Turkey slammed on Friday a Dutch parliamentary motion calling on the government to recognise the mass killings of ethnic Armenians during the First World War as a genocide.
The motion was passed by the Netherland’s House of Representatives on Thursday, alongside a call for the release of Armenia prisoners captured during the recent conflict with Azerbaijan.
“The motions were adopted by the majority of votes (sic). Only the pro-Turkish faction (3 MPs) voted against,” Mato Hakhverdian President of the Federation of Armenian Organisations in the Netherlands, told news outlet Armen Press.
But Turkish officials said the Dutch parliament was “detached from reality”.
“The decision is a null attempt to rewrite history with political motives,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hami Aksoy said.
“Those who agree with this decision, instead of looking for what actually happened in 1915, are after the populist vote,” he said.
The Dutch parliament passed a motion explicitly recognising the Armenian genocide in 2018. But the Dutch government insists the motions have no binding influence over its foreign policy.
More than 30 countries, including the United States, France, Germany, Russia, Greece and Italy have officially recognised the killing of as many as 1.5 million ethnic Armenians during the latter stages of the Ottoman Empire as a genocide.
Turkey, which emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, denies the claims as historically inaccurate and politically motivated.
Ahval