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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 Şahin (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 Gütersloh (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 Gütersloh 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.