!á�� face="Verdana" size="2">The suggestion Mr. Sükrü Elekda? has made regarding the “Blue Book” in order to counter the Armenian genocide claims, is quite right. At the instigation of Turkey’s main opposition party and with the support of the Turkish government a joint call will be issued to the British Parliament

  The suggestion Mr. Sükrü Elekda? has made regarding the “Blue Book” in order to counter the Armenian genocide claims, is quite right. At the instigation of Turkey's main opposition party and with the support of the Turkish government a joint call will be issued to the British Parliament. The latter will be urged to declare as “propaganda material” the Blue Book in question. Britain, who was an invading power at the end of World War I, is the country that knows about the facts better than anybody else. Westminster has not, until now, accepted the argument that the Armenian incidents had been genocide. In fact, in a press release the British Embassy in Ankara made it clear two years ago that the genocide claims were groundless.

  On the other hand, the Armenian foreign minister has promptly rejected the proposal for creation of a commission -- consisting of Turkish and Armenian historians or, to put it differently, academics -- to look into the genocide claims. The Armenians are saying that all historical-and-archive work has been completed; that the outcome has been accepted by the world; and that the problem stems from Turkey's “denial of the genocide.”

  If the Armenians' sole aim is to disseminate anti-Turkey propaganda this is an understandable attitude. However, they must not think they can make the EU or America, pressure us into accepting the genocide claims -- whereas Turkey would, naturally, accept the outcome of a joint initiative.

  The U.N. is not a suitable place for such a task. Those who, with good intentions, suggest the U.N., are not well acquainted with the U.N. The U.N. Security Council may tackle only those issues that constitute “a threat to international peace and security.” The incidents of 90 years ago are not within that scope. The Whitaker Report debated in 1985 shows how inadequate the U.N. human rights system is in this respect. And we know that UNESCO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe are not eager to tackle this issue. Under the circumstances, we must keep striving to pave the way for the creation of a common working premise. However, we must know that this issue is more technical than it seems. So we must not promptly voice any proposal that seems reasonable at first sight.

  Now let us come to the “mea culpa” front. In the course of an interview that appeared in the March 7 issue of daily Milliyet, Professor Halil Berktay claimed that the Armenians had been subjected to a forced relocation “only because they were Armenian.” He argued that forced relocation amounted to ethnic cleansing and that ethnic cleansing is considered genocide in our day. He said that the secret orders (concerning the massacres) were more important than the documents available in the archives.

  As far as I know Berktay has no published work on the historical aspect of the incidents. More gravely, he is not familiar with the genocide law, that does not keep him from making a legal assessment. 

  According to Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, acts committed with the intent to destroy a group only because of that group's identity (that is, without any ground fall into the genocide category. For example, Jews were destroyed without any other reason, that is, only because they were Jews. Armenians, on the other hand, were relocated because they had rebelled, because they had cooperated with the invading Russian army and because they had attacked the Turkish and Muslim population, with the aim of setting up their own state in eastern Anatolia. If, in the course of that process, the two sides massacred groups of civilians, that would fall into another category of crimes.

  The concept of “ethnic cleansing” emerged during the incidents in Bosnia-Herzegovina. That is not a legal term. It is being used when describing such actions as the destruction of civilian targets and the killing and raping of defenseless civilians -- acts perpetrated during the attacks staged by armed groups with the aim of driving out from their homes the resident population of a given area. The Former Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague treats this kind of ethnic cleansing as “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity.” The only exception was the Krstic case. But that was quite different. Ethnic cleansing is similar to the way Turks were driven out of the Balkans and the Caucasus in the 19th century rather than to the relocation of Armenians which was largely carried out in an orderly manner.

  Article 7 of the ICC's Rome Statute (1998) considers forced transfer of people a “crime against humanity.” However, according to Article 17 of Protocol 2 additional to the Geneva Conventions, relocation is not a crime if carried out due to “military imperative.”

  On the other hand, it is strange that Berktay does not know that almost all archive documents involving the Armenian incidents are “secret” documents anyway, that is, they are encoded.

  And, finally, one can only wish that the “eminent” members of our press -- which we increasingly realize are beyond criticism -- who seem to be dying to take part in the genocide debate, would be willing to study this issue at least a little.