Turkey calls Germany's approval of Armenian genocide bill "invalid"

Turkish government on Thursday described the approval of the Armenian genocide bill by German parliament as "null and void," Hurriyet News reported.

"Turkey will give the necessary response to Germany. This decision is null and void for Turkey," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told media after the vote on June 2.

Meanwhile, Turkey has recalled its ambassador to Berlin after the German parliament passed the resolution, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported, quoting the Turkish prime minister.

Turkey's parliament will also release a joint declaration on Germany's approval of the bill.

Earlier on Thursday, German parliament approved a resolution recognizing the World War I-era killings of Anatolian Armenians at the hands of Ottomans as "genocide."

The vote caused the tension to rise between Turkey and Germany, with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim saying that the result of the voting would amount to a "real test of the friendship" between Berlin and Ankara.

"Some nations that we consider friends, when they are experiencing trouble in domestic policy, attempt to divert attention from it," he said at a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Thursday. "This resolution is an example of that."

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, whose empire was disintegrating. Many of the victims were civilians deported to barren desert regions where they died of starvation and thirst.

Yerevan has long sought international recognition of the "genocide," but Ankara rejects the use of the term to describe the World War I-era killings and argues that it was a collective tragedy in which equal numbers of Turks and Armenians died.

More than 20 nations, including Russia and France, have recognized the 1915 killings as genocide. Endit