For the second time, the city of Cologne has dismantled a memorial to the murder of Armenians, Arameans, Assyrians and Greeks by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 2018, which was first erected on April 24, 2018. The memorial stands on the Hohenzollern Bridge not far from an equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm II. “Zeit online” reported on it.
The site is used once a year as a place to place wreaths when politicians visit it to commemorate the Armenians and other ethnic minorities killed in the Turkish sphere of power during the First World War. The proximity to the Kaiser Wilhelm Monument was not chosen by chance. German do-gooders are known to assume that for centuries the Germans have been more or less responsible, directly or indirectly, for every evil in the world. The genocide of Armenia and other ethnic minorities in the Ottoman Empire happened at a time when Germans and Turks were allies in the First World War. So obviously the evil German was somehow complicit in the murder.
That is the reasoning – if one really wants to speak of reasoning here.
The Turkish view of history, on the other hand, is much more offensive. Anyone who claims a Turkish genocide against the Armenians is put on trial and imprisoned in the country on the Bosporus. Erdogan’s diaspora in Germany consequently rejects the memorial and would prefer to make short work of it.
Cologne’s municipal authorities are torn. On the one hand, it does not want to make itself an accomplice of Kaiser Wilhelm II in retrospect. On the other hand, they do not want to anger the Turks. How does it manage this balancing act?
The Cologne solution is to erect the memorial to commemorate the murders in the First World War. Afterwards it will be taken down again.
Remember: it’s not easy when you’re batty.