Investigating Genocide During War: Commissions of Inquiry in the Ottoman Empire, 1919–1922

Prior to the inclusion of the crime of genocide into the international corpus, commissions of inquiry were active in attempts to prove the validity of atrocity claims and provide organisations, states, and the public with verified testimony and artefacts of atrocity to help shape policy and responses to these crimes. Focusing on the end of the First World War and the Greco-Turkish War, this paper analyzes the understudied work of the commissions of inquiry sent to investigate atrocity claims during the final years of the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides. We specifically look at British perspectives on commissions in 1919 and 1921 and the failed attempt in 1922. These commissions were undertaken within contested legal frameworks, faced varying support from international actors, and their scope was often determined by the theatre of war. War directly impacted the formation of the commissions, their investigative abilities, actions that could be taken in response, and how the findings were reported. While contributing to research on international intervention in the Ottoman Empire, this analysis also has implications for understanding the political and sociological impact of atrocity prevention mechanisms at the end of the First World War.