Turkish PM's aide says government change in Germany not to affect Turkey

[Gavur]

Anatolia news agency, Ankara
16 Sep 05

Berlin, 16 September: Cuneyd Zapsu, adviser to Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has said: "If ruling power changes in Germany,
it does not affect Turkey."

Speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, Zapsu said, "opposition
power in Germany can have a negative attitude against Turkey at the
moment. But, if they become the ruling power, they see the realities."

"We want the entry talks to start on 3 October. This process may last
for 10-15 years. The real problem about Turkey's EU membership is not
economic or military. They are actually scared of Turkey's becoming an
effective country within the EU like Poland and Germany," he added.

Zapsu noted: "We want Turkish people who live in Germany to be fully
integrated to that country. But, we don't want assimilation. We want
nearly 3 million Turks who live in Germany to be German
citizens. Turkey is ready to give every support to our Turkish
citizens with this objective."

[Gavur]

Eu To Urge Turkey To Open Border With Armenia, European Parliamentarians State

23.09.2005 05:45

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Green parliamentarian Cem Ozdemir stated that the European Union will urge Turkey to open borders with Armenia and show better attitude to the national minorities. When commenting on the EU-Turkey negotiations to open October 3 Mr. Ozdemir noted that the resolution to be adopted by the European Parliament on September 28 maintains an item urging Ankara “to make a decision on opening borders.” The parliamentarian also said that the Christian Democratic faction of the European Parliament will urge inclusion of the Armenian Genocide recognition by Ankara in the EU-Turkey negotiation agenda. When touching upon “December 2004 – October 2005. Has Turkey changed?” International Conference held September 22 in Brussels Cem Ozdemir noted that some participants stressed that “the European Union is a bloc of Christian states and cannot accept Muslim Turkey. “Nothing has changed in Turkey and it would be a historical mistake to accept it to the European Union”, European Parliament member Francesco Enrico Speroni stated, RFE/RL reports.

[Gavur]

Germany's Merkel accepts Turkey invitation

Incoming chancellor stresses two countries enjoy a 'common bond' through NATO

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Saturday, November 19, 2005


BERLIN: Incoming German chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday said she had accepted an invitation to visit Turkey in the first half of next year, and hoped the two countries would enjoy strong ties. Merkel made the announcement after meeting in Berlin with Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, who conveyed the invitation on behalf of Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan. She said she would like to see "good and intensive cooperation" between Germany and Turkey and stressed that they enjoyed a "common bond" because both were members of NATO.

Observers have been watching carefully how Merkel will handle her first diplomatic encounters with Turkey.

Her Christian Democrats have opposed Turkey's bid to join the European Union, calling instead for a "privileged partnership" with the predominantly Muslim nation. That stance angered Germany's three million-strong Turkish community and raised concerns about Berlin's future relations with Ankara.

But the Christian Democrats and their coa\lition partners, the Social Democrats, who strongly back Turkey's bid for membership, reached a compromise stance on the issue last week.

The parties said they recognized the EU's stance that Turkey "will have no prior guarantees about the outcome" of the accession talks which are expected to last up to 15 years.

The term "privileged partnership" has been dropped in favor of "privileged relationship," but the government manifesto stresses this would only be the case if Turkey fails to meet the criteria for full membership.

Gul was also scheduled to meet with outgoing German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and with his incoming successor Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday.

Gul was also to attend a conference organized by a foundation which promotes links between business and politics.

Outgoing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has repeatedly said Turkey's bid to join the EU will be successful and worked to ensure harmonious ties between Germans and Turkish immigrants.

He has argued along with Fischer that integrating the populous, relatively poor nation into Europe would prove vital towards ensuring the region's safety in a climate of growing Islamic extremism. - AFP

[Gavur]

Armenian Embassy In Germany To Continue Lobbying Armenian Genocide Recognition In Bun

ARMENIAN EMBASSY IN GERMANY TO CONTINUE LOBBYING ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RECOGNITION IN BUNDESRAT





BERLIN, JANUARY 13. ARMINFO. The Embassy of Armenia in Berlin together with outstanding representatives of the Armenian community of Germany will continue lobbying the Armenian Genocide recognition in Bundesrat, Armenian Ambassador to Germany Karine Kaziryan says in a talk with ARMINFO.

Bundestag's June 2005 adoption of a special resolution condemning the events of 1915 is not a end. "We will continue lobbying the issue in Bundesrat for it to adopt at least a relevant resolution if not a law like the French one," says Kaziryan. She says that it is necessary that the future resolution use the word "genocide" directly rather than in quotation like was the case with Bundestag's resolution. "The first step has already been taken and this will help us to move forward. In personal talk German MPs always call the events of 1915 the Armenian Genocide," notes Kaziryan.

Asked if the Turkish government and the biggest in Germany Turkish community can hinder the further lobbying of the issue in Germany, Kaziryan says that all their attempts to torpedo the adoption of the resolution in June failed. After the adoption of the revolution Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdohan called "a spineless politician" the former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, with whom he had been very close. Despite being deeply hurt by the resolution the Turks are still trying to keep the balance. The Armenian Genocide recognition is gathering momentum as an international issue and can no longer be stopped or reversed.

[Gavur]

Turkey After Pamuk

The New York Sun
January 24, 2006 Tuesday



by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen


Facing mounting international embarrassment and pressure, Turkey
yesterday dropped the criminal charges it had brought against
novelist Orhan Pamuk for daring to challenge 90 years of Turkish
denials about the Turkish genocide of Armenians. Mr. Pamuk, in saying
candidly last February to a Swiss magazine (so not even in Turkey)
that "one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these
lands and nobody but me dares talk about it," broke the Turkish
social and political proscription backed up by a grotesque
anti-democratic law criminalizing criticism of "Turkishness." The law
is used to prevent Turks from speaking truthfully about the Turkish
genocide of more than 1 million Armenian men, women, and children in
1915 under the cover of war and the pretext of national security. His
crime is to have "publicly denigrated Turkish identity."

While this historical and legal farce surrounding Mr. Pamuk has now
ended, the suppression of basic historical truths by the Turkish
government, people, and cowed or nationalist intellectuals continues,
remaining a blight against Turkey, and impeding its attempt to enter
the European Union and leave its non-democratic past behind. As the
European Union enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, overseeing
discussions with Turkey about membership, rightly said, and perhaps
as the Turkish court dismissing the case came to recognize, "it is
not Orhan Pamuk who will stand trial ... but Turkey."

The Turkish government and people should use the Pamuk affair as a
spur to rethinking the wisdom of their historical cover-up of the
Armenian genocide. And to do that, they should look for guidance to
the center of Europe itself, to Germany.

Since 1945, Germans, including German political leaders, have had to
struggle with how to confront their country's and countrymen's
crimes, chiefly the slaughter of 6 million Jews. This confrontation
with historical truth, with their own country's and their own
people's souls, with survivors, and with the need to perform repair,
has been immensely complex and variable, with substantial successes
and continuing failures.

To be sure, there was for decades no great willingness on the part of
Germans and their leaders to come clean about what so many of them
had willingly done, namely to slaughter Jews and non-Jews in the
cause of creating a European Nazi imperium. But they could not deny
these truths or completely ignore them: The victorious allies made
some semblance of an honest acknowledgment of the past and some
considerable reparations to the victims a condition for Germany's
re-entry into the community of nations. So German historians and
newspapers began writing about the Holocaust, the German government
in 1952 signed a reparations agreement with Israel, and the German
courts, albeit reluctantly, began to try and convict the murderers.

During the 1950s, 1960s, and even to some considerable extent to this
day, these measures have been either extremely unpopular or have at
least dissatisfied considerable minorities within Germany. It is not
easy to confront the horrific part of one's past, to make good on
material and moral debts, and to bend a knee in contrition - as
German Chancellor Willy Brandt literally did in 1970, falling to his
knees at the site of the destroyed Jewish ghetto in Warsaw.

Yet as many in Germany, particularly its political leaders, slowly
and in the 1990s finally came to understand, being truthful about the
past and acting to make amends with the victims as best one can -
always principally done for pragmatic reasons - neither shames nor
weakens Germany, but strengthens it and enhances its standing in the
world.

I know this firsthand. In 1996, I published "Hitler's Willing
Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust," causing a furor
and a sensation in Germany, causing the entire country to undergo -
for many an unwanted, for virtually everyone an unpleasant - soul
searching about the one central aspect of the Holocaust that had been
buried by German scholars, namely that ordinary Germans were not
coerced by the Nazi regime to kill Jews but they by and large
willingly did so because of their own anti-Semitism. There was an
unprecedented and as yet unequalled flood of attention for this.
There were national debates. There was much agonizing. Germany's
apologists did not want the truths to be discussed, so many attacked
my book viciously. But more Germans insisted that the truths had to
be known, and the issues had to be worked through. This was all
closely watched and reported in the media around the world, sometimes
with surprise at how well Germans were accepting the difficult
truths, and always with admiration at this aspect of the reaction.

Discussing and being truthful about the past crimes of one's
countrymen, and carrying out the duties of repair, while difficult,
only brings credit to a people and their country. Can anyone honestly
say that Germany, the leading country of Europe, a member of the
European and international community in good standing, seen in many
ways as a model for others, has suffered for its truthfulness? Has
Germany's relations with other countries ever been harmed because of
Germany's willingness to acknowledge the crimes of its past? Has the
German economy been weakened? Has German culture ceased to flourish?

Had postwar Germany, however, tried to deny and cover up the basic
truth that the Nazi regime and many Germans undertook a program of
annihilation against the Jews, it is like ly that the European
project and Germany's standing in the world would never have advanced
as each has. Had Germany engaged in systematic denial, there would
have been continuing conflict over the past with Germany's neighbors
and the world, and ongoing suspicion about how much Germans had
reformed themselves. It is also likely that without an honest
confrontation with the past, German democracy would not have
developed as democratically and tolerantly as it has, and would
continue to be seen with wariness by its neighbors.

Germans, by carrying out their duties of repair have, whatever their
ongoing failures (German historians and commentators while never
denying the basic historical facts, have always tended to make
excuses for the ordinary Germans who willfully committed crimes, and
anti-Semitism still is widespread in Germany), mainly cleansed
themselves and their national community. Chief among those duties is
to tell the truth, and by doing so, to avoid committing a second
offense of false denial against the survivors and their relatives.
What Germans have come to understand is that by telling the truth
they indicate to the world that they have utterly broken with their
country's criminal past. That is why truth does not shame but wins
friends and goodwill.

I often lecture in synagogues and to Jewish communities about the
Holocaust. During the discussion, I almost always say two things
about Germans today. No country, no people has ever confronted the
horrors of their country's past perfectly, but Germans, for all their
considerable failings, have done this more fully and more honestly
than any other people I know. I also insist that collective guilt,
including and especially intergenerationally collective guilt, is
conceptually and morally indefensible. Indeed, no one has said this
more publicly, repeatedly, and forcefully in Germany, in America, and
around the world than I have. When I tell this to Jewish audiences,
the individual and communal heirs of the victims, invariably there is
applause, agreement, and appreciation.

No one born after the deeds can be held culpable for those deeds. But
they can and ought to be held morally blameworthy for the suppression
of the truth about those deeds. And they should be told as many times
as necessary that, in the end, their denials only injure themselves.

Isn't it time Turkey ends its historical charade that imperils its
standing in Europe and the world?

Mr. Goldhagen, a member of Harvard's Center for European Studies, won
Germany's triennial Democracy Prize in 1997 for his contributions to
German democracy for having written "Hitler's Willing Executioners:
Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust."

[1.5 million]

Gavur - very good post. Turks here need to read and attempt to absorb the excellent points made in this article.

[Gavur]

Turkish Genocide Denialists Anger Germany

Assyrian International News Agency
2-14-2006 16:3:42

(AINA) -- Turkish Workers' Party leader Dogu Perincek and Rauf
Denktas, the former ulta-nationalist Turkish-Cypriot leader, will
lead a demonstration in Berlin on March 18 to denounce the recognition
of the Armenian Genocide by the German Parliament. The demonstration
announcements which read, 'If Western capitals don't want to be burnt
like Paris, unjust treatment towards Turkey should be ended' and "Take
your flag and come to Berlin," angered the German Government. German
Embassy officials in Ankara held talks with Turkish officials over the
issue this week, showing the growning tension in the relations between
Turkey and Germany The initiative of the group is the "Talat Pasha
Movement." Talat Pasha was the notorious Ottoman Turkish official
and one of the main culpits for the genocide of Turkey's Armenian,
Greek and Assyrian populations.

Denktas, the former Turkish-Cypriot leader, is also expected to lay
flowers where Talat was assassinated on March 15, 1921 in Berlin and
a general assembly to commemorate his memory is scheduled to be held
in Berlin on March 19.

Turkey, an overwhelmingly muslim country, has a long history of
Christian and minority persecution. It is believed that between
1912-1923 more than three millions Christians of Armenian, Greek
and Assyrian origins were massacred by Ottoman Islamist and Kemalist
forces in a state-orchestrated genocide plan.

[maral_m79]

Talat Pasha Movement angers Germany

Talat Pasha Movement angers Germany

The New Anatolian / Ankara


Perincek and Denktas to lead protest in Berlin on March 18 to denounce Armenian genocide claims. Announcement for demonstration says, 'If Western capitals don't want to be burnt like Paris, unjust treatment towards Turkey should be ended,' which angers Germany

A demonstration aimed at denouncing the Armenian genocide claims, to be held in Berlin on March 18 under the slogan "Take your flag and come to Berlin," is sowing tension between Turkey and Germany.

The announcement for the demonstration read, "If Western capitals don't want to be burnt like Paris, unjust treatment towards Turkey should be ended" and has angered Germany and German Embassy officials in Ankara held talks with Turkish officials over the issue this week.

Workers' Party (IP) leader Dogu Perincek and former Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) President Rauf Denktas will lead the planned demonstration with the participation of many representatives from Turkish political parties. The main aim of the group is to put pressure on the German Parliament to null or void recognition of the Armenian genocide claims. The initiative of the group, also known as the "Talat Pasha Movement," also aims to attract some 5 million supporters, including some 1,000 from Turkey. The slogans for the demonstration are "Take your flag and come to Berlin" and "End the Armenian 'genocide' lies."

One of the leaders of the group, Denktas, is expected to lay flowers where Talat Pasha was assassinated on March 15, 1921 in Berlin by an Armenian and a general assembly to commemorate Talat Pasha is scheduled to be held in Berlin on March 19.

The same group last year also held a demonstration to mark the 82nd anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne. At that demonstration Perincek lashed out at a decision by Switzerland to punish those who deny the Armenian genocide claims, saying, "The Armenian 'genocide' is an international lie," after which the prosecutor from Winterthur opened an investigation into Perincek and the incident turned into a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Switzerland.



http://www.thenewanatolian.com/tna-662.html

[Gavur]

German conservative opposes Turk party’s EU aspirations

MUNICH (AP) - A German state governor yesterday threatened to block Turkey’s governing party from beginning an association with a European conservative group, reflecting his opposition to Turkish attempts to join the European Union. Edmund Stoiber’s Bavaria-only Christian Social Union is the sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. He said he would block a move to allow Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, from joining the European People’s Party as an associate. The EPP decides by consensus on membership. “We think that Turkey’s joining the European Union is wrong, and for that reason, allowing the Turkish AKP to join would sent the wrong signal,” Stoiber said after a meeting in the Bavarian capital of Munich.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/news/world__KathiLev&xml/&aspKath/world.asp?fdate=28/03/2006