Hours before the Bundestag vote, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said it “will amount to a real test of the friendship” between the two nations. Armenia’s foreign minister welcomed the vote.
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The vote comes just over a year after President Joachim Gauck became Germany’s highest ranking official to describe the massacre as a “genocide”, drawing a fierce response from Turkey.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned German lawmakers ahead of a parliamentary vote to pass a resolution declaring the 1915 mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide.
The move was largely expected and was supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her foreign minister, who also backed it, was on a trip to Latin America. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, insists that the toll was inflated and says those killed were the victims of civil war and unrest.
Opening Thursday’s debate, Parliament speaker Norbert Lammert acknowledged that addressing historical events can be painful.
“I hope that this [the resolution] would not block what is necessary and what could be a way forward to put an end to the current situation where we have no communication between Armenia and Turkey”, he said.
He said Turkey’s current government is not responsible for what happened 100 years ago, “but it shares responsibility for what happens with it in the future”.
“According to the resolution, the planned expulsion and extermination of more than a million Armenians by the Young Turk regime starting from April 24, 1915, is an example of mass killing, ethnic cleansing and, yes, genocide”.
“Turkish-German relations have continued since World War I with extreme sincerity, leading to the intermingling of the peoples”.
The resolution also touches on the “inglorious” role of the German Empire, a military ally of the Ottomans, because it did nothing to stop the massacre.
Sargsyan also said that a possible failure in the implementation of the European Union agreement with Turkey on refugees “has nothing to do” with the Bundestag’s plan to adopt the Armenian Genocide resolution.
Nevertheless, Merkel backs the resolution, her spokeswoman said, even though the German leader would not attend the vote due to other official engagements. “But, let historians do this”, he said.
RT reported that chairman of the Green Party, Cem Ozdemir, who is of Turkish origin, was one of the MPs who received abusive messages on Facebook and Twitter.
The most common letter sent out stated: “More than 90 percent of the Turkish population rightly rejects the genocide accusation and interprets it as slander”.
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In an interview with German newspaper Bild, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan was quoted as saying, “The politicians in the Bundestag see it the same way and will not allow themselves to be intimidated” by Turkey’s threats.
