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Genocide (Armenia and Assyria)

I freely and publicly admit that there are few in the House who have a deeper knowledge of the Turkish penal code than my hon. Friend. He is absolutely correct. To deny genocide is bad enough, but for a state to structure within its legal framework a formal legalistic denial of it seems to be taking us into another area. I said earlier that I hoped that what I was saying was not contentious, but we have heard that it is. I put to the House the simple question, ““Did it happen?”” There are those in modern Turkey who would say that there was no genocide—that there was inter-communal fighting, and that a movement of people chose of their own free will to march into the desert and die; and that the decision was freely taken by people in the eastern Ottoman empire to leave their homes, in which their families had lived for hundreds of years, and to move away from their livelihoods and their ancestral lands and to choose instead a lonely death. I find that view unconvincing, and I cite as evidence one of the most remarkable books that I have ever read. It is by Viscount Bryce and Arnold Toynbee. That book was published during the first world war at the express instigation of the then Foreign Secretary in order to respond to the reports that were then reaching Her Majesty’s Government, particularly via the United States Ambassador Morgenthau, of what appeared to be a systematic programme of genocide. Toynbee, a distinguished Oxford historian, produced one of the most thoroughly researched and empirically backed volumes that I have ever read. Over and over again, it lists evidence from people who were there at the time. The original version was censored, because it did not name the witnesses. I am grateful, as is the House, to Ara Sarafian, who has published the full uncensored edition of ““The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon””, which identifies those who were there at the time—those who witnessed with their own eyes the horrors to which I refer. I give credit to Lord Avebury, known to many of us as Eric Lubbock, who with me and the tireless campaigner Odette Bazil, presented a copy of the book to Downing street last year. We know that Lord Avebury is not well, and I am sure that we all send our best wishes to him. I also pay credit to Ninos Warda, whose famous book ““Seyfo: the Assyrian Genocide in International Law”” was recently published. I also cite as evidence the ““Blue Book””—provable, substantiated and sustained evidence. It contains 102 specific eye-witness reports by neutral or belligerent nationals—neutrals such as the United States, and belligerent nationals such as German missionaries. It also contains 10 full statements by missionaries and missionary societies and 66 reports from Armenian clergy, local residents and refugees, as well as the extraordinary documents released by the American State Department—the state papers of Edward Nathan, the US Consul in Mersina. To read his reaction to the unfolding horrors is to realise that this truly was the first genocide of the 20th century. We have from the then Ottoman empire the evidence of the orders of the Minister of the Interior, Talaat Pasha, to the man whose position might roughly be described as analogous to that of a deportation Minister, Abdulahad Nuri, in which the Minister of the Interior orders Nuri to increase deportation and destruction finally to ““solve the Eastern Question””. Genocide did happen—3.5 million people were killed or died in the desert. Why did it happen? Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians had lived in the Ottoman empire for many hundreds of years, and some for even longer; and there was not a systematic programme or pogrom until late in the 19th century. Without doubt there were isolated incidents, but something changed, particularly during the caliphate of Sultan Abdul Hamid, and especially with the election of the Committee for Union and Progress. Ittihadve Terakki, normally referred to now as the Young Turks, were heavily influenced by ideologues such as Via Gokalp and Behaeddin Shakir, and created an ideology of Turkification. They harked back to an earlier Turkish empire, which they wanted to see freed of those who were not Muslims and not Turkish speakers. The Christians were the obvious target. On 12 November 1914, the sultan-caliph addressed an imperial declaration to the Turkish army and navy, demanding their participation in what he described as a ““jihad””—a word that few of us knew 10 or 15 years ago, but which now sadly resonates throughout Westminster and the city. ““Jihad”” was the word that he used on that day. The ruling triumvirate of Talaat Pasha, Jemal Pasha and Enver Pasha were all enthusiastic supporters of the process of Turkification. If one asks modern Turks why they still deny it, in addition to giving the theory that people willingly wandered to their deaths, they will say that the Armenians in particular were traitors. The Turks will refer to the huge Armenian community around Van lake in Van province, and the fact that some Armenians fought with General Nicolaieff, who led the Russian troops south to the Van lake and the vilayets in the area. This is an argument that constantly arises. General Nicolaieff’s fighting took place in July, long after the massacres had started. By May 1915, despite strong border censorship, reports were already being taken outside the Ottoman empire by travellers, missionaries and particularly employees of the Baghdad railway. Ambassador Morgenthau received a report that the River Euphrates was so choked with bodies that the water was breaking the banks and flowing beyond its course. At that time, further evidence was identified. Previously, forced conversions to Islam had been demanded to spare people’s lives, but the rule was changed so that, to be spared, families could convert only in groups of no fewer than 100, or they would not be allowed the protection of Islam. By late May and early June, wounded orphans and widows were arriving in Aleppo, Marash, Aintab, Tarsus, Adana, Sivas, Konia and Smyrna. Refugee bodies throughout the world were begged to help those people, who were arriving in such huge numbers. I have referred to the slaughter in Van, one of the traditional Armenian centres. That was matched, if not exceeded, by the genocide that took place in Cilicia in the vilayet of Adana and sandjak of Marash. That population had already endured a massacre as recently as 1909. Despite that, the population had increased and it was a stable community that had established its own churches and schools. There was little unemployment and a strong tradition of arable land and animal husbandry. Yet that community had the great misfortune to live on a strategic route through the empire and, more than that, to be the chosen target for Muslim refugees from the Roumelian vilayets that had been ceded by Turkey in 1913 as a consequence of the Balkan war. Those refugees wanted the area around Cilicia, and they got it—over the dead bodies of the established local community. Zeitoun was ethnically cleansed from April 1915; its inhabitants were driven into the Anatolian desert to die. Those who did not were harried to Sultania and beyond; we do not know where they ended up nor what happened to them. We have records of who they were, but none about what happened to them. We know only that they ceased to be. It is intensely difficult even to describe what was happening in the Ottoman empire at that time. Typically, the pattern was that Turkish regular army troops—I underscore that; they were regular army troops—would surround a village or community such as Ourfa. The local community would defend itself, as Ourfa’s did for a month. Then, inevitably, through force majeure, the Turkish regulars would surround, overcome and kill. The one exception to that horrific repetition of slaughter was in Jibal Mousa in the vilayet of Aleppo. A French naval squadron lying offshore witnessed the inhabitants’ defence of Jibal Mousa, aware of the horror—the certain death—that awaited them should the Turkish regular army manage to breach their defences. The squadron rescued the inhabitants and carried them to Port Said, where they came under British protection.