Erdogan threatening Germany (again)

**HermantheGerman** · 01-06-2016, 01:37 PM

Turkey's Erdogan warns Germany ahead of Armenian genocide vote

Turkish President Erdogan has warned Germany of consequences if it passes an Armenian genocide resolution. Berlin and Ankara's deep cultural, economic, political and military ties could sour at a critical time.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Germany on Tuesday against labeling the mass death of Armenians during World War I as "genocide," a sensitive move that could damage relations at a critical juncture.
German lawmakers are expected to pass the resolution on Thursday, with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and their coalition partner, the Social Democrats, as well as the Greens backing the measure.
Before heading on a trip to Africa on Tuesday, Erdogan told reporters the resolution's passage would "naturally damage future diplomatic, economic, business, political and military relations between the two countries - and we are both also NATO countries."
Erdogan also initiated a call with Merkel on Tuesday, Turkish state-run Anatolia Agency reported.
As the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, Turkey officially denies that the events that started in 1915 amounted to genocide and has lashed out at countries that have officially recognized the term.
When France formally called the displacements and killings genocide in 2011, Turkey temporarily recalled its ambassador; it did the same thing to Austria last year. It has threatened the US with the closure of critical NATO bases if the US Congress passes a resolution.
The German resolution comes at a time when Merkel is relying on Turkey to implement a migrant deal with the EU. The controversial deal has already faced difficulty over Turkish demands for visa-free travel to the bloc. Erdogan's allies have threatened to unleash a wave of migrants on Europe if the country's demands are not met.
It also comes amid mounting concern over human rights in Turkey, Erdogan's authoritarian bent and spillover from the war in Syria. Domestically, the resolution could stir emotions among Germany's 3 million-strong Turkish minority.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Tuesday he didn't believe passing the resolution would cause problems with Germany's Turkish community. However, he did voice popular concern that passing the resolution would trigger an unproductive response from Turkey and hamper efforts at reconciliation with Armenia.
Backing away from passing the resolution could renew criticism Merkel is appeasing Erdogan. She has already come under criticism for allowing an investigation into a German comedian who insulted the Turkish president in a poem.
Militating against a sharp and sustained Turkish response against a genocide resolution is Germany's position as Ankara's top trading partner.
The resolution and German culpability
The resolution up for vote on Thursday uses the world "genocide" in both the headline and the text.
"The fate of the Armenians is exemplary in the history of mass exterminations, ethnic cleansing, deportations and yes, genocide, which marked the 20th century in such a terrible way," it reads.
It also notes that Germany, as an ally of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, "bears partial responsibility for the events."
Last April 24, on the 100th anniversary of what Armenians call the Great Crime, the Bundestag postponed voting on a similar resolution to classify the mass killings as genocide. Yet German President Joachim Gauck used the term, drawing criticism from Turkey.
At the time, the governing coalition opted not to vote on the resolution, but the Greens led by Cem Ozdemir, an ethnic Turk, forced a vote this year.
Turkey officially refers to what happened as the "Events of 1915" and denies that the massacres and deportations amounted to genocide. The official line is that ethnic Armenians represented a fifth column backed by Russia during World War I, and that the mass deportation and accompanying Armenian deaths were not premeditated or intentional - a key requirement in the legal definition of genocide.
Officials in Turkey put the number of Armenians who died at around 500,000, while Armenia puts the number at about 1.5 million out of a prewar population of some 2 million. Turkish officials also point out that hundreds of thousands of Muslims died from combat, starvation, cold and disease in eastern Anatolia during the war. Armenians have documented systematic mass murder, organized banditry, raping of women, pillaging of property and other atrocities.
Nearly 30 countries have formally recognized the massacres as genocide. Keen to avoid irking a key ally, the United States has avoided using the term, although more than 40 US state legislatures have passed genocide resolutions.

Turkey?s Erdogan warns Germany ahead of Armenian genocide vote | News | DW.COM | 31.05.2016

**AndyCap** · 01-06-2016, 01:43 PM

So much for the applause around Germany and it's highly effective use of "soft" power.

**Norton** · 01-06-2016, 02:37 PM

Originally Posted by HermantheGerman

Turkey officially refers to what happened as the "Events of 1915" and denies that the massacres and deportations amounted to genocide

Of course officially Turkey refuses to call it genocide. Calling it genocide carries the potential for reparations. Reparations both financiai and territorial. Turkey will use whatever leverage it has to prevent opening up the reparations can of worms. Including threats as Erdogan has done here.

Erdogan has a strong hand as the "west" is in deep need of cooperation from Turkey at the moment.

**wasabi** · 02-06-2016, 01:04 AM

Are you suggesting that Er dog on EU's balls.

Turkey balls has EU by the balls

**ENT** · 02-06-2016, 08:52 PM

Originally Posted by Norton

..... the "west" is in deep need of cooperation from Turkey at the moment.

Europe needs Turkey like it needs a second a*sehole.

**Norton** · 02-06-2016, 09:04 PM

BERLIN/ANKARA (Reuters) - German lawmakers declared the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a "genocide" in a symbolic resolution on Thursday which risks hurting relations with Ankara just as Berlin and European partners need its help in tackling the migrant crisis.

Turkey rejects the idea that the killings of Christian Armenians during World War One amounted to a genocide and a spokesman for the ruling AK Party responded swiftly to the vote, saying it had "seriously damaged" relations.

Turkey's prime minister has condemned the motion as "irrational" and said it will test the friendship between the NATO partners.

The timing could not be worse for Merkel, who has championed a deal with Turkey under which Ankara has agreed to stem the flow of refugees to Europe in return for cash, visa-free travel rights and accelerated talks on European Union membership.

Merkel was powerless to stop the symbolic resolution, which was initiated by the opposition Greens and was also backed by lawmakers in her conservative bloc and the Social Democrats.

"With one vote against and one abstention, this resolution has been passed by a remarkable majority of the German Bundestag," said Norbert Lammert, the president of the lower house of parliament.

Germany angers Turkey with Armenian genocide resolution | Reuters

**HermantheGerman** · 09-06-2016, 02:46 AM

The Truth Berlin Won’t Tell About Turkey

Germany’s Parliament sets the record straight on a century-old genocide, but remains silent on Ankara’s modern oppressions.
Like everyone growing up in Turkey, I was taught at school that Armenians were an ungrateful race who sided with the Russians during World War I in order to carve up the Ottoman Empire, only to be deported en mass in 1915 as an emergency measure. We learned that while some Armenians died along the way, they had massacred many Turks, that this kind of stuff happens in wartime, and that the world was conspiring to spread lies about “the so-called genocide” in order to weaken us, the Republic of Turkey.

It took me almost 20 years to undo the brainwashing of the first 20 years of my life and discover the full truth.

What really happened is that in 1915 Armenians in the eastern provinces rose up for greater rights and autonomy. They were among the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East and an integral part of the empire, with many politicians, artisans, diplomats and businessmen. The wartime Ottoman government responded with harsher and harsher measures, finally putting in effect a policy of ethnic cleansing for more than one million Armenians in 1915 across the entire region that is now called Turkey.

With systematic purges and well-orchestrated mass killings, Anatolia was “cleansed” of one of its most ancient civilizations. All traces of Armenian life and culture were erased at the foundation of the new republic in 1923. It is as if they never lived there.

Last week, 101 years after this tragedy, the German Parliament recognized the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 as “genocide,” agreeing with most scholars on the subject. The Bundestag isn’t the first parliament to condemn this first genocidal spree of the 20th century—28 parliaments around the world have passed similar laws in the past few decades. But this vote matters immensely because it highlights imperial Germany’s complicity in this tragedy.

At the time, the German government was the closest ally of the Ottomans and had military consultants embedded with the Ottoman army across the empire. Historic evidence reveals that plans to purge Armenians from mainland Anatolia were shared with German officials at various stages of the campaign.

The current co-leader of Germany’s Green party, Cem Özdemir, himself of Turkish decent, spoke passionately in support of the motion. “They knew exactly what was going on,” Mr. Özdemir said of German officers. “In this respect we’re guilty of complicity and have to admit it.”

It’s impossible not to admire the courage of Turkish-German politicians like Mr. Özdemir, who resisted pressure from Ankara and its sizable Turkish constituency inside Germany and pushed for the probe into one of the darkest periods of Turkish history. All 11 Bundestag members of Turkish background voted in favor of the resolution.

While Ankara’s official response to the German government seemed measured enough to avoid a full blow-up in relations, its anger was directed on Mr. Özdemir and other deputies who supported the vote. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been issuing condolences to the Armenian victims of 1915 for the past three years. But this time he fumed that deputies who supported the vote “should have their blood samples tested in a laboratory,” suggesting there may be a hidden un-Turkishness to be revealed, very much evoking the abominable 20th-century Germanic obsession with racial purity.

What to call 1915 remains the greatest taboo in Turkey. While the government now accepts that terrible suffering was inflicted on the Armenians, it still invests millions of dollars every year in global campaigns to refute the g-word. “Bad stuff happened but it doesn’t amount to genocide” is an abridged version of the official Turkish position.

The public is even more reactionary than the government, thanks to a policy of denial enforced for decades on every level of the school curriculum, media and academia. Even posting a simple photo of Armenian orphans from 1915 on social media instantly draws dozens of hate letters, as I experienced on numerous occasions over the past year.

In this suffocating intellectual atmosphere, one would assume that the Bundestag’s vote might be a breath of fresh air and an opening for the small but growing number of mavericks in academia and politics who now challenge Turkey’s dogma. But hardly so.

By unleashing a wave of nationalist frenzy in Turkey, the vote makes the lives of those who try to speak truth to power even more difficult. Turkey isn’t going through a “normal” period these days. Free speech is muffled. The media are stifled under an increasingly authoritarian regime. Dozens of academics who challenge the government’s harsh tactics on the Kurdish issue have been fired or detained.

And while all that was happening, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was busy shuttling back and forth to Ankara, ignoring the sharp deterioration in Turkish democracy in order to strike a refugee deal with Mr. Erdogan. At the encouragement of Germany, the European Union in March agreed to ditch its own principles and expedite Turkey’s accession process—as journalists were going on trial day after day for what they write.

EU officials uttered not a peep on press freedoms, the pressures on the judiciary or the dire human-rights situation in Kurdish areas, until the European public finally protested the double standard.

The German government is courageous to face its past, but what it should also question is its policy of omertà about the present. Turkish democrats have grown deeply suspicious of Berlin’s politicking over the past year, seeing their struggles ignored for the sake of a handshake on migrants. The vote on history won’t change that.

No country in Europe is more important for Turks than Germany—home to almost 4 million Turkish citizens and the major force behind the European Union. There is scope in that relationship for a real alliance to lift both nations and make an immense contribution to Turkish democracy. For this to happen, Berlin needs to engage with the diverse levels of Turkish society and uphold its own core principles, not just on history but on what is happening today.

Ms. Aydintasbas is a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The Truth Berlin Won?t Tell About Turkey - WSJ

**HermantheGerman** · 09-06-2016, 02:49 AM

Turkey mulls retaliation in Germany genocide row

AFP on June 9, 2016, 4:42 am

Ankara (AFP) - Turkey is planning retaliatory steps against Berlin after Germany's parliament recognised the World War I killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces as a genocide, the presidency said on Wednesday.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had reacted furiously to last week's vote, charging that German MPs of Turkish origin who backed the move were supporters of "terrorism" and declaring that Ankara would never accept a genocide took place.

Turkish authorities including the foreign ministry are now "preparing an action plan against the decision made by the German federal parliament," presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told a news conference in Ankara.

The final plan will be submitted to Erdogan for approval, Kalin added, without giving details of the retaliatory measures being considered.

The vote has sparked a bitter diplomatic row between the two countries -- at a time when the EU is counting on Turkey to block the flow of migrants to Europe -- with Ankara recalling its ambassador from Berlin for consultations.

Armenians say Ottoman forces killed some 1.5 million of their people in a genocidal campaign from 1915 by Ottoman forces -- ordered by Minister of War Enver Pasha and other top officials -- to wipe them from Anatolia.

But Turkey insists similar numbers of Muslims and Armenians were killed when Armenians joined forces with invading Russian troops in the hope of carving out their own state.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/31...ide-row/#page1

**helge** · 09-06-2016, 03:14 AM

Originally Posted by HermantheGerman

the United States has avoided using the term, although more than 40 US state legislatures have passed genocide resolutions.

So has Israel, but probably for different reasons.

"Better if the genocide against us isn't blurred by those Armenians"

The term 'genocide' was, btw created to describe the armenian sufferring....,by a Jew.

Any Spit Trays in here ?

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