Some of the worst crimes in history have taken place under the guise of war. During the Second World War, much of the Jewish population of Europe fell victim to Nazi genocide. Several decades preceding the Holocaust, as World War I was unfolding, another genocide was taking place that effectively removed an entire population from their historical homeland of three millennia. Now, Turkey needs to acknowledge the Armenian genocide in order to gain better world standing.
Leslie A. Davis, the U.S. Consul posted to the remote town of Harput, Turkey in 1915, wrote in a diplomatic dispatch dated July 24 of that year, "I do not believe there has ever been a massacre in the history of the world so general and thorough as that which is now being perpetrated in this region."
Consul Davis was referring to the Armenians, a vulnerable minority population in the collapsing Turkish Ottoman Empire. When in 1944, Holocaust survivor Dr. Raphael Lemkin coined the word genocide, he clearly cited the Turkish massacre of Armenians as a prime example of such a crime. Except for the first post-WWI Turkish government under Damad Ferid Pasha, successive leaders of Turkey, the legal heir to the Ottoman Empire, have vehemently denied the veracity of the genocide. Among other reasons, this stance can be attributed to the probability of legal consequences that may include reparations and territorial concessions in its eastern provinces that the Armenians inhabited prior to their annihilation and deportation.
With global developments after WWI and with Cold War political affairs, Turkey's importance to the West became crucial in light of Soviet ideological and expansionist policies. As a result, consecutive U.S. governments have been careful not to label the 1915 killings as genocide in accordance with their strategic interests in Turkey.
Ironically, American diplomats and missionaries posted in Turkey in those years like Davis were among the most vocal decriers of the Armenian massacres. While the word "genocide" was not in existence at that time, American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau labeled the events "murder of a nation," and Consul Davis called it a "general massacre" upon personally visiting massacre grounds.
In one of his diplomatic dispatches, Davis declared: "the plan was to destroy the Armenian race as a race, but the methods used have been more cold-blooded and barbarous, if not more effective, than I had first supposed."
While the political war over terminology ensues, the extent and suffering of the Armenians in 1915 remains clouded by political posturing. Yet for those who seek it, the evidence speaks for itself. Out of somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million Armenians living in Ottoman Turkey prior to 1915, virtually none remained in the countryside by the time the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923.
The plan to deport and massacre the Armenians was highly systematic and organized: all Armenian intellectuals were rounded up and executed, as were all able-bodied Armenian men, including those in the Ottoman army. This was followed by a well-organized and executed plan to remove the remainder of the Armenian population - the women, children and elderly - village by village, town by town, by marching them off into the deserts. In some regions such as Bitlis and Mush, deportation was not an option. Armenians were outright massacred or burned alive in their villages, while others were drowned en masse in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and in the Black Sea.
Upon visiting Lake Golcuk (modern Lake Hazar) and witnessing the thousands of massacred Armenians along its shores, Davis labeled this part of Turkey "the Slaughterhouse Province." He wrote, "The order [to] officially and nominally exile the Armenians from these Vilayets [Provinces] may mislead the outside world for a time, but the measure is nothing but a massacre of the most atrocious nature. The shooting and killing of people a few hours after their departure from here is barbarous and shows that the real intention of the government is not to exile them but to kill them."
It is reprehensible to dismiss such powerful evidence of the Armenian Genocide put forth by our own American diplomats, including Consul Leslie Davis. Today the Cold War era is over and new global developments have changed the world order. France, Belgium and Switzerland became firsts to recognize the Armenian Genocide as a result of a revision of their Cold War strategies.
Recognition by the U.S. government will pave the way for Turkey's eventual admittance of this great crime, which will help bring about lasting peace and security in the Caucasus. It is important that the Republic of Turkey take serious and bold measures to come to terms with its Ottoman past concerning the immense human and material loss of its Armenian population during the final years of the empire.
Such a step would embolden Turkey's EU efforts and place the country one step closer to the European family of nations as well as to the modern values they uphold. The country will hence set a serious foundation for reconciliation, peace and cooperation with its Armenian neighbor and with the Armenian diaspora, a product and permanent reminder of the Armenian Genocide.
Harout Semerdjian is a MALD Candidate at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy.
