Recognizing the Armenian Genocide Germany will Help Turkey

• 04.28.2015, 14:36
• Anna Karapetyan
•  Europe,  "Insight" Analytical Center ,  Analytics

Will Germany recognize the Armenian Genocide? This is one of the most discussed questions after the president of Germany Joachim Gauck called the 1915 events Genocide.

On April 24, the German Bundestag held hearings on Armenian Genocide, and this word was used for a number of times. Besides, three draft resolutions are being discussed in the Bundestag and all of them contain the word Genocide. The announcement of the speaker of Canceller Angela Merkel and the discussions in Bundestag make it clear that the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Germany is now more possible than ever.

Germany’s stance on this issue is really very important and not only because Germany has one of the biggest economies in the EU and is key player in the world. The main factor is its geopolitical role and historical past.

Germany has always been one of the main partners of Turkey. Untill now, it continues to be so, because of economic relations and big sizes of Turkish Diaspora in Germany.

In this regard, the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Germany or even the discussions on the high level are an important message to Turkey that international tendencies and attitudes are undergoing some changes.

During World War I Germany has directly or indirectly helped Turkey during the Armenian Genocide. Involvement of Germany or of individual German politicians is still disputed but the fact that the German side was informed about the developments in Ottoman Empire and did not do any steps to stop the Genocide, make Germany accessory of the crime against humanity that was conducted by the Turkish government. This issue is now discussed among the German society and many researches have been done on this topic. Armenian Genocide and German involvement in it is now a topic of discourse.

Thus, Germany should be one of the first countries to recognize the Armenian Genocide and urge Turkey do the same. Germany has a rich experience of dealing with its past, learning from the mistakes and making gains from recognizing its past. This experience should be useful for Turkey as well.

Germany, both the government and the society, nowadays have a special attitude to the Holocaust, memory and its consequences. Huge and impressive monuments, museum and little nameboards in front of each house, where Jewish people lived before, are a tribute to memory of killed Jewish people. It is also a special call to young generation to remember the history and not to repeat the crimes conducted by the past generations.

The government of Germany nowadays makes a lot of steps to prevent Nazism, fascism, anti-Semitism and other radical attitudes in the society. And it is done not by forgetting or denying the past or making miffs about the history but telling the true facts, evaluating and accepting the history. Germany managed to regain its role and authority in international arena because of this policy, thus coming out from the international isolation.

The attitudes towards its historical past in Germany is sometimes even surprising. The museum in the place, where capitulation of Germany was signed, Soviet tanks in Berlin and writings of Soviet soldiers on the walls of Bundestag are the evidences of the dark pages of German history. But they are not destroyed. They are kept and now they have become a proof of how Germany was successful in overcoming a number of complexes of the looser side and has already become one the most developed countries of the world.

The experience shows that facing the history and evaluating the events of the past are a good impulse for progress and development.

The Turkish society has to learn a lot from this experience. It is important that some groups of Turkish society, that are more open-minded and progressive, have already acknowledged these facts. They understand that the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, objectively evaluating the events of 1915 will help Turkish society to free themselves from many phobias, form the rejected sense of being guilty, the load of the need to answer for the past generation.

As a democratic country, Germany should not give in to Turkish blackmail and manipulations, but should recognize the Armenian Genocide and by its example push Turkey to recognition.It will help Turkey to get over many stereotypes, will have a huge impact on the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations and will contribute to strengthening the position of Turkish in the world.