|
German party pressures Turkey to acknowledge Armenian genocide
BERLIN, April 19 -- The ex-communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) has launched a German parliamentary initiative for a resolution calling on the Turkish government to recognise the 1915 genocide of Armenians, a PDS deputy said Thursday.
Turkey has so far refused to recognise the term genocide for massacres which it says left 300,000-500,000 dead and which the Armenians say took 1.5 million lives.
The motion also calls on the Bundestag to acknowledge a German co-responsibility in the mass killings, because of the complacency shown at the time by officials of imperial Germany, PDS member of parliament Uwe Hicks said.
In January, the French National Assembly recognised that a genocide of
Armenians took place under the Ottoman empire in 1915, prompting
retaliatory trade measures by the Turkish authorities.
Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News Archives