From now on mentioning Armenian Genocide in the Turkish parliament will entail punishment.

The Turkish parliament’s constitutional committee passed a bill package submitted for debates by the ruling AK party and the Nationalist Movement Party. The bill package stipulates a number of changes in the internal rules of procedure of the legislative body.

Among the bill’s other provisions lawmakers are banned from mentioning the Armenian Genocide in the parliament.

The Democratic People’s Party lawmakers left the hall in token of protest.

The bill stipulates a punishment for those lawmakers who break the rule by “insulting the history and common past of the Turkish people” that is using the term “Armenian Genocide” while speaking about the “events of 1915”. The ban also includes terms like “Kurdistan”, “Kurdish regions”.

Garo Paylan, People’s Democratic Party lawmaker, who is of Armenian origin, called the bill “a nationalist authoritarian coalition proposal of the AK and NMP parties”. The opposition Republican People’s Party lawmaker of Armenian origin Selina Dogan is also opposed to the bill, saying that nobody should insult Turkish people’s history but neither should other peoples’ history be insulted.