There is no collective Kurdish guilt for 1915, but the responsibility is yet to be discussed

Photo: BERGE ARABIAN

EVRİM KAYA
[email protected]

• In the introduction, you briefly discuss the paradigmatic changes that research on Armenian Genocide has gone through. This mainly revolves around the question of intent. Can you summarize it just a little bit: What is mainly proposed by the two major sides and what is the importance of a case-study approach? 

During the 1980s and 1990s a paradigm was dominant that implied that the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and thus by implication the Ottoman government had decided on exterminating the Ottoman Armenians during a conference. Vahakn Dadrian argued on the basis of a questionable document that a blue print had existed.

Since about 1998 I argue that this perception is undocumented and, more importantly, contradicted by available evidence. I interpret the deportations and also massacres as being a process or even several processes evolving over the entire time span between say March 1915 and September 1916. We can document when certain government policies, like those in regard to women, children, assimilation, Armenian property etc. were initiated. Thus, in my view no blue print existed and the CUP started a policy without fully understanding or foreseeing its implications.

A second aspect is the nature of the CUP and the so-called Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa, TM). In some writing the two bodies appear similar to the NSDAP and the SS or Einsatzgruppen. On closer inspection, however, the CUP was very much fractioned. A faction within the party opposed massacres and to some extent even forced conversions. As pertains to the alleged central role of the TM, it is important to know that it was absent from major massacre areas and deportation routes. Thus, while its role needs further study, it is already clear that the key role attributed to TM is untenable.

The case study approach is useful for testing general hypotheses on the extermination of Armenians. While it is easy to construct a thesis by combining pieces of evidence from different places and different points in time and obscuring methodological problems with a number of generalizing statements, a case approach can contextualize some elements of these general constructs within their proper historical setting.

• I will use İsmail Beşikçi’s thesis as an example of one particular way that the Kurdish movement approaches the issue: Some reject responsibility on their side saying that Kurdistan has been a colonized land and no political will can be attributed to Kurds. Your book challenges that view, showing that considerable influence was exerted by people not acting on behalf of the state. Who were these people, how would you evaluate the “Kurdish responsibility” according to that.

Political will: Kurdish groups had a great interest in eliminating Armenian political competition and also to seize Armenian owned land and other assets. This has been described as 'primitive accumulation.' In 1915 and before the Kurdish elites had been courted by the CUP and their majority was neither in opposition to the CUP nor was it persecuted. Thus, they were acting on their own behalf and at the same time did the work the CUP wanted them to do. In a certain way, they also went far beyond. While the CUP hoped to keep Armenian assets as so-called abandoned property for the state and to finance government policies with it, very little Armenian property was actually collected by the authorities. This means the Kurdish population, primarily the leadership, took over these assets.

To talk of Kurdish responsibility implies a unified Kurdish policy or political body. There was none. We need to better understand the role of individual tribes and confederations like the Raman or the Haverkan. The Milli, the Daşkuri, or non-tribal groups and city dwellers. In other words, we need to go beyond these nationalist constructs and look at the variety of responses. There were also Turkmens, we have also Shia, Ezidi, Shafi, Hanefi populations add to that Arab tribesmen and notables.

In sum, I do not think that the Kurdish population can avoid to take responsibility. What this actually will mean remains to be determined. There was however no Kurdish collective guilt as there was no Kurdish collective innocence in the sense described by Besikçi.

We also need to take into consideration the abject poverty of most Kurds and the arrival of thousands of destitute Kurdish refugees from the combat zone plus the harsh winters of the time.

• How does Dr. Reshid stand among other government officials of the time?

Reshid Bey belongs to the most radical faction within the CUP. He was one of the principal perpetrators alongside Djemal Azmi Bey of Trebizond, Zeki Bey of Der Zor, Mustafa Abdulhalik Bey [Renda] of Bitlis and Aleppo, as well as Djevdet Bey of Van. Reshid Bey propagated total physical annihilation including the children. In this perspective, I cannot help it but he reminds me of Heinrich Himmler and his speech at Posen, although I do not like Holocaust comparisons and I avoid them in my academic writing.

Reshid Bey was responsible for at least 200,000 Armenian deaths and likely many more. This figure alone shows that he was one of the worst criminals. His efficiency depended, however, to some degree on the Ministry of Interior which continued to feed Reshid Bey's killing machine with ever more victims by continuing to deport Armenians to this known killing field. Thus, the book is only a case study but it is case study about a key area and one of the principal killing fields.

Thus it was for a good reason that one of Reshid Bey's reports was included in the Ottoman court martial verdicts of the post war period. I have identified this report in the book for the first time. Thus, this case study proves that it is false to claim that these documents do not exist. This was a first.

Importantly, the Ministry of Interior had officially sanctioned and also financed Reshid Bey's killing squads. They did this although Reshid Bey has made it absolutely clear that he would use the men to commit extra-legal killings and massacres. The document I have found was also the first official order to commit mass murder that has been identified in the Ottoman archives.

Having said this, Reshid Bey became also the focus of Ottoman opposition against the extermination. Hilmi Bey and Shefik Bey, the district governors of Mardin, resisted Reshid Bey, as did Hüseyin Nesimi Bey, whom Reşid murdered, as did Sabit Bey who was murdered by Reshid. Mosul governor Haidar resisted and warned the Germans about Reşid and his crimes. Most importantly, Zor governor Suad Bey demanded the execution of Reshid Bey and his associates for the crimes they were committing. Again this document was referred by the post-war Ottoman courts-martial and I discuss for the first time the entire document in the book.

• It seems to me that the CUP and Ottoman authority collide at different times but are never quite the same. How would you describe this complex relationship? (You may add bold figures like Reshid to that complexity.)

As for Diarbekir, Reshid Bey completely revamped the administration and also created a secondary administration only answerable to him. Thus, the government was identical with the CUP to an extreme extent. Those officials who refused were removed or killed. But we have to keep in mind that Reshid Bey belonged to the most extreme CUP faction. So we should identify Diarbekir with that faction while other CUP factions refused to commit murder like they did so in Syria.

• There was apparently a shift in CUP’s views on Kurds and Armenians at different points of time. What are the reasons of that? How did it happen that CUP started to rely so much on the Kurdish side that they used to dislike, that they used Armenians as leverage for buying Kurdish loyalty? How was this choice made? And also, how do you think the class-based cooperation between different notables was defeated by anti-Armenian rhetoric?

The CUP’s shifts in its Armenian policy were due to overall considerations. They were not dependent on Diarbekir although some aspects were also present in Diarbekir. One main cause for the split between the former allies CUP and Armenian Revolutionary Federation was the so-called land question. In other words, the return of stolen Armenian lands to their rightful Armenian owners. This was naturally very much opposed by those circles who had profited from the Armenian massacres of the 1890s and the land theft before, during, and after the massacres. Ziyaeddin's [Gökalp] family was among the main perpetrators and had profited. Later they extended their plundering also to Ezidis and the Milli tribe.

When the Armenians turned to international support for their demands, the CUP had already abandoned them and decided to support the Kurdish elites against the Armenians. In other words, the CUP opted to support its old enemies, the reactionary elites, and betrayed its revolutionary comrades from the days of the struggle against the autocratic Sultan. It was also a decision to abandon progressive politics in favor of repressive rule. A decision that hurt Turkey for decades to come.

The local class-based cooperation between Kurdish and Armenian notables at the expense of the underprivileged Kurdish and Armenian population came to an end when the Kurdish notables realized that they did not need their allies but could even eliminate them and take over their lands and possessions. These clans remind me very much of Italian mafia families. Working together at one time, killing each other the next. However, all these clans were carefully promoting their image as protectors of their respective communities, religion, and public morality.

• We see that Armenians were treated rather early “as traitors in cooperation with foreign powers”. Yet you show that Kurds weren’t much different at that point. How did that rhetoric develop in case of Kurds?

The CUP was not naive and knew that the Bedirhans and other were pursuing their interests with the help of any power that was willing to assist them. In this case it was the Russians who played both an Armenian and a Kurdish card simultaneously.

There was, however, no general anti-Kurdish rhetoric unlike in the Armenian case. The CUP had not much of a choice. While assaulting the Armenian population, there was no way that they could also attack the Kurdish population. Even the CUP needed some popular support in a region where there were hardly any if at all Turks.

While there was certainly some romantic rhetoric within some Armenian quarters about independence, the Armenian leadership, especially the church hierarchy, was fully integrated into the Ottoman state and political system. The ARF fully supported the Ottoman war effort to the last minute in 1915. The leadership was arrested and taken away with a municipal bus. You cannot arrest almost the entire leadership of any revolutionary movement in one night and using a bus in doing so.

The ARF and other leaders were very well aware that Russia was not their friend.

• How did CUP’s intentions change on the part of non-Armenian Christians?

I am afraid that the dominant CUP faction in Diarbekir province, namely the Pirinççizade family and Ziyaeddin Bey, never changed. They started as killers in 1895, continued their atrocities in 1908 and mastered large-scale massacres on a level and with a cruelty that is hard to imagine in 1915. Of course, the 1890s massacres and the 1915 extermination targeted first of all Armenians, but the 1908 massacres did not. I show in the book, how they went after the Kurdish Ezidis, killing, raping and doing basically anything that we see later in 1915. In 1915, Reshid Bey argued that the other Christians were in effect nothing but Armenians. I discuss his views at length in the book. His views show that he had a racist world view.

However, the central authorities stopped Reshid Bey and his men and thereby allowed for the survival of the Syrians in the Tur Abdin. This exemption from massacres came very late and many Syrians had died already. It was only for their self-defense and the support of a faction of the Haverkan confederation that they survived. Thus, Ezidi and Shafi Kurds were instrumental in the survival of Syrians while the latter in their turn saved many Armenians. They even preferred to die than surrendering Armenians to the authorities.

• We see that at one point Reshid tried to settle immigrants from Balkans. Why did this attempt fail unlike the western parts and how did this effect the Kurdish question as we know it today? Could it be different?

I show in the study that Reshid's settlement plans were a pipe dream. He had no idea about the environment but many racist prejudices against Bosnian and Albanians. He considered those people simple as being 'dirty.' Thus, he wanted only Turkish settlers. But there were no resources, no planning or anything else that might have been needed for such a project. Today's Kurdish question was impacted by the extermination of the Armenians. While Reshid Bey planned to make space for Turks, he in fact made place for many more Kurdish settlers in the area who had formerly been nomadic or had come as refugees. It was an irony that this Turanist racist ideologue turned Diarbekir into an undisputed Kurdish stronghold. Like in many other ways, Reshid's policies were a failure. He was good a killing, plundering, and self-enrichment. He had already failed in Iraq before, thus this man could only destroy and not build anything of substance which would benefit other people.

• You show that CUP and Ottoman authorities were partly misinformed and partly incompetent and partly responsible. How well do you believe that European governments - allies and foes - were informed, how would you describe their competency concerning the region as well as the rest of the country.

The Germans had some general idea of what was happening in Diarbekir province, especially in the southern region bordering on Zor district and Mosul province because a major military supply route ran through that region. A lot of the other information was fragmentary and after say July 1915 few foreigners traveled through Diarbekir and survived the trip. The disappearance of the British citizen Albert Atkinson, murdered by Reshid Bey, and US missionary George Knapp, who died under suspicious circumstances, all detailed in the book, are telling cases. Thus, Ottoman documentation forms the backbone of the book which is supplemented by German, US, British, French, Armenian, and other sources. I think it is the first monographic case study on the extermination of Armenians that is primarily based on heretofore unused Ottoman evidence.

“The Prime Minister didn’t say his last words on the subject matter”

• Lastly, do you follow the current politics on the Turkish and Kurdish side? How do you evaluate PM’s condolences as well as Öcalan’s and Kurdish movements positions? Any hope right before we enter 2015?

The Kurdish position is not dependent on one person. In 2012, Kurdish intellectuals in Diarbekir made a deep impression on me and I am confident that they will find the right approach to the darker sites of their own history. After having suffered repression for a long time, I trust that there is little willingness within the Kurdish population to justify violence against helpless people, including women and children, not matter if Kurds were involved in the criminal act or not.

The PM's condolences were of great importance. They marked a departure from the old paradigm that had been promoted by the Turkish extreme right and which had dominated Turkish historiography, the media, and also government perceptions. In the PM's statement the Ottoman Armenians were no longer denounced as terrorists or aliens who had received what they had deserved. On the contrary, now the Ottoman Armenian population is rightly considered as bona fide Ottoman citizens of the time who had suffered because of government policies. Moreover, these policies were described as inhumane. Thus, the Turkish government rejected the fascist discourse of that tiny but just too vocal minority in Turkey. The PM also affirmed that his government shared exactly the some appreciation for human rights and democracy often referred to by critics of his government and thereby established a solid basis for constructive discussions on the extermination of Armenians. Naturally, not everybody welcomed this historic statement. The Turkish extreme right woke up to the fact that its bluff had been exposed and that they could no longer control the debate with manipulations while lacking even the semblance of solid evidence. In other words, they are no longer part of any acceptable debate. Similarly, circles who view the extermination of Armenians as a welcome tool to further political agendas beyond the subject matter itself feel a bit at a loss. It is very easy to deal with a denialist Turkey. A Turkey that competently faces its own history is so much more difficult to confront. Still, there is wide agreement that the statement however important it was, did not yet fully address all burning issues and more is expected. But then the PM did not state that this would be his last time he will be addressing the matter. So I am confident that he will return to the issue. At that time he doubtlessly will also take into consideration the new results generated by research into the newly released files from the Ottoman archives.

As far as I can see, Turkey is increasingly taking the initiative in these debates. The scholarly most challenging and current debates take place in Turkey. There is no more censorship. I was never asked to delete or a change a single word in my book. Speaking at conference it does not even occur to me that it might be better to formulate my thoughts in a more restraint manner. Indeed, the most harrowing details of the massacres and other abuses are now discussed in Turkey and a growing public interest sustains this discussion. Looking at scholarly production in Turkey, we all can see how it has expanded in quality and quantity. Increasingly, Turkish scholars give important impulses to our debates. At the same time, these national or ethnic markers like 'Turk', 'Kurd', 'Armenian', 'American', or 'German' and so on have become irrelevant. It is a free debate and people are respected for their work - period.

So I am positive about research and forthcoming publications. The question of 'recognition' on the other hand is a bit dated. As official data from the Ottoman Ministry of Interior confirmed that at least 1.3 to 1.4 Million Armenians died or were murdered as part of or because of Ottoman government policies the question of genocide or not has become a somewhat academic matter. About 80 percent of the Armenians had been exterminated, the majority of the remainder converted in one way or another. In some areas the kill rate well exceeded 90 percent, women and children were not spared. So with all this knowledge people have long made up their own mind about what has happened. There is hardly anyone in Turkey who wants to defend such crimes or be in any way associated with such inhumane ideologies. The few persons that still subscribe to that kind of ideology do not stand for Turkey, its government or its population. In sum, I am confident that the Turkish government will come up with intelligent and innovative initiatives that will be instrumental in resolving the few remaining issues.