!á½p size="2">To be able to understand the enigma called humanity, probably one has to look at its extremes, hence the great significance of genocide. Throughout history there have been massacres, enslavement and destruction. However, genocide, which is an act committed with the 'intent to destroy' a specific group is a characteristic of the European continent of which we are a part. The desire to prevent anti-Semitism (that is, the kind of racism that led to the Holocaust) from resurfacing on the stage of history ever again was one of the basic considerations with which the European Union was founded.

  To be able to understand the enigma called humanity probably one has to look at its extremes, hence the great significance of genocide. Throughout history there have been massacres, enslavement and destruction. However, genocide, which is an act committed with the “intent to destroy” a specific group, is a characteristic of the European continent of which we are a part. The desire to prevent anti-Semitism (that is, the kind of racism that led to the Holocaust) from resurfacing on the stage of history ever again was one of the basic considerations with which the European Union was founded.

  Due to the Armenian problem we, too, have started learning about genocide. The Halaco?lu incident has taught us that according to Article 6 of the Genocide Convention only a competent court may decide whether a certain incident constitutes genocide.

  The genocide law created by the convention is a major intellectual leap. Article 2, which provides a definition of genocide, especially, is a legal masterpiece. To be able to understand it one has to read hundreds -- if not thousands -- of pages.

  Rafael Lemkin, the person who coined the word “genocide,” had described the Armenian incidents as genocide. As an adviser to the U.N. secretary-general he was in the group of persons who drafted the convention. However, the scope of Lemkin's genocide description -- which covered cultural and economic genocides as well -- was narrowed down in the course of the deliberations and, in the end, only biological genocide, destruction of groups, that is, human beings, came to be considered the crime of genocide by the convention.

  Lemkin had wanted to add “political group” to the groups to be protected from genocide by the convention, namely, the national, racial, religious and ethnic groups. The conference committee rejected that proposal as well. In other words, the convention does not put into the genocide category the massacre-type crimes committed against those groups that wage a struggle with political aims, for example to gain territory or independence.

  Lemkin did not make any proposal for the inclusion of the motive behind the “intent to destroy” in Article 2. The much-talked-about phrase “as such” was inserted in the text of this article by the delegations that negotiated the draft. According to the final version of Article 2, killing with the intent to destroy a member of a given group, not because of the “harmful” actions or behavior of that individual but only because he or she is a member of that group, is to be considered genocide. In other words, the genocide concept was shaped on the basis of the Jews having been destroyed only because they were Jews. That is, they were destroyed despite the fact that they had not rebelled against the Germans; they had not collaborated with the Russian Army to set up an independent state on part of German soil; and they had not attacked German civilians.

  The genocide concept was born out of the concept of crimes against humanity. “Crimes against humanity” were described in the Nuremberg Principles (Principle 6c). According to that principle “murder, extermination, enslavement and deportation” and … “persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds…” committed against civilians constitute crimes against humanity.

  Yet, Article 2 of the Genocide Convention does not cite any grounds. Naturally, those who had committed these acts of genocide had declared the Jews to be a big threat to Germans, even to mankind. However, that claim lacked the kind of rationality to be considered a cause or grounds. In this context genocide was defined as a crime that did not have any cause or rationale.

  There is no difference in meaning (either in Turkish or in English) between the words “extermination,” which is one of the crimes against humanity, and “destruction,” which forms the basis for the crime of genocide. Different words are being used for the purpose of showing the enormous difference between genocide and crimes against humanity -- in that the first one is a “groundless” crime whereas the second one has a “rationale.”

  In this context one could say that history is full of crimes against humanity, whereas genocide is an exceptional case.

  Having the intent to destroy a given group only because it is “that” group could be possible only with the anti-Semitism kind of racism. In fact, racism can be understood only in that context.

  Nazi Germany subjected Jews to genocide because that idea was an inseparable part of Nazi ideology. In other words, the main aim of the Nazi project was to create a hierarchical European -- or global -- society by ensuring that the Germans would become the master race, that the Slavs would be enslaved and that the Jews would be destroyed. Implementation of that project would not be possible if the German people had not been largely “immersed” in anti-Semitism ("Hitler's Willing Executioners," D.J. Goldhagen).

  If the Holocaust were to be considered genocide, other incidents could not be called genocide. The most one could do would be to identify ethnic cleansing as a “crime against humanity,” as in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina and to call “genocide” the massacres committed in the course of that ethnic cleansing.