On several metrics, the two nations appear very similar to one another. Both Germany and Turkey, Berlin and Istanbul, the major urban centers, are both among the most frequently-visited cities on the planet. Both serve as central hubs for financial, political, and cultural institutions. The two cities even established a formal urban partnership in 1989. And yet, in the space of historical memory, genocide commemoration, and transitional justice, Germany and Turkey could not diverge more drastically. Throughout Germany, but especially in Berlin, the systematic extermination of European Jewry during the Second World War is all but unmissable. It is visibly acknowledged and remembered in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, as well as the stolpersteine enmeshed in the pavement. Through its very topography, Germany cultivates a political and historical culture of solemn remembrance and atonement. In Istanbul and across Turkey, the genocide of the Armenians by Ottoman forces during the First World War has been submerged from public view. In the early 1920s, a memorial to the victims of the Armenian genocide was destroyed under mysterious circumstances. And, by the end of the century, the Turkish state had committed itself to a historical narrative of genocide denial by constructing a memorial on the border with Armenia to commemorate the Turkish victims of a genocide that never took place. Through a comparison of these two countries, linked by a shared genocidal past, this podcast will explore the challenges to developing a comprehensive and honest historical narrative amidst the political utility of denial and falsehood.
To download a full transcript, visit humanrightspodcast.sandbox.library.columbia.edu.
