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further unrest, the Turkish authorities began releasing low-level suspects. The British had grown frustrated by the incompetence and politicization of what they called the "farcical"Turkish judicial system. Fearing none of the suspects in Turkish custody would ever be tried, the British occupation forces shipped many of the arrested war crimes suspects from Turkey to Malta and Mudros, a port on the Aegean island of Lemnos, for eventual international trials. But support for this, too, evaporated. By 1920 the condemnations and promises of 1915 were five years old. Kemal, who was rapidly consolidating his control over Turkey, had denounced as treasonous the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which committed the Ottomans to surrender war crimes suspects to an international tribunal. The British clung for a time to the idea that they might at least prosecute the eight Turks in custody who had committed crimes against Britons. But Winston Churchill gave up even this hope in 1920 when Kemal seized twenty-nine British soldiers whose immediate fates Britain privileged above all else."
    In November 1921 Kemal put an end to the promise of an international tribunal by negotiating a prisoner swap.The incarcerated Britons were traded for all the Turkish suspects in British custody. In 1923 the European powers replaced the Treaty of Sevres with the Treaty of Lausanne, which dropped all mention of prosecution. Former British prime minister David Lloyd George called the treaty an "abject, cowardly, and infamous surrender" 49
     

Chapter 2

"A Crime

Without a Name"
    Soghomon Tehlirian, the young Armenian survivor, knew little of international treaties or geopolitics. He knew only that his life had been empty since the war, that Talaat was responsible, and that the former minister of the interior would never stand trial. Since the massacre of his family and injury to his head,Tehlirian had been unable to sleep and had been overcome by frequent epileptic seizures. In 1920 he had found a cause, enlisting in Operation Nemesis, a Boston-based Armenian plot to assassinate the Turkish leaders involved in targeting the Armenians. He was assigned to murder Talaat, a crime that earned him everlasting glory in the Armenian community and brief global notoriety.
    While Tehlirian awaited trial in Berlin, Raphael Lemkin, a twenty-oneyear-old Polish Jew studying linguistics at the University of Lvov, came upon a short news item on Talaat's assassination in the local paper. Lemkin was intrigued and brought the case to the attention of one of his professors. Lemkin asked why the Armenians did not have Talaat arrested for the mas- sacre.The professor said there was no law under which he could be arrested. "Consider the case of a farmer who owns a flock of chickens," he said. "He kills them and this is his business. If you interfere, you are trespassing."
    "It is a crime for Tehlirian to kill a man, but it is not a crime for his oppressor to kill more than a million men?" Lemkin asked. "This is most inconsistent."'

    Jewish boy being forced to write /udeon his father's store in Vienna, Austria, within days of Germany's Anschluss.
    Lemkin was appalled that the banner of "state sovereignty" could shield men who tried to wipe out an entire minority. "Sovereignty," Lemkin argued to the professor, "implies conducting an independent foreign and internal policy, building of schools, construction of roads ... all types of activity directed towards the welfare of people. Sovereignty cannot be conceived as the right to kill millions of innocent people"' But it was states, and particularly strong states, that made the rules.
    Lemkin read about the abortive British effort to try the Turkish perpetrators and saw that states would rarely pursue justice out of a commitment to justice alone.They would do so only if they came under political pressure, if the trials served strategic interests, or if the crimes affected their citizens.
    Lemkin was torn about how to judge Tehlirian's act. On