Germany recognizes the extermination of the 1915 Armenians perpetrated by the Ottomans. Even Berlin thus joins the (short) list of countries that after a hundred years have decided to make historical honesty prevail over the politically correct.
The reaction of Turkey and in particular of President Erdogan is not different from the previous ones, when from other authoritative benches it was decided to call things by their name. A year ago when the Pope spoke the Turkish ambassador to the Vatican was recalled; in these hours the Turkish ambassador in Berlin has been called back ...
The music is always the same: to Turkey the idea of feeling responsible for the almost 2 million Armenians exterminated just doesn't go down. For almost a century, Ankara's refusal to come to terms with its past has been interpreted as pride, dangerous above all from an electoral point of view. Today this reading is no longer sufficient.
It often happens that a country involved in a process of modernization and transformation sever its ties with the past, sometimes even going beyond what is necessary. It is the classic logic of defeated nations, forced to be reborn after annihilation. Nobody can understand this more than Italy and Germany itself. But even that was not enough for Turkey. Even after the Ataturk revolution that introduced Ankara to the future and to the Western world, the interest in hiding the embarrassing truth was stronger than the patina of secularism that the new nation has boasted for years.
In fact the denial of the Armenian genocide for decades has been among the few links between modern Turkey and the legacy of Ottoman culture. An umbilical cord kept in the dark but still present. Today, however, refusal has a different flavor. The fury seasoned with threats with which Erdogan reacts to the German motion is emblematic of a new Turkish awareness, not too far from the aggressive and Islamocentric logic that often characterized the ancient Empire.
Whether the Turks like it or not however, one thing seems relevant: if it had been approved twenty years ago, the motion would have fallen to nothing. Today, in light of the geopolitical weight reached by Turkey within the crisis in Syria, Libya, the Caucasus and with regard to the phenomenon of emigration, it is very difficult not to interpret the whole as the result of Ottoman revanchism. Separating Ankara's position regarding the Armenian genocide from its current political conduct is an objectively difficult path. The only mitigating factor to anger is the sense of betrayal perceived by Ankara, abandoned on the road of historical complicity by its usual ally, Germany, the mother of the central imperial blocs and the second home of millions of Turkish immigrants today.
But why Germany and why right now?
First of all it is good to give the motion of the Bundestag the actual weight it has: an absolutely symbolic value. That is to say, beyond the bombastic statements and a position taken more than anything else by internal public opinion, there will be no real diplomatic consequences between Turkey and Germany. The same positions as Chancellor Merkel, who was not present for the vote, and the German Foreign Minister Steinmeier, against the motion, say a lot about the incisiveness of the resolution at the international level. If anything, it emphasizes a double European conscience, the result of an often evident rift between political choices and collective perceptions: governments stutter; the peoples (this time through the Bundestag) speak loudly.
The only real relief may be worth doing within the strategic alliance that unites Germany with Turkey, undisputed NATO giants. In Western Europe the only stentorian voice heard so far in defense of the Armenians was that of France. However, according to ancient anti-Turkish diplomatic tradition, pro-Slavic and reluctantly Atlantic loyalty, the position of Paris has not surprised anyone. That the French were closer to the Russians than to the Americans on the Armenian question was somehow taken for granted.
On the other hand, it is surprising that a unanimous chorus has risen from Berlin, often hostage to guilt and soft Europeanism. Whether it is a swallow that does not make spring or the symptom of wider discontent, we will discover it only by living. In the meantime, no one will remove the right to feel less alone for the Armenians.
(photo: Turkish presidency / Axel Hartmann)
