"Up to 1.5 million people died in the mass extermination of the Armenians 100 years ago. Germany's government has agreed to refer to the killings as "genocide" - mainly thanks to President Gauck", writes Christoph Strack, a Deutshe Welle analyst.
"The German parliament's decisiveness and the new debate about the term "genocide" gained momentum thanks mainly to two men: Pope Francis and German President Joachim Gauck. Ten days ago, the leader of the Catholic Church celebrated Mass with Armenian Catholics in St. Peter's Basilica. He spoke then of "genocide," just as Pope John Paul II had done in 2000, and indeed as Francis himself had earlier in 2013," Strack writes.
"The former GDR civil rights activist has already chosen not to mince words on several occasions this year, at times when diplomats would have preferred he had been more circumspect. How would it look if the German president referred to "genocide" at the ceremony on Thursday evening, and then, a good 12 hours later, the coalition parties only tiptoe around the term in their debate?" says the author.
He says that few political debates in Germany about the history of the 20th century have been as dishonest as the current one.
"Greens politicians clamor around the fainthearted coalition - and yet in 2005, when they sat in government and prominent Green party member Joschka Fischer led the Foreign Ministry, the word "genocide" didn't appear even once in the statement at the Armenian commemorations, but remained hidden. Now, current coalition leaders have found the confidence to use the term, but one still has to search to find the artfully-transformed phrase in the text. One Christian Democrat politician wrote on Tuesday that in the coalition parties' resolution, "the term genocide had been deleted from the title at the request of the chancellor's office and the foreign ministry," adding that the adjustment would "provoke opposition." More and more MPs wanted "the genocide of the oldest Christian nation in the world to be named as such." These lines also say something about the self-confidence and understanding of the individual's role in the coalition parties in the government. According to legal experts, the current review of the word "genocide" won't carry any criminal or civil relevance. Since 1947, "genocide" has been a legally broad term. Back then, the United Nations General Assembly used the word while looking back on the horrors of the Nazi era. And so it is for Armenians, who now face a moral, political test. And with that inevitably comes the knowledge of the massacres and systematic expulsions that took place in 1915," the analyst says.
To note, on Friday, April 24, the Bundestag will vote on a bill, which states that "a planned expulsion and extermination of over a million ethnic Armenians" was "an example of mass destruction, ethnic cleansing, deportation, genocide, of which the 20th century is marked in such a terrible way." German Chancellor Angela Merkel in soft tones explained to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu Germany's stand on the Armenian Genocide recognition. Earlier, on Wednesday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu personally asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel not to use the word 'genocide' in a Bundestag resolution to be considered Friday. Today, however, German Ambassador to Armenia Reiner Morell told journalists that no Turkish calls will change Berlin's stand on this matter.