Thank you for that very kind introduction. It is a pleasure to share with you my new book, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. I also wish to thank my publisher, Metropolitan Books; my editor, Riva Hocherman; and the Zoryan Institute, for its efforts in translating and editing the book.

A Shameful Act recounts a series of attempts to try and punish those who were responsible for the deportation and mass killing of Ottoman Armenian citizens during World War I.

During the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Allied Powers tried to create an international legal framework for the trial of crimes against humanity. Next, Great Britain detained some of the suspects in order to establish its own courts to try them. Although both attempts failed, the Ottoman Military Tribunal in Istanbul was able to document and establish responsibility for the genocide and imposed sentences on some minor officials. Noteworthy aspects of the Istanbul trials were the indictments, the gathering of evidence, and the pre-trial investigations and interrogations.

A Shameful Act also reconstructs the annihilation of the Armenians from Ottoman-Turkish as well as Western sources. In addition to military tribunal records, the Ottoman sources include the Prime Ministerial Archive in Istanbul, historic newspapers, Ottoman and Turkish Republic parliamentary minutes, and a multitude of memoirs. The result is an integrated narrative based on Ottoman-Turkish as well as Western sources.

As you know, the official Turkish position rests on the claim that the Ottoman sources contain no evidence of a deliberate policy of systematic killing. It is also claimed that Ottoman sources are infallible, whereas the American, British, German, and Austrian documents are unreliable. In the West, meanwhile, it is widely believed that the Ottoman archives cannot be trusted because they were altered to cover up the genocide. The common logic underlying both of these arguments is that Ottoman and Western sources are mutually contradictory.

In fact, the reality is just the opposite. What remains in the Ottoman archives and in court records is sufficient to show that the CUP central committee, and the Special Organization it set up to carry out its plan, did deliberately attempt to destroy the Armenian population. The archival evidence taken in its entirety leaves no doubt that the scale of the destruction would have been impossible without central planning.

A Shameful Act is dedicated to the memory of a Muslim Turk, Haji Khalil, who saved the family of my good friend Greg Sarkissian during the Genocide. Haji Khalil and Greg’s grandfather were business partners in the city of Urfa when the government orders came: Whoever hides an Armenian is to be hanged in front of his own house, and then the house will be burned. In defiance of this order, Haji Khalil hid the Sarkissian family, eight people in all–in his attic, taking care of them, feeding them and even burying one of them when she passed away.

I heard Greg tell this story at a conference in Armenia in 1995, ending with these inspiring words:

I want to extend my hand to the people of Turkey, to ask them to remember that though at one time their state was led by mass murderers, they also had their Haji Khalils, and that it would honor the memory of the latter to acknowledge the overwhelming truth of the Genocide, to express regrets, so that the healing process may begin between our two peoples.

The next day, April 24, I went to the Armenian cathedral at Etchmiadzin to attend a memorial service for the victims of the Armenian Genocide. Greg approached me, took my hand, and invited me to light a candle in memory of the Sarkissian family, as he would light a candle in memory of Haji Khalil. I was deeply moved. Together we vowed to preserve the legacy of this righteous man.

I share this story with you in order to illustrate a basic problem in the study of massive human rights violations, including genocide. What is the ethical dimension of this type of research? Is non-partisanship the same as moral neutrality? We are challenged to balance engagement and objectivity, to understand incomprehensible cruelty, and to explain events of unspeakable horror.

Face to face with mass murder, we tend to distance ourselves in various ways. We usually tend to condemn act of mass violence and declare as “inhuman” because of their savage character. We describe them in metaphysical terms, such as “evil,” and we place between ourselves and the events a wall of morality. Walling ourselves off might help to assuage our consciences but to focus so much on our moral revulsion make us unable to comprehend the human motivations of the perpetrators or to understand genocide as a phenomenon which could possibly be predicted and prevented. This approach causes also people to remain stuck in the pattern of blaming and finger pointing.

Another way to distance ourselves is to adopt an overly objective language, a “vocabulary of inhumanity,” which can excuse the inexcusable and justify the unjustifiable. The important question is to analyze while maintaining our moral stance. This difficult challenge in the social sciences is described as the balance between engagement and dissociation.

I maintain—and this is my approach to the Armenian Genocide—that we can be objective and dissociate ourselves only to the extent that we are also morally engaged. Our analysis must be grounded in a firm commitment to respect human life and dignity and to oppose any sort of violence which targets a group of people because of their race, ethnicity, belief, or religion. Without such commitment, we cannot be objective in analyzing mass crimes.

Even though at some points in A Shameful Act you will encounter analytic language that may strike you as cold or distanced, you should know that I wrote this book with the spirit of Haji Khalil and for the legacy of this man. I firmly believe that Haji Khalil’s example teaches us how Turks and Armenians should deal with this dark past, not only as Armenians or Turks, but also beyond these ethnic identities, as human beings who respect one another.

My basic thesis is that we need to overhaul our approach to the Turkish-Armenian conflict. This can also be called as a paradigm change. Until now, the Turkish-Armenian problem has been perceived within the old paradigm which produced these conflicts, namely, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the clash of different ethnic or national groups. These conflicts can be blamed on the desire of each ethnic or national group to define its territories and determine its own boundaries, which resulted in ethnic cleansing within these boundaries.

A Shameful Act repositions the Armenian-Turkish conflict within the new paradigm of transitional justice, as a part of the democratization effort within existing nation-states. The conflict should not be regarded as merely a dispute between two parties over territories and boundaries, but rather as a human rights issue between them. Both parties and especially the nations states Turkey and Armenia in the region should deal with their pasts as a part of their democratization process and try to redefine themselves and their perception of the other’s identity.

Within this framework, my book should be understood as a new reading of Ottoman and Turkish history. The traditional narrative of demise and partition, which we were taught in Turkey, is also a history of continuous violation of what we now call human rights–so much so, that the Ottoman Empire was unable to prevent its own collapse.

What does it mean to integrate human rights into a new historical paradigm? First: There is a core principle that all studies of mass atrocities can teach us, and this is the fundamental logic of my book: In order to prevent the recurrence of mass crimes, people must first consider their own responsibility, discuss it, debate it, and recognize it.

What I mean is very simple. The Armenian Genocide was an outcome of the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of many new nation-states within the imperial border. The great suffering experienced during this period was enshrined in the collective memory of each newly emerged nation-state. Memory is selective, however. As a general rule, the ethnic and national groups tend to memorialize not the suffering they have inflicted on others, but the pain they themselves have endured.

A Shameful Act breaks with this tradition. In raising the question of Turkish responsibility in the Armenian Genocide, I call upon the people of Turkey, as well as other peoples in the region, to consider the sufferings inflicted in their name.

The second meaning of this paradigm change is that it is critical to merge multiple narratives into a single history. Two significant features of Turkey’s transition from empire to republic exist. One is the partition of the Ottoman Empire among the Great Powers and the resulting total collapse of the empire. On the other hand is the persecution and massacre of different ethnic groups. These two narratives have developed as competing and mutually exclusive historiographies. For example, as of July 2004, two out of three Turks still believe that Western countries want to carve Turkey up, as was done with the Ottoman Empire. More than half think that the reforms required by the EU are those similar to the Treaty of Sèvres, which dismembered the Ottoman Empire in 1919. This mindset allows no room for acceptance of the persecutions, massacres, and expulsion of ethnic and religious minorities. Those minorities, for their part, regard the demise of the Empire as positive, and their history revolves around each group as it was maturing and becoming a nation. The opposition of these two accounts, which are actually two sides of the same coin, impede the development of an adequate narrative of the period critical to understanding the Armenian Genocide in its historical significance.

The third meaning of this paradigm change relates to how we should incorporate the Armenian Genocide within Turkish history and help solve the mystery of Turkish denial. In this connection, allow me to summarize one of the main arguments of A Shameful Act.

The prevailing understanding of the period of 1918-23 and the resulting Sèvres and Lausanne Agreements can be characterized as a war between different national groups over land and borders. The general understanding in Turkey is that this was a war between the Turks, who desired after World War I to preserve their sole remaining territory as a legitimate successor of the Ottoman Empire, and the Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds, who wanted to establish their own nation-states and to partition Anatolia through an understanding with the British, French and Italians.

The Treaty of Sèvres signed in August 1920 essentially decided to partition in favor of the non-Turkish nationalities. For the Turks, therefore, Sèvres remains a black mark. The Ottoman leaders who signed the agreement were sentenced to death as traitors by the nationalist movement in Anatolia. For the other nationalities, although Sèvres did not fully reflect their demands for territory, the treaty represents an unprecedented historical opportunity to resolve the issue in their favor. A similar positive attitude can be seen on the Turkish side in regard to the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which guaranteed Turkish dominance in Anatolia, and therefore, for the Turks, it stands as a milestone and validation of their continued national existence. Inversely, the other nationalities see it as a great historical injustice.

Even though contradictory assessments of Sèvres and Lausanne exist, the underlying logic is the same, and revolves around the questions of which party has the right to own certain territories and who was justified in claiming those territories. But this was not the main element that determined subsequent historical developments. In short, there is an alternative, little-known history of Sèvres and Lausanne. You can read this history in A Shameful Act.

What we would now call the “human rights” dimension of the postwar period concerned the atrocities perpetrated by the Ottoman government against its Christian population during World War I. The prevailing mood among the victorious Entente powers at that time was that “the Turks” organized the massacres of other peoples, above all the Armenians. Thus, it was necessary to punish “the Turks” in order to rescue the other peoples (Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, etc.) from Turkish domination. Punishing “the Turks” had to be done in two phases. The first was done by individually trying the members of the Ottoman government and other officials, who were held to be responsible for the crimes. The second was to limit “the Turks” to a state that would be as small and as weak as possible, so that these atrocities would not be repeated.

I am not saying that the Great Powers desired to partition Anatolia out of a deep concern for human rights, nor am I ignoring the Powers’ colonial and imperial interests—far from it. I am saying that those interests were couched in the language of what we now call human rights.

Conceptualizing history along the axis of human rights and punishing “the Turks,” as described in that period, opens an entirely neglected dimension, which, up to now, has been missing in accounts of the history of the period, namely, the connection between the Armenian genocide and the establishment of the Turkish Republic.

In order to understand the events of the time, recall that postwar Turkey was governed from two political centers. One was Istanbul, which was still the capital of the Ottoman Empire and housed the Ottoman Government. The other was Ankara, today’s capital city, the center of the Turkish Nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal. Both governments were deeply concerned with how to deal with past atrocities.

A Shameful Act demonstrates that both governments acknowledged the massacres of Armenians and agreed with the Allies that the perpetrators should be punished. Where they disagreed with the Allies was in the scope and extent of retributive justice. Ankara and Istanbul thought punishment should be limited to the wartime leadership of the Union and Progress Party and the government officials who committed the crimes. These trials were termed “just and necessary.” Both governments vehemently opposed the partition of Anatolia.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, condemned the wartime deportation and massacres of Armenians. He criticized the Union and Progress Party and its pan-Turanist, pan-Islamic dreams of territorial expansion. In a conversation with the American General Harbord (September 21, 1919), who was assessing a possible U.S. mandate over Armenia, Kemal said “We believe in the detrimental nature of ‘Turanism’” (Turanizmin zararlarına inanıyoruz). In another memorandum he characterized Turanism as “a dangerous concept.”

The Ankara and Istanbul governments signed a protocol in October of 1919 calling for an election of the Ottoman Parliament according to the constitution. Five protocols were signed. The first protocol declared: “1. Ittihadism – (Party of Union and Progress) or any hint of its reawakening is politically very damaging… 4. It is judicially and politically necessary to punish those who committed crimes in connection with the deportation.” In the third Protocol both parties agreed that the fugitive members of “Ittihat,” who were wanted in connection with the genocide, were not to participate in the elections.

The reason reasons for this attitude is given in the following way: “it would be improper for individuals who are connected to the evil deeds of the Unionists, or persons who have been sullied by the nefarious acts of the deportation and massacre or other wicked actions that are contrary to the true interests of the nation” to participate in the national elections.

His attitude can be summarized by these words he spoke to Parliament on April 24, 1920, where he called the atrocities a “shameful act,” which inspired the title of my book. Now Kemal was not a human rights activist or an altruist. As a nationalist and a politician, he believed that trial and punishment were the price of sovereignty. In a letter he stated that the punishment “should not stay only on paper. . . but should be carried out, since this would successfully impress the foreign elements.”

In short, it was accepted that crimes were committed during the war, but that justice would be served on the leaders of Ittihat and members of the government according to Turkish domestic law. Meanwhile, the partition of Anatolia was firmly rejected. The rationale for such an attitude was the expectation of more favorable results at the Peace Talks following such trials, and the desire to maintain the national borders.

I maintain that if the Allies had treated the territorial issue as separate from the punishment of individual perpetrators, we would be talking about quite a different history. This is not only a hypothetical speculation. As I show in A Shameful Act, there were circles among the Allied powers that advocated a different policy on the sovereignty of the Ottoman State. Unfortunately, the Allies’ primary concern was not to punish crimes against humanity, but to partition Anatolia according to their own colonial interests.

A Shameful Act includes many more examples of the attitude of the Turkish Government towards the Union and Progress party and the Armenian killings. The interesting question here is how the government’s attitude changed. Why did Turkey begin by supporting retributive justice, but end with supporting the suspects held by the British and today’s denial?

The turning point in the Turkish attitude on trials of the suspects for massacres and deportation came when the provisions of the Sevres Agreement became clear. The allied forces understood punishment mainly as the lifting of the right of sovereignty from the Ottoman State. For this reason the leaders of the new Turkish state who were actually fighting for the continuation of the Ottoman State on the territory that remained were quickly accused and included in the trials of war and genocide criminals continuing in Istanbul.

When the provisions of the Sèvres Agreement started to be shaped in April 1920, Mustafa Kemal and his friends were sentenced to death in absentia by Military Court Nr. 1, which was primarily responsible for trying war criminals. In March 1920 Istanbul was occupied in order to fulfill the conditions of the Sevres treaty, and the attitude of the nationalist movement on the prosecution of war and genocide criminals changed. The letter Mustafa Kemal wrote on 12 August 1920 addressed to Istanbul is of particular importance concerning this change of attitude.

The Sèvres Treaty had been accepted, and accordingly those responsible for crimes of genocide and war had to be retried. Kemal’s letter dealt with the executions in Istanbul and was intended to be forwarded to the English Headquarters. The letter said: “The Ottoman Government… continues to hang the children of the country for allegations of deportation and massacres, though these executions no longer have a meaning.” Executions should only be carried out, if “they are meaningful,” is what the lines are saying. Meaningless executions should be stopped.

The trials of the war criminals were only partially realized because it became impossible to separate the issue of partitioning Anatolia from that of retributive justice against the perpetrators. This history has been erased from the national consciousness of the Turks. For their part, the victorious powers’ putting their colonial interests ahead of the human rights concerns and advocating of the partition of Anatolia at any price contributed to the national forgetting of the human rights dimension of the immediate post-war period 1918-1923.

I’ve tried to show that if the Western forces had taken the nationalist demands concerning the borders seriously, and had negotiated for trials in cases of “crimes against humanity” in return, we might be talking about a very different history today. The Turkish nationalist movement was mainly shaped by the linkage between these two issues. As national sovereignty concerns became paramount, the dimension of human rights was doomed to be forgotten. This is the main reason that in modern Turkey this aspect of history, including the Armenian Genocide, has been consigned to oblivion.

There is an additional reason which I call the continuity factor or the dilemma of making heroes into villains. If a community is forced to recognize that many of its revered founders were perpetrators, then reference to the past is indeed traumatic. The community can cope with the fundamental contradiction between identity claims and recognition only by a collective schizophrenia, by denial, by decoupling or withdrawal. This is exactly what is happening in Turkey. The continuation of the ruling elite from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic ensured that there would be a strong three-fold bond between the Armenian Genocide and the foundation of modern Turkey. First, after losing the war in 1918, the Turkish nationalist movement in Anatolia was organized by many of the same people who organized the Genocide. Even before the war, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), had already drafted plans for national resistance in case of military defeat. Immediately after the armistice, the CUP established the first defense and resistance organizations in Anatolia. One of these organizations, known as Karakol, was established by the direct order of CUP leaders Talaat and Enver. Karakol’s primary mission was to organize the resistance, while also smuggling fugitive CUP members out of the country. The second important connection is a natural outcome of the first. A significant number of the initial organizers of the national movement had themselves directly participated in the Genocide. The third connection between the Republic and the Genocide was the emergence in Anatolia of a class of wealthy men who had profited directly from the Genocide. The newly rich were the standard-bearers for the nationalist movement in certain regions.

It is very clear that there is a huge contradiction within Turkish identity; society would be devastated if one called those whom they regarded as “great saviors” and “people who created a nation from nothing,” as “murderers and thieves.” The Armenian Genocide has to be regarded as the traumatic reference for Turkish National Identity after 1923. It must seem so much simpler to completely deny the Genocide than to seize the initiative and face the destruction of a closely-held self-image of the Republic and Turkish national identity.

A Shameful Act includes a detailed study of the post-war trials of those who perpetrated the Armenian Genocide, and I am especially pleased that the analysis is based on a large number of previously unused archival documents. But I ended the book with a larger philosophical question. Because the Great Powers used the idea of human rights to legitimize their obvious colonial moves, Turks began to view the notion as Western hypocrisy. The fundamental problems that lay behind the failure to bring the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide to justice persist to this day. If it is not possible to make a clear distinction between humanitarian goals, on one hand, and a state’s economic and political interests, on the other, then how are we to come to agreement on ethical norms? And on what legal and theoretical grounds shall we justify international interventions? If we look the world especially Ruanda and Darfur today we will see that these questions have still remained unanswered.