Germany, defying Turkey, to call 1915 Armenian massacre ‘genocide’

Erik Kirschbaum, Reuters

20 April 2015

(Reuters) – The German government backed away on Monday from a steadfast refusal to use the term “genocide” to describe the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces 100 years ago after rebellious members of parliament forced its hand.

In a major reversal in Turkey’s top trading partner in the European Union and home to millions of Turks, Germany joins other nations and institutions including France, the European parliament and Pope Francis in using the term condemned by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said the government would support a resolution in parliament on Friday declaring it an example of genocide.

Germany had long resisted using the term “genocide” even though France and other nations have. But Merkel’s coalition government came under pressure from parliamentary deputies in their own ranks planning to use the word in a resolution.

“The government backs the draft resolution … in which the fate of the Armenians during World War One serves as an example of the history of mass murders, ethnic cleansings, expulsions and, yes, the genocides during the 20th century,” Seibert said.

Turkey denies that the killings, at a time when Ottoman troops were fighting Russian forces, constituted genocide. It says there was no organized campaign to wipe out Armenians and no evidence of any such orders from the Ottoman authorities.

“We believe that there is no such black stain in our history,” Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said when asked about the German resolution, saying similar votes in other parliaments had not changed Turkey’s position.

But in an apparent softening of tone, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Ottoman Armenians would be commemorated at a religious ceremony in the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul on April 24, the 100th anniversary, in what he described as a “historic and humane” duty for Turkey.

A source in his office said the ceremony would be attended by a government minister, an unprecedented move.

“IMPORTANT ROLE”

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had rejected using the word genocide in an ARD TV interview on Sunday, denying any suggestion that it was to avoid upsettingTurkey.

“Responsibility can’t be reduced to a single term,” he said.

Members of parliament from both Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and their Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners forced the change.

Analysts said that the reluctance until now from Germany, a country that works hard to come to terms with the Holocaust it was responsible for, was due to fears of upsettingTurkey and the 3.5 million Germans of Turkish origin or Turkish nationals living inGermany.

The German government also did not want to use the word due to concerns that the Herero massacres committed in 1904 and 1905 by German troops in what is now Namibia could also be called genocide, leading to reparation demands.

“It’s a striking contradiction by the German government that Germany is denying the genocide of Armenians,” said Ayata Bilgin, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University.

“Research has shown that external pressure on countries can have a considerable influence and Germany could play a very important role in this discussion on Turkey.”

(Additional reporting by Ercan Gurses and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Ayla Jean Yackleyin Istanbul; Writing by Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin and Nick Tattersall in Istanbul; Editing byRalph Boulton and Gareth Jones)

Featured Image: A picture released by the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute dated 1915 purportedly shows soldiers standing over skulls of victims from the Armenian village of Sheyxalan in the Mush valley, on the Caucasus front during the First World War. A hundred years after an estimated million members of the empire’s Christian minority were forced from their homes on death marches by Turkish forces during World War I, Germany is still struggling to come to terms with its role in enabling the massacres that many European governments, including Pope Francis, call the first genocide of the twentieth century. Copyright: STR/AFP via Getty Images

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