Reuters, 17/05 17:19 CET
BERLIN (Reuters) – German lawmakers risk
angering Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and jeopardising an EU-Turkey
migrant deal by backing a planned resolution branding as “genocide” the
mass killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces a
century ago.
The vote, expected to be held in the first week of June,
comes at a particularly sensitive time, with German Chancellor Angela
Merkel keen to ensure that Erdogan remains committed to implementing the
migrant deal she has championed.
Critics accuse her of going soft on Turkey over human
rights because she is desperate to stem the flow of migrants to Germany.
She drew fire from critics for allowing a German court to go ahead with
investigations against a comedian whom Turkey wants charged for mocking
Erdogan in a sexually crude poem.
Merkel’s conservatives, their junior coalition partner
the Social Democrats and the opposition Greens are finalising the
wording of the largely symbolic resolution.
Conservative Franz Joseph Jung said the term “genocide” would be in both the headline and the text of the resolution.
“We want to contribute to reconciliation but I think we
want to correctly describe a historic fact,” he told Deutschlandfunk
radio on Tuesday, adding it was separate from the migrant deal.
Click here for the full article.
Source: Euronews
No comments:
Post a Comment