Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday warned Germany against the adoption of a parliamentary resolution recognising the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces as “genocide”, saying it would harm the countries’ relationship.
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“German Parliament accepting this resolution is unbecoming of the friendship between Turkey and Germany”, he continued.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that Ankara wouldn’t nix a key deal with the European Union on curbing the flow of migrants to Europe in case the German Bundestag recognizes the Armenian Genocide.
Berlin has already had a taste of the expected backlash from Ankara. “But we have also seen that an honest and self-critical appraisal of the past does not endanger relations with other countries”, he said. It carries the contentious word throughout the text.
Germany was then allied with the Ottomans, and deployed soldiers who participated in the deportations of Armenians, Gauck had said. “This is not a decision that should be made by politicians or parliaments; it is a decision that has to be made by historians”.
Merkel backed the resolution, her spokeswoman said, even though she did not attend the vote due to other official engagements.
He expressed regret for the failure of various initiatives in recent years towards this goal, and said the German parliament’s initiative might also not help reconciliation between Turks and Armenians.
Turkey – the successor of the Ottoman Empire – concedes that many Armenians were mistreated at the time, but maintains that the number of victims has been grossly exaggerated and that there was no “genocide”.
His speech previous year during commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the killings had drawn fire from Turkey, but was also rejected by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Sofuoglu said it is not up to parliaments but for global courts to decide whether the deportation of Armenians involved systematic killings, as claimed by the Armenian historians, but disputed by many Turkish scholars.
The measure includes a German expression of regret that its World War I imperial government did nothing to stop the Armenian bloodshed at the hands of its Ottoman allies, despite receiving information on the events.
Turkey denies that there was a systematic campaign to slaughter Armenians as an ethnic group during WW1.
According to the Christian Democratic Union’s Albert Weiler, Germany had a “historical duty” to recognise the mass killings of Armenians.
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“The Armenians’ fate is exemplary of the history of mass destruction, ethnic cleansing, expulsion and genocide that has marked the 20th century in such a awful way”, said the motion, which also notes what it calls Germany’s complicit silence at the time and the singular nature of the Holocaust.
