Turkey is a beautiful country, and its people are a great people. The holidays I spent there with my wife in 2006 are among the happiest I can recall. I like Turkish food and have Turkish friends in Germany.
Sadly, Turkey is also a country where genocide denial – namely denial that the Armenian Genocide was a genocide – is not just the attitude of a minority of ideologically motivated fanatics, but official state policy.
Thus, when German President Joachim Gauck (the first German politician to do this, as far as I know) publicly called a spade a spade last Thursday, on the eve of 100th anniversary of the first killings, he triggered an angry response from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who had earlier rebuked Pope Francis for a similar statement.
Meanwhile, there are signs that "many Turks now understand that their country has a need to address its past".
Germans have set an example in doing this over the past decades, by confronting the crimes of the Nazi regime and society as what they were. Turks will hopefully do the same in the near future. I’m sure it will benefit their great nation, like the great German nation has benefited from coming to terms with its past.
Sadly, Turkey is also a country where genocide denial – namely denial that the Armenian Genocide was a genocide – is not just the attitude of a minority of ideologically motivated fanatics, but official state policy.
Thus, when German President Joachim Gauck (the first German politician to do this, as far as I know) publicly called a spade a spade last Thursday, on the eve of 100th anniversary of the first killings, he triggered an angry response from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who had earlier rebuked Pope Francis for a similar statement.
Meanwhile, there are signs that "many Turks now understand that their country has a need to address its past".
Germans have set an example in doing this over the past decades, by confronting the crimes of the Nazi regime and society as what they were. Turks will hopefully do the same in the near future. I’m sure it will benefit their great nation, like the great German nation has benefited from coming to terms with its past.