Clooney honors Armenian massacre victims
April 25, 2016
The 54-year-old Hollywood star laid flowers at the memorial service in the Armenian capital on Sunday, with President Serzh Sargsyan and the Armenian-French singer-songwriter Charles Aznavour also attending.
A staunch campaigner for the recognition of the 1915 massacre as genocide, Clooney co-chairs the selection committee of the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, which was established on behalf of the survivors.
The genocide "is a part of Armenia's history; it's also a part of the world's history - it's not the pain of one nation only," Clooney said upon his arrival in the ex-Soviet nation's capital on Saturday.
Genocide debate
As the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, Turkey officially denies that the events of 1915 amounted to genocide, and has lashed out at countries that have officially recognized the term.
The official line is that ethnic Armenians represented a fifth column backed by Russia during World War I, and that the mass deportation and accompanying Armenian deaths were not premeditated or intentional - a key requirement in the legal definition of genocide.
When France formally called the displacements and killings genocide in 2011, Turkey temporarily recalled its ambassador and did the same thing to Austria last year. Germany, however, is still not sure whether "genocide" is officially the right term to use for the "Great Crime."
Strategic struggle
According to an agreement reached in April between the Green Party and the German government, the Bundestag is likely to take up the debate on June 2, shortly before the summer parliamentary break.
Given Germany's need for Turkey's cooperation in the ongoing refugee crisis, it is unclear how or if the vote will proceed. Should Germany formally adopt the term, Turkey could pull its ambassador from Berlin and throw the recently implemented EU migration deal into doubt.