Turkey says German vote on Armenian 'genocide' a 'test of friendship'

ANKARA - Agence France-Presse

German lawmakers' planned vote to recognise the World War I killings of Anatolian Armenians as genocide will test the "friendship" between Berlin and Ankara, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said on June 2.

The resolution "will amount to a real test of the friendship" between the two nations, Yıldırım said.  
   
"Some nations that we consider friends, when they are experiencing trouble in domestic policy attempt to divert attention from it," he said at a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). "This resolution is an example of that."   

He stopped short of threatening Germany with political and economic retaliation, but added "3.5 million Turks live in Germany and actively contribute to the economy."
  
Put forward by the ruling left-right coalition and the opposition Greens, the resolution entitled "Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916" also carries the contentious word throughout the text.

Yerevan has long sought international recognition of the "genocide", but Ankara rejects the use of the term to describe the World War I-era killings and argues that it was a collective tragedy in which equal numbers of Turks and Armenians died.