Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
There's a difference between 'we weren't that nice to them' and 'mass depopulation, land theft and ethnic cleansing'.

And that's without even getting into the whole attitude to slavery over there.



I'm really going to enjoy seeing you try and justify this one.



I think the decision to issue/withhold repatriations or even just formal apologies will always be a political one. Even if there were a legal framework under which we could actually establish guilt liability it would be completely unenforcible against almost any state which were even slightly inclined to dispute or ignore the findings of this hypothetical court.
Did you ever hear about the Armenian Genocide? You could fill books about whether or not the genocide part in that is justifiable or a dangerous anachronism. The Turkish government takes the nomenclatura so serious because they fear very real legal repercussions from the acceptance of the term Genocide. If the Armenian Genocide would take on a meaning similar to that of the Holocaust it is very possible that Turkish interests would be attacked (with possible) success in court all over the world. Formal apologies are just as explosive, and for the same reason hardly anybody goes futher than expressing regrets about excesses in the past.