Prosecution of Ottoman war criminals after World War I

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After

Paris Peace Conference (1919) and ultimately included in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) with the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman government organized a series of courts martial in 1919–1920 to prosecute war criminals, but these failed on account of political pressure. The main effort by the Allied administration that occupied Constantinople fell short of establishing an international tribunal in Malta to try the so-called Malta exiles, Ottoman war criminals held as POWs by the British forces in Malta. In the end, no tribunals were held in Malta.[1]

Turkish nationalist movement.[2] According to European Court of Human Rights judge Giovanni Bonello the suspension of prosecutions, the repatriation and release of Turkish detainees was amongst others a result of the lack of an appropriate legal framework with supranational jurisdiction, because following World War I no international norms for regulating war crimes existed. The release of the Turkish detainees was accomplished in exchange for 22 British prisoners held by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.[1][3]

Since there were no international laws in place under which they could be tried, the men who orchestrated the Armenian genocide escaped prosecution and traveled relatively freely throughout Germany, Italy, and Central Asia.[4] This led to the formation of Operation Nemesis, a covert operation conducted by Armenians during which Ottoman political and military figures who fled prosecution were assassinated for their role in the Armenian genocide.[5]

Background

Allied reactions to the massacres, 1915–1917

Following the reportage by

Henry Morgenthau, Sr., US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, of the Armenian resistance during the Armenian genocide at the city of Van, the Triple Entente formally warned the Ottoman Empire
on 24 May 1915 that:

In the view of these ... crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization ... the Allied governments announce publicly ... that they will hold personally responsible ... all members of the Ottoman Government and those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.[6]

Turkish courts martial, 1919–1920

Main article:
Turkish courts-martial of 1919–20

Just as de-Nazification became a guiding principle of Allied policy in Germany after the Second World War, cleansing Turkey of the CUP and punishment for the Unionist crimes weighed heavily on British – and Allied – thinking after the conclusion of the armistice at Mudros.

Andrew Mango, Atatürk[7]

The initial prosecution of war criminals was established between 1919 and 1920 by the Turkish

Foreign Office conducted its own investigation into alleged war crimes, debating whether the process was adequately dealt with by Turkish courts martial.[9]

The court sat for nearly a year, from April 1919 through March 1920, although it became clear after just a few months that the tribunal was simply going through the motions. The judges had conveniently condemned the first set of defendants (Enver, et al.) when they were safely out of the country, but now, with Turkish lives genuinely on the line, the Tribunal, despite making a great show of its efforts, had no intention of returning convictions. Admiral Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe protested to the Sublime Porte, took the trials out of Turkish hands, and removed the proceedings to Malta. There an attempt was made to seat an international tribunal, but the Turks bungled the investigations and mishandled the documentary evidence so that nothing of their work could be used by the international court.[10][11]

Admiral John de Robeck replaced Admiral Gough-Calthorpe on August 5, 1919, as "Commander in Chief, Mediterranean, and High Commissioner, at Constantinople".[10] In August 1920, the proceedings were halted, and Admiral John de Robeck informed London of the futility of continuing the tribunal with the remark: "Its findings cannot be held of any account at all."[12] According to European Court of Human Rights judge Giovanni Bonello, "quite likely the British found the continental inquisitorial system of penal procedure used in Turkey repugnant to its own paths to criminal justice and doubted the propriety of relying on it". Or, possibly, the Turkish government never came round to hand over the incriminating documents used by the military courts. Whatever the reason, with the advent of power of Atatürk, all the documents on which the Turkish military courts had based their trials and convictions were "lost".[1][3]

Prosecution in Malta

Malta exiles

Main article: Malta exiles

Occupation of Constantinople by the Allied forces. Following the occupation of Smyrna by the Greek forces in May 1919, large manifestations in protest occurred on the Anatolian mainland raising pressure upon the courts martial. The judges then ordered the release of 41 suspects in order to calm down the situation. The release was not what the allied forces had in mind, and caused them to consider a better detention facility than the Bekirağa military prison, well aware that the prison might be captured by the protestors and its prisoners released.[13]

The

war criminals were named and relocated from Constantinople's jails to the British colony of Malta on board of SS Princess Ena Malta and HMS Benbow starting in 1919, where they were believed to be held for some three years while searches were made in the archives of Constantinople, London, Paris and Washington to find a way to prosecute them.[14] The prisoners were secluded in three different groups.[15]

  • A: for people suspected of having taken part in massacres
  • B: for people suspected of having tolerated massacres
  • C: for people who were not suspected of having taken direct action in massacres

The competing

Ankara government was strictly opposed to trials against war criminals. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk reasoned about the detainees in Malta on the occasion of the congress in Sivas 4 September 1919: "...should any of the detainees either already brought or yet to be brought to Constantinople be executed, even at the order of the vile Constantinople government, we would seriously consider executing all British prisoners in our custody." From February 1921 the military court in Constantinople begun releasing prisoners without trials.[16]

The release of the Turkish detainees in Malta was accomplished in exchange for 22 British prisoners held by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

government in Constantinople. They are often mentioned as the Malta exiles in some sources.[1]

Legal foundation

In 1918 an American list of 11 "outlaws of civilization" was drawn up to be targeted for "condign punishment":

The list included the three leading Young Turk leaders, comprising the Ittihad triumvirate. A similar, but larger list, was prepared in 1917 in France by Tancrede Martel, an international law expert, who argued that the men he indicated deserved to be tried as common criminals by ordinary civil and criminal courts of the Allied countries because of the type and scope of the atrocities they were accused of having perpetrated. In its final report, completed on March 29, 1919, the commission on Responsibilities through Annex 1, table 2, identified thirteen Turkish categories of outrages liable to criminal prosecution.[18]

The

British Foreign Office demanded 141 Turks be tried for crimes against British soldiers, and 17 for the crimes against Armenians during World War I.[19]

The Allied authority to proceed with any prosecutions was created as part of the

Democratic Republic of Armenia and developed a mechanism to bring to trial those accused of "barbarous and illegitimate methods of warfare... [including] offenses against the laws and customs of war and the principles of humanity".[6]

Article 230 of the Treaty of Sèvres required the Ottoman Empire:

... to hand over to the Allied Powers the persons whose surrender may be required by the latter as being responsible for the massacres committed during the continuance of the state of war on territory which formed part of the Ottoman Empire on August 1, 1914.

As a signatory to the treaty, the Ottoman Empire specifically recognized the right of the Allies to convene international tribunals to conduct war crimes trials.[20]

By 1921 the British High Commission had gathered a body of information from its Greek and Armenian sources about the Turkish prisoners held at Malta, and about 1000 others, all alleged to have been directly or indirectly guilty of participation in massacres.[21] The Allies had "a mountain of documents" related to the Armenian genocide, but these were mostly general and did not clearly implicate specific individuals.[22]

Suspension of prosecution

According to the former judge at the European Court of Human Rights Giovanni Bonello the suspension of prosecutions, the repatriation and release of Turkish detainees was amongst others a result of the lack of an appropriate legal framework with supranational jurisdiction, because following World War I no international norms for regulating war crimes existed, due to a legal vacuum in international law; therefore contrary to Turkish sources, no trials were ever held in Malta.

On March 16, 1921, the

Turkish Foreign Minister and the British Foreign Office signed an agreement in London. In exchange for the 22 British prisoners in Turkey, among them a relative of Lord Curzon and brother of Lord Rawlinson, Britain would set free 64 Turkish prisoners from Malta. These excluded those it was intended to prosecute for alleged offences in violation of the laws and customs of war or for massacres committed in any part of the Turkish Empire after war had broken out.[1][3] British Admiral Sir John Michael de Robeck, who had been second-in-command of Allied naval forces at the Dardanelles, commented: "It would be hard under these conditions to convict most of the exiles before an Allied court."[23]

In relation to prisoner exchange Article 2 under the Agreement For the Immediate Release of Prisoners reads:

The repatriation of Turkish prisoners of war and interned civilians now in the hands of the British authorities shall commence at once, and shall continue as quickly as possible. This will not apply, however, to persons whom it is intended to try for alleged offences in violation of the laws and customs of war, or for massacres committed during the continuance of the state of war in territory which formed part of the Turkish Empire on 1st August, 1914 ...[24]

British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon said the subsequent release of many of the Turkish prisoners was "a great mistake", and wrote:

The less we say about these people [the Turks detained at Malta] the better ... I had to explain why we released the Turkish deportees from Malta skating over thin ice as quickly as I could. There would have been a row I think ... The staunch belief among members [of Parliament is] that one British prisoner is worth a shipload of Turks, and so the exchange was excused ...[25]

Aftermath

Further information:
Assassination of Talat Pasha

Separate Turkish domestic prosecutions resulted in the convictions and sentencing to death of many of the masterminds of the Armenian genocide. As many of the principal architects of the genocide had managed to escape prior to sentencing, the

Behaeddin Shakir Bey, Jemal Azmi, Jemal Pasha, Enver Pasha
, and others, including several Armenians.

Some of those accused as war criminals led politically influential lives in the nascent Turkish state.

Mustafa Abdülhalik Renda, for instance, who had "work[ed] with great energy for the destruction of the Armenians",[26] later became the Turkish Minister of Finance and Speaker of the Assembly and, for one day, following the death of Kemal Atatürk, President. General Vehip Pasa, and various German sources, also implicated Abdülhalik in the burning to death of thousands of people in Mus Province.[27]

Armenian historian

Vahakn N. Dadrian commented that the Allied efforts at prosecution were an example of "a retributive justice [that] gave way to expedience of political accommodation".[28]

Peter Balakian—referring to the

Nuremberg Trials following World War II.[29]

In 1926, Kemal had six genocide perpetrators, including

Nazım Bey and Yenibahçeli Nail Bey [tr], hanged for allegedly plotting to assassinate him.[30][31]

Purging of evidence

A

Consulate General of the US in Istanbul states ambassador Birgi was effectively in charge of destroying evidence during the 1980s.[32] During the process of eliminating the evidence, ambassador Birgi stated in reference to the Armenians: "We really slaughtered them."[32]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Bonello 2008.
  2. ISBN 978-0-8050-8665-2
    .
  3. ^ a b c d Turkey's EU Minister, Judge Giovanni Bonello and the Armenian Genocide – 'Claim About Malta Trials Is Nonsense'. The Malta Independent. 19 April 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2013
  4. ^ Power, Samantha. "A Problem from Hell", p. 16-17. Basic Books, 2002.
  5. ISBN 978-1610693646
    .
  6. ^ a b William S. Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1922–1945, Franklin Watts; Revised edition (1984). Also see: William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crimes of Crimes, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 16–17
  7. ^ Kieser 1999, p. 203.
  8. ^ Taner Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozesse und die Türkische Nationalbewegung (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996), p. 185.
  9. ^ Dadrian V.N. in Genocide as a problem of national and international law, p.281–291; Dadrian V.N. (1986), "The Naim Andonian documents on the world war I destruction of Ottoman Armenians: the anatomy of a Genocide". International Journal of Middle East Studies, Cambridge, Mass., 18 (3) 338–355; Helmreich P.C. op. cit., p.236. These sources use the documents: Britain FO 371/5091, E 16080/27/44; 371/6509, E 5141 f.130; E 8562 f.13; E 10662 f.159; 371/7882, E 4425 f.182; as a source to reach their judgements
  10. ^
    ISBN 978-1597974967
    , p.211-212
  11. ^ Vahakn N. Dadrian "The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus" page 308
  12. ISBN 1-57181-666-6
    .
  13. ^
    JSTOR 163884
    .
  14. ^ Detlev Grothusen, Klaus (197). Die Türkei in Europa: Beiträge des Südosteuropa-arbeitskreises der… (in German). Berghahn Books. p. 35.
  15. ISBN 978-1-4411-3578-0
    .
  16. ISBN 978-0-8050-7932-6
    , p. 354
  17. ^ Türkei By Klaus-Detlev. Grothusen.
  18. ^ Vahakn N. Dadrian "The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus" page 314
  19. ^ British foreign archive: FO 371/5091/E15109 Malta Internees, 8 November 1920
  20. ^ M. Cherif Bassiouni "Crimes Against Humanity in International Criminal Law" page 67
  21. ^ Vahakn N. Dadrian; The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus page 310.
  22. Akcam, Taner. A Shameful Act
    . 2006, page 358.
  23. ^ from Taner Akcam "The Investigations and Prosecution of the War Crimes and Genocide" p 358
  24. ^ British National Archives CAB 24/127
  25. ^ British Foreign Office Archives, FO 371/7882/E4425, folio 182
  26. Akcam, Taner. A Shameful Act
    . 2006, page 362.
  27. Akcam, Taner. A Shameful Act
    . 2006, page 363.
  28. ^ Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 310—11.
  29. ^ On April 24, the world must remember victims of Armenian genocide, Times Union Archived 2020-05-26 at the Wayback Machine
  30. ISBN 978-0-85771-930-0
    .
  31. ^ AAE. "The Executions of Some of the Arch-perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide by the Ittihadists and Kemalists, 1915-1926". Retrieved 2023-08-24.
  32. ^ a b Barsoumian, Nanore (10 September 2011). "WikiLeaks: Stepping Out of Ottoman Archives, Diplomat Says 'We Really Slaughtered Them!'". The Armenian Weekly.

Books

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