MEPS CALL ON TURKEY TO RECOGNISE ARMENIAN MASSACRE AS ‘GENOCIDE’

EuroNews
April 15 2015

15/04 18:49 CET

MEPs have called on Turkey to recognise the massacre of Armenians by
the Ottoman empire during the First World War as ‘genocide’.

Turkey opposes the use of the word ‘genocide’ and disputes that up
to 1.5 million Armenians were killed.

Ankara has pledged to ignore the motion; President Recep Tayip Erdogan
said any such statement would go “in one ear and out from the other”.

“It’s a genocide. And we have to state that we cannot solve conflicts
between nations when we are denying facts or trying to reverse them,
but when we face the past honestly,” said Benedek Javor, a Hungarian
Green MEP.

Members of the Armenian diaspora want other parliaments around the
world to follow suit.

“I see this as a step forward, Its better than nothing. And it
shows that this question need a further solution. And it is not
forgotten. I hope that this is just one step in the whole process,”
said Emma Argutyan, an Armenian now living in Brussels, Belgium.

Turkey has protested against the move, saying that politicians should
not interfere and leave such work to historians.

“The European Parliament has made an historical mistake again
by slighting Turkey. It offends the Turks and Turkey. This is
unacceptable. It is a unilateral decision without consultation or
dialogue. This has no legal value. It does not matter for Turkey
or for EU-Turkey relations because the European Parliament cannot
speak on behalf of the European Union,” said Selim Yanel, the Turkish
ambassador to the EU.

The European Parliament itself first recognised the mass killings as
genocide in 1987.

Twenty countries, including France, Italy and Russia share that view.