In a resolution adopted on Wednesday, the European Union’s legislative body also renewed its calls for Turkey to recognize the 1915 Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. It said Ankara must also end “anti-Armenian propaganda and hate speech” and protect Turkey’s Armenian cultural heritage.
The extensive resolution is highly critical of the Turkish government’s human rights record and foreign policy, saying that they have brought the EU’s relations with Turkey to a “historical low point.” It says that the EU should formally suspend accession talks with Ankara unless the latter reverses a “continuous and growing distancing from EU values and standards.”
The European Parliament said that instead of backing international peace efforts President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s administration chose to “unconditionally sustain and support the military actions of Azerbaijan in the recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh by resorting to provocative rhetoric.”
It condemned the “transfer of foreign fighters from Syria and elsewhere to Nagorno-Karabakh, as confirmed by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries.” Ankara should avoid actions and statements that could “further exacerbate tensions in the south Caucasus region,” it said.
EU lawmakers already deplored Turkey’s “destabilizing role” in the Karabakh conflict and called for an end to Turkish military aid to Azerbaijan in two other resolutions passed in January.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry denounced the latest resolution as “biased” later on Wednesday. In particular, it criticized the European Parliament for supporting “the one-sided and inconsistent Armenian narratives regarding the 1915 events.”