Acting Together: A new attempt to build bridges between Armenia and Turkey

 

 

 

The Bundestag may consider an Armenian Genocide resolution this fall, but the concrete timing is yet to be confirmed, German Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Armenia Matthias Kiesler told reporters today.

Ambassador Kiesler said hearings on an Armenian Genocide bill pending at the Bundestag are under way. “I cannot say, however, when the measure will be discussed and be put on a vote.”

The Ambassador participated today in the discussion of the results of the “Acting Together” initiative, a program funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, which aims at building bridges between the people of Turkey and Armenia through adult education, journalism, oral history and art.

As part of the project twenty young people and two writers from Armenia and Turkey are taking in a joint road trip from Armenia to Turkey, retracing the routes of 1915.

Next year in Turkey they will look for signs of former Armenian life and its extinction in the collective memories of peoples with different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. Amng other places the participants will visit Istanbul and Haydarpasha station from where Armenian intellectuals were deported on April 24th, 1915, and Aydash, a former concentration camp near Ankara.

Emil Lazarian

“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS