FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE EU TURKEY AND THE KURDS

FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE EU, TURKEY AND THE KURDS
it were, you would have to look at the proportionality and the necessity for the kind
of force that turkey is using in Iraq. 100,000 troops defined how many fighters. The
proportionality is a very important question – what is the proportion of force in use?
And again it is not a debate that is taking place, either in my field of international
law, or in international public parlance. We aren’t discussing why this is happening,
and it’s a very serious question. Furthermore, you have to look at not only the legal
justifications for armed conflict, and I would suggest with the greatest of respect to
the government of Turkey, that in fact, justifying a major incursion into another sovereign
state to track rebels, well, think of the criticism that has been levelled against
the United States for its so called ‘war on terror.’ There is no such legal justification as
a war on terror. It does not exist in customary international law, nor in international
treaties. It is not in the United Nations Charter. And the Charter indicates that it is
against international law to violate the territorial integrity of another state, unless
there is a legal justification based on self-defence. And the response has to be proportionate
and necessary, according to the cases in the International Court of Justice, of
Nicaragua, and the legality of the use of nuclear weapons. I would suggest that the ICJ
has a good website, read some of those cases and you will get my argument that in fact
the justification for the use of force may not quite be present in this circumstance.
Well that’s the first part of my submission which is what is called the jus ad bellum,
what is the lawfulness of the use of force. The second problem is the method of armed
force, and as I said last year, it is not lawful in an armed conflict of whatever kind to
target women, children or civilians. It is contrary to the four Geneva Conventions
and customary international humanitarian law. Last year I didn’t have a chance to
finish my talk because we ran out of time but I wanted to say that there is often in the
press a sense that because Turkey has not signed the two more recent protocols the
Geneva convention, both the protocol on internal armed conflict and the protocol on
international armed conflict of 1977 that they are somehow held to a lesser standard
in humanitarian law. Well I helped to organize a project in London on customary
international humanitarian law, and we found that most of the provisions in Protocol
1 and 2 were customary international law. Just to summarize those rules, they are the
rules of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity. The only lawful targets
are military targets. If you attack a military target, where there are civilians present,
you have to argue that it is militarily necessary to take out that target; that it is of
fundamental importance to your battle. I know some of you would like me to say
that in all circumstances, civilians should not be killed. I cannot say that. There are
circumstances where civilians will be at a military target, and as the rules of war state,
civilians can be killed. But a commander, a military commander has an obligation
under the rules – customary rules – of humanitarian law, to establish that that target
is a lawful, legitimate target and necessary to the armed conflict.
Now I know I’m posing a lot of complicated questions that I hope you will just consider
when you are dealing with the situation in Kurdistan and Turkey. The problem
is that, I think that the silence has got to be broken in Turkey, in the sense that that
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