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11 Holocaust & Genocide Stud. 28 (1997)
The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide: Four Major Court-Martial Series

handle is hein.journals/hologen11 and id is 34 raw text is: The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide: Four Major Court-Martial Series Vahakn N. Dadrian Genocide Study Project, H. F Guggenheim Foundation This article examines the indictments, proceedings, and verdicts of a num- ber of important trials of perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. While the actual transcripts still are not available to scholars, daily abstracts pub- lished in the government's newspaper provide a unique window into the evidence heard during the trials. Relying upon this and other sources, the author argues that the very fact that the trials took place at all reflected the weakness of Ottoman Turkey after its defeat in World War I. With the ascendancy of the nationalist Kemalists, later the trials were gradually brought to an end, and sympathetic bureaucrats found ways to shelter most of the guilty from severe punishment for their crimes. Though this leniency may have emboldened those who would perpetrate genocide elsewhere, the author observes, the trials nonetheless demonstrated for all to see that the World War I Ittihadist government had attempted to destroy an entire nation in its ancestral homelands. Introduction The prosecution of dozens of World War I Turkish war criminals by a Turkish Military Tribunal has yet to engage the attention of scholars of legal history, in particular geno- cide 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 that 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, 28 Holocaust and Genocide Studies, VII N1, Spring 1997, pp. 28-59

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