Profile: Turkish 'genocide'

Yet despite recalling his envoy to Germany, the prime minister of Turkey said that it would not harm the two nations’ ties.

Armenians and many historians say around 1.5 million people were wiped out by Ottoman Turks but Turkey claims the number is much lower and was a result of the war rather than genocide.

Anger over the Bundestag vote on Thursday raised the prospect that it could derail the refugee deal struck in March which saw Turkey agreeing to take many of those arriving in Greece, including people fleeing the war in Syria. In return Turkey is to gain EU financial help and visa-free travel for Turks to most of Europe as well as accelerated negotiations on entry to the EU.

Condemning the German ballot as “ridiculous” and a “test of friendship” Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the 1915-16 massacres were an “ordinary event”.

“Some nations that we consider friends, when they are experiencing trouble in domestic policy, attempt to divert attention from it,” he said. “This resolution is an example of that.

“It’s a ridiculous vote. This was one of many ordinary events that can happen in any country, in any society under the conditions of World War One. We know that those who want Turkey to pay the bill for it do not have good intentions.”

However he added: “No-one should expect that relations will suddenly deteriorate completely because of this decision.”

WHO ELSE HAS CALLED IT GENOCIDE?

The vote has also angered many of the 3.5m Turks living in Germany. Some German MPs were sent abusive and threatening emails in the run-up to the ballot while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Chancellor Angela Merkel that their recent co-operation would be harmed if Germany “falls into such a game”.

The resolution was championed by the Greens and backed by Social Democrats and conservatives in Merkel’s Christian Democrats. It acknowledged “the German Reich’s complicity in the events”. Germany was an ally of the Ottoman Empire and some historians have claimed not only was aware of the massacres but also backed them politically.

The five-page document calls for a “commemoration of the genocide of Armenian and other Christian minorities in the years 1915 and 1916”.

More than 20 other nations and the European Parliament have passed similar resolutions and the Pope last year called it the first genocide of the 20th century.

Last year the Austrian government also passed a similar resolution to that of the Bundestag’s, prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador to Vienna amid warnings of “permanent negative effects” on their links.

However Israel, the US and the UK have stepped back from describing the massacres as genocide which is defined by the UN as any act “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.

SO WHAT HAPPENED?

It is generally accepted that hundreds of thousands of Christian Armenians were either killed or died from disease or starvation as they were deported en masse by the Ottoman Turks.

The dispute is over the numbers killed and whether it was a premeditated attempt to wipe out a people.

Treated as second class citizens in the Ottoman Empire, conditions grew worse for the Armenians after the government of Young Turks entered the First World War in 1914 as an ally of Germany.

As the Empire began to crumble through military defeats, Turkish propaganda began to brand Armenians as pro-Russian traitors.

On April 24, 1915, around 50 Armenian leaders and intellectuals were arrested and executed. This was followed by a purge of Armenians in the Ottoman army and the confiscation of Armenian property.

Thousands of civilians were massacred while thousands more were deported to desert regions where they died of thirst or starvation.

While the Young Turk leaders, the “Three Pashas”, managed to escape abroad after the war they were tried in absentia over the massacres and sentenced to death.

HOW MANY REMAIN?

For many years afterwards public debate in Turkey on the mass killings was stifled, and prominent writers, including Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink who highlighted the atrocities have been prosecuted. Dink was later murdered by a teenage ultra-nationalist.

After Pope Francis spoke out last year Turkey recalled its ambassador to the Vatican saying the Pope had “discriminated about people’s suffering”. The Turkish foreign ministry objected that he had “overlooked atrocities that Turks and Muslims suffered in the First World War and only highlighted the Christian suffering, especially that of the Armenian people.”

In 2010 Turkey also recalled its US ambassador after a congressional committee in Washington passed a resolution declaring the massacres were genocide. However President Barack Obama told Congress it should not act on the resolution.

Only 50,000 Armenians remain in Turkey from a pre- First World War population of two million, and Armenians are one of the globe’s most dispersed peoples.

ANY SIGN OF RECONCILIATION?

Decades of enmity between Armenia and Turkey appeared to thawed a little in 2009 when the two nations signed a pact to open their borders and establish diplomatic links.

The pact is still to be ratified by either of the countries’ governments amid mutual distrust over the frozen Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, a territory within Azerbaijan which fell to ethnic Armenians during a conflict in the 1990s. Turkey supports Azerbaijan.

School textbooks in Turkey do not mention the atrocities but some universities in the country have started to cover the topic while 300 Turkish intellectuals have put their names to a petition asking Armenia for forgiveness for genocide.

Professor Ahmet Insel, of Galatasaray University does not expect the Turkish government to follow suit any time soon.

“The charge of genocide could mean Armenians claim financial compensation from Turkey – that’s one factor holding it back,” he said.

Insel added: “This was a genocide and a crime against humanity. Turkey has a moral obligation to recognise it as such, so as to become a civilised modern democracy.”