Armeniangenocide: German Opposition Submits Motion

[Siamanto]

German opposition submits motion urging Turkey to examine killings of Armenians

 

AP Worldstream

Feb 27, 2005

 

Germany's conservative opposition has submitted a parliamentary motion

calling for Turkey to examine its role in the killing of Armenians

nearly a century ago, a senior lawmaker said Sunday, drawing criticism

from Ankara's ambassador in Berlin.

 

The motion urges the German government to push for Turkey to "look

without reservations at its role toward the Armenian people in the

past and present" and to "champion freedom of opinion in Turkey,

particularly concerning the massacre of Armenians."

 

Friedbert Pflueger, a foreign policy spokesman for the opposition

Christian Democrats, said lawmakers deliberately avoided the term

"genocide" and, rather than attacking Turkey, wanted to ensure that it

"faces its history openly." No date has been set for any vote.

 

Armenia accuses Turkey of genocide in the killings of up to 1.5 million

Armenians as part of a 1915-23 campaign to force them out of eastern

Turkey. At that time, Armenia was part of the Ottoman Empire.

 

Turkey remains extremely sensitive to the issue. It denies that the

killings were genocide, says the death count is inflated and that

Armenians were killed or displaced along with others as the Ottoman

Empire tried to quell civil unrest.

 

Armenia and Turkey do not have diplomatic relations. The German

opposition motion calls for Ankara to normalize ties "immediately."

 

Turkey's ambassador to Germany, Ali Irtemcelik, said the motion

contained "prejudices, factual errors, significant shortcomings of

information and one-sided expectations."

 

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government has been one of Turkey's

strongest backers in its bid eventually to join the European Union,

but the opposition has argued that it should be offered a "privileged

partnership" rather than full membership.

 

 

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg104005.html

[Siamanto]

Turkey condemns German parties on Armenia

 

Expatica, Netherlands

Feb 28 2005

 

28 February 2005

 

BERLIN - Turkey's ambassador to Germany, Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik, has

angrily denounced a parliamentary resolution by the German

conservative opposition on the alleged mass expulsion and murder of

Armenians by Ottoman Turks 90 years ago.

 

In a statement, the ambassador accused the opposition Christian

Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) of having made

itself into a "spokesman for fanatical Armenian nationalism".

 

He called the resolution, put forth by the CDU/CSU faction in the

German parliament on 22 February, a one-sided portrayal and said the

matter should be left to the historians.

 

"We would hope that our

 

friends in the Union parties, through their clumsy slander of Turkish

history, are not aiming to insult in particular our citizens living

here and in this manner to damage the manifold relations between

Turkey and Germany," he said.

 

The CDU/CSU resolution was put forward to mark the upcoming 90th

anniversary of the events in the former Turkish Ottoman Empire

involving the Turks' treatment of the ethnic Armenian minority.

 

In the resolution, the CDU said that on 24 April 1915, the order was

given by the Ottoman Turks to arrest and deport the Armenian cultural

and political elites, leading to the murder of most of them. It said

1.2 to 1.5 million Armenians were victims.

 

The resolution said that to this day, Turkey as the legal successor

to the Ottoman empire is still denying that the events were planned

and massacres carried out.

 

"This position of rejection stands in contradiction to the idea of

reconciliation which guides the community of values in the European

Union which Turkey wants to join," the CDU/CSU resolution said.

 

In his statement, Irtemcelik said the CDU/CSU needed to explain why

it has waited so long, including the period when it was in power in

Germany to put such a sensitive topic on the agenda. The CDU/CSU was

in power in Bonn and then Berlin between 1982 and 1998.

 

He said the Union parties in the past had always opposed initiatives

which had sought to instrumentalise the German parliament.

 

Over two million Turks live in Germany, making up by far the largest

foreign ethnic group in the country.

 

In January, the eastern German state of Brandenburg, bowing to

diplomatic pressure from Turkey, struck the subject of the Turkish

genocide against Armenians from its classroom curriculum.

 

But then this move was partially rescinded, after pressure by

Armenian representatives, so that the genocide against Armenians is

taught in the classroom as being one of several examples of genocide

in the 20th Century.

 

DPA

 

 

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg104032.html

[Med]

This is the case of the pot calling the kettle black.

[skhara]

This is the case of the pot calling the kettle black.

style_images/master/snapback.png

 

 

Please elaborate??

[Dave]

AN UNPRECEDENTED EVENT IN GERMANY

 

A Panel on Armenian Genocide With Turkish Intelligentsia

 

A citizen of Germany of Armenian origin Artin Aqyuz sent an email to daily Azg on February 25. The name of the addresser is the distorted variant of Armenian name of Harutyun but the last name has no Armenian trace. Obviously, the addresser is a former citizen of Turkey, a country that does not bother too much about precisely putting Armenian names in the passports.

 

In other words, it is almost impossible for a Turkish-Armenian to make a Turkish official at the Passport Department write his name correctly in the document, especially when the name is ending in "ian". However, Artin Aqyuz attached a notification informing of a seminar in Cologne on March 5.

 

The name of the seminar is "The 90th anniversary of Armenian Genocide and social responsibility. A panel with Turkish intelligentsia". It is organized by the Central Council of Germany and the Armenian Church Center of Germany in association with the Church Union of Cologne and TODAY Turkish NGO.

 

Aqen Birdal, honorable president of the Turkish General Union of Human Rights, journalist Demir Qyucuqaydn, Ragəp Zaraqolu, publisher and public figure, writer Recep Maraslə will lecture at the seminar. Dogan Aqhanlə, vice-president of Union Against Genocide, will preside the workshop.

 

The notification informs that the Turkish society having neglected the processes of the Ottoman military court in 1919, the investigation of the parliament, numerous documents and studies, as well as the fact that thousands Armenians escaped Genocide by finding shelter in different countries of the world, continues denying the Genocide and even places the blame on the victims of the atrocities 90 ago.

 

All participants of the seminar are from Turkey alone. It’s an incredible step given Turkey’s state negationism. The following questions put by participants for discussion are more than incredible: "Will Turkey be able to follow Germany’s example in acknowledging Holocaust by 2015? Can it display ability of reconciling with the genocide it committed instead of turning deaf ear to just claims? Will it remember that the Armenians and Assyrians massacred in 1915 were the country’s citizens and not a country waging war against Turkey? Will it trace links between the crime committed in the past and the violence in different spheres of social life in today’s Turkey in order to free the coming generations from bearing moral, jural and civil responsibility? If negation and threats are no way out, then what will be the approach and responsibility of Turkish intelligentsia, mass media and political figures to the genocide issue?"

 

We think that the coming seminar will contribute to the initiative of Christian Democrats’ to honor the victims of Genocide in Bundestag and will be an adequate counteraction to Turkish official circles.

 

By Hakob Chakrian

 

From http://www.azg.am/?lang=EN&num=2005030201