Abstract

Starting from the claim by the Armenian community and the majority of historians that the 1915–1916 Armenian massacres and deportations constitute genocide as well as Turkey’s fierce opposition to such a qualification, this paper investigates the possibility of identifying those massacres and deportations as the destruction of a nation. On the basis of a thorough analysis of the facts and the required mental element, the author shows that a deliberate destruction, in a substantial part, of the Armenian Christian nation as such, took place in those years. To come to this conclusion, this paper borrows the very same determinants as those used in the case-law of the Military Tribunals in occupied Germany, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in genocide cases. Based on the principle of tempus regit actum, this essay also discusses the law applicable to such a deliberate destruction, and tries to demonstrate that, far from falling in a legal vacuum, the 1915–1916 Armenian massacres and deportations constituted a serious breach of various international norms in force at that time. Indeed, it consisted in “the murder of a nation”, which is the proper meaning of the word “genocide”.