The European Union worked out a deal with Turkey in March that would let EU countries send migrants to Turkey.
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Turkey recalled its envoy to Germany in protest against the resolution passed by German MPs on Thursday.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that “this decision will seriously impact Turkish-German relations”.
On Thursday, German lawmakers became the latest popularly-elected body to recognise the “genocide”, immediately drawing a rebuke from Turkey which called the vote a “historic mistake”. “There is no shameful incident in our past”.
Although Germany is neither the first nor the only country to oppose Turkey’s assessment on that matter, the decision could have far-reaching consequences.
In particularly inflammatory remarks, the justice minister Bekir Bozdag accused Germany of hypocrisy.
“They burned Jews in furnaces and now they slander the Turkish people by accusing us of some genocide”. “There is nothing that we can be ashamed of” when we look back at our history as Turks, he said.
“We reiterate that Turkey must recognize the Assyrian, Armenian, and Greek genocides and work towards reconciliation and restitution”. The Germany parliamentary vote was nearly unanimous, with just one MP voting against and another abstaining.
Angela Merkel chose to stay away to avoid provoking further tension with Turkey, pleading other engagements. However, her spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz has made clear that the chancellor supported the motion. A number of states all around the world, including Russian Federation and major Western powers, have recognized and condemned the crime of genocide against the Armenians.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their people died in the atrocities of 1915. It also says Germany- at the time an ally of the Ottomans – bears some guilt for doing nothing to stop the killings.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu posted: “The way [for those] to close dark pages in their histories is not to defame the history of other countries through parliamentary resolution”.
Germany has triggered an outcry in Turkey over the Armenian genocide vote.
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Sidestepping a question on the Bundestag decision, Merkel said at a press conference with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation chief Jens Stoltenberg that her government will “do everything to foster dialogue between Armenia and Turkey”.
