Demotix/PAN photo/Vahan Stepanyan. All rights reserved.
What happened on April 24 is one of the most significant radical moments in the process of extreme
violence and mass annihilation in the great tragedy that befell the Armenians.
It was on this day that the
extermination of Armenians began in Dörtyol, Adana, Marash and Zeytun, lasting
until March 1915, then Konya, Anatolia, before stopping in Syria.
On that same day, first in
Istanbul and later in all of the provinces of Anatolia, the arrest of Armenian
intellectuals began, which continued into June/July of 1915, leading to the
murder of many around Çankiri, Ayas and Ankara.
Only a day later, British Imperial troops began to bombard Çanakkale from land and sea. The wrath of
the Committee of Union and Progress, leaders of the Ottoman Empire, feeling
pressed and their existence threatened, fell first upon the Armenian community
and afterwards on all non-Muslim Ottoman subjects.
The seizure of Armenian property was not just a byproduct of
the genocidal policies of the CUP, but an integral
part of the murder process; reinforcing and accelerating the intended
destruction. The expropriation and plunder of deported Armenians’ movable and
immovable properties was an essential component of the destruction process.
As Martin Dean argues in Robbing
the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933-1945,
ethnic cleansing and genocide usually have a “powerful materialist component:
seizure of property, looting of the victims, and their economic displacement
are intertwined with other motives for racial and interethnic violence and
intensify their devastating effects.” In the same vein, the radicalization of
CUP policies against the Armenian population from 1914 onward were closely
linked to a full-scale assault on their property.
Thus, the
institutionalization of the elimination of the Christian-Armenian presence was
basically realized, along with many other things, through the Law of Abandoned
Properties. These laws are structural components of the Armenian Genocide and were
the basis of the legal system in the Republic. It is for this reason that we
say that the Republic has adopted this Genocide as its structural foundation.
Thus, a fresh look at the relationship between the Republic as a legal system
and the Armenian Genocide must be taken.
The Law of Abandoned Properties is perceived as “normal and ordinary” in
Turkey. Its existence has never been questioned in connection to the Genocide,
which explains why the Armenian Genocide was ignored throughout the history of
the Republic.
Turkey was
founded on the transformation of a presence – Christian in general, Armenian in
particular – into an absence.
This picture
also shows us a significant aspect of genocide, as Lemkin pointed out. Genocide
is not only a process of destruction but also that of construction. By the time
genocide perpetrators are destroying one group, they are also constructing
another group or identity. Confiscation is an indispensable and one of the most
effective mechanisms for perpetrators to realize the aforementioned process of
destruction and construction.
Raphael Lemkin can
be considered the founding father of genocide literature. He introduced the
concept of genocide for the first time in 1944 in his book entitled Axis
Rule in Occupied Europe. The book consists of a compilation of 334 laws,
decrees, and regulations connected with the administration of 17 different
regions and states under Nazi occupation between 13 March 1938 and 13 November
1942.
As such, Lemkin
did not introduce the concept of genocide together with barbaric practices like
torture, oppression, burning, destruction, and mass killing observed in all
genocides, but through a book quoting and analyzing legal texts. Could this be
a coincidence?
Given its
importance, it is necessary to stress this one more time; the year that Lemkin
completed the writing of his book (1943), he already knew of all the crimes
perpetrated by Nazi Germany. However, he did not present the concept of
genocide in a framework elucidated by these crimes. On the contrary, he
introduced it through some laws and decrees that were published on how to
administer occupied territories and that perhaps, in the logic of war, might be
considered “normal.”
We cannot say
that this situation accords well with our present way of understanding
genocide. The general perception is that genocide is the collapse of a normally
functioning legal system; it is the product of the deviation of a system from
the “normal” path. According to this point of view, genocide means that
institutions of “civilization” are not working and are replaced by barbarism.
Lemkin,
however, seems to be saying the complete opposite; that genocide is hidden in
ordinary legal texts. By doing this, it is as if he is telling us not to look
for the traces of genocide as barbaric manifestations that can be defined as inhuman,
but to follow their trail in legal texts. Genocide as a phenomenon that fits
into the legal system – this is an interesting definition.
A series of laws and decrees, known as the Law of Abandoned
Properties (Emval-i Metruke Kanunları) were issued during the Ottoman
and Turkish Republican periods. They were concerned with the belongings left
behind by the Ottoman Armenians who were deported in 1915.
Most of the
properties were distributed to Muslim refugees from the Balkans and Caucasia at
the time. Central and local politicians and bureaucrats of the Union and
Progress Party also took advantage of the properties, as well as hundreds of
local employees, as the process of administering and selling the properties
usually involved considerable administrative efforts.
Economic
discrimination and plunder contributed directly to the CUP’s process of
destruction in a variety of ways. At the direct level of implementation, the
prospect of booty helped to motivate local collaborators in the massacres and
the deportations orchestrated by the CUP security forces.
Similar to the
policy of Nazi leaders with regards to the “Aryan”ization of Jewish property during
the Holocaust, the CUP aimed to have complete control over the confiscation and
expropriation of Armenian properties for the economic interests of the state,
but could not prevent corruption. As such, the widespread participation of the
local population as beneficiaries served to spread complicity and legitimacy to
the CUP’s actions.
It should be
emphasized that corruption was fairly rife among bureaucrats and officers of
the Abandoned Properties Commissions and Liquidation Commissions, who were the
responsible actors for administering and confiscating properties under the
supervision and for the advantage of the state – as was the case during the
“Aryan”ization of Jewish property.
A number of
leading members of the Central Committee of the Union and Progress Party, as
well as CUP-oriented governors and mutasarrıfs, seized a great deal of
property, especially those belonging to affluent Armenians in many vilayets.
According to one argument, CUP leaders also utilized Armenian property and
wealth to meet the deportation expenses.
After the
establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1926, the Turkish Grand National
Assembly passed a law. This law was promulgated and enforced on 27 June 1926.
According to this law, Turkish government officers, politicians, and
bureaucrats who were executed as a result of their roles in the Armenian
deportations or who were murdered by Dashnaks, were declared “national heroes,”
and the so-called “abandoned properties” of Armenians were given to their
families. And in 1928, the Turkish Republic introduced a new regulation that
granted muhacirs or Muslim refugees who were using Armenian properties
the right to have the title deeds of those properties, which included houses,
land, agricultural land and shops.
As such, a variety of actors and institutions seized the
opportunity. Economic
motivation was always present and enabled CUP central actors to carry out their
ultra-nationalist ideological policies against Armenians. The process of
genocide and deportation directed at the Armenians was, in fact, put into
practice by local notables and provincial elites. These local actors prospered
through their new acquisitions, transforming them into the new wealthy social
stratum.
In this
respect, the Union and Progress Party’s genocide and deportation decree on 27
May 1915 had a social basis through the practice of effective power, control,
and support mechanism(s) at the local level.
The
distribution of a great amount of the “abandoned property” provided a useful
incentive that reinforced hatred for local Armenians. And as Lemkin noted, the participation
of local people is a necessary condition to ensure the effectiveness of
genocidal policies. Planned extermination of all members of a given category of
people is impossible without the involvement of their neighbors – those who
know who’s who in a community.
Therefore, the
entire process of confiscation can be evaluated and construed as both an
ideological principle and economic motivation. These two aspects cannot be
separated from each other. In some instances, ideology played a more significant
role than economic motivation, and in other instances economic interests came
into prominence.
The essence of
all the laws and regulations issued was the erasure of all traces of the Armenians
from Anatolian soil. Perhaps the physical annihilation of the Armenians was
necessary to achieve this goal, but it was not sufficient in and of itself. The
use of the legal system was as important as, if not even more important than
their physical annihilation.
The law, in
particular the Law of Abandoned Properties, became the most important tool of
the Ottoman Empire. Economic interests blinded people from the
plight of their fellows who were made to disappear.