a year to bring the parties back together (July 2002), to approve going on with the ICTJ analysis, which would turn out to be more complex to prepare than anticipated. ICTJ spent another six months on preparing the study; the findings were not presented until February 2003. The report, which was supposed to take a month to compile, had taken a year.136 An independent legal counsel had drafted a seventeen-page strictly legal memorandum on the subject. Referring to the general prohibition of the retroactive application of treaties in international law, the report noted that “no legal, financial or territorial claim arising out of the Events could successfully be made against any individual or state under the Convention [emphasis added].”137 However, the report was summarized by the conclusion that the Events, viewed collectively, can thus be said to include all of the elements of the crime of genocide as defined in the Convention, and legal

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scholars as well as historians, politicians, journalists and other people would be justified in continuing to so describe them.138 In ICTJ board member Theodore Sorensen’s words, the report gave “neither side everything, but each side something.”139 The ICTJ conclusion that no legal financial or territorial claim can be made under the Convention, is quite logical, given the ex post facto nature of the legal system. However, what justifiably worried the Turkish side was the description of the events as tantamount to genocide, i.e. implying that wrongful acts had indeed taken place. It was this very conclusion which the Turkish side had deemed dangerous, revealing the stipulation of this study that the core of the issue is not whether there was a genocide, but whether there was any wrongdoing of any kind. That the wrongdoings surmounted to genocide is really just an aggravating factor. Once one argues that the Turkish denial is originally anchored in the issue of escaping liability (long before the definition of genocide even existed), it becomes clear that the denial is not limited to the genocide label per se, but any wrongdoing. Thus, the executive summary of the ICTJ report was indeed worrisome for Ankara. While seemingly satisfied with the non-retroactive applicability of the Convention, the Turkish members of TARC chastised ICTJ for having exceeded the limits of its mandate in regard to the nature of the WWI events.140 Aktan, the very person who requested ICTJ to conduct the analysis, went even further in his criticism, dismissing ICTJ as incompetent to deal with the Armenian Genocide and unable to conduct a legal examination of the issue.141 The insistence on the strictly legal examination by ICTJ, disregarding the “legislative intent” was an echo of the earlier argumentation regarding the Lausanne amnesty’s acquitting of all potential perpetrators, implying that the absence of punishment was proof that there were no committed crimes. Now, in 2002, this argumentation was given prominence by referring to the inapplicability of the 1948 Convention for demanding reparation retroactively. This was seen as tantamount to the nonexistence of any wrongdoing during WWI. Thus, it seemed that the interpreted legal precedence in the present simply was translated into historical fact about the past. Phillips had intended the ICTJ report to be a “creative way” to address the issue of genocide which overshadowed every aspect of TARC’s activities. Although the report was never meant to be subject to a deeper analysis or consideration,142 it became, ironically enough, the hallmark of the commission and the legacy by which it came to be remembered. Even then, the report received little attention from political circles, especially in the USA, while Turkey, quite understandably, chose to forget it entirely and repeat its call for additional, “objective” examinations. Political contingencies in the shape of the 9/11 attacks in the USA and the subsequent war on terror would redefine USTurkish relations, rejuvenating the US dependency on Turkish military bases and cooperation in military operations in the region.143 And Ankara was indubitably aware of its importance in US war.144 The politics of memory

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would, nonetheless, soon reutilize the Armenian Genocide in the international political arena. This became tangible when the relations between Ankara and Washington started to deteriorate due to Turkish insistence on being allowed to occupy northern Iraq. In return, Ankara would allow American airplanes through Turkish air space. While Congress had abstained from criticizing Turkey during the preparation of the war in Iraq, the lack of a Turkish willingness to cooperate during the war itself had angered the legislatures in Washington, DC. The hostility was channeled, in Phillips’ interpretation, by several resolutions for recognition of the Armenian Genocide.145 Senior members of the administration worked frenetically to stop the recognition and Vice President Dick Cheney managed finally to convince House Speaker Denis Hastert to keep H.R. 193 from the House floor, while the Senate majority leader did the same with Senate Resolution 307.146 The issue of a common commission investigating the WWI events did, however, not disappear. In 2007, in an interview with Le Figaro, Kocharian stated that “[t]he normalization of bilateral relations is the responsibility of governments, not historians,” at the same time adding the traditional Armenian position inherited from the Ter-Petrosyan administration about being “ready to establish diplomatic relations with Turkey without preconditions, create an intergovernmental commission and to discuss all issues, including the most sensitive.”147 Few interpreted the “most sensitive” as anything else than the genocide. The next opportunity would come during the second year of his successor’s term, namely the famous Football diplomacy and the 2009 Protocols. Football diplomacy and the 2009 Protocols Perhaps the closest Armenia and Turkey came to officially normalize their relations was the so-called 2009 Protocols, which has been dubbed as “Football diplomacy.” This referred to the historic visit by the Turkish president Abdullah Gül to Yerevan to watch the World Cup qualifying game between Armenia and Turkey. The historic protocols, which were signed through Swiss mediation, were hailed by the entire world community as a possible thaw in one of modern time’s longest frozen relationships. However, the rapprochement seemed rather strained due to both external pressure and prevailing contingencies. From a Turkish perspective, the rapprochement was seen in the context of Turkey’s “zero problems with the neighbors,” launched during 2004 in connection to Turkey’s EU accession negotiations. Yerevan’s agreement to sign the protocols was, according to many, a direct result of the GeorgianRussian war in August 2008. The week-long Georgian-Russian armed conflict bluntly demonstrated the vulnerability of landlocked Armenia and the risks of being heavily dependent on Georgia for the vital imports of grain and fuel. The fact that more than 70 percent of Armenia’s export and import were traded through Georgian ports meant that Armenia’s supplies virtually ceased during the second week of August 2008.148 The normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations would certainly lend some well-needed stability to the Caucasus,

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especially if it could also contribute to a possible speedy solution to the Karabakh conflict. However, while both parties and the mediators, yet again, did their best to avoid the issue of the g-word, the 1915 events would take centerstage and topple the whole deal. Despite the secrecy surrounding the initial phases of the negotiations, the content of the protocols soon reached the general public. As a result, the Dashnaktsutyun party, which was a junior member of the four-party ruling coalition in the Armenian parliament, left the coalition in protest, condemning president Serzh Sargsyan and his Republican Party for giving in to Turkish pressure. The criticism was solely directed to the policy of “normalization without preconditions” which Dashnaktsutyun asserted had now been turned by Turkey into conditions.149 The core of the criticism consisted of the three issues of genocide recognition, the issue of the Armenian-Turkish borders and the frozen Karabakh conflict. The media had reported that one of the key articles in the protocols was pertaining to the creation of a joint historical commission for examining the 1915 events and settling whether they constituted genocide or not. Although there was no direct mentioning of the genocide or the 1915 events, it was hard not to interpret the article in this context. The article envisioned the creation of a sub-commission to implement “an impartial and scientific examination of the historical records and archives to define existing problems and formulate recommendations.”150 To the critics this was nothing but the very policy which Ankara had driven for the past decades in order to question the reality of the events and to negotiate a favorable version to its likening. Official Yerevan insisted that no such commission would be set up to question the reality of the genocide.151 Upon signing and disclosure of the contents of the protocols, the issue also prompted the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) to address an open letter to Erdogan and Sargsyan. Here, it was pointed out that the [a]cknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide must be the starting point of any “impartial historical commission,” not one of its possible conclusions. The world would not accept an inquiry into the truth of the Nazi Holocaust, or the extermination of the Tutsi in Rwanda, and nor can it do so with the genocide of the Armenians.152 In a letter to William Schabas, then President of IAGS, Sargsyan said that the purpose of the proposed historical commission was not to question the genocide but rather “to give an opportunity to Armenian and Turkish peoples to find common grounds for mutual trust and dialogue.”153 Yerevan’s statements did little to calm the critics and Sargsyan was forced to conduct a world tour to meet with diaspora representatives to assure them that the recognition of the genocide was neither part of the protocols nor a negotiable item.154 Notwithstanding, that was exactly how the majority, especially the international political establishment, interpreted the protocols.155 With some exceptions, Sargsyan was met by massive protests and

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suspicion about Yerevan’s willingness to trade the issue of the genocide for the normalization of relations with Ankara.156 Despite the criticism, Yerevan, under heavy pressure from Washington, agreed to sign the protocols on October 10 2009. World leaders and the media were overjoyed by the “historic agreement.”157 This positive excitement did not, however, quite reflect reality and it did not take long before the real issues of the genocide and Karabakh caught up with it. It would soon become apparent that the deliberately ambiguous outset in regard to the core of the issue, i.e. the genocide, had once again undermined the reconciliatory process, instead of facilitating and promoting it. Armenia and Turkey had both very different interpretations of the content of the protocols and their implementation. But, in order for the protocols to be official, they had to be ratified by the respective parliaments. Within only six months the whole process would come to a halt and it was again the issue of the genocide, later aggravated by the Karabakh conflict, which dashed the process. Soon after the signing of the protocols, Turkey, pressured by Azerbaijan, began increasingly to attach the normalization process to the settlement of the Karabakh conflict in Baku’s favor. In turn, Yerevan seemed to utilize a contingency plan, which would instead come to emphasize the centrality of the genocide in the equation after all. In accordance with the Constitution of Armenia in regard to establishing diplomatic relations with a foreign state, the Armenian administration conveyed the protocols to the Constitutional Court for examination. There was little surprise in reading the Court’s findings that the protocols were in full conformity with Armenia’s Constitution and international law.158 However, item d-5 in the Court findings, without mentioning the g-word, simply noted that the protocols “cannot be interpreted or applied … in a way that would contradict the provisions of the Preamble to the RA Constitution and the requirements of Paragraph 11 of the Declaration of Independence of Armenia [the strife for international genocide recognition].” 159 This single remark did not go unnoticed in Ankara. Turkey accused Yerevan for putting forth conditions since the judgment of the Constitutional Court contained “contradictory elements to the letter and the spirit of the Protocols.”160 The Turkish response indeed only confirmed what the critics of the protocols in regard to the envisioned historical sub-commission had implied. The immediate aftermath of the 2009 protocols was much alike that of TARC nine years earlier. While Yerevan found itself in a quandary over the implications of the protocols’ contents, official Ankara immediately utilized the protocols to hamper ongoing cases of international recognition of the genocide.161 The 2009 protocols and the alleged “reconciliation” had now become the main argument against then existing resolutions for genocide recognition, among others in the US Congress and in the Swedish Parliament. The recognitions by the US Committee on Foreign Relations and the Swedish Parliament, both unheeded by their respective governments, would in fact be the last of their kind during the coming four years. The next international recognition

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(by the Bolivian Parliament) would wait until December 2014, in immediate association with the start of the centennial commemoration of the genocide during the following year. Meanwhile, Turkey continued chastising foreign parliaments for “writing history” through a “one-sided view of history,” calling for the need to examine the events by an “objective commission.”

Parliamentary recognitions: writing history or confirming the research? As the genocide recognition process has trundled on, gaining affirmative responses in parliaments, primarily in Europe and South America, the issue of such recognitions by legislative institutions has not only been contested by Turkey, but also by scholars and politicians. The opponents to such resolutions have quite rightfully argued that historical truth is not a matter for parliaments and politicians to decide. Along with the arguments of “leaving history to historians” and an “objective” commission to settle the difference of opinion, these critics oppose any such parliamentary recognition by, for example, referring to the absence of legal verdicts as those in Nuremburg. At first glance one would agree with such criticism; politicians should not act scholars and legal experts. However, especially with regard to the accumulated knowledge and the consensus around the 1915 events, one could equally claim that parliaments are actually doing what is expected from them, i.e. keeping to the body of information and the conclusion supported by the majority of the experts. As already discussed in relation to the European Parliament’s debate in 1987, parliamentary recognition is aimed at the official denial rather than writing history. Neither scholars nor the diaspora have the position to challenge a sovereign state; only other states could be capable of such a task. And it would be equally unrealistic to expect Armenia to shoulder this demand towards Turkey on her own.162 The disparity of power between the NATO member and its small eastern neighbor only establishes the fact that it would be anything but naïve to suggest that Turkey and Armenia should resolve the issue among themselves. Indeed, as Vahakn N. Dadrian points out, it is only the powerful who can afford to deny a crime of this magnitude and get away with it.163 Turkey’s case is a prime example of this. Thereby, exonerating oneself from the call to recognize the genocide by suggesting that Armenia and Turkey should resolve the issue among themselves, especially in the light of existing knowledge on the subject, is nothing short of indirect support of the denial.164 It is here that the role of the international community comes into the picture, similar to the numerous examples mentioned earlier in this study in regard to upholding the universal values invested in the issue at hand, i.e. the human rights and justice in the international law. The fact that the political apathy in respect of recognition of the Armenian Genocide no longer has a legitimate base in research is becoming increasingly evident in recent years, especially in the argumentation of the recognition opponents. This aspect has been evident in several cases when a legislative body has considered the issue of recognition. As already described, the Israeli

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government has long been an opponent to recognition of the Armenian Genocide, partly due to the fact of Turkey being one of the few friendly Muslim powers in the region. Thus, in the wake of the considerable cooling of Israeli-Turkish relations due to the Mavi Marmara incident, where eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish-American were killed by Israeli soldiers,165 some believed that the window of opportunity for Israeli recognition had appeared. The political reality, however, would prove otherwise. Although the motion for recognition and the subsequent discussion in the Israeli Knesset were viewed as a breakthrough per se, the Israeli government’s opposition to genocide recognition was unchanged. During the debate in the Knesset, objecting to such recognition by Israel, the representative of the government stated that “[o]ur relations with them [Turkey] are so fragile today, it is not right to push them over the red line.”166 Knesset MP Ariyeh Eldad replied, “In the past it was wrong to bring up the issue because our ties with Turkey were good; now it is wrong because our ties with them are bad. When will the time be right?”167 Michael Berenbaum, the former project director for USHMM, pointed out the Israeli dilemma bluntly. In an opinion article regarding the resolution in the Knesset, now arguing against such a move, Berenbaum recalled the USHMM episode and how the Israeli government intervened to exclude any mention of the Armenian Genocide.168 However, while still firmly believing that the Armenian fate was a genocide, he now argued that given the prevailing frosty Turkish-Israeli relations, nothing good could come of such a recognition. He concluded his article by writing the following: Israel is now in a lose/lose situation. The longer the politicians debate the issue, the more it diminishes the country’s moral stature and the more dangerous it becomes for the memory of the Holocaust. Not to acknowledge the Armenian genocide puts it on the side of historical deniers, yet to acknowledge it now, out of anger, as punishment for the Turks, is the ultimate of politicization of history. Sometimes, as the Talmud tells us, silence is wisdom.169 Realpolitik still reigned supreme, imposing a tacit denial of the facts. It was not the knowledge, but the diplomatic ties which were the main argument. Almost an identical exchange of arguments took place one year earlier in the US Congress when the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the US House of Representatives was about to vote on the subject (H.R. 252). Representative Michael T. McCaul, adhering to those opposing a US recognition, although not denying the reality of the genocide itself, argued that such a resolution would be untimely for two main reasons: 1) it would harm the ongoing Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process initiated by the 2009 protocols; 2) it would endanger the US troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, since Turkey would most likely shut down access to its airbase utilized for transporting American troops and supplies.170 The chairman of the committee, Howard L.

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Berman, a long-time proponent of US recognition of the Armenian Genocide, refused to yield to the pressure, replying the following to McCaul: I appreciate that, and I have great respect for the gentleman’s efforts to look into this and for his consideration and the seriousness of the issue he raised, but I do have to say that I have been in this Congress for 27 years … and I have never seen a time when it was the right time to take up this resolution in 27 years.171 Looking into the debate, it was evident that, compared to the same debate back in 2000, when the validity of the historical records and the interpretation of the events were still being challenged,172 no one was questioning the reality of the genocide itself anymore. On the contrary, the majority of those who pleaded against the recognition, including McCaul, did so while explicitly acknowledging that the historical evidence was in favor of confirming the genocide. It was simply a case of sheer political and economic interests and more significantly, America’s national interests. The true nature of the issue was stated quite bluntly in the letter sent by Chairman Ike Skelton of the Armed Forces Committee to the members of the Foreign Relations Committee, cautioning them about such recognition. This legislation will have very real and meaningful consequences internationally. While we can and should debate the best ways to defeat extremism and help strengthen our struggling economy, we certainly should not be considering proposals that will only further damage our country both militarily and economically.173 It seems quite ironic that Skelton had to point out in the letter that a recognition would have “very real and meaningful consequences internationally.” In a twisted manner it seemed to underline the importance of the recognition in the eyes of the victim, as well as its repercussion for the perpetrator, while it appeared to be nothing more than a symbolic gesture on behalf of the third party. These parliamentary recognitions, other than confronting the denial, have yet another important effect, namely to raise the domestic factual awareness on the subject by enticing debates in the entire society as media starts contemplating on the subject. Viewed within the politics of memory, the policy of decision-makers has thereby rippling effects on the public, often including scholarly expertise in shedding light on the issue. This process was quite noticeable in the Swedish recognition case. When the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, voted on March 11 2010, in favor of recognizing the 1915 genocide,174 Turkey reacted in the usual manner by recalling its ambassador and cancelled Prime Minister Erdogan’s impending visit scheduled for the following week. The whole issue took yet another turn when the Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, refused to adhere to the Riksdag’s decision and Prime

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Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt called his Turkish counterpart, to say that he “regretted” the decision by the Riksdag.175 Although the issue had been hinted at in the media for some time, the recognition seemed to have come as a total surprise to everyone and it became the dominating news for the following days. As already mentioned in the introduction of this book, it is noteworthy that the media’s coverage, and the language used in the articles, reflected a genuine lack of knowledge about the events, but perhaps more importantly, about the existing research.176 While the main topic of the debate concerned whether similar parliamentary recognitions are the correct manner to address the issue, the Riksdag’s resolution had evidently generated a discussion within Swedish society, which had put the “forgotten genocide” into immense focus. Attention was directed towards trying to understand why a century-old issue has such an explosive effect and the reasons behind it. Thus, by the time of the centennial commemoration in 2015, when the media was replete with articles covering the centennial of the genocide, the wording of the articles had changed dramatically. The editorials, the articles and the reportages were unanimous in expressing the reality of the genocide based on the overwhelming scholarly consensus on the one hand and the Turkish state denial on the other.177 In 2015, there was apparently no such need to “balance” the discussion by asking the Turkish side for their view of the question as there was in 2010. The media simply referred to the existing research consensus. The change did not appear overnight through the Riksdag’s recognition, however. The (top-down) decision had initiated a (bottom-up) discussion and interest, which required a more in-depth scrutiny of the information at hand, including those belonging to the denialist camp. Only two years after the Riksdag’s recognition, the wording had shifted to depict the support of the majority of scholars of the issue, while official Turkey refutes the charges.178 Thus, parliamentary recognitions not only mark a stand against the state denial, but they do demonstrably function as a catalyst for initiating further domestic investigation into the known facts about similar politicized issues, which in turn could also affect the same stand internationally as the confirmation of the past is echoed across the borders.

Legal examination: law and politics The question of parliaments being the improper forum for similar recognitions has been employed by Turkey, as well as foreign governments who were unwilling to risk their diplomatic and trade relations with Turkey. Among others, the British Government has referred to the legal rulings as a basis for its refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide, stating explicitly that the UK only recognizes the cases of Holocaust, Srebrenica and Rwanda, which have been found to be genocide by international courts.179 Reflecting on similar arguments, one is inclined to wonder whether the Armenian case, especially in the light of the presented confirmatory data, should be taken to a court of law for such a review, in order to settle it once and for all. However, as one might

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suspect, such a step is not that trivial and straightforward. Theoretically, given the claimed substantial evidence in the matter, the proponents of recognition should be quite confident in such a move. Notwithstanding this, as already mentioned, political maturity and backing do play a significant role in similar cases pertaining to human rights. This is especially valid for the issue of establishing the question of continuity and responsibility where political considerations and the existing balance of power, rather than international law, can play a decisive role.180 The Armenian side has justifiably hesitated to make such a move, since it would be a gamble with enormous high stakes before the necessary political backing is in place. With that in mind, one should still recall the already existing legal examinations (although not all exclusively pertaining to the labeling of the term genocide in particular, but also committed “crimes against humanity”) mentioned earlier in this study: the War Commission reports during 1919, the UN War Commission Report in 1948, the 2002 ICTJ report, etc. The pitfalls of such a legal potential move were bluntly demonstrated in the case of Perinçek vs Switzerland in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). During his visits to Switzerland in 2007, Dog˘ u Perinçek, a Turkish political activist, denouncing the Armenian Genocide as a “great international lie,” had been found guilty of racial discrimination by a Swiss district court in Lausanne and fined 3,000 Swiss Francs.181 Perinçek appealed to the ECHR, which announced its verdict in December 2013, ruling that Switzerland had violated Perinçek’s right to freedom of speech.182 The troubling part in the ECHR verdict was, however, some of the argumentation which questioned the reality of the genocide itself: The Court doubted that there could be a general consensus as to events such as those at issue, given that historical research was by definition open to discussion and a matter of debate, without necessarily giving rise to final conclusions or to the assertion of objective and absolute truths.183 By stating the above-mentioned reasoning, the ECHR seemed to have disregarded the existing scholarly consensus, passing a judgment based on political consequences rather than researched factual basis, a remarkably worrying lapse by an institution of such nature and stature. What made it even more troublesome was the argument stating that “only about twenty States (out of more than 190 in the world) have officially recognized the Armenian Genocide.”184 The ECHR had seemingly delegated the responsibility laid on a legal institution, such as itself, back to the world parliaments and their governments. In doing so, the ECHR had, instead of a legal examination, rather resorted to political standpoints. It is remarkably ironic that several of those 170 parliaments and governments referred to by ECHR as not having recognized the genocide, as in the mentioned case of the UK, often point to the lack of an international court verdict on the subject. Thus, some feared that the ECHR had now broken virgin ground for further

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genocide denial by a perpetrator state that wishes to escape responsibility for similar mass atrocities.185 If anything, this case superbly demonstrated the interdisciplinary nature of the Armenian Genocide and how the legal investigation and statements would have tangible impacts on the narrative within the process of the politics of memory. This was a highly renowned institution who risked being invoked in substantiating history revisionism. The argument, however, did not stop there but would continue in a higher instance. Switzerland appealed the verdict to the Grand Chamber of ECHR and the Grand Chamber announced its ruling on October 15 2015.186 The highly divided panel of judges, ten against seven, demonstrated the complexity of the issue, but also its delicate nature. While confirming the previous verdict regarding the violation of Perinçek’s right to freedom of speech, the Grand Chamber, however, rectified the previous mistake of questioning the reality of the WWI events.187 The Grand Chamber did not explicitly acknowledge the genocide, as some chose to interpret the verdict, but rather strategically (or diplomatically to choose a more appropriate wording in our context) waivered the issue of the definition of the events entirely by stating that it was not required to determine whether the massacres and mass deportations suffered by the Armenian people at the hands of the Ottoman Empire from 1915 onwards can be characterised as genocide within the meaning of that term under international law, but has no authority to make legally binding pronouncements, one way or the other, on this point.188 Although an overwhelming majority welcomed the judgment in regard to the protection of freedom of speech, which many now employed as a golden opportunity to attack the Turkish denial by using the infamous Article 301,189 the verdict and the argumentation were not without scrutiny and once more the Holocaust took central stage. According to the majority of the judges, Holocaust denial automatically translated into inciting hatred, while other cases, e.g. that of the Armenian case, are refuting the historical records. In regard to the parallels with the Holocaust, the ECHR judgment stated that [f]or the Court, the justification for making its denial a criminal offence lies not so much in that it is a clearly established historical fact but in that, in view of the historical context in the States concerned – the cases examined by the former Commission and the Court have thus far concerned Austria, Belgium, Germany and France … its denial, even if dressed up as impartial historical research, must invariably be seen as connoting an antidemocratic ideology and anti-Semitism. Holocaust denial is thus doubly dangerous, especially in States which have experienced the Nazi horrors, and which may be regarded as having a special moral responsibility to distance themselves from the mass atrocities that they have perpetrated or abetted by, among other things, outlawing their denial.190

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This particular argumentation around the Holocaust surprised many who criticized it for having substantially undermined the judgment. By putting such emphasis on the Holocaust, the ECHR had not only tied the issue of moral responsibility entirely to that singular case, but also to the countries where it actually had occurred. The argumentation had imploded the universality of the crimes against humanity, thus the very issue of human rights itself, into one single occasion limited almost entirely to Europe and European memory. In Uladzislau Belavusau’s words, the ECHR argumentation “essentially trivialises the sufferings of a million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and projects a flimsy judicial iconography with the Holocaust rising over other ‘second-class’ evils.”191 The relevance of geography in the majority ruling was equally troublesome and was criticized harshly. The majority judges argued that, while denying the Holocaust in Germany or Switzerland could be punishable due to the immediate local connections to the event, one could not argue that there was such a direct link between Switzerland and the events that took place in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.192 Although one would be inclined to accept a certain degree of logic regarding the Holocaust being more sensitive for the countries affected by the event, the ECHR’s argumentation once again posed a serious quandary in regard to the universality of the nature of the events and international law. This aspect was captured by the reflection of the seven dissenting judges, stating that Drawing all the logical inferences from the geographically restricted approach apparently adopted by the majority, one might come to the view that denial in Europe of genocides perpetrated in other continents, such as the Rwandan genocide or the genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, would be protected by freedom of expression without any limits, or with scarcely any. We do not believe that such a vision reflects the universal values enshrined in the Convention.193 The Grand Chamber judges also delivered an interesting argumentation, which is highly relevant for this study, namely the relevance of temporal distance. The ruling stated that [w]hereas events of relatively recent vintage may be so traumatic as to warrant, for a period of time, an enhanced degree of regulation of statements relating to them, the need for such regulation is bound to recede with the passage of time.194 Thus, it seems that in the eyes of these judges, time will eventually heal all wounds. Needless to say, this neither reflects the findings of this study nor the general policy shift internationally in the light of the need for truth commissions for past wrongdoings.195 As Sévane Garibian asked rhetorically, would this argumentation then imply that e.g. Holocaust denial could be a negligible

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offense in forty years’ time?196 It seemed that ECHR had missed the self-irony of the situation in which the court itself had, for the past three years, been entangled in handling a century-old issue, evidently highly capable of conjuring up heated emotions and traumatic memories. The politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide was still steaming on at full speed. The ECHR assessments had thereby demonstrated clearly the dangers of taking the Armenian issue to a court of law for settlement. The ambiguities stated in the assessments once again left the core issue in limbo by having seemingly given neither side everything, but each side something. Thus, all parties seemed to be pleased and were claiming victory by interpreting the judgment in their favor. While Armenians and proponents of recognition accentuated the Grand Chamber’s refraining from questioning the events as an implicit recognition of the genocide,197 the Turkish side took it as a confirmation of the genocide being a contested event.198 The outcome had also demonstrated how a similar legal assessment could be influenced by prevailing political circumstances – for example, by stressing the lack of consensus on the international level – instead of the existing consensus among scholars. Touching on the interdisciplinary nature of the problem, it bluntly demonstrated how a strictly legal assessment can overlook such essential and influential aspects as memory and history. This is a situation that might aggravate the dilemma. The ECHR ruling was not the only legal case in the recent past demonstrating the political implications of the recognition process of the Armenian Genocide. Another, perhaps clearer, example of the intricate relations between law and politics of the Armenian Genocide occurred two years earlier in 2013, when the US Supreme Court rejected a petition to review a case regarding insurance claims by Armenian Genocide victims filed in the State of California. The significance of this case was the argumentation by the Supreme Court, basing its dismissal in a reference to the Federal Government’s foreign policy, the latter’s posture towards Turkey and the question of the genocide labelling in particular. Referring to the US government’s stand on refusing to describe the WWI events as genocide, the Supreme Court argued that if a state court were to accept such an insurance claim, this would intrude “on the foreign affairs prerogatives of the federal government.”199 It is also noteworthy that while the District Court denied one insurance company’s motion to dismiss the claims for breach of contract, the decisive argument of the defendants was the Federal Government’s foreign policy’s pre-emption of the State law. In fact, the defendants explicitly referred to the three foiled attempts in the US Congress to recognize the Armenian Genocide (in 2000, 2003, and 2007) in order to substantiate their claim.200 What the verdict hinted, however, was that future change of US policy in regard to the genocide would indeed imply the possibility of filing similar lawsuits. This would in turn confirm the underlying incitements for Turkey’s adamant denial, bearing in mind the consequences of a potential US recognition. If anything, this episode also demonstrated that insisting on applying the term genocide in

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every aspect of the question can indeed become counterproductive. There is, of course, hardly any guarantee that the outcome would have been different, but had the plaintiffs chosen any other classification than the specific term of genocide, the legal case would have at least not met obstacles set by the foreign policy of the government.

The unforgotten genocide: the centennial commemoration, 2015 By the time of the genocide centennial in 2015, the “forgotten genocide” had truly become an unfitting epithet for the events in 1915. The activities of the recent five decades since the 50th commemoration on April 24 1965, including the terrorist acts, the parliamentary resolutions and their adhering Turkish vociferous protests, but most significantly the body of research, have conveyed the Armenian Genocide from the imposed oblivion into the limelight. This attention actually started a year earlier, in connection to the centennial of WWI during 2014. The importance of the commemoration events for WWI a year earlier and the focus on its history and its constituent parts had suddenly revealed the fact that the attention of research had indeed been mostly on the Western theatre and the implications of the West, while the eastern front, including Armenia, had been rather marginalized.201 By 2015, one might rightfully assert that the accumulated knowledge of the scholarly research, together with the politically charged activities during the past fifty years of the process of the politics of memory, had truly elevated the Armenian Genocide into international collective memory. Knowledge, however, has not yet been translated into proper acknowledgement, especially in the realm of politics. A century later, the media coverage, numerous academic and commemorational seminars and conferences around the world dedicated to the centennial of the Armenian Genocide put the spotlight on the core of the issue: it has been and continues to be a political question; it became historical only due to the passage of time. Nowadays, regarded as a well-researched case of genocide in the modern era, the media coverage and the conferences hardly question the nature of the events and their outcome and legacy, including the still-persisting Turkish official denial. As such, the evolution of knowledge of the Armenian Genocide has also meant a dilution of the sharp contradiction between the pro-recognition and denialist narratives. An important contributing factor in this shift has been the research conducted by Turkish researchers such as Akcam, Göcek, Üngör and others who have contributed to a Turkish confirmation of the majority consensus and a fact that it is not a case of foreign conspiracy towards Turkey and Turks. One sign of this shift was a series of events which affected the Washingtonbased Institute for Turkish Studies, ITS. The first clash came in 2006 when Donald Quataert, a historian at the State University of New York at Binghamton, was seemingly forced to resign from his position as the Chair of the ITS board.202 Quataert stated that the reason for his resignation was pressure from the Turkish Ambassador to the USA due to Quataert’s usage of the

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term genocide in a book review to depict the Armenian fate. Quataert had been given the choice to either quit his position or the Turkish State would revoke its funding of the institution.203 The circumstance that the Turkish State obviously utilized ITS in its denial policy of the genocide was, as described earlier in this study, hardly news, but when members of the ITS had begun challenging that policy and demanded their scholarly independence, this was certainly new and hailed positively. When the Turkish State suddenly announced its ending of the funding in December 2015, some interpreted this as a consequence of the ITS having exhausted its purpose in Ankara’s genocide denial, while others attributed this decision to the ongoing political consolidation in Turkey.204 Either way, the fact that the decision came in 2015 was also timely. The centennial activities, the conferences and the publications all testified to an established consensus, which made it virtually inappropriate for an institution to dispute the genocide. A similar change on the political scene has, as one might expect, been less noticeable. While an increasing number of political leaders and legislative bodies have officially acknowledged the genocide, the wider political recognition of it continues to be conspicuous by its absence. One could even assert that the politicization of the issue has been heightened even further as the academic research has left little doubt about the nature of the WWI events, since the only viable routes left for Turkey are political and economic measures. Consequently, this has had its impact on the reasoning for the rejection of recognition within the political arena. As seen in the aforementioned cases of the US, Israel and other countries, foreign state leaders and representatives no longer substantiate their refusal of recognition by referring to lack of proof or uncertainty about the events, but quite bluntly refer to the importance of their relations with Turkey. Statements such as the one by the Norwegian Prime Minister Solberg, explaining why her government had declined the invitation from Yerevan to participate in the centennial commemoration in Armenia, exclaims this reality en clair: “Norway puts value on relations with Turkey.”205 Meanwhile, official Ankara has shown little sign of a policy change and continues to adhere to its strict line of “nothing happened, thus there is no need for admitting any wrongdoing.” Notwithstanding this, the crude force of political and economic intimidation still works quite perfectly. The politicization of the Armenian Genocide was perhaps emphasized best in what came to be known as the “War of RSVP.” Official Yerevan set out to make the centennial commemoration as noticeable as possible, inviting numerous heads of states to be present at site on April 24 2015. Soon official Ankara followed suit to hamper the centennial commemoration. While Turkey normally commemorated the Martyr’s Day on March 18 (the start of the Allied naval campaign at the straits of Dardanelles, known in Turkey as the Battle of Çanakkale) or sometimes on April 25 (the failed main Entente assault on the Gallipoli peninsula), the Turkish authorities chose suddenly to move the commemoration to April 24, inviting heads of states and their representatives to be present at the event in Istanbul. The action left little room for

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speculations about the intentions behind such a change. Robert Fisk called it an “unprecedented act of diplomatic folly” and a “shameful attempt to hide the Armenian Holocaust.”206 The criticism was equally harsh within Turkey where Halil Berktay, a historian at Sabancı University, called it “deplorable,”207 while Ohannes Kılıçdag˘ ı, a researcher and writer for the Armenian weekly paper Agos, called it a “very indecent political manoeuvre.”208 The Turkish move meant virtually that participation in either event would indeed imply choosing sides: recognition or denial. Erdogan, now President of Turkey, even sent an invitation to his Armenian counterpart, Sargsyan, to take part in the Gallipoli commemoration on April 24.209 Erdogan’s invitation, as stillborn as it might appear, was perceived as a reply to Sargsyan’s equally futile invitation to Erdogan to attend the genocide commemoration in Yerevan. Politicians are seldom humorous in official correspondence, even less when it comes to such sensitive issues as genocide, but Sargsyan seemed to have enjoyed concluding his decline to Erdogan’s invitation by adding P.S. Your Excellency, a few months ago I invited you to join us in commemoration of memory of the innocent victims of the Armenian Genocide in Yerevan on the 24th of April. It is not a common practice for us to be hosted at the invitee’s, without receiving a response to our invitation.210 The process of the politics of memory moved on and the Armenian Genocide continued to be part of the geopolitical considerations; this was also clearly evident in statements in connection with the centennial commemoration. Pope Francis’ mentioning of the events as “the first genocide of the twentieth century” was perceived to partly reflect the Vatican’s increased worry about the Christians in the Middle East being object to violence committed by the “Islamic State.”211 For a while it seemed that the centennial might mark a breakthrough in the political standstill after all, when a number of official recognitions followed in 2015: the Vatican, Austria, Luxemburg, Brazil and Paraguay. But perhaps the most surprising among these was the unanimous recognition by the German Bundestag, followed by the confirmatory statement of Angela Markel’s administration to be willing to officially recognize the WWI events as genocide.212 German recognition would be utterly significant for several different reasons. First, as Turkey’s number one trade partner in the EU and home to a substantial Turkish diaspora, it would clearly display that these factors do not hinder recognition. Second, there is the issue of German compliance in the genocide as an ally of the Ottoman Government. A further important point is the consequences of a similar recognition in the light of Germany’s own responsibility in the Herero and Namaqua genocide in Namibia during 1904–1905. Finally, last but definitely not least, there are the parallels with the Holocaust and its centrality in our discussion. Many saw German recognition as firm confirmation of a turning of the tide within the political sphere; the collected knowledge could simply be acknowledged. Soon, however, political contingencies would prevail yet

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again when the Syrian refugee crisis hit Europe, and the EU members were confronted with the reliance on Turkey to act as a barrier against the flood of refugees. When Angela Merkel travelled to Ankara to persuade the Turkish government in aiding the EU with the refugee problem, Der Spiegel noted that she had brought a “special gift with her. The controversial resolution in Bundestag regarding the Armenian Genocide was to be put on ice until further notice.”213 The Armenian Genocide continued to be a highly valuable political commodity to bargain with. The refugee crisis and the deal with Turkey had similar effects on other countries’ recognition process as well. Sweden, now governed by the same opposition coalition that had pushed through with recognition in 2010 and then chastised the government for not heeding the Riksdag’s recognition, handled its own parliamentary recognition slightly differently, namely by appointing a commission to make a recommendation. Although the assignment was born specifically in regard to the recognition of the 1915 genocide, the incumbent government made a tactical move in choosing the framework of the task. Instead of tackling the issue of possible political, legal and historical consequences of recognizing the 1915 genocide specifically, the oneman commission that was set up was requested to reflect upon these aspects of “historical atrocities” in general. Thus, the 35-page report contained a wide variety of how a third party could and should relate to similar historical events, offering a smorgasbord of pro and con arguments for proponents as well as opponents of such recognition.214 The centennial also brought a clear political marking by official Yerevan. After almost twenty-three years of tiptoeing around the issue of the genocide in its foreign policy, the incumbent Armenian administration finally took a much firmer stand in regard to the demand for genocide recognition. The Pan-Armenian Declaration on Genocide Centennial, adopted on January 29 2015, was the first of its kind where Yerevan addressed the issue, not in the name of the Republic of Armenia, but in the name of the “Armenian people.”215 The declaration reiterated the commitment stated in Armenia’s Declaration of Independence for achieving international recognition, but it went even further, alluding to legal actions pertaining to “individual, communal, and pan-Armenian rights.” And while there still was no explicit demand for reparations of any kind, implicit references in regard to denial as the means “to avoid responsibility” and “dispossession of homeland” could suggest otherwise.216 As it ought to be, the declaration did attract criticism. While some complained that the text continued to avoid mentioning the issue of reparation in plain text, others such as former President Ter-Petrosyan, in a recognizable continuation of his policy during the 1990s, criticized the declaration for being in violation of the Declaration of Independence and rather reflecting the ARF line.217 Ankara’s reaction to the centennial, other than the Gallipoli commemoration and the standard recalling of its ambassadors to countries recognizing the genocide, was also embodied in other domestic steps. One such change was the

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appointment of Turkish-Armenian Etyen Mahçupyan as senior advisor to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutog˘ lu in October 2014. Some were optimistic and viewed this as a small step towards possible reconciliation by including Armenians in the Turkish political system hierarchy. Those distrustful of the Turkish State’s sudden benevolence instead viewed this as being nothing more than window dressing ahead of the genocide centennial. Mahçupyan himself received quite heavy criticism from the Armenian diaspora, who even called him a “traitor.”218 Notwithstanding, Mahçupyan’s tenure did not last long. In April 2015, the announcement that Mahçupyan had “retired” from office due to reaching the age of sixty-five came somewhat unexpectedly.219 The fact that the “retirement” came only a week after Mahçupyan openly stated that the 1915 events amounted to genocide was interpreted by many that his tenure was cut short due to the statement rather than for any other reason. Official Ankara continued to dismiss any allusion to the reality of the genocide. Looking at the high level of political reasoning in regard to the recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide one could assess that little had changed. The British Government was still pursuing its policy from 1920 in which the Armenian question does not raise any interest what so ever, save as a moral question. London reiterated its stand in recent times and a note from the Eastern Department (1999) simply stated the core of the dilemma in plain text: HMG is open to criticism in terms of the ethical dimensions. But given the importance of our relations (political, strategic and commercial) with Turkey, and that recognising the genocide would provide no practical benefit to the UK or the few survivors of the killings still alive today, nor would it help a rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey, the current line is the only feasible option.220 A century on, the parameters regarding the recognition of the Armenian Genocide remain the same. As Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour stated brusquely back in 1919, the major powers (or the international community for that matter), have “no interest whatever in Armenia except the interest of humanity.”221 Unfortunately, humanity still needs to submit itself to an array of other factors, foremost spearheaded by sheer realpolitik. Although realpolitik still reigns supreme, always preceding the human right issues, geopolitical changes since WWI have dramatically changed the global scene, which strongly challenges this doctrine. To consider national interests alone is not a functional approach in a globalized world where each nation’s interests are highly interlaced and affected by what occurs around us. This includes all kinds of matters, ranging from climate affecting measures to political upheaval on the other side of the planet, which have rippling effects around the globe. Such a situation is neither exclusive for the Armenian Genocide nor to past events, but highly contemporary; it is the essence of the perpetual nature of the politics of memory. A prime example of this was the highly politicized decisions in the UN Security Council in which China and

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Russia vetoed a resolution for bringing Syria to the ICC for well-documented crimes committed against humanity at an earlier stage of the Syrian war, long before it developed to be a fully-fledged humanitarian catastrophe.222 The Syrian war is also a fitting example of the defunct policy of reacting to crimes against humanity through the prism of national interests. This became evident in the wake of the refugee crisis during the summer of 2015 and later in the terrorist actions in November 2015, first in the downing of the Russian passenger plane over Egypt (October 31 2015) and later the massacre in Paris (November 13 2015). Only then, more than a year after the first reports of large scale massacres in Iraq and Syria by the hands of the “Islamic State” (IS) had reached the world community, did the UN Security Council found a common ground to issue a resolution, calling for a unified global front against IS.223 Victor Hugo’s more than century old, often-quoted cynical observation is still quite fitting: “If a man has his throat cut in Paris, it is a murder. If 50,000 people are murdered in the east, it is a question.” It is natural that events close to us are perceived as more horrible and tangible. While the killings in the Middle East were only news flashes on the TV screen or articles in the newspapers, the killings in Paris were much more realistic. However, while this could be somewhat justified from an individual point of view (argued also by the ECHR judges in regard to the alleged difference between the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide), the same cannot pertain to state strategies in the globalized world of the twenty-first century. Even during the previous century, WWI demonstrated that similar massive infringement of human rights in one part of the world will hardly be local anymore and prevarications with reference to “national interest” are likely to fail, especially in the long run. Nevertheless, now a century later, it was only after the attack in the middle of Europe that the West stepped up and called for a concrete plan of action. The refugee flood prior to terrorist deeds had only acted as a waking call for the European community about what was to come; it was an ominous omen of how suddenly “their” problem would become “ours.” The same pertains to the Armenian Genocide and its recognition, or any similar human rights issue for that matter, as third parties refer to it as “their problem, not ours.” Thus, the question of prevention becomes much more significant and less costly than damage control at a later stage. The same argumentation extends to the universality of human rights and thereby also crimes against humanity. It is deplorable to brush aside calls for recognition of the Armenian Genocide (or any other similar infringement) by referring to “national interests.” The deleterious nature of such a posture is viewed in the fact that we do not talk about “crimes against Armenians” or “crimes against Christians,” but crimes against humanity. As such, the universal inclusive tenor of the term should affect all those who count themselves as part of that humanity. As the disparity between knowledge and acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide has become more obvious, so has the distrust and loss of confidence towards the international community. It was this negligence that played a significant role in the genesis of the armed terrorist actions during 1970s as means

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to express their discontent, demanding acknowledgment for their victimization. Although the armed actions are long gone, a similar recent loss of this trust manifested itself in a more politically articulated manner when the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), one of the major Armenian advocacy organizations in the US, announced its withholding of endorsement for either of the president candidates in the 2012 elections.224 One could say that this was an anticipated reaction to the initial expectations put on Barack Obama regarding the genocide recognition. But Obama simply continued what his predecessor had done before him. In Akcam’s words, on April 24 the USA annually joins Turkey in its lie, “denying for one day what they believe the other 364 days of the year.”225 While the pattern of an elected US president breaking the pledge he has made during the candidacy campaign to recognize the genocide was hardly any surprise, many had still hoped for a change. This was due to the explicit promise made by Obama, which was evident in his support as a US Senator, as well as the video of him chastising the failure of presidential candidates before him to fulfil their promise once in office. These instances contributed heavily to the great expectations on him as a human rights advocate. Back in 2008, Obama had stated that “America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides.”226 The fact that Senator Obama had appointed people such as Samantha Power as senior advisor amplified those expectations even further. It seems quite ironic, even reprehensible for the sake of the issue, that Power’s highly praised and Pulitzer-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, 227 would turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once the human rights advocate and the Armenian Genocide recognizer Power was appointed US Ambassador to the UN (2013), she became a member of the same administration that refused to go the whole hog regarding the usage of the g-word. Now, at the height of the Syrian war and with the unfolding of a humanitarian tragedy before the very eyes of the international community, the recognition of the Armenian Genocide was a highly contemporary event, not a historical one. The same was true about the criticism aimed at the Obama administration’s continuous refusal to officially recognize the genocide. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s article on the eve of the genocide centennial was one of many that traced the political apathy for crimes against humanity in our time to unrecognized crimes of the past.228 In the light of these tragic observations, the repetition of the phrase “never again” during the past century has been regarded as an ominous confirmation of the assertion that the only lesson learned from history is that we have not learned anything from it at all.229 That insight is itself an invaluable lesson.

Notes 1 See Mouradian, p. 15. 2 See Fuller, p. 1. It should be mentioned that post-Soviet Armenian-Azeri schism dates back to the aftermath of the 50th commemoration of the genocide and the

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Memory, history and justice calls heard in Yerevan concerning the return of Nakhichevan and Karabakh to Armenian SSR. The first reported violent clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Stepanakert were reported already in 1968 as a result of Karabakh Armenians’ request to be reunified with Armenia. See Payaslian, p. 185. See “The Nagorno-Karabakh Crisis: A Blueprint for Resolution,” p. 5. See, for example, Gozman, p. 399. See also Payaslian, pp. 190–191. Astourian, p. 86. For example, see Melkonian, 2007, p. 139. “Armenian terrorists threaten attacks against Soviet citizens.” According to Libaridian, ten former ASALA members joined the Karabakh movement. See Libaridian, 1999, p. 143. Mammadov. Ibrahim. See also “Karabakh’s independence will never be subject of Negotiations, Aliyev.” One of the most noted cases was the refusal of the airplane carrying the Macedonian national team on their way to Armenia for a FIFA World CUP qualification game in Yerevan. See “Armenia-bound Macedonian plane forced back over Turkish airspace.” “Turkey denies airspace to Republika Srpska president.” See Lialiouti and Bithymitris, p. 155. Cheterian. For a similar argumentation regarding the genocide denial as a factor in the Karabakh killings see Paul, p. 29. See, for example, Tonoyan, pp. 225–226. See Libaridian, 2004, p. 271. Brzezinski and Sullivan, pp. 615–616. Chorbajian, pp. 32–34. MacMillan, p. 100. For a comprehensive rendering of the situation in post-WWI period see Hovannisian, 1967. Astourian, p. 82. Payaslian, p. 192. Ibid. Azadian, p. 16. See Ter‐Gabrielian and Nedolian, p. 97. See also Ishkhanian, pp. 9–38. Libaridian, 1991, p. 3. Jung, p. 162. See e.g. “‘Washington using Turkey as a tool to destabilize Russia’.” Bloxham, p. 234. See, for example, Aybak, p. 9. See Müller, 2001, p. 272. Murinson, p. 119. Ug˘ ur. See also Hale, pp. 254–5. See, for example, Feneis, pp. 1–2. See also Hale, p. 254; Azadian, p. 56. See Kohen, pp. 17–18. Jung and Piccoli, p. 176. Çevikalp. An assassination attempt in 1988 is said to have also been a decisive factor in Özal’s abandoning the reforms, focusing on the economy instead. See Kutahyali. Ibid. Ibid. See Astourian, p. 89. Ibid. Libaridian, 2004, p. 267. However, a majority of the deputies, 131, voted in favor of the inclusion while only twenty-five voted against. See also Astourian, p. 84. “Armenian Declaration of Independence.”

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Derghoukasian, p. 237. Libaridian, 2004, p. 268. Ibid., p. 267. Astourian, pp. 83–84; Libaridian, 2004, p. 268. Power, p. 22. Azadian, p. 25. “Introduction,” in Libaridian, 1991, p. 2. Mirzoyan, p. 72. Ibid. See Baccolini, p. 118. See Libaridian, 1999, pp. 88, 89. Ibid., p. 87. Shogren, 1990. Libaridian, 1999, p. 89. Ibid., p. 114. Ibid., p. 117. Ibid. Minow, 1998, p. 112. Barkan, 2000, p. 46. Ibid. Astourian, p. 85. April 24 as public holiday was proclaimed in 1988 by Soviet Armenia, i.e. prior to the independence under ANM governance. Hakobyan and Kiviryan. Ibid. Payaslian, p. 209. Libaridian, 1999, p. 87. In MacMillan, p. 39. Slye, p. 179. Payaslian, p. 201. Shogren, 1992. See also Hovannisian, 2010, pp. 169, 175–177. Libaridian, 1999, p. 88. Azadian, p. 72. See Mirzoyan, p. 74. Suny, p. 157. “Pan-Armenian Declaration on Genocide Centennial Adopted.” “General Assembly Official Records Fifty-third Session 15th plenary meeting Friday.” See Libaridian, 2004, p. 275. For the Sèvres Syndrome see, for example, Jung, pp. 135–179. Jung, p. 143. Hirsch, p. 35. De Brito, Enriquez and Aguilar, p. 37. Derghoukasian, p. 248. See “International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide.” See the “Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity.” Among other similar approaches one might also mention the “Armin Wegner Prize.” Mirzoyan, p. 91. Track One is the traditional diplomatic relations and policy making by state representatives. See, for example, Davidson and Montville, pp. 154–155. Phillips, p. 2. See also McDonald and Bendahmane, p.1. Phillips, p. 2.

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90 Ibid., p. 40. Gunduz Aktan was the Former Undersecretary General of Foreign Affairs of Turkey and Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva as well as Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister. Ozdem Sanberk was the Former Undersecretary General of Foreign Affairs and Turkey’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom. 91 Ibid., pp. 41 and 54. 92 Ibid., p. 56. 93 Ibid., p. 66. For his view on the Dashnaks see also pp. 61–62. 94 Libaridian suggests that the idea of a common commission was first raised as early as 1992, but since the Turkish side was non-committal, the idea was dropped. See Libaridian, 2004, p. 277. 95 Payaslian, pp. 226–227. 96 Phillips, pp. 62–63. 97 See ibid., p. 53. 98 See, for example, Phillips’ own testimony to this effect in ibid., p. 25. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid., pp. 31–32. 101 Ibid., p. 53. 102 Ibid. 103 See ibid., p. 57. 104 See Avedian, 2012. 105 Kiss, p. 70. 106 Jelin and Kaufman, p. 35 107 Ludi, p. 237. 108 See Müller, 2001, p. 268. 109 Kaligian, p. 10. 110 Suny and Göçek, “Introduction,” p. 3. 111 De Waal, p. 185. 112 Suny and Göçek, p. 4. 113 Kaligian, p. 11. 114 “Workshop on Armenian Turkish Scholarship: Politics and Gratuity at Work Again.” 115 Suny and Göçek, p. 4. 116 Ibid., p. 5. 117 Ibid., pp. 6, 9–10. 118 Ibid., p. 9. 119 Ibid., p. 7. 120 Ibid. See also Alemdarog˘ lu, p. 33. 121 Ibid., p. 33. 122 Gutmann and Thompson, p. 33. 123 See Rotberg, p. 18. 124 Bakiner, p. 157. 125 Ibid., p. 159. 126 Ibid., p. 160. 127 Phillips, p. 33. 128 Ibid. 129 Cooper and Akcam, p. 91. 130 Phillips, p. 55. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid., p. 91. 133 See ibid., p. 109. 134 Ibid., pp. 99–100. 135 Ibid., p. 100. 136 Ibid., pp. 112–113.

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“The Applicability of United Nations Convention …” p. 4. Ibid., p. 17. Phillips, p. 116. Ibid., p. 115. Ibid., p. 100. Ibid., p. 116. Ibid., p. 83. Ibid., pp. 85, 119. These were Senate Resolution 307 and House Resolution 193. See Phillips, p. 127. Ibid., pp. 130–131. “Armenia Ready for Ties, Talks with Turkey.” See, for example, Killough; Avagyan. “Dashnaks Quit Armenia’s Ruling Coalition.” For the content of the protocols see “Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations …” “Armenians, Turks React to Protocol Signing.” Quoted in Smith, 2009. “Sarkisian to IAGS President.” See e.g. “President Serzh Sargsyan Continues His Pan-Armenian Tour.” See e.g. the statement by Congressman Dan Burton during the debate on H.R. 252 in “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution,” p. 19. The diaspora was again divided in two major camps, one highly critical of the protocols while others were more inclined to support Yerevan in the rapprochement. For the critical view see “Armenian National Committee of America Protests Protocol Pressure on Armenia.” For the more supportive line see “Message to Armenian Assembly Members.” See among others “Armenia and Turkey normalise ties” and “Turkish-Armenian Diplomatic Ties In The Offing?” “On the Case on Determining the Issue of Conformity …” Ibid. “Relations between Turkey and Armenia.” Derghoukassian, p. 243. See, for example, remarks by Congressman Michael T. McCaul in “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution,” p. 30. Dadrian, 1999, p. 2. For such a statement see the appeal signed by several world-renowned genocide experts directed at the Swedish Parliament in June 2008: “Recognize the 1915 genocide for what it is.” “Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Inquiry on the 31 May 2010 Flotilla Incident.” “Israel debates recognizing Armenian Genocide.” Ibid. Berenbaum. Ibid. “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution,” pp. 29–30. Ibid., p. 30. See “Markups Before the Committee on International Relations,” pp. 1–41 and 45–85. “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution,” p. 14. The motion was perhaps the first in its kind, calling upon the Swedish government to recognize the 1915 genocide, including Armenian, Assyrian/Syriac/

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Memory, history and justice Chaldean and Pontic Greek victims. The formulation was deliberately aligned with the 2007 resolution by the International Associations of Genocide Scholars (IAGS). For the Swedish motion see “Motion 2008/09: U332.” For the IAGS resolution see “IAGS-Resolution.” “Turkish PM Hails Reinfeldt Despite Parliament’s Genocide Decision.” See, for example, the fact box stated in the article “Riksdagen erkände folkmord på armenier.” For a summary survey of the media coverage see Avedian, “Media’s bevakning.” For some of the articles see Lundgren; Rydén; “Turkiet förnekar fortfarande folkmord”; ”Folkmordsoffer hedras efter 100 år.” See, for example, Björkman; “Turkiet fortsätter förneka folkmord.” “Centenary of Armenian Massacres of 1915–16.” It should be noted that the Holocaust has in fact not been tried as genocide, i.e. under the existing UN Convention, but at the time of the Nuremburg trials the charges were raised as war crimes and crimes against humanity plus the fact that the Genocide Convention and its codification were simply non-existing by the Nuremburg trials. See, for example, Schabas, 2008. See, for example, Marek, p. 190 and Bühler, p. 18. “Turkish politician fined over genocide denial.” Case of Perinçek v. Switzerland, Second Section. Ibid., p. 46. Ibid., p. 45. See e.g. “Scholars Call for Reexamination of ECHR Judgment on Genocide Denial Case” and Sassounian, 2013. Case of Perinçek v. Switzerland, Grand Chamber. Ibid., p. 118. Ibid., p. 57. See, for example, “Robertson, Clooney Issue Statement on ECHR Ruling” and Diler. Case of Perinçek v. Switzerland, Grand Chamber, p. 103. Belavusau. Although Belavusau’s analysis was in regard to the Chamber’s judgment prior to the verdict in Grand Chamber, the argumentation is still valid since the latter instance used the same argumentation. For other similar criticism see Schindler; “Sévane Garibian: ‘The polarization in Grand Chamber is important’.” Case of Perinçek v. Switzerland, Grand Chamber, p. 101. Ibid., p. 123. Ibid. For the latter see, for example, Bevernage, 2012, p. 12. “Sévane Garibian: ‘The polarization in Grand Chamber is important’.” See, for example, “Amal Clooney comments on ECHR judgment in Armenian Genocide denial case.” “Burhan Ozkoshar: Turkey won a legal victory in ECHR.” “Supreme Court Won’t Review Calif. Genocide Insurance Law”; “Supreme Court Will Not Review Armenian Genocide-Era Insurance Claims Case.” See Guibert and Kim, pp. 111–112. See Laycock, p. 9. Kinzie. Ibid. See Redden. Kizil. Fisk. In 2016, the commemoration was held on March 18, see “Gallipoli victory marked on 101th anniversary.” Zalewski.

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“Turkey eclipses centenary of Armenian massacre by moving Gallipoli memorial.” Zeyrek. “President Serzh Sargsyan Responds to Turkish President’s Invitation Letter.” “Turkey accuses Pope of ‘prejudice’ over Armenian ‘genocide’.” E.g. see “German lawmakers call massacre of Armenians ‘genocide’”; “Germany struggles with Armenia genocide debate.” “Der Sultan lässt bitten.” Wrange, 2016. “Pan-Armenian Declaration.” Ibid. “Levon Ter-Petrosyan harshly criticizes Pan-Armenian Declaration on Armenian Genocide.” See “Mahchupyan’s Appointment: A New Step in Genocide Denial Policy?”; “EGAM Concerned Over Mahçupyan’s Resignation.” “Armenian adviser to Turkey’s prime minister retires ahead of centenary” Robertson, 2014, p. 162–163. Nassibian, p. 173. See UN Security Council resolution “Syria ICC Referral Draft Resolution.” For the meeting record see UN Security resolution “Draft Resolution, The Situation in the Middle East.” “Security Council ‘Unequivocally’ Condemns ISIL Terrorist Attacks.” “ANCA Withholds Support for Presidential Candidates.” A rare action, this was only the second time ANCA had withheld its support for either of the candidates, the first time being during the 2000 elections. See “ANCA Withholds Presidential Endorsement.” ANCA withheld its endorsement once again in the 2016 US Presidency Election, a decision in which the candidates’ stance on the Armenian Genocide yet again played an overwhelming role. See “ANCA Withholds 2016 Presidential Endorsement.” For an overview of the candidate analysis see “ANCA Presidential Candidate Overview – 2016.” Quoted in “Armenian Genocide: Taner Akcam is asking Obama to stand for truth.” Tapper. Power, 2002. Boteach. It mattered little that on April 24 2017 Samantha Power apologized for having failed to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide while in the Obama administration. See Bowden. Several Armenian commentaries stated their disappointment and even waivered Power’s apology. See, for example, Yegparian. See, for example, Huyssen, p. 5.

5

Knowledge and (dis)acknowledgement A century of the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide

The politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide is a truly intricate process, witnessed in the interlaced relations between several different disciplines involving factors and mechanisms employed by numerous actors. Studying this perpetual negotiation during the past century explains why such a distant event can still be topical in our times, which actors are involved in that process and how it functions. The process has effectively kept the issue alive, especially since it has never had the chance to start healing, instead grinding on to disclose new information and interpret this in order to substantiate the seemingly diametrically opposite positions of the involved parties. Thus, both victim and perpetrator have suffered from the lack of a common narrative and set of memories, which could share their common fate in the past. Yet, even though the lack of closure is the main driving force of the Armenian Genocide, the perpetual nature of the politics of memory will most probably continue to keep it alive in the foreseeable future, even when rapprochement is reached between perpetrator and victim, as well as their respective internal reconciliation with the past. The Armenian question emerged as a political question in 1878 as a consequence of the maltreatment of Armenian subjects within the Ottoman Empire; it soon engaged the international community as different major powers utilized the issue to their own ends. Concerned about the consequences of the Armenian question, potentially repeating the loss of the Balkan nations on the Western front, the political headache evolved in stages to finally be solved as the genocide was perpetrated in the cover of WWI. And it turned out to be a rather successful campaign, at least from a politicallegal perspective, since the Turkish state (Ottoman and Republic) not only achieved the goal of physically eliminating its Armenian question but has seemingly managed to evade any responsibility ever since. The evasion was implemented by exploiting realpolitik considerations in combination with a large-scale history revisionism during the republic’s nation-building process, which had already started during the beginning of the twentieth century. The measures employed within the politics of memory gave birth to new memories which were essential in creating the new Turkish narrative and identity in justifying “Turkey for Turks.”

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While this absolution of the perpetrators of the WWI wrongdoings could be said to have served its purpose in consolidating the desired image and the policies of the Turkish leaders, it was not devoid of long-term negative effects. It deprived the perpetrator of a window of opportunity to exclude the wrongdoings during a crucial process of its identity-building, divesting it of a more solid democratic foundation, even reconciling with the victims. Thus, the exclusion of the righteous people from the newly created Turkish identity prevented the creation of an “other,” which could in the long-term have helped the Turkish society to confront its WWI memories. Instead, it created a homogenous Turkish identity, devoid of any wrongdoings, presenting an artificially created continuity to a glorified past in which the Armenians were the constant foe. The tacit acceptance of wrongdoings as the basis for the newly established Turkish Republic has also been interpreted as a fundamental culprit responsible for the turbulent political and social atmosphere in Turkey’s modern history. This has been characterized by frequent infringements of the democratic and human rights of its citizens, especially the ethnic minorities. The legacy of the genocide has thus been infused into the Turkish narrative and identity, although perhaps in a subtler manner. The same impact has quite expectedly been much more tangible for the victims. Having been subjected to massacres and confiscation, they were simply wiped out from their historical lands. But perhaps equally harmful and the main reason of its seemingly vivid continuation in our days was the lack of closure due to being denied justice. Deprived of an opportunity to seek indemnification or at least of being heard, to confront their perpetrators and being acknowledged for having been wronged, victimized them anew, this time through the feeling of abandonment by the international community. During the ensuing events in the region, the major powers secured their political and economic interests, simply choosing to disregard the WWI wrongdoings and the call for justice. This feeling of betrayal has only been amplified as the victim time after time has virtually begged third parties for recognition and has been denied, eroding the victim’s trust in both international norms and those who champion these values. With Armenia’s loss of independence in 1920 and its incorporation into the Soviet Union, the Armenians also lost their official voice on the international level, effectively sealing the fate and the narrative of the WWI events for decades to come. This oblivion would in due course become what the world referred to as the “forgotten genocide.” Devastated by the genocide and scattered around the world, Armenians seemed to suppress the horrifying memories, focusing on rebuilding their lives. The repressive Soviet rule during Stalin’s era only deepened this amnesia. Notwithstanding this, the processes involved in the politics of memory would in time revive the genocide from the imposed oblivion, bringing it back once again as a topical issue on the international arena. The 50th commemoration on April 24 1965 marked this return. But while the genocide was placed in suspended animation, it certainly did not disappear from the international arena. This was especially valid in regard

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to the legal aspects of the Armenian Genocide’s inclusion in several reports and publications during the interwar period. Indeed, the Sèvres Treaty and its articles, pertaining to realization of the Entente ultimatum of May 24 1915 to punish the committed “crimes against humanity,” are regarded as the precursor for contemporary international laws on human rights. But perhaps the most relevant occasion was Raphael Lemkin’s coining of the term genocide. Tehlirian’s trial in Berlin for having assassinated Talaat Pasha demonstrated the obvious lack of legal mechanisms to punish such crimes, which were then unfolding in Nazi Europe. Thus, the Armenian Genocide came to leave its firm imprint on the definition of the term and the subsequent UN Convention. It is in the light of this fundamental fact that the seemingly main quarrel about the WWI events becomes highly ironic, namely the “sensitive” and highly politicized issue of the applicability of the term genocide. The rise of the Cold War and its specific policies and parameters, putting Soviet Armenia and NATO Turkey on different sides of the Iron Curtain, only cemented this politicization, making rapprochement impossible. It seemed that the Armenian question was now long dead and buried. Nonetheless, what the decision-makers had presumably solved on a political level, came to be challenged in due time by the public. The initiators of this revival were the new “third generation,” who started questioning the inconsistencies in the narratives of their parents and grandparents. Confronted with these questions, the elapsed time also allowed the victims to retell memories, which they had suppressed, revealing a committed injustice that had been left unheeded. The questioning thus presented the victim with the confessing venue which the courts of law had denied them, silenced by political means as well as a psychological reaction. The retelling started a chain reaction within the Armenian nation, now divided in a large diaspora dispersed around the world and the small Soviet Armenia. Having had time to recuperate from the devastating genocide and having built up their new lives, Armenians started mourning in earnest for the first time since the genocide; but they were also demanding justice. The 50th commemoration on April 24 1965 thereby became a symbolic date when Armenians, lead by its youth, openly questioned the international community’s negligence of the crimes committed five decades earlier. Now, equipped with the existing legal term of genocide, its codification and international usage to vehemently condemn Nazism and fascism, Armenians were asking why they had been deprived a Nuremberg of their own. The demonstration also gave a concrete reason for the Armenian elite to embark on a soul-searching scrutiny of their own silence for the past decades. Further, it gave them the possibility of criticizing their own central Soviet authorities and the international community for having ignored their plight. However, although the outburst was partly ascribed to the post-Stalinist thaw, Soviet rule still called for moderation and caution. In reality, there was little official Soviet Armenia could do. The absence of an official voice in the international arena, a direct consequence of Yerevan’s submission to Moscow, limited the conveying of the

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public demands to an external, international audience. It also prohibited the conversion of these concerns into an earnest negotiation between public and official instances. This void on the official level meant that the newly awoken memories and their related emotions could not be articulated satisfactorily in the negotiation between the top-down and bottom-up perspectives within the politics of memory. Thus, the unheeded demands for recognition and justice started building up among the public, accumulating into a powder keg, which would detonate in a decade’s time. Yanikian’s assassination of the Turkish diplomats in California in 1973 became the spark which ignited that keg. Although that single action did not create Yanikian’s intended attention, his deed did act as guidance to a segment of the Armenian youth, who having recently rediscovered their identity and concealed memories of the past, worried about the risk that “the world was forgetting the Armenians.” News about the omission of the Armenian case from the Ruhashyankiko Report due to Turkish pressure was interpreted as confirmation of this threat. Disillusioned by the lack of results for traditional Armenian political actors as well as in international institutions such as the UN, these youths needed a more radical way of making their demands public. Influenced by the leftist surge of radicalized groupings at that time around the world, Yanikian’s venue was thereby justified as the only viable means. Thus, began the Armenian armed attacks in 1975, targeting Turkish diplomats around the world in order to force the political establishment to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Few have, quite expectedly one might add, admitted that these terrorist acts have had a substantial part (if any at all) in the international community’s rediscovery of the Armenian Genocide. While the condemnation of the actions per se has been almost unanimous, it would be difficult to disregard the reaction which these public actions forced within official circles. This was evident in the debates relating to UN genocide studies as well as the European Parliament, in the examination by the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal and not least in the entry of the Armenian Genocide into the scholarly community. The radical actions simply awoke the interest of the world community in understanding what the commotion was about, especially in regard to the then fitting designation of the “forgotten genocide.” Deplorable as the terrorist acts were, they had forced political circles (partly due to their own domestic public reaction) to at least stop pretending that the Armenian question was non-existent. The same pertained to the denialist policy of Turkey, forcing it to abandon its silent treatment and evolving its own narrative in order to face the accusations brought against them internationally. The buried and presumed dead had come back to life. In the meanwhile, two consecutive UN genocide studies demonstrated how politicized the issue was, both in regard to the Armenian case and its vehement official denial by Turkey, but also due to the stigmatization of the term genocide generally, as witnessed in the Whitaker study. At times, the main argument was to avoid “hurting the feelings” of the accused countries, not factual incorrectness. While legal examinations in the UN revealed many

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interesting and important aspects of the politics of memory, especially in how history, politics and law were interlaced, it was the entry into the academic sphere that introduced an entirely new front in the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide. This new dimension started adding information and interpretations of the events, presenting a formidable new arsenal within the process of the politics of memory and future debates. The denial followed suit. As the scholarly research became the de facto official champion of the recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the international arena, Turkey needed to respond in kind. The response was realized by the evolution of the historical narrative at home, authored by former diplomats and state officials to dismiss the accusations, vilifying the victims, whose traitorous actions were to blame for their “unfortunate” fate. At the same time, the attendance of Turkish embassy personnel at almost every academic conference and seminar, to question the presented facts and offer the Turkish official version, became a standard procedure. This thrust was further substantiated by establishing dedicated academic institutions, the most notable being the Institute for Turkish Studies in Washington, DC. Now the Turkish official narrative could be disseminated internationally through legitimate academic channels as well. In the meantime, the diplomatic efforts raged on and episodes such as the 1982 Tel Aviv Conference and the lengthy process of the US Holocaust Museum illustrated how political considerations were merged with the academic. Realizing the inherent power of the Holocaust memory, it soon became a pivotal factor within the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide, employed by both sides. The canonization of the Holocaust, now much more than just history but a true reference guide for moral and legal norms, had transformed it into a significant factor for not only the Armenian case, but generally speaking in regard to all similar cases. Thus, the Holocaust has been a recurrent factor in the recognition process of the Armenian Genocide, visible in almost all aspects of its politics of memory. It was a frequent reference as early as the 50th commemoration in Yerevan, the UN genocide study reports, the European Parliament’s debate and most recently in the verdict of the ECHR regarding the Perinçek vs Switzerland case. The recognition by the European Parliament in 1987 marked a full circle in the politics of memory of the Armenian question. The question which in 1878 needed a political solution had, after decades of suppression and insistence on it being a historical issue, reappeared in a resolution demanding “A Political Solution to the Armenian Question.” The associated debate would become one of many in the coming parliamentary debates where the suitability of similar parliamentary decisions was challenged. As stated in the EP debate, however, similar resolutions were not an attempt to write history. Rather, they were directed at Turkey’s official denial and its politically inflicted history revisionism, domestically as well as internationally. In fact, had it not been for Turkey’s official denial, one might argue that there would hardly be any need for similar parliamentary recognitions. As such they are a means for public demands, in this case mainly the Armenian diaspora, to be conveyed by their host country’s

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official instances to their Turkish counterparts. But these decisions have also impacted the domestic discussion in regard to the event itself, often resulting in increased public awareness of the issue in question, even inciting broader scholarly research on the subject. It also emphasizes the role of the international community, more specifically the state members on a par with the Turkish state, thus in position to exert pressure on Ankara to cease its history revisionism. It is simply a case of establishing the negotiation between official and public spheres in the politics of memory. Apparently, the concept works, as observed in how the frequent reemergence of the Armenian Genocide in connection with Turkey’s membership application to the EC and later to the EU has forced Turkey to at least abandon its strict policy of denial. The same pertains to encouraging an internal debate inside Turkey which, confronted with the available international research and scrutiny, has empowered society (although mostly limited to the intellectual circles and academia) to openly question the decades-long official denialist version. The same can be noted in regard to the Armenian side. Although one should not credit the cessation of terrorist activities exclusively to the European Parliament’s recognition, one needs to acknowledge it as a contributing factor. The recognition did certainly offload a considerable amount of the Armenian frustration aimed at the international community’s apathy towards the Armenian question. Yet another factor in draining the Armenian armed groups from their members was the Karabakh conflict, itself a legacy from WWI. Although the modern-day Karabakh conflict is associated with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was certainly not a new one. The fact that it was indeed a dormant conflict and only resurfaced in 1988 when the political contingencies allowed it, was evident in its explicit mentioning during the protests on April 24 1965. The memories had never faded but had simply been kept at bay by Soviet rule. As that rule loosened in the wake of Gorbachev’s reforms, the suppressed memories resurfaced. Once Azerbaijan’s response to Karabakh’s request to be reunified with Armenia in 1988 resulted in violent acts with lethal outcome in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku, it immediately awoke memories of the precursory assaults to the 1915 genocide. The “evil Turk” was still determined to eliminate the Armenians, but history was not allowed to repeat itself. The conflict escalated rapidly, becoming a fully-fledged war with huge human losses and many more refugees. It developed into a practical impediment for the region’s unhindered growth. Other than the sheer territorial aspects, Karabakh moreover became an immense symbol for both sides. For the first time since WWI, Armenians celebrated victory, rather than mourning victimhood. Turkey along with Azerbaijan viewed Karabakh as proof of the same Armenian territorial aspirations as they had been accused of during WWI, thus used as justification for the WWI treatment of the Armenians. Karabakh was thereby intimately interlaced with the memories of the genocide. The Karabakh movement, gathering the nucleus of the Armenian nationalist leaders, also gave impetus to a more daring plan, an independent Armenia.

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The regained independence in 1991 was a dream come true, especially for the diaspora. It was a concrete affirmation of the genocide’s failure. Armenians were not only still around, they now had a fully developed sovereign state and were an official member of the international community. Nevertheless, with sovereignty, Yerevan was suddenly invested with several different issues which had until then been under Moscow’s suzerainty, among other matters, the issue of the genocide. Now, in the wake of a devastating 1988 earthquake and an ongoing war, landlocked Armenia was in dire need of establishing diplomatic and trade relations with all its neighbors, especially Turkey. Turkish relations were significant not only due to the importance of its trade and transit routes, but it would also potentially help in solving the Karabakh conflict more smoothly. There was, however, one major impediment, namely the unsolved issue of the genocide. While the issue of the genocide, or rather the erasing of its existence, was a fundamental part of the nation-building process for the Turkish Republic in the 1920s, it played an important role for the same process now in Armenia. The genocide, as a central part of the Armenian identity, was, as expected, a significant factor in both the domestic process of nation-building and in regard to the foreign relations. The latter also included the relations with the large Armenian diaspora, which had been relatively detached from the homeland during the Soviet rule. Thus, the genocide presented an important variable in the equation of nation-building for the Ter-Petrosyan administration and the ANM party at the helm of government. However, the ANM leadership viewed the genocide as a strictly historical issue, which had little to do with politics, a perception that could very well be ascribed to the political contingencies of the time. President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, himself a senior historian, and his administration (of whom several were also historians) seemed to try to interpret the prevailing needs in the light of their professional knowledge about the past, especially in regard to the policies undertaken during the first republic and its consequences. As such, the genocide, as a rule-setter, was identified as an impediment which could even endanger the goal of independence itself. But, while the genocide was down-graded from Armenia’s foreign policy agenda, it certainly did not disappear. It was still a part of the collective memory and a tangible part of the Armenian identity. This predicament gave birth to Yerevan’s policy of “normalization without precondition,” which has been both praised and criticized. While opponents interpreted this as a weakness, and appeasement of the Turkish denialist policy, proponents hailed it as a sound diplomatic strategy, which could defuse Turkey’s potential malevolence by using the genocide as an excuse to deliberately isolate Armenia. Nonetheless, while Yerevan has been inclined to conduct such a policy, Turkey has certainly not shared this enthusiasm. Instead, ever since the very initial diplomatic contacts with Yerevan, Ankara has broached the issue of the genocide and expressed that waiving of the strife for international recognition was a precondition to normalization of relations. This was indeed a quite logical

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reflection of the disparity of power between Armenia and Turkey. In due time, the genocide became increasingly entangled with the issue of the Karabakh conflict in the explicit Turkish preconditions for normalization of relations, effectively freezing the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement. The lack of official rapprochement has, however, not excluded the same on an unofficial level. The attempt with TARC in 2000 constituted such an example of trying to bridge the gap through Track Two diplomacy. However, the mediators made the incorrect assumption that the reconciliatory process could be embarked on by leaving the genocide at a safe distance, thinking that it might resolve itself on the way as the parties would build common ground in order to tackle the genocide later. This proved to be an incorrect assumption and as soon as the unmentionable issue of the genocide was introduced into the discussion, it almost terminated the entire process altogether. As it turned out in the end, the participants had quite divergent expectations at the onset of the commission concerning the outcome of the commission. Since the mediators had continued with the prevailing political ambiguity in regard to the WWI events, it was left open to interpretation. The Turks perceived it as a venue to negotiate the past and put the issue of the genocide at rest once and for all, getting rid of its frequent emergence on the agenda of foreign parliaments. Armenians, on the other hand, in a true spirit of “normalization of relations without preconditions,” participated in the hope of initiating contact with Ankara in order to enter an official dialogue for confirming the reality of the genocide. The hallmark of TARC, the legal examination by ICTJ, was asserted to satisfy everyone by giving “neither side everything, but each side something.” Although the Turkish side was content with the emphasis of the report on the non-retroactive applicability of the UN Convention, it was unhappy with the conclusion that the WWI events indeed qualified as genocide. This was a dangerous conclusion, which pointed to the core of the issue, namely that regardless of denomination of the events, the state had committed internationally wrongful acts. Accusing ICTJ of incompetence, Turkey conveniently chose to forget the report, continuing its call for an “objective commission” for investigating the WWI events. The call for the same “objective commission” became a hotbed for much criticism during a new attempt at rapprochement, this time an official one in 2009. Thus, when the 2009 protocols were signed by Yerevan and Ankara, and the event was hailed as a historic moment, the mediators failed to correct the mistake from 2000. The single issue of genocide, flanked by the unsolved issue of Karabakh, became once again the hurdle which the envisioned reconciliatory process could not overcome. In less than six months, the process was virtually declared dead. In a parallel to these politically initiated commissions, WATS proved to be more successful in at least being durable, sustaining an ongoing discussion forum, albeit almost exclusively within the realm of academia. Although it has sustained criticism from both camps, WATS managed to create a network which initiated a scrutiny of the Turkish official narrative inside Turkey. However, the lack of political willingness to openly back such a

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platform has effectively impeded the transfer of the process or a wider dissemination of its findings to society at large. As the centennial of the Armenian Genocide in 2015 approached, it became quite evident that knowledge about the WWI events had evolved considerably compared to the 50th commemoration back in 1965. In the light of its worldwide coverage, reflecting a rather unanimous confirmation of the reality of the genocide based on scholarly consensus, the proponents of recognition were justified in exclaiming that “we have finally won the information war.” The media coverage, the numerous conferences and seminars, concerts and other similar commemorations dedicated to the centennial of the Armenian Genocide had truly made the epithet of the “forgotten genocide” outdated. However, the same worldwide coverage also highlighted the clear disparity between knowledge and its (political) acknowledgement. As the scholarly knowledge has grown, the space for political repugnance to recognition by alluding to lack of knowledge on the subject has almost diminished, leaving no other choice than to bluntly point out the preference of relations with Turkey over the issue of recognition of the Armenian Genocide. As Donald Miller has pointed out, “In the age of information, ignorance is a choice.” Studying the past century of the Armenian question, there can be little doubt that it has been, and continues to be, foremost a political matter. While its politics of memory had constrained the issue to appear as an academic problem, or even a strictly historical one, the study of the historicity of the Armenian question rather reveals its highly nuanced character. As a truly interdisciplinary matter, the politics of memory of the Armenian Genocide has engaged a host of different actors representing a wide range of different areas and expertise. This continuous process, especially in the light of the lack of closure by an open and honest confrontation of the past, has kept it a highly topical question to our day. Most likely, the past will continue to be reinterpreted into a new set of memories even beyond its current aim, a recognition of the Armenian Genocide and reconciliation between perpetrator and victim.

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