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Genocide (Armenia and Assyria)

Thank you, Mr. Cook. It is obvious from the passionate presentation of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) that he has a thorough and detailed interest in this difficult and painful subject, and we are all grateful to him for setting out his arguments with such clarity and, indeed, for securing this debate. This matter has been debated in this House on many occasions, not least, as I am sure my hon. Friend is aware, in the immediate aftermath of the 1915-16 massacres that left so many dead and forced survivors into exile. What happened to ethnic Armenians and other smaller Christian minorities living in the Ottoman empire, including the Assyrians, was roundly and rightly condemned at the time. I extend the Government’s deepest sympathies to the relatives and descendants of the victims. That the events took place, and that the then rulers of what is now Turkey should bear some degree of responsibility for encouraging, allowing or failing to prevent them, is not a matter of dispute in this House, but the main concern of this Government is not what we call such horrific events but ensuring that the lessons are learned, and that relationships are rebuilt to ensure a peaceful and secure future for everyone living in the region. To that end, we shall continue to encourage the Governments of Armenia and Turkey to improve co-operation and understanding between their countries. I want to deal with my hon. Friend’s call for the United Kingdom legally to recognise the events of 1915-16 as genocide. The fact is that the legal offence of genocide had not been named or defined at the time when the atrocities were committed. The United Nations convention on genocide came into force in 1948, so it was not possible at the time of the events that we are considering legally to label the massacres as genocide within the terms of the convention. I recognise that it is perfectly possible intellectually to try to apply the definitions of genocide from the convention to appalling tragedies that occurred, in this case, some 30 years before. The common practice in law is not to apply such judgments retrospectively. It is not possible for us properly to provide a substitute today for the submission of evidence, cross-examination or arguments that necessarily would have arisen in mitigation in a court of law, whether a local or international one, had there been one with the necessary jurisdiction and had the crime already been recognised and defined. Not least would be the issue of who should be charged with the offence in the circumstances. That is why I hope that my hon. Friend will accept that the legal process that he is asking for would not necessarily be appropriate at this stage. In any event, as I hope he will accept, historians question each other’s accounts of what took place. The debate has primarily been about the causes of the events, those responsible for them and the extent to which the wartime security context may have been a factor, perhaps obscuring the motives of those who were involved. As a result, neither this Government nor previous British Governments have judged that the evidence is sufficiently unequivocal to persuade us that the events could be categorised as genocide, as defined by the 1948 UN convention on the subject. However, I emphasise that that in no way diminishes the scale of the terrible individual and mass tragedies that occurred between 1915-16 and both before and after, as my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing, North and for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) have made clear. The key now is to ensure that the full truth about those events is brought to light and that both Armenia and Turkey look to the future. In that context, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane), my distinguished predecessor as Minister for Europe, raised the need for an independent inquiry on the events of 1915-16 at a European Union ministerial meeting with Turkey in March 2005, in an attempt to promote a truth and reconciliation process. I share the view that the work of establishing truth, if it is indeed to help towards reconciliation, must be conducted as a joint exercise by the parties directly involved. Outsiders can commend the idea to them, but they should not try to do the work for them, as the doing of the work by the parties themselves is an important part of the confidence-building and reconciliation process. Last year, shortly after that idea was proposed, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and the leader of the main Turkish opposition party joined forces to call for an impartial investigation by Armenian and Turkish historians of the allegations. I understand that the Armenians felt unable to accept the proposal at that time, but we believe the Turkish proposal to be a welcome signal that Turkey wishes to engage with its neighbour and re-examine the issue. My conclusion is that the idea, or some variant of it, is not at an end, but that further developments in the international situation will be needed before the idea can be explored again and constructively developed. Obviously, I cannot give the House an absolute assurance that Armenia and Turkey will undertake to move relations forward this year or even the next, although I certainly hope that they will, but I commend to the House the idea that the resolution of the questions raised by my hon. Friend should be pursued through some kind of truth and reconciliation process undertaken by the people of Armenia and Turkey. This Government will continue to encourage the parties to embark on such a process. In the meantime, we should resist the temptation to pre-empt its conclusions.