TESSA HOFMANN: IN CONTEXT OF GENOCIDE, EVASIVENESS TRANSFORMS INTO ENCOURAGEMENT OF FURTHER CRIMES
What is taking place in Germany ahead of April 24 – the country,
which, according to many experts, is to some extent responsible for
the Armenian Genocide, the country, which perpetrated the Holocaust,
but repented and continues compensating the damage to the Jews up to
this day?
In an interview with the Golos Armenii newspaper, Tessa Hofmann,
a renowned German scholar and human rights activist, the head of
the Working Group “Affirmation” – Against Genocide, commented on
these issues.
– The media claims that a difficult situation has emerged in Bundestag
with the document on Armenian Genocide. How would you characterize
this situation and what kind of document shall we expect to be adopted?
– On 24 April 2015, two motions for resolutions will be discussed
by the Federal German Parliament (Bundestag) in the course of only
20 minutes: one is from the oppositional socialist party Die Linke
(The Left) and contains the demand for official recognition of the
genocide against the Armenians; the other derives from the ruling
conservative-social democrat coalition and is said to have contained
originally the term genocide, which, however, was cancelled after the
intervention of the German Foreign Office and the leadership of both
coalition parties. The text of the revised version of the coalition
parties (without the term genocide) has not yet been published,
but the headline contains the two key-words that the Federal
Government has ever used since 2005 to avoid a legal evaluation of
the crimes committed in 1915/6 against the Ottoman Armenians and
other Christian ethnic groups, mainly Aramaic speaking Christians
(Arameans/Assyrians/Chaldeans) and Orthodox Greeks.
The resolution of the oppositional party has no chance of acceptance.
The evasive terms used by the Bundestag in its non-legislative
resolution of 2005 and subsequently by the German government are
‘expulsion’ and ‘massacres’. In particular ‘expulsion’ is a misleading
term and a minimization if scored against the historic facts: During
WW1, Ottoman Armenians were not just chased over the nearest borders.
They did not get such chance to escape the government-planned
extermination. Armenians were driven under armed guards southwards
into the Mesopotamian areas of massive starvation and slaughtered
in 1916 or burnt alive if they did not perish from starvation soon
enough. Deportation, or forcible population transfer are legal terms
and crimes against humanity according to the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court (1998); expulsion is not such a term.
The political position behind these evasive terms is obvious: Official
Germany supports the official Turkish position that there still exists
a need for academic clarification- despite at least 30 years of intense
international academic research with the participation of Turkish,
Armenian and other scholars. The German government and legislators
deliberately ignore not only the results of profound genocide and
historic studies, but also the expertise of the International Center
for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) which has been commissioned by the
Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC) in 2001. In its
report, ICTJ already in 2003 confirmed the applicability of the UN
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on
the ‘events’ of 1915. In the past, the German Bundestag was well aware
of the existence of TARC and used it in 2001 as argument to decline
a joint recognition petition of Armenian, Turkish and German NGOs.
On 24 April 2015, the Bundestag in all probability will repeat its
resolution of 2005 in which it avoided the term genocide. Instead of
expressing an own legal opinion, the Bundestag ten years ago promised
to support Turks and Armenians in their dialogue. The fiction of this
non-existing bi-lateral dialogue may be further repeated, whereas the
reality of the already existing collaboration of Armenian and Turkish
scholars is ignored once they come to the result of genocide in 1915.
– The German press informed, that in the events dedicated to the
centenary of Armenian Genocide the German President Joachim Gauck will
take part for the first time. How would you assess this step? This is
somehow against the official position of German authorities, isn’t it?
– The Federal Government declined any own commemorative events or
activities. But the Presidential Office confirmed that President
Gauck will participate in non-public church service of 23 April which
is organized by the Armenian Orthodox Diocese, the Protestant and
Catholic Churches of Germany. So far, Gauck did not use the term
genocide, but evasively speaks about the ‘pain of the Armenians’,
which again resembles the official Turkish terminology. Since 2010,
official Turkish statements by Davutoglu, since 2014 also by Erdogan,
admit Armenian ‘pain’, while at the same time denying a state intended
genocide.
There is no contradiction between the acknowledgement of ‘pain’
by the German president and the 2005 resolution of the Bundestag,
or any official version of the AKP governments in Turkey.
The practical implications of such evasiveness and half-heartedness
in German history and memory politics go far beyond words. In Germany,
mayors decide whether memorials are erected in cities or towns.
Despite the centenary, several municipal heads and/or administrations
declined applications of citizens to erect – on the expenses of the
applicants! – memorials in commemoration of the genocide against
Ottoman Christians. In Cologne, the city’s administration refused to
accept the offer of Mr. Erdal Þahin (a Turkey born Alevi from Dersim)
to erect a memorial for the Armenian genocide. In the town of Leer,
the recent mayor (a Social-Democrat) told Mr. Albert Tovmasyan,
who initiated the erection of a khachkar that the cross-stone would
not be allowed to bear a dedication with the word genocide, although
Tovmasyan has earlier received the permission of a previous mayor
for the erection of a genocide memorial in the public space of
Leer. In Gutersloh (Land Lower Saxony) the city council declined
the erection of a memorial commemorating the destruction of the
Arameans/Assyrians/Chaldeans, although there is a large community of
Arameans in Gutersloh and its vicinity, many of them descendants of
genocide survivors.
To the Turkey born communities of Germany belong Armenians, Kurds
and Turks. While German governmental statements still dwell on the
necessity of Armenian-Turkish dialogue, German local, regional or
federal decision-makers miss their ample chances of genocide awareness
education among these communities, of encouraging those Turkey born
residents of Germany who acknowledge the Ottoman crimes as genocide
or want to know about them.
– The position of Germany regarding the issue of Armenian Genocide
has always been of paramount importance, taking into consideration
the important role played by Germany in the events in early XX century.
The Bundestag has once adopted a resolution, yet refrained from
employing the word ‘genocide’. Are there any chances this term may be
included in documents of legislative level anytime in the near future?
– To be honest, I do not see such a perspective in the near future.
– Germany has acknowledged and atoned for the Holocaust. Yet,
acknowledging the crime against the Jews, Germany refuses to recognize
a similar crime against the Armenian people perpetrated by Turkey.
What do you think is the reason for that? Only close partnership
with Turkey?
– Germany has been involved into three genocides; for two of them –
Namibia (1904-1908) and the destruction of the Jews of Europe during
WW2 – Germany bears full and only responsibility. In the case of the
genocide against the Armenians and other co-victims Germany decided
to remain a passive bystander and benefitted from the unpaid slave
labor of Armenian men, women and even children at the construction
sites of the Baghdad Railway. Survivors of the Armenian genocide such
as Archbishop Grigoris Palakyan (Balakian) in their memoirs accused
certain Germans for stimulating the idea of deportation among their
Young Turkish allies. Several of the high-ranking German officers who
served in the Ottoman forces gave deportation orders despite their
knowledge about the fatal consequences for the deportees. The German
Imperial Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg refused to distance Germany
from the Ottoman policies against the Armenians, arguing that the
military alliance with the CUP regime was of highest priority,
“even if Armenians perish”.
Whereas the misconduct of the Imperial German Government during
WW1 explains by its military alliance with the Ottomans, relations
between Turkey and Germany of today are much less relevant. Both are
NATO members, but that alone does not explain the repeated refusal of
German governments to juridically evaluate the Ottoman crimes of the
WW1 period or to condemn these crimes as genocide. I believe that those
of my countrymen who bear the responsibility for state politics, act
by tradition and in difference to our neighbors in France, Switzerland
or Sweden. Our tradition is shaped by pronounced national or even
personal self-interests, the lack of humanitarian visions and values
and the failure to act according to human rights principles.
Consideration for votes from Turkey born constituencies is an
additional factor why German MPs refrain from confrontations with
Turkey and Turkish diasporas.
Let me add, that the evasiveness and half-heartedness of official
Germany is not only shameful (for Germans) or painful (for Armenians),
but first of all internationally dangerous. Drawing conclusions
during these April days of commemoration, we must answer the following
question: Can three million people be killed and the perpetrators get
away with it? The current conduct of German MPs and state politicians
is a tacit ‘yes’. In the case of the three million Ottoman Christians,
who were murdered during 1912-1922, most perpetrators ended their
lives without being ever called to justice. Therefore their crimes
can and must be unambiguously condemned by politicians and statesmen
of today. In the context of genocide, evasiveness transforms into
the encouragement of further crimes.
– Recently President Erdogan has urged the Armenians “to show “archive
documents” about the genocide. How would you respond to this, as a
prominent genocide scholar?
– It is Erdogan’s very cheap attempt to buy time. Relevant primary,
i.e. archival sources have been documented, published and analyzed over
the last 40 years. Many of them are published in the World Wide Web and
made searchable, such as contemporary German diplomatic correspondence,
Ottoman archival documents and documents from neutral diplomats on
the site ‘Armenocide.net’. Already years ago the German government
handed over copies of the relevant German archival documents to the
governments of Turkey and Armenia. If Turkey has lost her set of
copies, I shall with pleasure buy a notebook for Mr.
Erdogan. He can then in a convenient for him way research the sites of
‘Armenocide.net’ and others, where Turkish and English translations
help him over the linguistic gap. But he can also give on-line orders
for the numerous Turkish editions of such primary sources.
20.04.15, 13:14