Turkey has reacted angrily at a US Senate move to unanimously pass on Thursday a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu calling the vote a “political show” on social media, adding that “it is not legally binding and it has no validity whatsoever,” Al Jazeera reported.
The historic move dealt another blow to the already problematic ties between Ankara and Washington.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency quoted Çavuşoğlu as saying that those who use history for political purposes are “cowards who do not want to face the truth.”
Turkey’s foreign ministry also issued a statement condemning the vote as “one of the shameful examples of how history can be politicized,” Anadolu reported.
The ministry on Friday summoned David Satterfield, the US ambassador to Turkey.
Armenians say up to 1.5 millions of their kin were killed between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart. They say the mass killings amounted to genocide, a claim recognized by about 30 countries.
