Archive
GWA Press Release December 14, 2004
Turkey must recognize the Armenian Genocide
The German World Alliance endorses the position of the Government of France in urging Turkey to recognize the genocidal acts committed by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians during World War I.
The German World Alliance calls upon the EU to make Turkey‘s recognition of the genocide a precondition to any further negotiations about Turkey’s entry into the Union. The new Turkish Penal Code institutionalizes negationism of genocide as State policy. This is not only anachronistic, but also incompatible with European and universal human rights standards when it criminalizes the expression of Turkish responsibility for the genocide against the Armenians, and, in effect, institutionalizes negationism of genocide as State policy.
Only when all genocides and all victims of genocide are treated equally, will the world be able to move ahead and put ethnic cleansing and genocide behind the human race.
The EU missed a historic opportunity to uphold its own human rights standards and to obtain closure for the fifteen million German victims of ethnic cleansing 1944-1953, for the survivors and their children, when it did not make the entry of Poland and the Czech Republic into the EU dependent on their recognition of the expulsion of the Germans of Eastern Europe as a crime against humanity. The EU must not repeat this mistake in the case of Turkey.
The GWA calls upon the governments of Germany and Austria to join ranks with the Government of France in this matter. The GWA demands that the government of the USA persuade its Turkish allies to do the right thing and admit to the past acts of ethnocide against the Armenians.
In keeping with the goals of this year‘s Human Rights Day, the GWA demands that Turkish schools teach the Armenian Genocide and that those in Poland, Russia and the Czech Republic teach about the crimes against humanity which were committed against millions of human beings during the expulsions..
It is imperative that the world community realize that the genocide against the Armenians, the genocide against the Volksdeutsche, the genocide in Cambodia, and the genocide in Rwanda are important events in 20th century history.
All victims are entitled to the same respect and compassion, because they share the same human dignity.