Prof. Vahakn Dadrian, Director of Genocide Research at theZoryan Institute, was honoured by Dr. Hranush Hakobyan, Armenia’s Minister of Diaspora, with the bestowing of a gold medal, the Ministry’shighest national award. In a public ceremony on December 20, Minister Hakobyan underscored Dadrian’s immense contribution over more than fiftyyears to the scholarly study of the Armenian Genocide, at the same timeraising awareness of it in international circles as a prime example of the“ultimate crime.”
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DATE: January 5, 2011 Tel: 416-250-9807
Prof. Vahakn Dadrian Receives Medal from Armenian Diaspora Minister Hranush Hakobyan
Yerevan—Prof. Vahakn Dadrian, Director of Genocide Research at the Zoryan Institute, was honoured by Dr. Hranush Hakobyan, Armenia’s Minister of Diaspora, with the bestowing of a gold medal, the Ministry’s highest national award. In a public ceremony on December 20, Minister Hakobyan underscored Dadrian’s immense contribution over more than fifty
years to the scholarly study of the Armenian Genocide, at the same time raising awareness of it in international circles as a prime example of the “ultimate crime.” The Minister particularly emphasized the invaluable nature of Dadrian’s legal studies on the Armenian Genocide.
Prof. Dadrian attended the international conference on “The Crime of Genocide: Prevention, Condemnation and Elimination of Consequences,” convened by Armenia’s Foreign Ministry. He gave a paper titled, “The Armenian Genocide as a Dual Problem of National and International Law.”
By special arrangement, the Zoryan Institute will be distributing his most recent legal study, “The Armenian Genocide as a Dual Problem of National and International Law,” which is published in the latest issue of the University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy, to some 160 legal scholars and institutions of higher learning in North America and
Europe.
Prof. Dadrian was also invited to address the Military Academy, Armenia’s West Point, with an audience of a select group of General-Staff officers and some 400 cadets. After a brief introduction by Major-General M.N. Garabedian, the Principal of the Academy, Dadrian delivered a lecture on “The Role of the Turkish Military in the Organization and Implementation of the World War I Armenian Genocide.” He proceeded to describe and
analyze the various aspects of the involvement of the Turkish military, particularly the mechanics of the execution of the genocidal scheme. In doing so, he focused on three principal instances of military involvement. First was the role of Enver, the Supreme Commander of the Ottoman Armed Forces who, however, was also one of the three supreme leaders of the
Ittihad party, next to Talat and Cemal, who ran the affairs of th e Empire in the decade between 1908 and 1918. It was Enver who was instrumental in officially launching the World War I comprehensive Armenian deportations through the infamous May 14/27 official decree of deportation that bears his signature. Almost a month before that, it was Enver again who, on April 13/26, ordered first the surveillance, then the actual disarming of the Armenians, in tandem with Talat. Second in importance in this respect was the role of Colonel, later in the
Turkish Republic, General Shevket Seyfi (Düzgören), who, as Chief of Dept. II in both the General staff as well as the Ministry of Defense, was in charge of the organization and genocidal mission of the criminal branch of the notorious Special Organization (Teshkilate Mahsusa). Comprising thousands of convicts specially released from the Empire’s many prisons, these killer bands, after a week of training in the camp of the Ministry of War in Istanbul, were deployed throughout Eastern Turkey to carry out their murderous mission vis à vis the countless Armenian deportee convoys. This historically unprecedented measure constitutes the most striking departure of the Armenian Genocide.
The third signal feature of the Armenian Genocide, as it relates to the role of the Turkish military, concerns the functional efficiency of General Mahmud Kâmil, Commander-in-Chief of the Ottoman IIId Army, whose jurisdiction encompassed the six “Armenian Provinces” in eastern Turkey, plus Trabzon province. Unhappy with the original appointment of General Vehib Pasha to that military post, Ittihadist party chiefs, Drs. Baheddin Shakir and Nazim,
the actual architects of the Armenian Genocide, with the support of Talat, interceded with the Army High Command, and with remarkable ease, managed to have Vehib replaced by General Kâmil. A fanatic member of the Ittihad political party, Kâmil went at once to work to denounce in his reports to Istanbul the Armenians as a major liability for the Turkish war effort,
especially in the six provinces of Eastern Turkey. The order for mass deportations was directly connected to this series of complaints—as conceded in the memoirs of Turkish Army Commander Ahmed Izzet Pasha (v.1, p. 201). It was evident that General Kâmil was planted there for this particular mission of preparing the ground for massive deportations.
The lecture was well received with a standing ovation. The Zoryan Institute is the parent organization of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, which runs an annual, accredited university program on the subject and is co-publisher of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal in partnership with the International Association of Genocide Scholars and the University of Toronto Press. It is the first non-profit, international center devoted to the research and documentation of contemporary issues with a focus on Genocide, Diaspora and Armenia. For more information please contact the
Zoryan Institute by email zoryan@zoryaninstitute.org or telephone (416)
250-9807.
Zoryan Institute, was honoured by Dr. Hranush Hakobyan, Armenia’s Minister of Diaspora, with the bestowing of a gold medal, the Ministry’s highest national award. In a public ceremony on December 20, Minister Hakobyan underscored Dadrian’s immense contribution over more than fifty years to the scholarly study of the Armenian Genocide, at the same time
raising awareness of it in international circles as a prime example of the “ultimate crime.”
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