EUROPEAN PARLY VOTES ON ARMENIA MASSACRE
Independent, South Africa
April 15 2015
April 15 2015 at 09:43pm
By Adrian Croft and Ayla Jean Yackley
Brussels/ISTANBUL – The European Parliament backed a motion on
Wednesday calling the massacre a century ago of up to 1.5 million
Armenians a genocide, days after Pope Francis used the same term.
Although the resolution repeated language previously adopted by
the parliament in 1987, it could raise tensions with Turkey, whose
President Tayyip Erdogan said even before the vote took place that
he would ignore the result.
After the vote, the Turkish Foreign Ministry accused the parliament
of attempting to rewrite history.
Muslim Turkey agrees Christian Armenians were killed in clashes
with Ottoman soldiers that began on April 15, 1915, when Armenians
lived in the empire ruled by Istanbul, but denies that this amounted
to genocide.
Armenia, some Western historians and foreign parliaments refer to
the mass killings as genocide.
Voting by show of hands, European lawmakers overwhelmingly backed the
motion stating that the “tragic events that took place in 1915-1917
against the Armenians in the territory of the Ottoman Empire represent
a genocide”.
Pope Francis sparked a diplomatic row last Sunday by calling the
killings “the first genocide of the 20th century.” His remarks
prompted Turkey to summon the Vatican’s ambassador to the Holy See
and to recall its own.
The European Parliament sprang to the Pope’s defence, commending the
message the pontiff delivered at the weekend.
Turkey is a candidate country to join the 28-nation EU but accession
talks have dragged on for years with little progress.
Earlier, Erdogan told a news conference that “whatever decision the
European Parliament takes on Armenian genocide claims, it would go
in one ear and out the other”.
“It is out of the question for there to a stain, a shadow called
‘genocide’ on Turkey,” he said at Ankara airport before departing on
a visit to Kazakhstan.
Then prime minister Erdogan last year offered what his government
said were unprecedented condolences to the grandchildren of Armenians
killed in World War One.
The parliament’s resolution said such statements were a step in the
right direction, but legislators urged Turkey to go further and to
recognise the events as genocide.
“We shouldn’t forget that people were murdered and that these
particular events are rightly described as a genocide … I believe
this should lead to a further recognition by Turkey that there was a
genocide under the Ottoman empire,” German Christian Democrat Elmar
Brok said.
In a statement after the vote, Turkey’s foreign ministry said lawmakers
who backed the resolution were in partnership with “those who have
nothing to do with European values and feeding on hatred, revenge
and the culture of conflict”.