“GERMANY’S ROLE IN THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE”:
Book presentation and talk with Jürgen Gottschlich
The daily taz newspaper’s Turkey correspondent Jürgen Gottschlich got together with readers at an event to promote his book Beihilfe zum Völkermord: Deutschlands Rolle bei der Vernichtung der Armenier (Assisting Genocide: Germany’s Role in the Annihilation of the Armenians) printed in early 2015 by Ch. Links Verlag in Germany, based on a study supported by our association. At the talk organized in the evening of December 2 at Galeri Birzamanlar, Gottschlich explained how and why he started to think about the German state’s role in the genocide, and shared his experiences during visits to Turkish and German archives to explore the issue. He observed that Germany’s role in the Armenian genocide cannot be limited to a passive position, such as turning a blind eye on the events, and based this claim on the relations, especially military ones, between the Ottomans and German Empire which predated World War I. He also gave a number of examples of how the events of 1915 were personally approved of and supported by high ranking German officers. In the very first days following the implementation of the decision to force Armenians to migrate, a number of German diplomats informed their government that this would soon turn into the extermination of all Anatolian Armenians. simply in order to prevent being held accountable in the future.
Please click on the link to access the voice record of the discussion which started with the author’s presentation and continued with a Q&A session: http://tr.boell.org/de/2015/12/04/podcast-beihilfe-zum-voelkermord-deut…
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Inspirational stories of people who are making an effort for carving out a better future all over the world met the audience at the Sustainable Life Film Festival during November 19-22!
Arising out of a dream of a sharing, open, fair, understanding, diversity-embracing, life-cherishing society, The Sustainable Life Film Festival (SLFF) started on November 19 in Istanbul and was held on November 20-22 in all other provinces. Having our support as Heinrich Böll Stiftung Association from the year 2012 on, The Sustainable Life Film Festival has been continually organized since 2008 with the purpose of offering an insight into the notion of sustainability, raising awareness about interacting systemic problems, and sharing inspirational solutions.
Living through its 8th year by 2015, SLFF has given wide publicity to the documentaries featuring holistic views and creative solutions, selected each year out of hundreds of films, and sought to remind the audience their ability to move beyond being a helpless part of the problem and be part of the solution.
This year, too, in cooperation with the local teams paying attention to the Sustainable Life Collective’s call to action “You Can Do It, Too,” SLFF was held simultaneously in 23 movie theaters in 20 provinces and districts. The provinces and districts where the festival was held were: Adana, Ankara, Antalya, Artvin, Balıkesir, Bayındır (Izmir), Bodrum (Muğla), Bursa, Çanakkale, Diyarbakır, Eskişehir, Fethiye (Muğla), Giresun, Istanbul, Izmir, Kayseri, Konya, Mersin, Trabzon and Urla (İzmir).
Films that are holistic in view, offering solutions and appealing to the heart
As in previous years, SLFF has this year also presented a program full of films calling the audience to action. 30 films figuring in this year’s selection have demonstrated that infact all the issues we face today about water, transportation, climate, energy, fashion, agriculture etc. are all symptoms; and they invited us to perceive the real problems lying at the root of these symptoms by exhibiting the interconnection among all these diferent problems. Following the documentary films, speakers delivered speeches, and music and performance groups took the stage and enriched the festival program.
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COP21 ParIs:
Historical compromise between obligation and proposal
At the twenty-first meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held between November 30 and December 11 in Paris, 195 countries agreed upon a resolution. Most of these parties also set a specific date to ratify the Paris Agreement in their national assemblies. Accordingly, the agreement is scheduled to be taken up in the Turkish Grand National Assembly in April 2016. In the previous COP (Conference of Parties) talks such as COP20 Lima, COP19 Warsaw, COP18 Doha, COP17 Duban, COP16 Cancun, and the greatest disappointment of them all, COP15 Copenhagen, the parties had failed to produce a legally binding text with specific pollution (carbon emission) mitigation targets. As such, the consensus of 195 nations on the Paris Agreement may be seen as a political achievement. A delegation from the Heinrich Böll Stiftung attended the COP21, and observed an atmosphere of political partnership and agreement unseen in the previous meetings.
What kinds of discussions took place at the COP21 that resulted in a final text? An analysis of the 105-page minutes of the 11-day summit shows that most of the meetings focused on finance. At the press conference by Carbon Leaders held on the third day of the summit, OECD Secretary-General Jose Angel Gurria had already stated that the subject of this summit was not the environment but finance, and he was correct. Financial issues debated throughout the summit were taken up in the final text in some way. The most important topics were pricing carbon emissions and setting up and elaborating a governance mechanism for financing the fight against climate change, because the fight against climate change harbors great economic potential for the carbon market. Naturally, this draws huge interest from the business world.
The most striking output from the agreement is the target of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This target is defined at the Article 2, section 1, paragraph a of the agreement; however it is does not legally binding. In a sense, it points to a necessity, presents an analysis and makes a proposal. Indeed, this is a confession of the fact that the gravity of the situation is clear to all, yet the countries can take only limited steps in response. Nevertheless the target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, as suggested by the climate activist Bill McKibben, is an instrument which civil society can use from now on to remind the leaders of the Paris Agreement what they agreed upon.
Aside from finance, the most heated debates concerned losses and damages, that is, the issue of countries who suffer losses and damages due to climate change. They have urgent needs but have difficulty in accessing financial support. As a result, this subject was given a significance in the agreement. However, in terms of climate justice, the developed countries’ proposals to compensate the damages they have caused is rather insufficient and limited. In this respect, the Paris Agreement cannot be said to uphold climate justice. Furthermore, the agreement does not make a clear-cut statement as to how climate finance mobilization will be brought about, and whether carbon pricing or taxation could create such a mobilization. Yet again, Article 9 of the Paris Agreement includes language which oscillates between obligations and proposals.
The talks had come to a standstill when the issues of human rights, the status of refugees, and gender were brought to the table. It is pleasing to see the agreement’s preface, if not its articles, make a clear mention of human rights and gender.
To conclude, the fact that the articles mostly put forth proposals rather than obligations suggests that the itinerary does not end in but simply passes through Paris. As such, issues now left at the stage of proposal will most probably be hotly debated at the COP 22 summit to be held next year in Morocco on November 7 - 18. At the COP21, most countries agreed upon the Paris agreement, which claims to fight against the climate change but does not go all the way. Activities and protests held by civil society showed that it is keen on continuing to pressure decision makers to take legally binding, timely and radical decisions to fight climate change.
