Marking the anniversary of 100 years since the Armenian Genocide, the European Green Party expresses its’ solidarity with the Armenian people and calls for action towards a historical rectification, bilateral reconciliation, and firm action against hatred and all forms of violence.
We acknowledge that the bloodshed that was conducted by the Ottoman state against the Armenian people, during 1915-1923, constituted a genocide according to the meaning of the convention on the prevention and the punishment of crimes of genocide, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948. The structural and well-planned violence conducted by the Ottoman state brought death to an estimated 1.5 million ethnic Armenians. We want to express additional mourning to the destruction of whole communities, cultural heritage and interethnic society committed at the time. This is about not forgetting and commemorating the victims, Assyrian and Pontiac Greeks, numbering over a million fallen. We must not neglect that this tragic campaign included severe torture, rape, and destruction of families, communities’ structures and displacement.
We also acknowledge the tacit complacency as well as support that states that are now Member States of the EU have given to the Ottoman Empire. We especially recognize that the German Kaiserreich shared responsibility for the genocide. As a close military ally of the Ottoman Empire, it knew about the massacres but decided not to intervene and even prevented related information from spreading in the public.
Denial of the Genocide by the Turkish state and prorogation of recognition by other states, not only keeps the Armenian community further from historical settlement and having their own history, but also adversely affects true reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia and moreover weakens actions against new waves of violence.
Henceforth we commend the Turkish citizens who are strongly and fearlessly committed to the recognition of the Armenian genocide and who stand up to the State propaganda and censorship.
The EGP urges the EU Member states and other European countries that have not yet done so, to open the political process to recognise and condemn the Genocide, followed by the respective Act.
- We deem that it’s of the utmost importance that the Turkish government recognises the Genocide and conducts acts of moral and historical rehabilitation towards the Armenians.
- We call upon the Government of Turkey to offer its official apologies to the Armenian state and diaspora.
- We call upon the Government of Turkey to immediately abolish Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code that among other things censors political and public debate on the genocide issue and to acquit all those who were imprisoned or fined under this article.
- Seeing it as an investment in a common future and cooperation, we call upon the Turkish government and civil society to re-evaluate historical and cultural narratives and thoroughly eliminate hatred from them.
- Additionally, the Turkish Government should take the necessary steps to open all archives and invest in opportunities for historians, academics and researchers to engage in a transparent debate and come to terms with its past.
- We urge the Government of Turkey to respect and include the Armenian cultural heritage within State borders within Acts of Protection and Development of Cultural Heritage.
- Finally, the current regime in Turkey must admit that failing to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide and invest in reconciliation until today gave cause to rhetoric of violence and fear and gave legitimacy to perpetrators.
- We urge governments of both countries to establish diplomatic relations without any precondition with utmost priority of opening shared border.
- We urge the German government to recognize unequivocally the responsibility that the German Kaiserreich carried with regard to the Armenian genocide and to provide substantial financial and other support for efforts to research and commemorate the Armenian genocide. We urge the governments of Germany and of all EU member states to anchor the history of the Armenian genocide both in their respective national and in the European culture of remembrance.
As Europeans and as Greens, we believe that everyone’s right to their own history, culture and identity needs to be respected. The European Greens acknowledge the Armenian genocide and pay due respect to its victims as a first step towards historical reparation.
