BERLIN, Germany (A.W.)—Co-chair of Germany’s Green Party Cem Özdemir was recently insulted and threatened by a group of Turkish taxi drivers in Berlin, Germany based Berliner Zeitung reported.
Özdemir sent a letter regarding the incident to Berlin’s Union of Taxi Drivers. He added that one of the main reasons he was threated was due to Germany’s adoption of the resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide.
“I don’t see any problem with them expressing their thoughts… But insults, threats, and aggressive attitude is the tipping point for me,” Özdemir wrote in the letter.
Leszek Nadolski, the president of the Union of Taxi Drivers, responded to Özdemir’s letter stating that he was upset with the incident and wanted to speak to Özdemir about it.
Özdemir was the keynote speaker in Toronto on Jan. 22 at the commemoration event of the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Turkish- Armenian Editor-in-Chief of the bilingual Agos newspaper, Hrant Dink.
The resolution in the German Bundestag to formally classify the 1915-1923 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide that was led by Özdemir was passed on June 2, 2016.
It is easy to close your eyes, stuff your ears with cotton so as to avoid hearing the TRUTH, it is also easy to be violent to the TRUTH but at the end of the day, the TRUTH is the factor. Forget about those who have no knowledge, you cannot change them, they can jump up and down but the fact remains a fact, the TRUTH speaks and shame on those who deny the TRUTH. Bravo Cem.
At some point Germany’s Merkel may realize the mistake of her government importing laborors from turkey a few decades ago, and the last three years so called refugees from and through turkey. While not all Turks in Germany are terrorists, the few are enough to destroy the peace of Europeans, as well as well meaning officials who are brave and honest enough to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by turkey.
They cannot persuade in reasoned discussion, so they crack heads, break bones and kill (obviously Dink, also Diyarbekir Bar Assn Head Tahir Elçi, and numerous others). Such thuggish attitudes that are common in Turkey are now being exported to Europe, and to some extent to the Americas.
With all due respect, ‘H’ might recall that Ozdemir is a member of the same diaspora. Germany’s mistake has been not mandate a generous but comprehensive education program for the immigrants, in particular to undo, as much as possible, the effects of an upbringing in a perniciously ‘Turkist’ and violent milieu. Ozdemir’s spearheading of the genocide recognition law shows that family origin is no bar to recognizing that the shame of an ideologically ‘Turkist’ past can be countered by an embrace of humanitarian and democratic principles.
Bravo, Dulgarian! I don’t believe for a half a minute that this is anything other than a repeat of reprisals à la 1915, or “insult to Turkishness”