A discussion with Hikmet Özdemir, the chief historian of the Turkish government, for the processing of the genocide at the Armenians
DIE WELT: Mr. Özdemir, why Turkey enters only now into the debate around the Armenian tragedy? Was one ashamed, or was politically too risky the topic?
Hikmet Özdemir: That is a good question. I often placed it to me. I believe, it have with all the bloody conflicts to do driving out and migrations 1911 to 1923. Atatuerk operated thereafter a policy of the "rehablitation". Painful wounds again to break, was not a kind of recovering from trauma to. But other conditions prevail now. The Armenian Diaspora convinced the world of the Genozid thesis, and this prejudice can have heavy political consequences for Turkey. We must create therefore clarity. We demand an open, international discussion of this question. We opened our archives. We request all other involved ones to put also their documents on the table.
DIE WELT: It seems to give also a large prejudice - that there was no Genozid.
Özdemir: We do not have prejudices. Prime Minister Erdogan suggested creating an international historian commission under participation of the great powers at that time. There all sides are to then put their documents on the table, and if thereby comes out that it it gave a Genozid, we that will accept.
DIE WELT: Why is an open discussion so heavy in Turkey? Is the political pressure to refer certain positions too strong?
Özdemir: There is no political pressure in the Armenian debate with us.
DIE WELT: How ask? Recently an international conference was blown off to this topic in Istanbul, after the Minister of Justice was issued itself in wildest verbal attacks against the supervisors.
Özdemir: The conference could have taken place. Nobody forced the supervisors. I regret that the conference did not take place, but happened rather for propaganda reasons, in order to make tendency against Turkey.
DIE WELT: The German Bundestag requested Turkey to place itself to its past.
Özdemir: Germany missed a large chance. It would be the ideal mediator in this question. Instead of its became a one-sided judgement pleases, still, without listening to us. Prime Minister Erdogan had offered to send me to Berlin in order to describe our understanding of the events. The Germans rejected that.
DIE WELT: Which arguments would accept you at all, in order to pull-light the Genozid thesis?
Özdemir: If someone shows a document, from which follows that the government intended the destruction of the Armenians, then accept I that. The opposite is however the case. The Armenians fought against us, and their Deportation became necessary from military reasons. Even driving out from the winter comes out on spring shifted, in order to preserve humans from all documents that the government was endeavored around the protection of the civilians. That so many died, was consequence of war confusions, the weather, the primitive circumstances.
DIE WELT: There was not a written destruction instruction also under Hitler. So seen there were no Holocaust.
Özdemir: There was no hate with us against the Armenians as in Germany against the Jews, and Armenian hate was not a component of the state ideology like the Antisemitismus in Germany. There is completely different initial positions.
DIE WELT: The historian Erich inhabitant of zurich - and many different -, gave two operations say it. Driving out, which did not have to lead for itself taken yet to the genocide, and a covered operation of the governing young Turks, who had the task to make driving out the death march.
Özdemir: In the context of an international historian commission all relevant documents will come on the table.
DIE WELT: Willy Brandts case of knee in Warsaw introduced a turn in the relationship between Poland and German. Is something similar between Turkey and Armenia conceivable?
Özdemir: I personally bow me before all Armenian victims. We do not have to forget however that alone 1915 more than 102 000 Turks were killed of Armenians, and altogether 570 000 Turks of Armenian hand died. We need gestures of the reconciliation on both sides. But Willy Brandts case of knee is seen with us in connection with the Holocaust, and there we Genozid to have committed, cannot one that compare.
DIE WELT: 570 000 Turkish victims? At the end died after more Turk than Armenians?
Özdemir: The portion of the population was larger with the Armenian victims, even if in absolute numbers perhaps less Armenian than Turks died. I can say that not yet definitely, become the numbers we in November to publish.
DIE WELT: How can one arrive at a reconciliation?
Özdemir: Atatuerk said after the world war to the British and Australians: Mothers, does not cry, your dead ones are in our chest. They became also our sons. - in this sense we must stop to up-add dead ones against each other.
With Hikmet Özdemir spoke Boris Kalnoky
15 July 2005
Die Welt
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