(Reuters) Turkey condemned on Friday a U.S. Senate committee resolution branding the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War One as genocide and warned Congress against taking steps that would harm Turkish-American ties.
The nature and scale of the killings remain highly contentious nearly a century after they took place. Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in 1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this constituted an act of genocide – a term used by many Western historians and foreign parliaments.
The resolution, adopted by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Thursday, called “to remember and observe the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2014”.
