Էդիտա Գ. Գզոյեան2026-06-122026-06-122021Գզոյեան, Է., «Թուրքիայի միջազգային իրաւական պատասխանատուութեան հարցը Ա. համաշխարհային պատերազմից յետոյ», 2021, Պէյրութ, էջ 95-118https://haigrepository.haigazian.edu.lb/handle/123456789/1418The principle of state sovereignty, launched in Westphalia in 1648, showed its first serious cracks after WWl. The chaos and devastation of war, the pressing demand for peace and public protests against impunity for atrocities became the basis for breaking the link with the past system and building a normative basis for human life and dignity he new approach, which called into question the absoluteness of state sovereignt ave rise to the criminal responsibility of states for war crimes and crimes agains humanity. At the epicenter of these events was also the Ottoman Empire, which during WWI had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Indeed, under the guise of the world war, the Turkish authorities initiated the annihilation of the native Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire through massacres, deportations and forced assimilation. Already on May 24, 1915, the allied states, Russia, Great Britain and France, issued a joint statement in which they qualified the actions carried out against Armenians as crimes "against humanity and civilization", laying the foundation for the formation of a new crime in international criminal law. After the end of the war, during the Paris Peace Conference, the Commission on the responsibility of the authors of the war and on enforcement of penalties was created. It was supposed to identify the initiators of WWl and determine the punishments for those who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Commission also investigated Turkey's international legal responsibility for the Armenian massacres in the context of crimes against humanity. Although the wording "crime against humanity" was not included verbatim in the text of the Peace Treaty of Sèvres, in fact, Article 230 was related to this new crime, which was formalized, however, only after WWIl. Against the backdrop of these developments the paper examines the case of Turkey's international legal responsibility vis-à-vis crimes it committed against humanity.