Deutsche Welle
22.04.2005
/0,1564,1560270,00.html
Germany to Turkey: Own Up to Massacre
Genocide or the result of war?
The German parliament has agreed on a resolution that will ask Ankara to
accept its role in the expulsion and massacre during and after World War I
that killed up to 1.5 million Armenians.
The resolution, which is set to win final approval by lawmakers in the next
few months, avoids the word “genocide,” but calls on Turkey to “take
historic responsibility” for the massacres of Armenians by the Ottoman
Turkish government and ask forgiveness from the descendents of the victims.
The document, which was drafted by the conservative Christian Democratic
Union-Christian Social Union (CSU/CSU) bloc and later modified by a
parliamentary committee, is meant to coincide with the April 24
commemoration of the beginning of the expulsions 90 years ago, in Yerevan,
the Armenian capital.
“We don’t want to want to put the Turkish government on trial,” CDU
representative Christoph Bergner said. Instead, the goal is to “invite our
Turkish friends and partners” to come to terms with the past.
German role
The three-page resolution also recognizes a limited German role in the
massacres that killed between 1.2 and 1.5 million Armenians. Germany was
Ottoman Turkey’s main ally in the war. “Partly through approval and through
failure to take effective measures, there was a German co-responsibility for
this genocide,” said Gernot Erler, the Social Democratic (SPD) deputy
foreign affairs spokesman in the Bundestag in a statement. “The (Bundestag)
asks the Armenian people for their forgiveness,” said a statement.
However, in the resolution itself, the word “genocide” is not used. Instead,
it refers to “expulsion and massacres.”
But Turkey’s ambassador to Germany, Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik, condemned the
planned resolution as containing “countless factual errors” and said it was
being written “in agreement with propaganda efforts of fanatic Armenians.”
Germany has been reluctant to address the issue of Turkish and Armenian
history in the past largely due to its own 2.5 million Turkish residents.
However, a member of the CSU/CSU bloc, Erwin Marschewski, said the EU value
system required that countries “shine a spotlight on the dark pages of our
history.”
“Recognition by Turkey of the Armenian genocide of 1915 and 1916 is
important,” he said in a statement.
EU membership hopes
The resolution comes at a sensitive time, since negotiations for Turkey’s
membership in the European Union are set to begin in October. Critics of the
resolution accused the conservative alliance of drafting the resolution to
throw another hurdle in the way of future Turkish EU membership, which many
conservatives have not supported. The bloc itself has rejected the
accusation.
However, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is a staunch supporter of
Turkey’s EU bid and will visit Ankara and Istanbul for talks with political
and business leaders there on May 3 and 4.
Commemoration
Armenians themselves are planning a large demonstration on April 24 to
commemorate the massacres. They say their forbears were systematically
eliminated by Ottoman Turkey’s rulers from 1915 to 1923.
Their claims, that between 1.2 and 1.5 million Christian Armenians were
killed or died from disease and starvation as a result of planned
relocations, are supported by many Western historians.
Ankara has always rejected those claims, saying Armenians have no firm data
to back them up. Most Turkish historians say nationalists in Armenia sided
with Russia troops when they invaded eastern Turkey. While admitting many
Armenians died at the time, Turkey says it was due to war, not planned
murder.
The two countries have no diplomatic relations and Turkey shut the border in
1993 to show solidarity with Turkish-speaking ally Azerbaijan, which was
then engaged in a conflict with Armenia.
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