The Turkish-Armenian Historical Controversy: How to Name the Events of 1915?

Abstract:

This article examines the debate involving Turkish and Armenian historiography about the fate of diverse Armenian communities in eastern Anatolia. It argues that the contemporary description of the events in 1915, especially the legal description, is much more important than the facts and the role of human agency in which these facts were produced. Armenian historiography scholars have moved to label the set of complicated events and processes as ‘genocide,’ and they seek to delegitimize any argument or factual case pointing outside the term of genocide as denialism. Scholars representing Turkish historiography, on the other hand, emphasize a different context of ethnic cleansing and massacres of the Muslims in the Balkans and their unintended consequences in Anatolia, while insisting on the role of major powers and Armenian revolutionary groups to carve out eastern Anatolia as an Armenian national homeland. The article explores how the Armenian side has urged judicial forums and countries to rewrite and reinterpret history in order to canonize its description of the events as genocide by ignoring the political context, intentions and policies of Armenian revolutionary organizations during that critical period. It proposes a path in which diametrically opposing sides can come together by humanizing the mutual suffering of each group and developing a shared language that encompasses the mutual impact of the events of 1915.

Key Words:

• Armenia
• Armenian historiography
• Genocide
• Legislating history
• Memory and history
• Nostalgia
• Perincek v. Switzerland
• Turkey
• Turkish historiography

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank the Turkish Coalition of America for their generous support in organizing and hosting a one-day workshop on Turkey on April 1, 2019 at the University of Utah at which the first draft of this paper was presented. The author would also like to thank Pulat Tacar for the careful review of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Pierre Nora, Member, L’Académie Française & President of Liberté pour l’Histoire, Appel de Blois (2008), in Le Monde (Oct. 10). Available at: https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2008/10/10/appel-de-blois_1105436_3232.html, accessed December 12, 2019. Nora spearheaded the “Appel de Blois,” which has been signed by more than 1,300 individuals from 49 countries.

2 Michael A. Reynolds (2011) Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 141–166; Sean McMeekin (2011) The Russian Origins of the First World War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press), pp. 141–174; Sean McMeekin (2015) The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908-1923 (New York: Penguin), pp. 223–246; Hew Strachan (2001) The First World War: Volume I: To Arms (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 712–729.

3 For the definition of genocidizing, see M. Hakan Yavuz & Tal Buenos (2015) Stop “Genocidizing,” in International Policy Digest. Available at: https://intpolicydigest.org/2015/04/23/stop-genocidizing/, accessed April 23, 2016.

4 The following books constitute the core of Armenian historiography: Arnold J. Toynbee (1917) The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks, with a Preface by Viscount Bryce (New York: Hodder and Stoughton); Henry Morgenthau (1918) Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (New York: Doubleday, Page and Company); for a critical reading of Morgenthau’s book, see Heath W. Lowry (1990) The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Istanbul: ISIS) in which Lowry provides documentary evidence that Morgenthau’s main goal in writing his book was to convince Americans to support Great Britain and France against Germany and Turkey during World War I; Richard G. Hovannisian (1967) Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press); Louise Nalbandian (1963) Armenian Revolutionary Movement: The Development of Armenian Political Parties Through the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press); Gerald Libaridian (2004) Modern Armenia: People, Nation, State (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers); and Anahid Ter Minassian (1983) Nationalism and Socialism in the Armenian Revolutionary Movement (1887-1912), in Ronald Grigor Suny (ed.), Transcaucasia, Nationalism and Social Change: Essays in the History of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).

5 Kamuran Gürün (1985) The Armenian File: The Myth of Innocence Exposed (Nicosia, Cyprus: K. Rustem); Salahi R. Sonyel (1987) The Ottoman Armenians: Victims of Great Power Diplomacy (Nicosia, Cyprus: K. Rustem); Sinasi Orel & Sureyya Yuca (1986) The Talat Pasha Telegrams: Historical Fact or Armenian Fiction? (Nicosia, Cyprus: K. Rustem); and Guenter Lewy (2005) The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press). For one of the best legal analysis of the events of 1915, see Şükrü Elekdağ, “An Assessment of Armenian Claims from the Perspective of International Law,” in M. Hakan Yavuz & Feroz Ahmad (eds) War and Collapse: World War I and the Ottoman State, pp. 941–971 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press).

6 Justin McCarthy (2015) Turks and Armenians: Nationalism and Conflict in the Ottoman Empire (Madison, WI: Turko-Tatar Press, LLC), pp. 111–153.

7 William E. D. Allen & Paul Muratoff (2010) Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border 1828-1921(New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 242, 299; Jamil Hasanli (2014) “Armenian Volunteers on the Caucasian Front (1914-1916),” The Caucasus and Globalization, 8 (3–4), pp. 183–201; and Firoz Kazemzadeh (2008) The Struggle for Transcaucasia (Anglo Caspian Press), pp. 24–31.

8 Nalbandian, Armenian Revolutionary Movement; and Richard G. Hovannisian (1977) The Republic of Armenia, Vol. III: From London to Sèvres, February-August 1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press).

9 Richard G. Hovannisian (2015) “Denial of the Armenian Genocide 100 Years Later: The New Practitioners and Their Trade,” Genocide Studies International, 9(2), pp. 228–247.

10 Author Interview with Jamil Hasanli via electronic mail, March 12, 2020.

11 I examine the diversity within Turkish and Armenian historiography regarding the events of 1915 in M. Hakan Yavuz (2015) “A Topography of Positions in the Turkish-Armenian Debate,” in War and Collapse: World War I and the Ottoman State, pp. 541–569.

12 Michael Gunter (1986) ‘Pursuing the Just Cause of Their People’: A Study of Contemporary Armenian Terrorism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press). The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) killed 46 Turkish diplomats, including several high ranking ambassadors, to force Turkey to recognize the events of 1915 as genocide, pay reparations and cede territory for Armenia. Indeed, before these attacks, the Turkish public had forgotten the events of 1915 and there was no debate about what happened to the Armenians in eastern Anatolia. In other words, the violent efforts to force the Turkish state and the public to remember and face the history of 1915 through these high level attacks might explain the creation of the more defensive and dismissive literature about the events of 1915.

13 The first reactive historiography was Gürün, Armenian File.

14 Ibid; and Edward J. Erickson (2013) Ottomans and Armenians: A Study in Counterinsurgency (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).

15 M. Hakan Yavuz (2014) “Orientalism, the ‘Terrible Turk’ and Genocide,” Middle East Critique, 23(2), pp. 111–126.

16 Hovannisian, ‘Denial of the Armenian Genocide,’ pp. 228–247.

17 See the special issue on the Armenian experience in Anatolia in M. Hakan Yavuz & Hakan Erdagoz (2019) “Minorities: Muslims in the Balkans and Christians in Anatolia,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 39 (3), pp. 1–17.

18 Abraham H. Hartunian (1968) Neither to Laugh Nor to Weep: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide (Boston: Beacon Press). He writes of “bloodthirsty and savage Moslems” whom he associates with “satanic superstition.” “The Turk,” he says, “does not know the meaning of compassion, love, pity.”

19 Robin G. Collingwood (1946) The Idea of History, revised edition 1993 (New York: Oxford University Press).

20 Andrew Mango (1989) Historiography by Political Committee and Committed Historians: Review Article, Middle Eastern Studies, 25(4), p. 536.

21 Başbakanlık Basımevi (1983) Ermeni komitelerinin amal ve harekat-ı ihtilaliyesi: ilan-ı meşrutiyetten evvel ve sonar [The Rebellious Activities of Armenian Revolutionary Committees: Before and after declaration of the constitution (Ankara: Başbakanlık Basımevi), pp. 212–213.

22 Ronald G. Suny (2016) ‘They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else’: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press). Suny, a leading Armenian historian and political scientist, offers the most succinct Armenian perspective on the events of 1915. As the title of the book indicates, a shared history between Turks and Armenians from 1071 to 1915 has been reduced to the crime of genocide.

23 M. Hakan Yavuz with Peter Sluglett (eds) (2011) War and Diplomacy: The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and the Treaty of Berlin (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press).

24 Examples include Gabriyel Noradunkyan Efendi (1852-1936), who served as the Minister of Trade and then Minister of Foreign Affairs (1912-1913); Ohannes Kuyumcuyan, who served as deputy undersecretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1909-1913); and Sakız Ohannes Paşa, Minister of Finance (1897-1908).

25 Feroze A. K. Yasamee (2011) “European Equilibrium or Asiatic Balance of Power?: The Ottoman Search for Security in the Aftermath of the Congress of Berlin,” in M. H. Yavuz (ed) War and Diplomacy: The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and the Treaty of Berlin, pp. 56–78.

26 Erickson, Ottomans and Armenians, pp. 197–212.

27 See Robert Melson (1982) A Theoretical Inquiry into the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 24(3), pp. 481–509; and Robert Melson (1986) Provocation or Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry into the Armenian Genocide of 1915, in Richard G. Hovannisian (ed) The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, pp. 61–84 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books).

28 Yavuz, A Topography of Positions in the Turkish-Armenian Debate.

29 Vahakn N. Dadrian (1995) The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books); Vahakn Dadrian (1999) Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-Armenian Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books).

30 Mary S. Conroy (2000) Review of Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-Armenian Conflict by Vahakn N. Dadrian, The Social Science Journal, 37(3), pp. 481–483.

31 Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 22.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid, p. 156.

34 Richard G. Hovannisian (ed) (2007) The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers).

35 See Further C. J. Walker (1980) Armenia, The Survival of a Nation (London: Croom Helm), pp. 190, 202.

36 Andrew Mango (1990) Some Recent Books on the Armenians and the Next Stage in the Historiography of Turkish-Armenian Relations, XI. Türk Tarih Kongresi [Turk History Congress], pp. 1945–1950, at p. 1948 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu).

37 B. Der Matossian (2014) Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. 13.

38 Reynolds, Shattering Empires, p. 54.

39 Ibid, p. 117.

40 Ibid.

41 Justin McCarthy (2006) The Armenian Rebellion at Van (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press), p. 185; for more on the success of the Armenian volunteer regiments, see Reynolds, Shattering Empires, p. 145.

42 Elie Kedourie (1970) The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies (New York: Praeger), p. 294.

43 Ibid, p. 62.

44 Astouranian’s argument is in Richard G. Hovannisian (1999) Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit: Wayne State University Press).

45 Richard Wilson (2011) Writing History in International Criminal Trial (New York: Cambridge University Press)

46 E. H. Carr (1987) What is History (London: Penguin), p. 23; the full text reads: “Study the historian before you begin to study the facts. The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonge’s slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use – these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation.” (Ibid.)

47 Although criminal law demands a threshold of proof that is “beyond reasonable doubt,” historians deal in “broader frame of probabilities.” Quote from Richard Ashby Wilson (2011) Writing History in International Criminal Trials (New York: Cambridge University Press), p. 6.

48 “Resolution on a political solution to the Armenian question,” Official Journal of European Communities, NC 190/119, 20 July 1987. Full text see, europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/dsca/dv/dsca_2016012021_10/dsca_2016012021_10en.pdf, accessed March 10, 2020.

49 For the judgment visit, http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=48869&doclang=EN, accessed March 14, 2020.

50 Christian J. Tams, Lars Berster & Bjorn Schiffbauer (2014) The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: A Commentary (Berlin: Verlag C.H. Beck oHG), p. 44. Many governments, such as that of Germany, have made public their view that the Convention “does not possess retroactive effect.” See Deutscher Bundestag (German Federal Parliament), Document No 17/1956 (2010), 5: “Die Konvention über die Verhütung und Bestrafung des Völkermordes vom 9. Dezember 1948 ist am 12. Januar 1951 in Kraft getreten. Für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland ist sie seit dem 22. Februae 1955 in Kraft. Sie gilt nicht rückwirken.”

51 William Schabas (2010) Commentary on Paul Boghossian, ‘The Concept of Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research, 12 (1-2), pp. 94–95.

52 In June 2008, Dogu Perinçek filed an application in the European Court of Human Rights. He alleged that the Swiss courts wrongfully had breached his right to freedom of expression by convicting him for denial of the Armenian genocide. The ECtHR Chamber concluded that the reasons given by the domestic court of Switzerland were insufficient to justify his conviction. In March 2014, the Swiss government requested that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber. Pulat Tacar and I wrote Perincek’s legal defense for the Grand Chamber. In fact, the Grand Chamber upheld the decision of the Court. See Pulat Tacar’s analysis online at: https://www.turkishnews.com/tr/content/2019/02/11/ahim-fransanin-sozde-soykirim-karari-uzerine-pulat-tacar/, accessed March 13, 2020.

53 Perinçek Case. Available at: https://www.lph-asso.fr/, accessed December 14, 2019.

54 Kai Ambos (2015) The Armenian “Genocide”?, EJIL: Talk!: Blog of the European Journal of International Law. Available at: https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-armenian-genocide/, accessed March 12, 2020.

55 Maurice Halbwachs (1992) On Collective Memory (University of Chicago Press).

56 For one of the best analyses of the parliamentary declarations of the events of 1915 as “genocide” see Bertil Dunér (2004) What Can Be Done about Historical Atrocities? The Armenian Case, in The International Journal of Human Rights, 8(2), pp. 217–233.