The issue of Armenian genocide reparations derives from the Armenian genocide of 1915 committed by the Ottoman Empire. Such reparations might be of financial, estate or territorial nature, and could cover individual or collective claims as well as those by Armenia.[1] The majority of scholars of international law agree that Turkey is the successor state or continuation of the Ottoman Empire.[2] In addition, the Republic of Turkey continued the Ottoman Empire's internationally wrongful acts against Armenians, such as confiscation of Armenian properties and massacres.[3] Former Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee, Professor Alfred de Zayas, Geneva School of Diplomacy,[4] stated that "[b]ecause of the continuing character of the crime of genocide in factual and legal terms, the remedy of restitution has not been foreclosed by the passage of time".[5]
That Turkey represents the Ottoman Empire's successor State is a shared opinion by the greater part of international law scholars: ex plurimis see Dumberry (2013), according to whom "Turkey has the same legal identity as the Ottoman Empire and [...] accordingly it should be held responsible for all internationally wrongful acts committed by the Empire against the Armenian population before, during and after the War", in specie p. 165.
Even if one were to question the continuity of state identity between the Empire and the Republic, the actions of the insurrectional Nationalist movement, which became the new state, establish a clear link to the predecessor, at least when the internationally wrongful acts pertaining to the massacres, deportations, and confiscations were considered. The Republic not only refrained from halting the CUP era massacres, the persecution of the Christian minorities, and the unlawful confiscation of their assets and properties, but it continued the same internationally wrongful acts, even expanding the massacres beyond its own borders into the Caucasus and the territories of the independent Republic of Armenia. The Republic of Turkey was competent to prosecute the war criminals for crimes committed on its own territory, but refrained from so doing. The new leadership protected individuals accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity and unlawful enrichment, later exonerating them and rewarding them with new positions within the Republic.
Alfred de Zayas
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).