Deutsche Presse-Agentur
February 8, 2005, Tuesday

NEWS FEATURE: Armenian genocide row as Germany confronts Auschwitz

By Leon Mangasarian, dpa

Berlin

A row has erupted in Germany over alleged pressure by a Turkish
diplomat which caused removal of the Armenian genocide from school
curriculums just as Germany held high profile ceremonies marking the
Auschwitz death camp liberation anniversary last month. It all began
when Turkey’s Consul in Berlin, Aydin Durusay, raised the issue of
the 1915 Armenian massacres with leaders of Brandenburg – the only
one of Germany’s 16 federal states, which described the killings as
“genocide” in its school curriculum. Most European and U.S.
historians say up to 1.5 million Christian Armenians were killed by
Moslem Ottoman Turks during World War I and that this was a genocide.
Eight European Union (E.U.) parliaments including France and the
Netherlands – but not Germany – have passed resolutions declaring the
deaths genocide. Turkey, however, firmly rejects the genocide label
and has long insisted far fewer Armenians died or otherwise succumbed
during World War I. More recently it has moderated its tone somewhat
and said the matter should be cleared up by a historical commission.
Over lunch at Potsdam’s exclusive “Villa von Haacke” restaurant,
Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck and his education
minister swiftly agreed to Durusay’s request to eliminate references
on Armenians in history classes, said news magazine Der Spiegel.
“Naturally the whole thing came out and just in the week the
liberation of Auschwitz was being commemorated – Platzeck and his
education minister disgraced themselves,” said the Frankfurter
Allgemeine, Germany’s conservative paper of record. Education
Minister Holger Rupprecht, however, defended the decision.
Brandenburg officials say a reworked curriculum will list a series of
genocides as examples. “Mention (of the genocide) was taken out
because both the premier and myself regarded it as a mistake to only
name the Armenians as a single example for such an explosive theme as
genocide. Turkey naturally reacted allergically,” said Rupprecht in a
Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten newspaper interview. But the
controversy swiftly took on an international angle with the angry
Armenian Ambassdor to Germany, Karine Kazinian, due to meet with
Platzeck later this week. A German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman,
Sabine Stoehr, declined to comment directly on the affair or on
whether the German government agreed that the 1915 killings of
Armenians amounted to a genocide. “Our view is that coming to terms
with the past is naturally very important but it’s an issue between
Armenia and Turkey,” said Stoehr. German Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer visited Armenia last year and made a stop at Yerevan’s
genocide memorial. Stoehr said his only official comment at the
memorial had been: “Reconciliation is the basis for a common future.”
A Turkish embassy spokesman in Berlin would not comment on the
discord in Brandeburg other than to stress the initiative came from
the Turkish consulate for the region – not from the embassy itself.
The man at the centre of the dispute, Brandenburg’s Prime Minister
Platzeck, is a member of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social
Democrats (SPD). Schroeder is a top supporter of Turkey’s bid to join
the European Union. Any issue which impacts on Turkey is tricky for
Berlin given that Germany has almost two million resident Turks who
comprise by far the country’s biggest minority. Many Turks in Germany
are poorly integrated and unemployment rates for Turkish youths are
high. And there is another angle: Germany’s own historic link to the
killing of the Armenians. As Huberta von Voss, the editor of a new
book on Armenian history and contemporary affairs notes: Germany has
“moral responsibility” for the Armenian genocide because Berlin was
allied with the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. “Many
German politicians are absorbed with the Holocaust … they don’t
have the strength for another genocide,” said von Voss in an
interview. Wolfgang Gust, a former correspondent for the news
magazine Der Spiegel, says in a chapter of the book titled “Partners
in Silence” that “German officers played an important role in the war
of destruction against the Armenians.” The involvement of Germans
ranged from diplomats failing to protest the massacres, to officers
taking part in executions of Armenians and the mass expulsion of
women and children who died in the Syrian desert, says Gust who is
compiling an archive of German Foreign Ministry documents on the
genocide available at Von Voss’s book dismisses
Turkish arguments that the killing of Armenians did not amount to
genocide. “The research has already been done. We do not even need
the Ottoman archives to be opened – the evidence is overwhelming,”
she said, adding: “Don’t pretend the Armenian genocide is a matter of
opinion. It’s a fact.” With Turkey gearing up to start negotiations
in October aimed at E.U. membership, von Voss warned that failure to
address the Armenian genocide could severely harm Ankara’s chances.
The parliament of the Netherlands, which only passed its Armenia
genocide resolution last December, did so in part due to anger that
the issue was left out of the formal E.U. decision to open accession
talks with Ankara, she noted. Turkey is not expected to join the E.U.
for 10 to 15 years and will only be able to do so if all 25 current
member states give it a green light. dpa lm ms