German parliament votes to recognize Armenian Genocide (updated)

PanARMENIAN.Net - The German parliament overwhelmingly approved on Friday, April 24, a resolution branding the mass killings of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces a century ago as Genocide, Reuters reports.

The vote marks a significant change of stance for Germany, Turkey's biggest trade partner in the European Union and home to a large ethnic Turkish diaspora. Unlike France and some two dozen other countries, Berlin has long resisted using the word.

The term 'Genocide' also has special resonance in Germany, which has worked hard to come to terms with its responsibility for the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

In a parliamentary session to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the killings, all parliamentary groups in the Bundestag lower house backed the resolution in a vote likely to infuriate Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

"What happened in the middle of the First World War in the Ottoman Empire under the eyes of the world was a genocide," Bundestag president Norbert Lammert said at the start of German lawmakers' debate on the resolution.

It was earlier reported that the discussion was delayed till April 30.

Speaking at a church service in Berlin, President Gauck said: "The fate of the Armenians stands as exemplary in the history of mass exterminations, ethnic cleansing, deportations and yes, genocide, which marked the 20th century in such a terrible way."

Gauck, added that Germans also bore some responsibility "and in some cases complicity" concerning the "genocide of the Armenians". Germany was an ally of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.