Turkish Premier Says European Stance on Armenian Genocide Reflects Racism

 Turkey’s prime minister on Friday accused Europe of showing signs of racism after the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on his government to recognize the mass killings of Armenians in the collapsing Ottoman Empire as genocide.

Although Turkey vowed to disregard the resolution, government officials have lashed out at the European Parliament, the legislature of the European Union, accusing it of contriving obstacles to relations with Turkey. But the remarks by the prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, went further.

“The European Parliament should not take decisions that would result in hatred toward a certain religion or ethnic group if it wants to contribute to peace,” Mr. Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara. “This issue is now beyond the Turkish-Armenian issue. It’s a new reflection of the racism in Europe.”

The tensions came a week before Armenians across the world plan to commemorate the 100th anniversary of what historians recognize as the first genocide of the 20th century. Armenians say that as many as 1.5 million Armenian Christians were systematically killed from 1915 to 1923 through mass slaughter, starvation and deportation into the Syrian desert.

While Turkey acknowledges that atrocities took place, it refuses to take responsibility for the deaths, claiming that a large number of people — many of them Turks — were also killed as a result of civil war and famine. Over the past century, all Turkish governments have vehemently rejected the term genocide.

The debate over the characterization of the 1915 events gained momentum after Pope Francis described them as genocide on Sunday in a Mass to commemorate the killings. The statement caused a diplomatic uproar from Turkey, which recalled its ambassador to the Vatican.

The European Parliament’s resolution on Wednesday calling on Turkey to normalize relations with Armenia and recognize the genocide further enraged the Turkish government.

In a call with Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, Mr. Davutoglu urged Europe to look in its own backyard by opening up its archives on events affecting native tribes.

“If we open the books on European history, there will be questions about what was done in Asia and Africa,” Mr. Davutoglu said. “What happened to the original tribes there? Where are the Aborigines? Where are the Native Americans?”

He continued: “We never had ghettos. Ghettos are a European product. First there is ethnic discrimination, then there is genocide.”

After the European Parliament’s vote, Mr. Davutoglu’s chief adviser, Etyen Mahcupyan, an ethnic Armenian, caused a bit of an uproar by appearing to break with the government’s opposition to use of the word genocide.

“If you accept the events in Bosnia and Africa as genocide, it is impossible to call what happened to the Armenians in 1915 something else,” he said.

A day after his statement, the prime minister’s office announced that Mr. Mahcupyan would be stepping down because he had reached retirement age.