In the wake of Pope Francis’s remarks about the Armenian genocide by the Turks, there has been quite a bit of criticism of the present Turkish government and its continuing official rejection of the very idea of the genocide, preferring to think of it as the outcome of a civil war which is ridiculous. If it was a civil war, it was a war in which only one of the sides was armed.
The Kurds, who are known to have taken part in the killings of Armenians, are under no such illusions as illustrated by this article at International Business Times:
During the 1915 genocide, some Kurdish tribes were also exploited and encouraged by the Turkish Ottoman regime to attack the deportation caravans of Armenians.
However, it should be noted that there were many cases where Kurds refused to attack the Armenians and rescued them from certain death.
Today, 100 years after the genocide, Kurds in Turkey still do not have any political authority in their own lands. But they do recognise the Armenian genocide, commemorate the victims and call on the Turkish government to apologise to Armenian people.
One of them is Selahattin Demirtas, the Kurdish co-chairperson of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), who said in televised comments that “without hesitation, I recognise the Armenian Genocide.
“Both during my deputyship and before that – when I was a human rights lawyer – my stance toward this issue has never changed.
“Just because some people have covered up such a tragic historical incident by saying that ‘the official history [of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey] is not like that’, I will not bow to it,” said Demirtas. “Whatever happened should be acknowledged.”
When asked whether Kurds also had a role in the genocide, Demirtas responded: “Everybody including the Kurds did. But the political authority was the Ottoman regime led by Talaat Pasha, and Djemal Pasha. Whoever gave the orders, carried out the project and made the decisions [regarding the Armenian Genocide] – that is, the ideology of the government of Union and Progress – should be brought to account before history.”
The word “genocide” was apparently coined in 1944 to describe the murders of the Jews by the Nazis in Germany and elsewhere. I think too little has been written of the role of creating an ethnically-based national identify in such mass murders. That was obviously the case with the murder of Jews referred to as “the Holocaust” but the murder of Armenians by the Turks is inextricably entangled with the rise of Turkish nationalism as well.
I don’t know how far this particular sort of genocide and “ethnic cleansing” goes back. Possibly forever. I can certainly hear echoes of them in the persecution of the Breton in France during the French Revolution and since, the earlier persecution of the Huguenots, the persecution of Jews in Europe from the 13th century onwards, the persecution of the Irish by the English, the expulsion of Jews from North Africa and the countries of the Middle East, and even the treatment of the American Indians here.
I think the origin of the term “genocide” may predate the Holocaust, but I think the term has become synonymous, leading to an inefficient argument, where we no longer argue about historical events, but word choice. Lawyers and statesmen adapt to such gridlock by finding mutually agreeable alternative words. I suspect this is not about reaching a consensus as to historical facts.
And while its noble of the Kurds to demand their enemies the Turks apologize; the Turkish Republic has always kept some distance from the prior Empire. Ataturk characterized the Turkish people (including its Christians) as victims of the Young Turk dictatorship.
Also, the British sought to keep the Ottomans of the Great War with threats of supporting nationalist uprisings within its Empire. Something that was happening in Central Europe, happened with the Arab Uprising and would have happened with the Armenians no doubt if they were accessible to the British.
The earliest usage of the word I’ve been able to find was by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, characterizing the Holocaust.
I don’t think we should ignore that the Erdogan government is not Atatürk’s Turkish Republic. Erdogan’s Turkey is an Islamist increasingly nationalist neo-Ottoman one of which we might do well to be wary.
Lemkin apparently started developing his ideas with Armenians in mind, as well as Iraqi Assyrians in the 1930s. I don’t know that he necessarily gets the “final word” on the issue though. By the time the word was published, it was being used to describe the Holocaust, which is usually dated from 1933, i.e., not a war measure.
Joyner had a post on this earlier this week:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/the-complexity-of-genocide/
I listened to a podcast interview w/ Kazuo Ishiguro about his new novel, The Buried Giant. It takes place in fictionalized Dark Ages Great Britain, with dragons and giants. The Saxons have committed a genocide against the Britons, but have pulled back from the abyss and a magical fog has enveloped the land, causing most everyone to forget what has happened. The characters have also variously forgotten personal events as well, and the novel apparently is a meditation on the role of forgetting personally and as a society.
The American Civil War was transcended by forgetting. Most communal atrocities are forgotten, if not forgiven, by placing the blame on the leaders. Forgetting is primarily the privilege of the winners though.
I have a minor problem with the word “genocide”: it’s macaronics. The Greek root genos is being jammed into the Latin suffix -cide from occidere or uccidere, to perish.
A better word would be “populicide” and prior to the adoption of “genocide” there are attestations of its use with that meaning going back to the 18th century.
BTW, as a casual point “Dark Ages” is an English language expression. Basically, Tudor propaganda.
Read your Old Testament. When Joshua leads Israel out of the desert they killed entire populations of some groups. When David was king they sometimes killed everyone, sometimes even including the animals, which always seemed a bit extreme to me. This is not new at all, I am just not sure how common it was. My guess is that taking slaves was probably more common than killing everyone.
Steve
If it was a civil war, it was a war in which only one of the sides was armed.
Those are the best kind to fight, if you’re on the side with the arms.