“Believes that the tragic events in 1915-1917 involving
the Armenians living in the territory of the Ottoman Empire constitute genocide
within the meaning of the convention on the prevention and the punishment of
the crime of genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948.”
- Believes that the Armenian question and the question
of minorities in Turkey must be resituated within the framework of relations
between Turkey and the Community; points out that democracy cannot be solidly
implanted in a country unless the latter recognizes and enriches its history
with its ethnic and cultural diversity;
-
Believes that the tragic events in
1915-1917 involving the Armenians living in the territory of the Ottoman
Empire constitute genocide within the meaning of the convention on the prevention
and the punishment of the crime of genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly
on 9 December 1948; Recognizes, however, that the present Turkey cannot
be held responsible for the tragedy experienced by the Armenians of the
Ottoman Empire and stresses that neither political nor legal or material
claims against present-day Turkey can be derived from the recognition of
this historical event as an act of genocide;
-
Calls on the Council to obtain from
the present Turkish Government as acknowledgment of the genocide perpetrated
against the Armenians in 1915-1917 and promote the establishment of a political
dialogue between Turkey and the representatives of the Armenians;
-
Believes that the refusal by the
present Turkish Government to acknowledge the genocide against the Armenian
people committed by the Young Turk government, its reluctance to apply the
principles of international law to its differences of opinion with Greece,
the maintenance of Turkish occupation forces in Cyprus and the denial of
existence of the Kurdish question, together with the lack of true parliamentary
democracy and the failure to respect individual and collective freedoms,
in particular freedom of religion, in that country are insurmountable obstacles
to consideration of the possibility of Turkey’s accession to the Community;
-
Conscious of those past misfortunes,
supports its desire for the development of a specific identity, the securing
of its minority rights and the unrestricted exercise of its people’s
human and civil rights as defined in the European Convention of Human Rights
and its five protocols;
-
Calls for fair treatment of the Armenian
minority in Turkey as regards their identity, language, religion, culture
and school system, and makes an emphatic plea for improvements in the care
of monuments and for the maintenance and conservation of the Armenian religious
architectural heritage in Turkey and invites the Community to examine how
it could make an appropriate contribution;
-
Calls on Turkey in this connection
to abide faithfully by the provisions for the protection of the non-Muslim
minorities as stipulated in Articles 37 to 45 of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne
which, moreover, was signed by most Member States of the Community;
-
Considers that the protection of
monuments and the maintenance and conservation of the Armenian religious
architectural heritage in Turkey must be regarded as part of a wider policy
designed to preserve the cultural heritage of all civilizations which have
developed over the centuries on present-day Turkish territory and, in particular,
that of the Christian minorities that formed part of the Ottoman Empire;
-
Calls therefore on the Community
to extend the Association Agreement with Turkey to the cultural field so
that the remains of Christian or other civilizations such as the ancient
classical, Hittite, Ottoman, etc., in that country are preserved and made
generally accessible;
-
Expresses its concern at the difficulties
currently being experienced by the Armenian community in Iran with respect
to the Armenian language and their own education in accordance with the
rules of their own religion;
-
Condemns the violations of individual
freedoms committed in the Soviet Union against the Armenian population;
-
Condemns strongly any violence and
any form of terrorism carried out by isolated groupings unrepresentative
of the Armenian people, and calls for reconciliation between Armenians and
Turks;
-
Calls on the Community Member States
to dedicate a day to the memory of the genocide and crimes against humanity
perpetrated in the 20th century, specifically against the Armenians and
Jews;
-
Commits itself to making a substantial
contribution to initiatives to encourage negotiations between the Armenian
and Turkish peoples;
- Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the
European Council, the Foreign Ministers meeting in political cooperation,
the EEC/Turkey Association Council and the Turkish, Iranian and Soviet Governments
and the UN Secretary General.
June
18, 1987