As far as I see it, the problem with the politics of the Armenian Genocide today can be condensed to four main points :
1. The legal term 'genocide' came into formal international law in 1950/1951. It is an accepted and essential principle of law, including international law, that criminal acts cannot be created through retrospective application of new laws. Therefore, in legal terms there were no genocides before 1950/1951.
However this is a patently absurd conclusion to arrive at if one is using an 'ordinary language' definition of genocide. On that latter score, there have been hundreds of genocides prior to 1950/1951, including the Armenian Genocide.
So in an international legal sense then successive Turkish governments have a correct objection to labelling the Armenian killings a genocide. In an ordinary language sense they don't have a leg to stand on.
2. Successive Turkish governments have claimed that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians was primarily due to (a) the circumstances of war, such as rebellion, hostile acts etc, (b) the effects of war such as hunger, disease, forced displacement, and (c) the widespread but ad hoc (and not centralised) orders of local commanders
The legal definition of genocide (Genocide Convention, Article 2) is
genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
and the acts punishable as genocide include (article 3) :
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
The legal definitions are fairly broad and open to wide interpretation. Thus, arguably, even on a narrow interpretation one could say that genocide has been committed against Gypsies in the UK and Ireland. Genocide does not require the open and systematic use of violence. It can be conducted as a cultural destruction.
Had the 1915 mass killings of Armenians been conducted after the 1951 Genocide Convention came into force then it would undoubtedly have been labelled in legal terms a genocide.
3. Successive Turkish governments fear that conceding the label 'genocide' would (a) lead to compensation claims from Armenians and (b) lead to some sort of recognition of territorial claims at the expense of the Turkish state.
The record of perpetrator states recognising 'genocides' does not suggest that either compensation or territorial adjustment has followed. In that respect Turkish government fears are unfounded.
4. Successive Turkish governments have battled against others even opining that 1915 was the Armenian genocide as if to so label the events of c.1915 could stain the reputation of a government of 1997 or 2007. Equally successive Turkish governments have NOT opened the Ottoman archives (the link provided of 'Armenian in Ottoman Documents' is not the opening of archives; it is the collection of archival material which supports the Turkish government's position - that is a totally different story and doesn't meet the basic criteria of an open archive. It should be noted here that the govts of UK, US, France etc are also reluctant to the point of refusing to open certain archives or materials in their own bloody histories, even from 90+ years ago).
Finally, does it all boil down to a word - is it a mass murder, massacre, etc or is genocide the
only word that can be used to describe the events ? To reject the appropriateness of the word 'genocide' is not the same as 'genocide denial' (though sometimes the two can some pretty close).
