Since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, its official armed and paramilitary forces have committed numerous violations of international criminal law (including war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide), and are also accused of aiding and abetting crimes committed by non-state actors, including rebel groups in Syria. Turkish war crimes have included massacres, torture, terrorism, deportation or forced displacement, kidnapping, sexual violence, looting, unlawful confinement, unlawful airstrikes and indiscriminate attacks on civilian structures.
The founders of the modern Turkish nation-state, who led the nationalist movement in the years following World War I, committed numerous atrocities during the War of Independence and continued many of the late Ottoman Empire's genocidal policies against Christian minorities, especially Armenians and Greeks. After its formal establishment in 1923, Turkey would perpetrate many human rights violations against Kurds (both inside and outside its borders) during the long running Kurdish–Turkish conflict. Turkey has faced many accusations of committing war crimes in other countries, including in Cyprus, Syria and Libya.
Definition War crimes are defined as acts which violate the laws and customs of war established by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, or acts that are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I and Additional Protocol II. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 extends the protection of civilians and prisoners of war during military occupation, even if there is no armed resistance, for the period of one year after the end of hostilities. However, the occupying power should still be bound by several provisions of the convention as long as "such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory."Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 2Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 6
Background
Ottoman genocides and campaigns of ethnic cleansing
In the final years of the Ottoman Empire's existence, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) – the Turkish nationalist political party that ruled over it – committed a genocide against the empire's Armenian population. The Ottomans carried out organised, systematic massacres and deportations of Armenians throughout World War I, and they portrayed acts of resistance by Armenians as rebellions in an attempt to justify their extermination campaign. In early 1915, a number of Armenians volunteered to join the Russian forces, and the Ottoman government used this as a pretext to issue the Tehcir Law (Law on Deportation), which authorised the deportation of Armenians from the Empire's eastern provinces to Syria between 1915 and 1918. The Armenians were intentionally marched to death, and a large number of them were attacked by Ottoman brigands. While the exact number of deaths is unknown, the International Association of Genocide Scholars estimates that 1.5 million Armenians were killed. The Ottoman Empire repeatedly denied the genocide was happening, and the government of Turkey has continued these denials, arguing that those who died were victims of inter-ethnic fighting, famine, or disease during World WarI; these claims are rejected by most historians.
Other ethnic groups were also attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events different parts of the same policy of extermination. An estimated 250,000 Assyrian Christians (about half of the population) and 350,000–750,000 Greeks were killed between 1915 and 1922. According to Rudolph Rummel, during 1900 and 1923, the Turks massacred between 3,500,000 and 4,300,000 Christian Greek, Armenian, Assyrian and other Christian groups.
Turkish War of Independence
Vahagn Avedian argues that the Turkish War of Independence was not directed against the Allied Powers, but that its main objective was to get rid of non-Turkish minority groups. The Turkish National Movement, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, maintained the aggressive policies of the CUP against Christians; most former members of the CUP joined the movement, and were active participants in the war.
Raymond Kévorkian states that "removing non-Turks from the sanctuary of Anatolia" was among the main activities of the Turkish Nationalists after World War I. Preventing Armenians and other Christians from returning home, and therefore allowing their properties to be retained by those who had stolen them during the war, was a key factor in securing popular support for the Turkish National Movement. Christian civilians were subjected to forced deportation to expel them from the country, a policy that continued after the war. These deportations were similar to those employed during the Armenian genocide, and caused many deaths. Many Greek men were conscripted into unarmed labor battalions where the death rate sometimes exceeded 90 percent. Over 1 million Greeks were expelled (as were all remaining Armenians in the areas of Diyarbekir, Mardin, Urfa, Harput, and Malatia), forced across the border into French-mandated Syria.
Historian Erik Sjöberg said that "It seems, in the end, unlikely that the Turkish Nationalist leaders, though secular in name, ever had any intention of allowing any sizeable non-Muslim minority to remain."
Turkish invasion of Armenia
In a secret telegram to General Kâzım Karabekir (who would launch an invasion of Armenia in 1920), Foreign Minister Ahmet Muhtar Mollaoğlu stated that "the most important thing is to eliminate Armenia physically and politically".: "The famous 'war of national liberation', prepared by the Unionists and waged by Kemal, was a vast operation, intended to complete the genocide by finally eradicating Armenian, Greek, and Syriac survivors." Rıza Nur, one of the Turkish delegates at Lausanne, wrote that "disposing of people of different races, languages and religions in our country is the most … vital issue". Avedian holds that the existence of the Armenian Republic was considered the "greatest threat" for the continuation of Turkish state, and that for this reason, they "fulfilled the genocidal policy of its CUP predecessor". After the Christian population was destroyed, the focus shifted to the Kurdish population.
The Turkish invasion and occupation of Armenia had drastic humanitarian consequences: between 60,000–198,000 Armenian civilians were killed and around 12,000–18,000 were taken prisoner to be used as forced labour. Women and children were subjected to sexual violence, and widespread looting of food and farming equipment led to widespread famine, and left 500,000 Armenians in extreme poverty.
Massacre of Armenians at Marash
During the 1920 Battle of Marash, thousands of repatriated Armenians were massacred by Turkish militias; a surgeon at a nearby hospital reported that around 3,000 Armenians at the Church of Saint Stephen had been killed by Turkish, Kurdish and Cherkess villagers. Some Armenians tried to hide in church buildings and schools, but eventually, all churches, and entire Armenian districts in Marash, were burnt to the ground. Muré, Materne (1921). Un épisode de la tragédie arménienne: le massacre de Marache (février 1920). Brussels: Société Belge de Libraire. Early reports put the number of Armenian dead at no less than 16,000, although this was later revised down to 5,000–12,000, which were considered far more likely figures.
Samsun deportations
The Turkish National Movement continued the genocidal, Ottoman-era policies towards Greeks during the war of independence. During the late spring of 1921, armed militias led by Topal Osman looted and burned Greek settlements around Samsun and massacred the civilian Greek population. Those who were not already killed were deported, being sent on death marches into the Anatolian interior. On 16 June 1921, the Turkish nationalist government of Ankara authorized the deportation of all Greek males between ages 16 and 50 who remained in Samsun, and mass arrests of local Greeks began the same day; however, in practice, all Greeks in the area (including women, children and elderly men) became targets of deportations and death marches.
Roughly 21,000 people were deported from Samsun, and by September 1922, the city had almost no Greeks left.
Human rights violations at Smyrna
After occupying the city of Smyrna on 9 September 1922, Turkish forces began to systemically target local Greeks and Armenians, committing massacres against them, looting their shops and homes, and sexually assaulting women. The Greek Orthodox Metropolitan bishop, Chrysostomos, was tortured and hacked to death by a Turkish mob. After a fire broke out in the city four days later, Turkish troops reportedly prevented Armenians and Greeks within the fire zone from fleeing. Turkish soldiers and irregulars periodically robbed Greek refugees, beating some, and arresting others who resisted. According to American naval captain Arthur Japy Hepburn (who witnessed the burning of the city), "every able-bodied Armenian man was hunted down and killed wherever found".
The number of Greek and Armenian men deported from Smyrna to the interior of Anatolia, and the number who died as a result, varies across sources. Norman Naimark writes that 30,000 Greek and Armenian men were deported, where most of them died under brutal conditions. Dimitrije Đorđević puts the number of deportees at 25,000 and the number of deaths at labour battalions at 10,000. David Abulafia states that at least 100,000 Greeks were forcibly sent to the interior of Anatolia, where most of them died.
Alleged role in the burning of Smyrna
War crimes against Turkish Kurds
Early repressions of Kurds (1916–1934)
The policy of deporting Ottoman Kurds from their indigenous lands began during World War I under the orders of Talaat Pasha, and continued after the founding of the Republic of Turkey. Although many Kurds were loyal to the empire (with some even supporting the persecution of Christian minorities by the CUP), Turkish authorities nevertheless feared the possibility that they would collaborate with Armenians and Russians to establish their own Kurdish state. In 1916, roughly 300,000 Kurds were deported from Bitlis, Erzurum, Palu and Muş to Konya and Gaziantep during the winter, and most died in a famine.
The official policy of the newly-founded Turkey was to dismantle traditional Kurdish Islamic tribal society and institutions, as well as to continue with the CUP's repressive and assimilationist policies. Consequently, the Kurds began to mobilize for a resistance, culminating with the Sheikh Said rebellion in 1925; in response, the government mobilized half of the Turkish Army and conducted an aerial bombing campaign against the Kurds. The rebellion was ultimately crushed and Sheikh Said executed. Later that year, the government initiated a pogrom in Diyarbakir, executing civilians and burning villages to the ground, which in total destroyed about 206 villages and killed 15,200 people. By late 1925, a new deportation law was implemented and the Kurdish elite – numbering about 500 – were deported to western Turkey.
Zilan massacre