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  • The Constantinople War Crimes Trials: The Legal Response To The Arme

    THE CONSTANTINOPLE WAR CRIMES TRIALS: THE LEGAL RESPONSE TO THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
    by Vache Thomassian

    Haytoug
    http://www.haytoug.org/3097/the-constantinople-war-crimes-trials-the-legal-response-to-the-armenian-genocide
    June 29 2011

    As a result of the world's inability to criminally punish the
    perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide, the Ninth World Congress of
    the Armenian Revolutionary Federation made the decision to track down
    and execute the most culpable Ottoman leaders in a covert undertaking
    called Operation Nemesis. By the end of 1922 dozens of top Turkish
    leaders were extra-judicially brought to justice.

    Understanding the chain of events which led to Nemesis offers important
    insight to the current difficulties faced by Armenians to achieve
    reparations and restitution for the crimes committed by Ottoman Turkey.

    Post World War I

    As early as May of 1915, the Allied powers formally accused the
    Ottoman government of crimes against humanity (a term which would be
    made infamous thirty years later following the Holocaust). However,
    following World War I, France focused its outrage on Germany and
    pursued rapprochement with the Turks. After the Bolshevik Revolution
    in 1917, Russia lost all interest in bringing the Young Turks to
    justice. And despite the well-documented and harrowing accounts
    of American diplomats, including Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr.,
    America did not take serious steps to punish murders that killed
    non-Americans. More than any other Allied Power, Britain took the
    massacre of Armenians seriously.

    In 1918, Britain had an occupying force of over a million soldiers in
    the Ottoman Empire which allowed it to exert extensive pressure on the
    post-war government of Sultan Mehmet VI. Furthermore, the developed
    British legal system wanted to hold individual members of Ottoman
    leadership criminally responsible for war crimes. The Sultan, however,
    feared that if he took large-scale action to prosecute the Young Turks
    it would provoke a nationalist revolution where he would be overthrown.

    Turkish Courts-Martial

    In 1919 under British pressure, the Sultan ordered domestic Turkish
    courts-martial to try Ittihadist (Committee of Union and Progress)
    leaders of the Ottoman Empire. By April, over 100 top Turkish
    officials were under arrest. In custody were the grand vizier,
    the sheikh ul-Islam, the president of the council of state, a former
    director of intelligence, the commander of the garrison at Yozgat (the
    site of some of the most heinous Armenian massacres), several former
    valis (provincial governors) from Smyrna, Bogazlian, Mosul, Broussa,
    and Diarbekir, the ministers of justice and public instruction,
    along with dozens of others. Subsequently four major trials began:
    for Armenian massacres and deportations in Yozgat and in Trebizond,
    of Ittihadist leaders, and finally for wartime Turkish cabinet members.

    There were lesser trials for atrocities in Harput, Mosul, Baiburt
    and Erzinjan. More trials for atrocities in Adana, Aleppo, Bitlis,
    Diarbekir, Erzerum, Marash, and Van were planned but never held.

    The first verdicts handed down by the tribunals found Major Tevfik
    Bey, commander of the Yozgat police, and Yozgat lieutenant governor
    Kemal Bey guilty of organizing deportations, murder, pillage, robbery
    and crimes against humanity and civilization. Tevfik was sentenced to
    fifteen years of hard labor and Kemal to death. Kemal Bey's funeral
    became a rallying point for Turkish nationalists who were still not
    convinced Turks had done wrong during the war and were insulted that
    punishments were being doled out for killing Christians.

    The courts-martial continued against prominent leaders including
    Said Halim Pasha, as well as those who had fled to Germany, including
    Talaat and Enver, who were tried and sentenced to death in absentia.

    The indictment of Talaat and Enver read in part:

    "The disaster visiting the Armenians was not a local or isolated
    event. It was the result of premeditated decision taken by a central
    body; and the immolations and excesses which took place were based
    on oral and written orders issued by the central body."

    At the same time, politics began destroying the domestic tribunals.

    The British army presence shrank by over two-thirds-along with its
    authority. As dozens of the accused Turks began being released, the
    British gave up on the Ottoman trials and decided to take custody of
    sixty-eight of the most prominent prisoners who were guilty of the
    most heinous crimes and transfer them to a British detention center
    in Malta. This left the Turkish courts-martial a toothless farce.

    Malta International Tribunals

    After taking custody of the prisoners, the British assumed that they
    could implement British-style trials to attain a just conclusion. The
    idea of having show trials or summarily executing the prisoners was
    dismissed outright. However, an unusual problem presented itself:
    the Armenians were slaughtered en masse, but the massacres were
    carried out under Ottoman sovereignty and not under British law. Since
    international law had not yet developed, a new kind of criminal law
    was needed: a crime against humanity (this same problem flustered
    the planners of Nuremberg).

    Unfortunately, the British were slow to set up tribunals even after the
    signing of the Treaty of Sevres in August 1920, which included five
    articles on war crimes including language calling for Turks "guilty
    of criminal acts [to be] brought before the military tribunals"
    and even carved out a new independent Armenian state. The British
    were left in a quagmire, not wanting to release the prisoners and
    not having the political will to prosecute.

    As Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's nationalist revolt gained strength,
    defeating French troops in Cilicia, the British began cutting their
    losses. By 1920, War Secretary Winston Churchill was clearly weary
    of the entire issue. He wanted to make sure that Ataturk would not
    be pushed into the arms of the Soviet Union. When pressed to choose
    between prosecuting war criminals and protecting British soldiers,
    Churchill did not hesitate to advocate choosing the latter.

    The final straw came in August of 1921 when Ataturk's nationalists took
    a group of 29 Britons hostage and demanded the release of all Turkish
    prisoners who remained in Malta jails. All fifty-nine remaining Turks
    in custody were subsequently freed. Finally, as a further insult,
    the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in July 1923 by Ataturk, containing
    no clauses on war crimes tribunals and no mention of an independent
    Armenia. British Prime Minister Lloyd George referred to the treaty
    as an "abject, cowardly and infamous surrender."

    In Comparison with Nuremberg

    The lessons learned from the failed attempts of international
    justice following World War I, along with the political commitment
    to punish wartime aggression led to the Nuremberg trials, criminally
    prosecuting the leadership of Nazi Germany. Henry Morgenthau Jr. (son
    of Ottoman-era US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr.) led calls to
    summarily execute all top Nazi leaders without any trials. However,
    the plan set forth by War Secretary Henry Stimson to put the criminals
    on trial won out.

    The Allied effort (led by the United States), to punish the Nazis
    was undertaken mostly out for retribution for the Nazi instigation of
    the war, rather than just punishing the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

    While the intention was to punish the Nazis for starting the war, the
    legacy left by the trials is that it was an effort to punish crimes
    against humanity, namely the Holocaust. By 1963 over 2000 Germans
    were sentenced, nearly 700 to death. These trials have subsequently
    led to the 1948 adoption of the UN Genocide Convention as well as
    the later creation of the International Criminal Court.

    Aftermath

    Had the war crimes tribunals held in Constantinople been given the
    opportunity to uncover evidence and document high-level testimony,
    as was stipulated by the Treaty of Sevres, it would have been
    significantly more difficult for subsequent Turkish governments
    to deny, distort or minimize Turkish culpability for the Armenian
    Genocide. For Britain, it was in their strategic interest to
    leave Constantinople. For Ataturk, nationalist fervor led to the
    establishment of the Turkish Republic on the blood of murdered
    Armenians. For the Armenians, abandoned by the international community,
    justice became an elusive concept.

    Unlike Germany, whose Nazi-era leaders were held criminally responsible
    and punished, the Turkish Republic has never confronted the Armenian
    Genocide. In the short-run, the lack of adequate criminal prosecution
    of Young Turk leaders following the Armenian Genocide led to vigilante
    justice to preserve Armenian dignity. In the long-run it has caused
    decades of denial, and has given a path for the successor state to
    avoid reparations. However, during the past five decades, Armenians
    worldwide have persevered to attain global recognition of the Armenian
    Genocide. While the perpetrator generation of Turks may have escaped
    justice, what remains is the civil and territorial compensation to
    the Armenian people from the benefactors of Genocide.

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