Tessa Hofmann: Denial of Armenian Genocide dangerous for Turkey and its society

YEREVAN, APRIL 21, ARMENPRESS. Official Germany first and foremost is guided by its own interests in the process of the legislative decision-making for the Armenian Genocide leaving behind the humanitarian concerns. However, the German ruling circles have already stated in their speeches that they recognize the fact of the Genocide committed in the Ottoman Empire, German famous genocide scholar Tessa Hofmann said this in an interview with “Armenpress". German scholar spoke about the denial of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey, the stance of international community and in particular Germany over this issue and the possible adoption of the resolution of the Armenian Genocide in Bundestag.

-Mrs. Hofmann, more than a century later after the Armenian Genocide the Turkish state continues to refuse from the historic truth and tries to close others’ eyes on this issue. How would You comment on this official position of Turkish Republic?

-Most of all, this attitude is dangerous for Turkey and its society. Not only does official Turkey deny the genocides that had been committed against more than three millions indigenous Christians during the last decade of Ottoman rule, but it worships the perpetrators. Public squares, boulevards, schools, kindergartens and even mosques are named after Talat, Enver, or Cemal Azmi, governor of Trabzon in 1914-1917, and CUP rapist of Armenian girls.

Turkish curricula and school books still contain denial and blame the Christian victims instead of the perpetrators who are venerated as role models of ‘antiimperialist’ patriotism. Thus, genocide appears as a mean of ‘solving’ domestic problems or issues in nationalities’ and minorities’ policies. This becomes a severe obstacle for the prevention of crimes against humanity, and a repetition of deportation and massacres must be feared, this time against the Kurdish population.

-How would you evaluate the position of international community in general and Germany in particular on this issue?

-Throughout all 2015, the international community and German society have been extremely interested in a crime that was committed 100 years ago. This remarkable response includes intense media coverage of several weeks by all print media in Germany, tremendous activities by artists, theatres, NGOs, educational and church institutions. Subsequently, the main problem of the 1915/6 genocide is not international forgetfulness (despite the sad fact that numerous and even quantitatively larger genocides have been committed since 1915), but legislative acknowledgment.

So far, Germany has failed in this aspect. In 2015, German consideration for Turkish interests was of higher priority than the legal evaluation of the Armenian genocide by the Bundestag, i.e. the issuance of a resolution. Nevertheless, speakers of all parliamentary fractions articulated recognition in their speeches of 24 April 2015. The massive immigration of civic war refugees from Syria, Iraq and other countries to Germany in the second half of 2015, however, led to an even more Turkey focused German policy, for the Chancellor perceives president Erdogan as Europe’s doorkeeper against further influx of refugees/immigrants. This resembles the official German policy during WW1, when the Ottoman-German military alliance was of higher priority for the Reichskanzler than any humanitarian concern for the persecuted and murdered Ottoman Armenians.

-Today Turkey arms the terrorist groups that are committing crimes against humanity in the Middle East. Don’t you think that this kind of activities of Turkey come from the impunity for committing the first Genocide of 20th century?

-Religiously motivated terrorism – ‘Islamic State’, Boko Haram and similar – receives direct and indirect support by predominantly Sunnite states like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others. I do not quite see a direct link with the Ottoman genocide, although the CUP authors of that genocide relied to religion and religious antagonism in order to conduct their genocidal agenda. But throughout the second half of the 20th century, Western states, in the first place the USA, likewise exploit Islamic terrorism for their interests (Indonesia, Afghanistan etc.).

-The draft resolution on the Armenian Genocide will be discussed in the German Bundestag on June 2. What are your expectations?

-The chairman of the ruling conservative fraction recently mentioned in an interview that the Bundestag is going to discuss and perhaps vote on a – still unpublished – draft resolution on 2 June. Against the above mentioned background of negative experience, this remains to be seen. The German government is all too ready to sacrifice such projects and to interfere into the business of legislation if alleged ‘necessities’ materialize. But given that this time a legislative recognition will be indeed issued then it is not the end, but the beginning of a lot of further work. For then we shall have to discuss the inclusion of the Ottoman genocide into school curricula of genocide awareness education and the representation of this and other cases into the general representation of genocide. We also have to deal with the veneration of genocide perpetrators in wide circles of the Turkey born diaspora of Germany and the cult of the graves of Cemal Azmi and Dr. Bahaeddin Şakir on the Islamic Cemetery of Berlin, or the renaming of the Enver Bridge in Potsdam.

The movement for parliamentary genocide recognition in Germany has started 16 years ago as a joint petition initiative by German human rights defenders and Turkey born activists, including ethnic Turks and Kurds. However, since 2005 we observe an increasing influence of lobbyist structures and NGOs in this movement, weakening the human rights focus of previous years. But to solve the tasks in history and memory politics as described above, we have to return to the initial focus of integrated and independent German, Turkish, Armenian and other civic and human rights defenders.

Interview by Araks Kasyan