The European Parliament on Wednesday urged Turkey to recognize the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire and unconditionally normalize relations with Armenia, in a resolution dedicated to the approaching 100th anniversary of the mass killings.
The resolution strongly condemned by Ankara “pays tribute the memory of the one-and-a-half million innocent Armenian victims who perished in the Ottoman Empire.” It says that the European Union’s legislative body “joins the commemoration of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide in a spirit of European solidarity and justice” and calls on the EU’s executive bodies to follow suit.
The European Parliament stressed that Turkish-Armenian reconciliation is impossible without “truth and remembrance.” Accordingly, it urged Turkey “to come to terms with its past, to recognize the Armenian Genocide and thus to pave the way for a genuine reconciliation between the Turkish and Armenian peoples.”
In that context, the Turkish government should also “conduct in good faith an integrated inventory of Armenian and other cultural heritage destroyed or ruined during the past century within its jurisdiction,” added the EU legislature.
The European Parliament has repeatedly recognized the World War One-era Armenian massacres as genocide in the past.
Its latest the resolution also urges Armenia and Turkey to unconditionally implement their 2009 protocols that commit the two neighboring states to establishing diplomatic relations and opening their border.
Turkey has made parliamentary ratification of the U.S.-brokered protocols conditional on a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that would satisfy Azerbaijan, its closest ally.
Official Ankara was quick to condemn the resolution in unusually strong terms, saying that the European Parliament is “mutilating history” and repeating “the anti-Turkish clichés of Armenian propaganda.”
“This selective and one-sided approach of the European Parliament with regards to the 1915 events has the potential to harm the relations between Turkey and EU and falls far behind from bringing a solution to the issue between Turkey and Armenia,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“Naturally, this resolution cannot merely be explained away by either lack of knowledge or ignorance. Unfortunately, what lies behind it is a religious and cultural fanaticism and indifference towards others regarded as different,” it said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shrugged off the resolution just hours before its overwhelming approval by EU parliamentarians. “Whatever decision the European Parliament takes on Armenian genocide claims, it will go in one ear and come out of the other because it is not possible for Turkey to accept such a crime, such a sin,” Erdogan said, according to “Hurriyet Daily News.”
Predictably, Armenia’s reaction to the resolution was highly positive, with Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian praising the European Parliament for sending an “important message” to the Turks ahead of the centenary of the genocide that will be officially marked on April 24.
“With this resolution, the European Parliament once again reaffirmed its commitment to protection of human rights and universal values,” Nalbandian said in a special videotaped statement.