By ALİ YURTTAGÜL
ALİ YURTTAGÜL
The 100th anniversary of the Armenian “Meds Yeghern,” or genocide, has finally arrived.
The Vatican’s characterization of the 1915 incidents as the “first genocide” of the 20th century as well as the European Parliament’s postponement of its Turkey report from April to May and the inclusion of the Armenian issue on its April agenda are not coincidental. It is no surprise that there are currently numerous conferences, exhibitions and publications about the tragic history of Armenians in France, Russia and the US, countries with sizable Armenian populations.
Interestingly enough, Germany is conducting in-depth discussions into the matter even though it does not have a sizable Armenian population. Berlin seeks to look into this sorrow in depth. I have a book that focuses on the role of Germans in the Armenian genocide written by Jürgen Gottschlich, a journalist living in İstanbul and Berlin. It is titled “Beihilfe zum Völkermord” (Complicity in Genocide). As you know, in criminal law, not only is “intention” or “deliberation” to kill someone a crime, but so is “assistance” or “complicity.” Before moving to a discussion of whether Gottschlich sees Germans’ role in the Armenian genocide as “assistance” or “complicity,” I would like to touch on why a reading of Germans regarding this matter is imperative.
A cursory look at Germany’s recent past reveals that the country is still suffering from the effects of two profound traumas. The world sees Adolf Hitler as the German fascism that cast a shadow on the fate of Jews. This reading is not necessarily wrong. While the number of Russians or Germans who died is way above the 6 million Jews who died, the Jewish suffering stands apart. The Nazis targeted Jews because they are different and they systematically annihilated them.
The shadow of history’s greatest genocide, which Jews refer to as “Shoah” or “Holocaust,” can still be felt in Germany. The Holocaust Memorial, which spans a 4.7-acre space in downtown Berlin, was built a few years ago. There is also a more recent “stolperstein” (stumbling block) movement in which “stolpersteine” (the plural of stolperstein) — small, cobblestone-size memorials for individual victims of Nazism — are laid in the sidewalks.
Actually, “stolperstein” represents the second trauma. Germany experienced the 1968 movement differently from France. In Germany, revolutionary youth started to question their parents and their recent past. They realized that when Jews were taken from their homes to gas chambers, their parents weren’t ignorant of the process. They further understood that some of their neighbors, uncles, writers, journalists and politicians were loyal supporters of the Hitler regime, were “murderers” or were “complicit” in the genocide. Being “children of murderers” is a current trauma that many Germans feel deeply. In this context, the “stolpersteine” represent a “refusal to forget,” a “renunciation of the past” or a “determination to refrain from complicity in crimes.”
Gottschlich’s book is a good example of this generation’s perspective on their country and the world. As it examines the Armenian issue in our recent past, the book is interesting. The book is an interesting read not only for the Armenian issue, but also for its foray into Germany’s role in it.
As you can guess from its title, the book puts Germans in the spotlight instead of Turks, the Committee of Union and Progress (İTC) or the Ottomans. More precisely, it focuses on the role of Germans in the Armenian genocide. The writer not only examines Anatolia and the places where the incidents occurred, but also looks at the German army’s archives that survived World War II. He also tried to study a number of private archives as well as the archives of the General Staff in Ankara.
The book contains the biographies of German officers who worked closely with Enver Paşa, Talat Paşa and Cemal Paşa, the leading figures of the İTC, as well as letters these German officers sent to their relatives, which betray their perspective on the Armenian genocide as no different from that of Enver Paşa and Talat Paşa. The book also describes how certain Germans raised objections to the injustices done to Armenians and tried to warn Berlin about them.
Gottschlich examines the biographies and documents like a meticulous historian, but he also doesn’t renounce his identity as a journalist as he takes into consideration the time and circumstances of the incidents. “Beihilfe zum Völkermord” is an interesting report in terms of the German Reich’s responsibility. When you read the book, you can decide if Germans’ role in the genocide was “assistance” or “complicity.” I hope the book is translated into Turkish soon so that the grandchildren of the Ottomans have a chance to look at their parents and grandparents from a different perspective.