Jürgen Zimmerer

Late Ottoman genocides: the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish population and extermination policies—introduction

1. Introduction Late Ottoman Genocides: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish Population and Extermination Policies Dominik J. Schaller and Jurgen Zimmerer 2. Seeing like a Nation-State: Young Turk Social Engineering in Eastern Turkey, 1913-1950 Ugur Umit Ungor 3. The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a case of Violent Turkification Matthias Bjornlund 4. Perception of the Others Ill-Fate: What Greek Orthodox Refugees from the Ottoman Empire Reported about the Destruction of Ottoman Armenians Herve Georgelin 5. A Prelude to Genocide: CUP Population Policies and Provincial Insecurity, 1908-1914 Dikran M. Kaligian 6. Dissolve or Punish? The International Debate amongst Jurists and Publicists on the Consequences of the Armenian Genocide for the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1923 Daniel Marc Segesser

Settlers, imperialism, genocide. Introduction: apologies and the need to right historical wrongs

During a state visit in Libya at the end of August 2008, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi promised Libya financial investments of E3.4 billion over the next 25 years as compensation for Italian atrocities committed during occupation and war in Libya between 1911 and 1942. In a document handed to Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, Italy formally apologised for colonial injustices, bringing to an end a dispute from which Italian–Libyan relations had suffered for more than four decades. In Italy, however, the apology and the promised reparations were met with some critical responses. A veteran organization of former colonial soldiers and settlers for example, representing some 20,000 people, demanded compensation for their own losses when the colonial empire collapsed. Italy seemed quite an unlikely candidate for this kind of apology, since Italian colonialism had been a rather short-lived affair and is commonly considered as somewhat insignificant, both for Italian history, and for that of colonialism generally. In addition, Berlusconi can certainly not be accused of being a leftist liberal, whose conscience demanded an apology. The apology was rather a rational political choice. At the heart of it apparently lay Italy’s need to secure Libya’s goodwill in the fight against illegal African immigrants, not to mention the desire for economic cooperation between the countries, especially regarding the supply of Libyan gas and oil. Italy has Europe’s longest coastline and thousands of African refugees try to cross the Mediterranean Sea every year to reach Italy and with that the sanctuary of the European Union. Since it has proven virtually impossible to seal off Italy’s long coast by police or military forces, now Libya is being asked to prevent the refugees from reaching the Mediterranean in the first place. There is neither time nor space here to discuss the deep irony in the fact that an apology for colonial crimes was issued to gain a former colony’s support for a policy which aims again at securing Europe’s exceptional status and wealth, and which, by doing so, again excludes the majority of those people who suffered most under colonialism. It is, however, a good example of the increased importance and power of the former colonies, which has started to dictate a change in Journal of Genocide Research (2008), 10(4), December, 475–477

From the Editors: Environmental genocide? Climate change, mass violence and the question of ideology

What has genocide to do with climate change? Nothing at all, most people would argue. Conventional wisdom has it that genocide is an ideological crime, carried out by atavistic thugs, who are driven by an obscure belief in primitive or irrational theories or rites. Genocide thus becomes a crime of lunatic psychopaths, an aberration of history, at least of the enlightened kind. The ongoing and in itself almost morbid fascination with certain rites and cultic elements of Nazism is proof of this. Certainly, everybody who has ever looked closely at the horrendous crimes committed by man against man sometimes feels this way, and is inclined to accept that the perpetrators stand outside the path of progress and reason, which has allegedly shaped European history since the Middle Ages, or even before. This is a rather comforting perspective. For if we can attribute mass violence of the most extreme kind to psychopathological cases alone, then “we,” who are apparently sound and “healthy,” are safe. Even more importantly, our modern, rational world, based on reason and enlightenment, becomes the very antithesis of genocide. All we have to do is continue our progression to progress, and the danger will be averted. Convincing as this may seem, especially from a viewer’s point trained by a certain image of the main Holocaust perpetrators, this perspective entails the danger of being too narrow in its approach and therefore missing out on one of the major causes of mass violence in the future. What if genocide is not only the achievement of irrational criminals? What if the decision for genocide is taken as a rational political choice, as a “solution” during a (real or perceived) crisis? Such a case has, for example, been made for the Nazi genocides in Eastern Europe during World War II. The murder of millions of Polish and Soviet citizens, it has been argued, had been accepted by the German political and military leadership as a way to solve the logistical “problem” of supplying the German troops with food. On an even grander scale, “Generalplan Ost” included the removal and—accepted—starving to death of up to 30 million Soviet and Polish citizens in order to secure the agricultural production for the German “Reich.” Other problems, for which expulsion and extermination seemed a “rational solution,” were caused by the forced population movements, which intended to Germanize the former Polish mainland by settling ethnic Germans from the South Tirol and other regions, where Germans had been an ethnic minority. The influx of those Journal of Genocide Research (2007), 9(3), September, 349–351

From the editors: towards transnational genocide studies: recent trends and future developments in genocide research

Since its foundation seven years ago, readers of the Journal of Genocide Research knew what to expect on the first pages. Henry Huttenbach, founder and editor of the journal, has been instrumental in establishing this field, upon which he also commented with stimulating, often controversial and critical insights in his introductory editorials. Now, in the journal’s eighth year, he decided to share not only the editorship of the JGR with Dominik J. Schaller and myself, but also the precious space at the beginning of each issue. We are very grateful for this act of confidence, still very unusual in an academic field where seniority still seems to be of prime importance and a voluntary sharing of achievements as part of a process of intended hand-over to a younger generation anything but the order of the day. The fact that the editors are now based in three different countries also reflects recent developments in the field, which has seen a remarkable widening of its geographical scope. The JGR is once again—in the best sense of the word— avant-garde in the field of genocide studies. While genocide research has become an established academic discipline in the USA already since the 1980s—Raphael Lemkin’s truly pioneering work on genocide has largely been forgotten for reasons that would merit a close examination of its own—its institutional recognition began much later in other parts of the world. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, genocide studies turned into a global affair by having gained an institutional foothold on all continents. Genocide-related topics are taught from Sydney to Stanford, from Cape Town to Uppsala. Genocide research is carried out in South Africa as well as in Japan, in Poland as in Brazil. Globalizing genocide scholarship in this way is no mean achievement, for which scholars like Henry Huttenbach can take credit. ENOGS, whose official journal the JGR is now, even goes a step further: founded a year ago in Berlin, this global network of genocide scholars is no longer nationally based, but is truly transnational. One advantage of the original confinement of genocide research to the USA had been that all participants shared the same language, the same academic socialization, the same political culture. Research was set in the political arena and framework of reference of the US–American society. In a globalized field, this is no longer sustainable. Academic traditions differ from country to country; historical Journal of Genocide Research (2006), 8(1), March, 3–5

Beyond Gaddafi: sustainable prevention in the face of environmental injustice

Whilst I write these lines, fighter jets of NATO and other states are bombarding Libya with a United Nations mandate. Their targets are the heavy weapons of Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi’s regime, one of the worst dictatorships in Northern Africa. Few doubt that their cause is a fundamentally just one. Gaddafi had announced early in the conflict with ‘rebels’ that he would take revenge on those who dared to join an armed rebellion against his regime. Doubtless, the ‘rebels’—and thousands of civilians—would stand no chance of escaping his wrath without outside intervention. One need not ascribe a genocidal intention to Gaddafi, as some have done, to justify action against the regime in Libya. It is engaged in gross violations of human rights, and many sincerely believe that the bombardment seems to be a clear case of the efficacy of humanitarian intervention. But can it be a role model for dealing with cross human rights violations and genocide on a global scale? The success (at least momentarily) of the intervention conceals the larger problem of prevention within the mainstream of Genocide Studies. Interventions almost by definition can address only emergencies of a certain, limited kind. They can perhaps stop certain forms of collective atrocities, but not prevent or transform structural violence. They seem to be a useless tool against systemic failures and ‘perpetrator-less’ crimes. By that I mean humanitarian crisis that are not perpetrated by single states or elites within state structures, but are embedded in the very nature of a global political-economic system. They may be caused by developments sometimes far removed from those regions where the violence takes place. Global social injustice and environmental violence are among the key symptoms of this wider systemic dysfunction. It is time to address these issues as well and develop a new preventative framework that goes well beyond intervention. Why has the West backed Gaddafi in recent years? Surely, the ‘War on Terror’ has played a role, as has Libya’s promise to end its support for international Journal of Genocide Research (2011), 13(1–2), March–June 2011, v–vii

From the Editors: genocide and global social justice: towards sustainable prevention

Genocide prevention—as we know it—has failed! Sixty years after the UN “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” we have to confront this unpleasant truth. There might be ever more instances where perpetrators of genocidal crimes are being brought to justice and punished, but prevention has not worked satisfactorily. After Rwanda it was said that we should lobby more effectively so that governments and other political decision makers would have to acknowledge genocide when it happens. Then the mechanisms of the international community, namely military intervention, would help to prevent the worst. In 2004, for example, the US Congress recognised that the violence in Darfur was of genocidal nature— and nothing happened. And despite endless campaigns and action days, in which tens of thousands demanded action from their governments, at the very least 200,000 people have been left dead by violence and disease so far. The conflict threatens to destabilize the entire region. And no effective steps are being taken to end that conflict. The sad truth is that governments are only prepared to take effective action— economic, military or otherwise—if it is in their national interest to do so. And, if it is in their national interest, they will take action regardless of whether or not a community of scholars or activists, or even single governments, declare the situation to be genocidal or not. Kosovo in 1999 is a case in point. Leaders of the “Western World” were quick to evoke genocide or even Auschwitz—something that could never be allowed ever to happen again, the then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer claimed—thereby giving an abashing example not only of Holocaust relativization but also of the abuse of the Holocaust for political purposes. And NATO almost immediately started bombing Yugoslavia. We have since learned that information about the violence and the number of victims was grossly exaggerated. With regards to Zimbabwe, on the other hand, when President Robert Mugabe, who has a proven track record of at least ethnic cleansing (Operation Gukurahundi, 1980s) started his city ‘cleaning’ and cleansing program in 2005 (Operation Murambatsvina), nothing happened. Mugabe was even invited to the EU-Africa summit in Lisbon in 2007. There are many Zimbabwes. Given this poor track record it is necessary to ask the question—undoubtedly central to Genocide Studies—whether prevention as it is predominantly understood at the moment is adequately developed as a concept and sufficiently Journal of Genocide Research (2008), 10(2), June, 183–186

From the Editors: genocidal terrorism? A plea for conceptual clarity

Since 9/11, the world has undoubtedly changed. The attacks by Al-Qaeda and the US-led response, the War on Terror, have altered not only the global landscape. Their fallout can also be seen in the epistemological systems with which we try to understand the world. Not only is the proverb “knowledge is power” true, but its opposite can also claim relevance: “power is knowledge.” Since a considerable amount of research, both in the arts and humanities and the social sciences, is funded by governmental organizations, or better by state-funded programmes, these funding bodies exercise considerable influence over academics’ research agendas. All academics understand the importance of those famous “key phrases,” which are essential for any research application seeking success. “Terrorism” has quickly found a home on this list. “Genocide” is another of those catchwords which attract attention. It was just a matter of time before both terms were conflated to create the powerful phrase “genocidal terrorism.” “Genocidal aspects of contemporary terrorism” is now even to be found amongst the key topics of international genocide conferences. As understandable as the use of this phrase may be in the political arena, in which attracting attention seems to count for almost everything, from a scholarly perspective the concept of “genocidal terrorism” is doubtful, to say the least. It certainly needs to be well defined and reflected upon. If not, it will serve as just another example for the perception that genocide studies is not much more than a potpourri of mankind’s most hideous crimes, its scholars fuelled by a rather naive “do-good” feeling, stemming from engaging with global injustice of the most horrific kind. It also creates the impression that genocide scholars jump on any bandwagon, regardless of the epistemological soundness of the enterprise, and that politics determines not only research agendas but also the categories by which scholarship works. Worse still, politics conflates genocide and terrorism in order to use Holocaust imagery for political purposes. If terrorists are attempting genocide, they are not only positioning themselves on the same moral level as the Nazis, but the fight against them is also elevated to the same moral height as the fight against the latter. If genocide is the goal of the attacker, then surely all means are justified in order to fend them off. By uncritically accepting this terminology, genocide studies again confuses scholarship with politics, which has unfortunately been all too often the case in the past. Journal of Genocide Research (2006), 8(4), December, 379–381