There are many experiences to draw on, and they all point to the importance of acknowledging genocide and other serious crimes and the state's failure to protect its citizens.
"But Germans have been reluctant to look at colonial history and, in particular, the Namibian genocide – even though, perversely, we are pushing Turkey to acknowledge their genocide".
Sometimes someone will mention the Armenian genocide around him — someone will say, 'Oh, I don't acknowledge the genocide.' They say that just to bother him.
For years such a joint commemoration was made impossible by Turkey's refusal to acknowledge the genocide.
And they conceded that their insistence that Turkey acknowledge the genocide before the border was opened carried bittersweet overtones.
And that means it must acknowledge the genocide its ancestors committed against the Armenian people in World War I.
At its founding, the group's stated goals were to force the Turkish government to acknowledge the genocide, pay reparations, and support the creation of an Armenian state.
For the Turks to acknowledge the genocide would thus mean admitting that their country was founded by war criminals and that its existence depended on their crimes.
A member of his Senate staff told me that, like everyone in Washington, he had agreed with the Clinton Administration's refusal in 1994 to acknowledge the genocide in Rwanda, much less approve an international intervention there, even without American troops.
It was a horrendous crime that both Turkey and U.S. leadership have refused to acknowledge as Genocide.
