The German Parliament [official website] approved a resolution [text, PDF, in German] Thursday recognizing the mass killings of ethnic Armenians by Turks during the Ottoman Empire a century ago as genocide, prompting an angry backlash and the immediate recall of the Turkish ambassador. The resolution, calling for “commemoration of the genocide of Armenian and other Christian minorities in the years 1915 and 1916,” passed with support from all parties in the parliament. Turkey framed Germany’s move as an attempt to come to terms with its own violent history in connection with the Jewish holocaust. Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel [official website] sought to calm the tensions by highlighting the friendship between the two nations, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan [BBC profile] stated that this development is sure to strain relations between the two countries. Although some fear that this latest move by Germany may upset the EU’s efforts to win Turkish support in stemming the flow of refugees to Europe, others predict that the vote is unlikely to prompt Turkey to make any drastic moves. One historian noted that a significant feud with Germany at this point would be “extraordinarily costly” for Turkey, given its current political instability and diplomatic isolation.

This vote in Bundestag comes more than a year after the approval of a resolution in Germany’s parliament declaring the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces during World War I a “genocide.” Germany had previously been reluctant to term the mass killings as genocide due to fear of straining trade relations between the two countries, but that changed when German President Joachim Gauck [official website], condemned the killings as genocide in 2015. In recent years Armenian nationals have fought with the international community to recognize the killing of 1.5 million Armenian citizens as genocide [JURIST news archive]. Turkey has long disputed the numbers, alleging the killings were a result of a civil war that took place after the collapse of the Ottoman empire. In October 2015 the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website] ruled [judgment; press release, PDF] that Switzerland was wrong to prosecute former Turkish politician Doğu Perinçek for denying that the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915 was genocide. In 2009 Turkey and Armenia signed [JURIST report] a landmark accord in Switzerland to normalize relations between the two countries and open up borders. In 2010 a spokesperson for the US State Department stated that the Obama administration opposed a vote [JURIST report] before the House of Representatives on a resolution [HR 252 materials] branding the World War I-era killings of Armenians by Turkish forces as genocide. In September 2014 the Parliament of Greece ratified a bill that criminalizes the denial of the Armenian Genocide [JURIST report].