Deutsche Presse-Agentur
April 21, 2005, Thursday
13:59:42 Central European Time

Berlin to tell Turkey “take responsibility” for Armenian massacres

Berlin

All parties in the German parliament have agreed key points of a
resolution which will tell Turkey to “take historic responsibility”
for the 1915 Armenian genocide, a senior member of Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder’s Social Democrats said Thursday.

Gernot Erler, the Social Democratic (SPD) deputy foreign affairs
spokesman in the Bundestag, said the resolution due to win final
approval in the coming months would have three “goals.”

First, Germany’s parliament will recognise a limited German role in
massacre of 1.2 million to 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks
during the First World War, said Erler in a statement.

Germany was Ottoman Turkey’s main ally in the War and “partly through
approval and through failure to take effective preventive measures
there was a German co-responsibility for this genocide.”

“The (Bundestag) asks the Armenian people for their forgiveness,”
said Erler’s statement.

Second, the Berlin parliament will call on Turkey “to halt its up
until now overwhelming suppression, to take historic responsibility
for the massacre of the Armenians by the Young Turk regime and to ask
for forgiveness from the descendants of the victims.”

Turkey’s government has always insisted that there was no Armenian
genocide and says a far smaller number of Armenians died during
Ottoman deportations which it argues took place under war conditions
and were due to an Armenian rebellion.

Turkey’s ambassador to Germany, Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik, has denounced
the planned Bundestag resolution as containing “countless factual
errors” and being written “in agreement with propaganda efforts of
fanatic Armenians….”

“Its goal is to defame Turkish history… and poison ties between
Turkey and the European Union,” said the ambassador.

Finally, the German parliament’s resolution will underline Berlin’s
efforts to help normalise relations between Turkey and Armenia.

Germany, which has about 2.5 million resident Turks, has up until now
been wary about addressing the Armenian genocide.

A member of the opposition Christian Democratic alliance (CDU/CSU),
Erwin Marschewski, said in a statement that the value system of the
European Union (E.U.) insisted that countries “shine a spotlight on
the dark pages of their history.”

“Recognition by Turkey to the Armenian genocide of 1915 and 1916 is
important,” said Marschewski.

Turkey is due to start membership negotiations with the E.U. in
October but E.U. leaders say accession talks – if successful – will
take up to 15 years.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is a staunch backer of Turkish E.U.
membership and will visit Ankara and Istanbul for talks with Turkish
political and business leaders on May 3 and 4.

The draft resolution being debated in Germany’s parliament does not
use the word “genocide” but rather refers to the “expulsion and
massacres” of Armenians under the Ottoman Turks in 1915 as part of
ceremonies marking the 90th anniversary of the killings.

“We purposely left out the … term genocide,” said Christoph
Bergner, an opposition Christian Democrat, in a speech to parliament.

The declaration says between 1.2 and 1.5 million Christian Armenians
died or were killed by the Moslem Turks during “planned” deportations
during the First World War.

Armenians all over the world will on April 24 mark the 90th
anniversary of the start of what most international historians
describe as a genocide lasting from 1915 to 1923 which left up to 1.5
million people dead. dpa lm sc