Berlin, May 26, 2016 (AFP) – A resolution recognizing the first genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire and the “responsibility” of Germany in these crimes is being prepared in the Bundestag, according to a draft the text obtained by AFP Thursday.
The Bundestag, the lower house of the German Parliament “deplores the acts committed by the Young Turk government of the time, which led to the almost total annihilation of the Armenians”, in the text entitled “Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities there 101 years. “
The resolution presented by both the members of the coalition parties in power in Berlin – conservative CDU-CSU and SPD Social Democrats – and the opposition Greens, evokes “the movement and annihilation planned more one million Armenians “, and must be voted on Thursday.
The Bundestag also regrets “the deplorable role of the German Reich which, as the main military ally of the Ottoman Empire and despite explicit information of diplomats and German missionaries on the movement and organized the extermination of the Armenians, n has done nothing to stop this crime against humanity. “
“The empire bears a share of responsibility for these events,” the text of the resolution, echoing what was said last year President Joachim Gauck, Germany’s first senior official to be qualified as genocide the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman empire in 1915.
“The experience of Germany face its own history shows how difficult it is for a company to take on the darkest chapters of its past”, yet the text says, referring to slow the country’s working memory of the Nazi period but also the difficulties of Turkey against the Armenian issue.
Like its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey accuses those who recognize the genocide “to support claims based on Armenian lies.”
The Bundestag vote on this text thus risk of stoking German-Turkish tensions, already weakened by a controversy over a satirical poem insulting Erdogan, designed by a German comedian.
Stéphane © armenews.com