99 - all you should know about the Genocide April, 2014 | Page 45

photographic evidence document s how the
pretext of deportation was used to organize the
extermination of a nation.

— Osmanlı Türkiye’sinde 1,500,000 Ermeni yaşamadığı
halde o kadarı öldürülebilirmiydi? (How could 1,500,000
Armenians have been killed if there were not so many of them
living in the Ottoman Empire? [Turkish translation])
— Savaş şartlarında 10,000 kişinin ölümü
soykırımmıdır? (The death of 10,000 people in conditions of
war is not a genocide, is it? [Turkish translation])

Fake Numbers
The debate run by the Turkish side maintains a
strong focus on the number of Armenians killed. The
denialists cast doubt on the number of one and a
half million victims. Because it is simply impossible
to absolutely deny the mass murders of the
Armenians, an attempt is made to foment doubt on
this particular aspect of it and then disseminate that
doubt over the whole issue. One of the well-known
deniers of the Armenian Genocide, Justin McCartney,
based on controversial studies, says that only one
and a half million people lived in the Empire up to
1915. According to the former President of the Turkish
Historical Society Yusuf Halaçoğlu, the number of
Armenians who died was 56,000, of whom only
10,000 were killed.
The use of this approach is, to put it mildly, strange.
Those responsible for the slaughter at Srebrenica in
Bosnia have been found guilty by the International

There is the opinion that
in 2015, that is 100 years
after the well-known
events in Ottoman Turkey,
the issue can be taken off
the agenda. Let me state
that no such law exists
wherein there is a statute
of limitations of 100 years
for such issues. The law
says that the relevance of
specific legal claims may
diminish after a certain
period of time has passed.
So in that sense, I cannot
say anything specific
about the Armenian issue.
However, I can state with
certainty that there is no
law which limits the legal
right to state these claims
after 100 years.

Court of Justice in The Hague as perpetrators of
genocide, even though the number of people killed
there was “only” 7000.
But even if we look at the debate from this angle, the
strongest evidence consists of the official numbers

William Schabas
Chairman, Center for Human Rights
at the National University of Ireland

that come from Turkey. After the collapse of the
Young Turk party, in December 1918, the Minister of
the Interior Mustafa Arif formed a commission that
was charged with studying this issue. They worked
for three months and presented their results to
public judgment during the period when Cemal Bey
was the new Interior Minister, on March 14, 1919.
Based on those data, the number of Armenians killed
between 1914 and 1918 was 800,000.

ARMENIAN CHILDREN WERE ORPHANED AS A
RESULT OF THE GENOCIDE FROM 1915 TO 1923