Genocide of Armenians
Never forgive, Never forget
 Introduction
•   The prosecution of dozens of World War I Turkish war criminals by a Turkish Military Tribunal has vet to engage the attention of scholars of legal history-, in particular genocide studies. The present article continues efforts by this author to counteract this negligence by directing attention to those trial sessions which previously received only passing attention. When analyzed to some extent, however, these sessions may shed significant light on the twin issues of prevention and punishment that are the touchstone of the UN Convention on Genocide. These issues continue to punctuate contemporary debate on genocide as the ultimate crime.
Yielding to German political and military pressure, on October 29, 1914, Turkey-relinquished its openly proclaimed neutrality in the war which was then raging in Europe. Through a combined surprise attack against Russian warships and coastal installations in the Black Sea, Turkey on tliat day entered the war. England and France, Russia's allies, declared war against Turkey on November 5, three days after Russia. This aggression would entail for defeated Turkey legal and political liabilities. Two factors animating this belligerence appear critical. Turkey signed on August 2, 1914, a secret political and military alliance with Germany because the top leaders of the lttihad Party (the Committee of Union and Progress, or CUP), led by Enver, War Minister and de facto Supreme Commander of the Ottoman Armed Forces, had divined that Germany would emerge victorious in the war. Kaiser Wilhelms long-standing pro-Turkish attitudes and policies on the one hand, and Envers boundless faith in German military prowess on the other, contributed to this judgment. Moreover, Germany had agreed by treaty to help Turkey recover territories lost to Russia in previous wars. Germany shared Turkeys historical animosity toward Russia.The prospect of assisting militarily in the obliteration of the perennial Russian threat rein-forced Turkish inclinations to identify with Imperial Germany.
•   "Nationalities" problems, the Achilles' heel that had led to the incremental truncation of the decaying multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, continued to bedevil its new lttihadist rulers. That affliction was exacerbated when on February 8, 1914, the lttihadist leaders were impelled, if not compelled, by the Great Powers to sign a new "Armenian Reform Act" giving control over the administration of the eastern provinces containing the bulk of the Ottoman Armenian population to European "Inspectors General."  The fact that the initiative for this Act came from the Russians, who had doggedly interceded on behalf of the Armenians in protracted negotiations in 1912 and 1913, embittered the lttihadist leaders. The latter would soon find it convenient and expedient to direct their ire against their vulnerable Armenian subjects. The Russian threat became identified with an Armenian threat. These developments took on a greater significance because the Reform Act grew out of a major military calamity for Turkey. The redoubtable Ottoman army had suffered crushing defeats in 1912 during the first Balkan War at the hands of the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks, former subject nationalities. The war itself resulted in part from massacres the Turks had committed during conflicts over a similar "Reform Act" for the Balkans, namely Article 23 of the Berlin Peace Treaty, stipulating reforms in Macedonia. v This legacy made the new Armenian Reform Act extremely portentous.
It is against this backdrop that the crystallization of the scheme to destroy the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire must be understood. Involved here is a historical process through which the antecedents of the Turko-Armenian conflict gained cumulative momentum. German, Austrian, and especially Turkish documents demonstrate that Turkish belligerence was conditioned by an urge to eliminate the last nationality conflicts in the Ottoman Empire, in particular the most perilous, the Armenian. Similar documents indicate that the Turks saw their alliance with Austria and Germany as a protective shield for their genocidal scheme. The Armenian geno-cide thus fits, implicitly at least, the stipulation of the Nuremberg Charter that genocide, in order to be prosecuted, has to involve crimes committed "in execution of or in connection with war.  Virtually the same point was made in the Key Indictment of the Turkish Military Tribunal.
•   The juridical proceedings and findings of the Turkish Military Tribunal as recorded in Takvimi Vekayi, the official gazette of the Ottoman government, whose supplements (ilave) served as the judicial journal of the Tribunal, form the basis of this article. The "Key," or main. Indictment and the "Key Verdict," as well as other subsidiary indictments and verdicts were based on primarily official and authenti-cated documents  (a practice followed later at Nuremberg as well). As far as is known, outside Turkey only the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate Archive and the Nu.bar Library in Paris own the originals of these "supplement" issues. The official published transcripts of the debates in the Ottoman Parliaments Lower House (Meclisi Mebusan) and Upper House (Meclisi Ayan) in November and December 1918 have also been utilized. The Turkish daily press has been consulted for some of the details of testimony given by defendants and witnesses in pre-trial interrogations and various sittings of the court.
These auxiliary sources reinforce the findings of the Military Tribunal. As the executive branch of the Ottoman government, for example, considered instituting courts martial, the legislative branch was providing ammunition. In his inaugural ad-dress on October 19, 1918, for example, the Upper Houses President openly declared that during the war "the Armenians were savagely killed.  A month later, a promi-nent Ottoman statesman made a crucial revelation: during his term as post-war Presi-dent of the Council of State he came into possession of evidence documenting the fact that the Central Committee of lttihad had planned and ordered the massacre of the provincial Armenian population. Upon further examination, Re§it AkifPa^a determined that the lttihad Party and its boss, Talat, were responsible for the mas-sacres. On the basis of this determination the Attorney General launched his investi-gation of the lttihad Party in early December 1918. The Lower House, i.e., the Chamber of Deputies, held similar debates and heard similar revelations before the courts martial period. On December II, 1918, Trabzons deputy declared that he had "personally observed" an episode of the drowning operations on the Black Sea, during which "the Armenians, under the pretext of being taken to another port city, were loaded onto barges and thrown overboard in the high seas". The transcripts which record this evidence represent a crucial source of documentation.

The Military Tribunal
•   The trials constitute a milestone in Turkish legal history. The post-war Turkish authorities had to reckon with a theocratic system which had an established legacy of severity in dealing with non-Muslim subject nationalities embroiled in conflict with Ottoman authorities. The trials challenged this legacy by introducing a novel element in the handling of nationality conflicts. For the first time, Ottoman-Turkish authorities of the highest rank were being held accountable for their crimes against these nationalities. To add emphasis to this novelty, the Sultan and his government did so via a Special Military Tribunal, whose work proceeded under a succession of Ottoman governments in the wake of an exhausting war which had ended with the devastating defeat of the Ottoman army.
It is most certain that this undertaking was dictated by political expediency. On the one hand, it was hoped that it would be possible to inculpate the lttihadist Party leadership as primarily, if not exclusively, responsible for the Armenian massacres, thereby exculpating the rest of the Turkish nation. On the other, many representatives of the victorious Allies nurtured a strong belief that the punishment of the perpetrators might induce the victors to be lenient at the Peace Conference. The sudden escape from Istanbul on the night of November 1, 1918, of the seven arch leaders of lttihad Party, including the wartime ministers of war, marine, interior, and education, as well as the two top Internal Security and Police officers, exacerbated the situation. Strong voices in the Press and Parliament began to agitate for the prompt arrest and prosecution of remaining high-ranking suspects. The personal antagonism ofVahdeddin, the new Sultan, for the "Committee of Union and Progress"-the lttihadist Party-facilitated this targeting of the residual leadership of that party. Old and new opponents of the latter, especially leaders of the hitherto suppressed opposition ltilaf Party, assumed an active role in this drive, which at times deteriorated into outright persecution.
•   The task of the Special Military Tribunal was not easy as it faced very serious resistance from lttihadist partisans who continued to dominate the Civil Service, the ministries of War, Interior, and Justice, and, above all, the central and local offices of the powerful Istanbul Police. These tried to impede the work of the Tribunal by temporizing, withholding documents, stalling the transmission of information, and occasionally outright disobedience of court orders. Obstruction was clandestinely abetted by operatives of the residual Special Organization (SO), the outfit which had actually carried out the killing operations of the Armenian genocide. Secret cells of the SO in the Ottoman capital unleashed a campaign of intimidation against the judges, the attorneys-general, and witnesses for the Tribunal, as well as against those organs of the press whose editors exposed details of the Armenian genocide by publishing eye-witness testimonies of Turkish citizens anxious to see the criminals punished. Members of these cells even managed to organize the escape from the main military prison of such foremost lttihadists murderers as Army Group Commander Halil Pa§a, Central Committee member Ku^uk Talat, and Diyarbekir Governor-General Dr. Reit. (14)
In addition to this encumbrance, the Tribunal suffered from instability as it underwent four changes in structure and function between December 1918 and November 1920. These changes included revisions of its statutes, a switch from a military-civilian to strictly military court-martial (March 1919), and the enlarging of the scope of the charges to encompass "overthrowing the government" (April 1920) added to the principal charges of "deportation and massacre." Turnover among the presiding judges and attorneys-general in charge of the prosecution was considerable; there were at least six of the former and nine of the latter. (15) Parallel to these turnovers, Cabinet and ministerial changes affected the personnel of the Tribunal-there were ten different justice ministers alone. In the eight months following the Armistice, there were six different Cabinets, with Tevfik Pa§a alone forming three successive Cabinets between November 1918 and February 1919. In the initial three months (February-May 1919) of the Tribunal three Interior Ministers were successively appointed, only to resign or be relieved of their posts.
•   Despite all these handicaps, however, the Tribunal functioned in the inhospitable milieu as best it could. It was able to secure, authenticate, and compile an array of documents, including formal and informal orders for massacre, implicating the Ottoman High Command, the ministers of interior and justice, and the top leadership of the lttihad Party. The Tribunals Key Indictment and nearly all of its verdicts are predicated upon these documents rather than courtroom testimony. Owing to the ascendancy of Kemalism first in the interior of the country, then gaining momentum in 1919 and 1920, and eventually prevailing throughout the entire land, displacing and expelling the Sultans government in Istanbul, the prosecution ultimately faltered. Only a fraction of the 200 suspects (including 150 civilian officials of government and party and 22 military officers) against whom the so-called Mazhar Inquiry Commission had marshaled incriminating evidence and prepared separate files for delivery to the Tribunal could be convicted. With the fall of the Republic of Armenia in November-December 1920, invaded and demolished by the Kemalist General Kazirn Karabeldr, and the attendant demise of pro-Sultan Darnad Ferids fifth and last Cabinet, the courts-martial were jettisoned.
Despite initial cooperation between the two in opposing the Sultans government for placating the victors, lttihadism should not be confounded with Kemalism. The former was bent on reestablishing itself in postwar Turkey without relinquishing its Panturldc and Panislamic ambitions. The latter was trying to mitigate the disastrous consequences of a military defeat by confronting the victorious allies as a provincial insurgency, unless the allies were willing to recognize the sovereign rights of a new Turkish republic, bereft of expansionist, Panturldc ambitions. The cooperation failed because the lttihadists continued to conspire to seize power, displace the Kemalists, and reimpose a new lttihadist regime. In the end the leaders of the new republic, led by Mustafa Kemal, liquidated the residual leadership of lttihad following a series of trials, conducted by the Independence Tribunal in July and August 1926; about ten top lttihadist leaders were hanged, including Special Organization chieftains Dr. Nazirn, Yenibah^eli Nail, Filibeli Hilmi, National Security Director Canbolat, and Hur§it. Kara Kemal, the right hand man of party boss Talat, committed suicide after he was caught hiding in a chicken coop. The principal charge leveled against all of them was conspiracy to assassinate Mustafa Kemal and overthrow his republican regime.
•   All difficulties notwithstanding, the Tribunal performed its task of investigating the genocide of the Armenians with the help of the Administration's Mazhar Inquiry Commission, adjunct inquiry commissions attached to the Tribunal, and Parliament's Fifth Inquiry Commission (Besinci §ube Tahkikat Komisyonu). As the series of Verdiets demonstrates, the Tribunal substantiated the key charge of premeditated (ta'ammuden) mass murder organized by the Central Committee of the lttihad Party, carried out by the "Special Organization" (Tegkilatl Mahsusa), largely consisting of hardcore criminals released from the empires prisons for the purpose. The following is being confined to the description and analysis of the main Verdicts the Tribunal issued after each trial series, the main Indictment itself, and the sittings of the main trial series involving the Cabinet ministers and the top lttihadists. As we shall see, each Verdict or series has its own distinct characteristics.