A Normative Account of the Armenian Genocide: History, Justice and International Criminal Law
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Abstract
The First World War gave the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihatve
Terakki, CUP), which had recently acquired the monopoly of power in the Ottoman
Empire, a unique opportunity to solve several interconnected problems.
The war presented a valuable opportunity to restore some of the Empire’s former
glory by regaining lost territories while promoting a Pan-Turanist and
Pan-Islamic agenda. The ultimate goal was to establish a genuinely Turkish
national community1 through a war of revenge for the accumulated humiliations
of the past2. More importantly, the war was a crucible for a new international
law born out of abrogating the nexus of treaties that bound the Empire
and fostered European interventionism, including the leonine regime of capitulations3.
Finally, the war and the annulment of prior engagements empowered
domestic elites to set old scores and adopt the measures necessary for a
‘complete and fundamental elimination’4 of the Armenian Question.
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