Turkey has warned the Bundestag not to condemn the annihilation of Armenians by Turkey as genocide, Bild reports.
“It is not the role of national parliaments to judge history,”Turkish Ambassador to Germany Hüseyin Avni Karslioglu told the Düsseldorf-based Rheinische Post.
The Ambasaador said “the genocide is a legal concept defined by the Geneva Convention and it’s only up to international courts to rule on the issue.”
“It is questionable whether the Bundestag will contribute to normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia with a resolution in which the events are called genocide,” Karslioglu said.
Rather, he said, “the two nations should be encouraged to cooperate with regard to this tragic period of history” and pointed to Ankara’s offer to form a commission of historians.
The German Bundestag is set to vote on an Armenian Genocide bill on June 2, according to an agreement reached in April between the Greens and the government.
The ruling coalition, the Left and the Alliance90/Green Parties have reached an agreement to call the 1915 events “genocide.”
