A monument of disgrace

Back from work, I sometimes get the news of the day from Ulusal Kanal channel. About a week ago a decision taken by the Cologne City Council was on the agenda. Germans of Turkish ethnic origin and Turks living in Cologne were expressing their frustration.  Organisations which represent the Turkish community should react collectively, said an interviewee (1).  The proposal submitted in November 2015 for installing a memorial in the memory of the victims of the alleged "Armenian Genocide" was approved to be located at the Brück cemetery in Lehmbacher Weg region 15 months later.  It will be in the shape of khaçkar, that is a stone cross, and there will a plate that reads “In the memory of 1915/1916 Armenian Genocide victims” on it (2).  The crestfallen middle aged interviewee noted that there is a Turkish section of this cemetery. When I checked on the Internet, found out that the Muslim burial ground has been laid out on 31 corridors and was opened in November 1972. It seems to be the only burial ground available for the Muslim population in Cologne (2,3). Cologne has a population slightly over one million, and 150 thousand of them are Germans with ethnic origins, according to the 2009 census results (4). Turks probably form the largest group among them. In addition, the population of the Turks living there is over 60.000 thousand. The Armenian community of Cologne is the largest Armenian community in Germany, with over 5,000 members. (5)

While Mayor Henriette Reker has stated that the decision was taken  by consensus of all the fractions; Levent Taşkıran, the spokesman for the Cologne Turks Solidarity and Initiative Platform, which comprises 32 associations,  has said that their opinion was not taken despite the fact that they have been following this issue for two years and that they have always been in constant contact  with the authorities. Taşkıran has noted that "according to the Cemetery Directive, memorials serving to political ends are not allowed, and this decision has been against the regulations. The platform finds the decision anti-democratic and think that it will disrupt the domestic peace. The consensus, Mayor Reker thinks that was reached seems to ignore 10 percent of the Cologne population. 

Cologne City Hall (Rathaus)

Mayor Reker is a lawyer, and surely knows the meaning of "genocide" as a legal term, and also knows that the tragic events of 1915-16 cannot be called "genocide" legally. Yet, she is pleased with the decision. Once more it has been exposed how "Armenian genocide" allegations is utilized as a political instrument at times of conflict with Turkey. Apparently such instruments are very handy to turn the public opinion negative at times interests clash. It is disgraceful to bring such an approach down to the point, even respect to the deceased, respect to bereavement, and respect to deceaseds' kins and friends who will visit them has been lost. How can one be so merciless to create a psychological barrier for any community to access to the place of remembrance? Unfortunately Cologne has done that to its own people:  Germans of Turkish origin who have become the dwellers of Cologne for half a century. They have been subject to such a treatment. This is disgraceful for Cologne.

Jews used to react to allegations with the view that the arbitrary use of the term "genocide" diminishes its meaning. I wonder if we should relax, shrug our shoulders, stress the difference between the use of the word as a legal term and  as a common word in the meaning of any mass killing, and remember that there has been many mass killings during wars and actually in this sense the number of Muslims subject to ethnic cleansing outnumbers Armenians.

We can also stress the difference between mass deaths and mass killings. A genocide entails "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" (6). Mass deaths which occur during wars due to famine or epidemics cannot be regarded as genocide.  In my post titled WWI Famine in Anatolia, "Armenian Genocide" and Turkmens Today, I have covered the fact that lack of food affected everyone in the war zones, and the central government did not starve the relocated Ottoman Armenians intentionally (7). Food was scarce for everyone.

In the case of epidemics, again, it was the common fate. In his book titled The Ottoman Army 1914 - 1918: Disease and Death on the Battlefield, Özdemir (8) refers to a British archival document which affirms this fact as follows: "The weekly military intelligence report for the week of 14–21 September 1915, prepared by the British Army Command in Egypt, compares the events of 1894–1896 during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid to the events that took place in 1915. The report identifies an important distinction between the two periods in its following assessment: unlike the events of 1894–1896, the “deaths” occurring in 1915 started after the “victims” were sent into exile, many of whom lost their lives from starvation and disease. As the title of the book implies itself, epidemics caused great losses in the army, and under the circumstances Eastern Anatolian fleeing refugees were not immune either. Özdemir  points out that"The Muslim people of the areas occupied by the Russians following the retreat of the 3rd Army migrated to the inner parts of Anatolia. In 1916 and 1917, especially after the fall of Bayburt, Trabzon, and Erzincan, the army had to deal with a huge wave of refugees. Since no civilian organization existed to take care of the health problems of such a large number of people, the army also had to assume that responsibility beginning in mid-July 1916. Out of 5,424 refugees who became ill and were taken to refugee hospitals, 2,300 recovered and 1,529 died. According to Tevfik Sağlam, “Since civilian authorities could not take proper measures for the transfer and settlement of the refugees, much of the suffering, which could in fact have been prevented to a certain degree, could not be avoided.”

The Germans are in the best position to know the circumstances of the war years, since many German generals and officials were based in our country. Leopold Colmar von der Goltz, also known as Goltz Pasha, died himself because of typhus during  Kut-al-Amara Campaign. Yet, as seen in the justification part of the Resolution titled "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of the Armenians and other Christian minorities in the years 1915 and 1916" which was adopted by the Bundestag in 2016 they have chosen to believe the reports of the German diplomats and Dr. Lepsius, and blamed the generals by censoring the facts. Later Angela Merkel had to say that the Resolution was not legally binding.

However, studies demonstrate that Dr. Lepsius was biased and his sources of information were not reliable. For instance, Russian General Mayevskiy has reported that Dr. Lepsius's narrations about Van incident was exaggerated (9). Dr. Lepsius used to receive information from the American Ambassador Morgenthau whose motives were uncovered by Heath Lowry (10). Bruce Fein's analogy, "Would you trust the Ku Klux Klan to provide reliable accounts of black behavior in the United States?" while commenting on the validity of Henry Morgenthau's racist testimony, equally applicable to all the many virulent reports from people of the period who clearly stated Turks were an inferior race explains this point at its best (11).  Guenther Lewy  says that “many German diplomats considered the deportation of the Armenian community tantamount to annihilation. These records, especially the consular reports from Anatolia, help establish the terrible suffering of the deported Armenians and the occurrence of massacres. But, contrary to Armenian claims , they do not prove the responsibility of the central government." (12)

If the Cologne City Council is sensitive in the protection and defense of victims I wonder if they are aware of ethnic cleansing of Turkmens in Northern Iraq and Syria. Have they shown any reaction to the recent US bombing which killed not ISIL terrorists but civilians? Do they care about 1.4 million children at imminent risk of death as famine looms in Africa? Have they taken any decision to help them?

I believe a City Council can find  many other things more useful  to humanity to take decisions about, rather than demonizing Turks under the pretence of approving a stone cross to be put to a cemetery, to create a good excuse to support terrorists fighting against Turkey. 

We all know, that this is all about interests and choices. Let's hope days come for the humanity, when interests clash win win solutions are sought and good will replaces calculations.

Sources

01) Köln'de Ermeni anıtı tepkisi: Vatandaşlar kararın geri çekilmesini istiyor. [Reaction to the Armenian Monument in Cologne: Citizens want the decision to be withdrawn]. (Mar 21, 2017). Ulusal Kanal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCPfAgSGVz0

02) Friedhof Brück Köln. http://www.eslam.de/begriffe/f/friedhof_brueck_koeln.htm

03) Grabstaetten für Muslime. Muslim-Friedhof.de. http://www.muslim-friedhof.de/islamische_graeber_D.html

04) Demographics of Cologne. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Cologne

05) Armenier in Köln. (06.02.2017) Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.  http://www.ksta.de/koeln/armenier-in-koeln-mahnmal-projekt-zum-voelkermord-steht-seit-monaten-still-25678294

06) Office of the UN Special Adviser On The Prevention Of Genocide (OSAPG). Analysis Framework. http://www.un.org/ar/preventgenocide/adviser/pdf/osapg_analysis_framework.pdf

07) Aslan, S. A. (Oct. 26, 2016). WWI Famine in Anatolia, "Armenian Genocide" and Turkmens Today. Armenian Holocaust: My Story.

08) Özdemir, H. (2008). The Ottoman Army 1914 - 1918 : Disease and Death on the Battlefield. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.

09) Sertçelik, S (2016). The emergence of the Armenian Question 1678 - 1914: In the light of Russian and Armenian sources. Ankar: SRT Yayınları.

10) Sonyel, S. (2001). The Great War and the tragedy of Anatolia: Turks and Armenians in the Maelstrom of major Powers. Ankara: Turkish Historical Society.

11) The Last 1000 Years of A Nation & The Prejudices Against The Turks
http://www.memmuzik.com/symphonyturk/?php=dombra

12) Lewy, Guenter. Utah Series in Turkish and Islamic Studies : Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey : A Disputed Genocide. Salt Lake City, UT, USA: University of Utah Press, 2005.