Germany’s Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, on Tuesday adopted a resolution declaring the 1915 mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a genocide.
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“The German parliament’s recognition of “distorted and groundless” allegations as “genocide” is a historic mistake”, Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus said on his official Twitter account, calling the resolution “null and void”.
The Armenians were clearly a national, ethnic group, and there is ample documentation of the mass deaths they suffered under Ottoman control during World War I. So how does Turkey argue that the Armenian massacres do not fall within the United Nations definition?
Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said it was a “valuable contribution” to the “international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian genocide”. Speeding that up was one of the incentives for Turkey to accept a deal with the European Union, championed by Merkel, on curbing migrant flows to Europe.
To date, 30 countries now officially recognized the Armenian massacres as an act of genocide.
Erdogan said he would consult with his cabinet to formulate a proportional response aimed at the German government.
But Turkey moved swiftly to condemn the resolution.
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”.
The German motion, which was put forward by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition and the opposition Greens, was passed with support from all the parties in the parliament.
“This decision which is against history and the future will no doubt have an impact on German-Turkish relations and will damage bridges of friendship between the two countries”, they wrote in the statement, putting their usual divisions aside.
In April last year world political and church leaders including France’s Francois Hollande, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the head of the World Council of Churches, Olav Fykse Tveit, in Yerevan marked 100 years since the start of the Armenian genocide.
This morning’s headlines in the country featured vulgar editorials – with one state supporting paper labelling German Chancellor Merkel as Hitler.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the resolution would seriously affect relations between the two countries.
Sevim Dagdelen, a Bundestag member from the Left party, said that Germany should stop sell arms to Turkey because of the crimes committed by Turkey against ethnic minorities.
The key element that is missing, they say, is evidence that the Ottoman Empire had “intent to destroy” the Armenians.
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The atrocities perpetrated on the Armenian people a century ago were genocide, the German Parliament declared on Thursday.
