A question on the recognition of the Genocide of the Christians of the East (Anatolia) was submitted to the European Commission by the MEP of the European People’s Party and the New Democracy, Mr. Fredi Beleris, on the occasion of today’s International Day of Remembrance and Dignity for the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and the Prevention of this Crime.

Specifically, he said that “the persecutions and massacres of minorities are, to this day, the most heinous crimes in world history. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, ratified in 1948, clearly establishes that any act intended to destroy a population group constitutes genocide.”

Elsewhere he points out that “In addition to the Holocaust, many states have also recognized the genocides of the Armenians and the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, and the genocide of the Assyrians, a small Christian population living on the present-day Turkish-Syrian border, took place during the same period. In fact there was one genocide: that of the Christian populations of the East, Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians, which unfolded in different phases. This genocide was the result of central planning by the Young Turks who ruled the Ottoman Empire. It served only one purpose: the expulsion by any means of the Christian populations of the East.”

The MEP of the New Democracy and EPP asks the Commission whether it intends to officially recognise the genocide of the Christian populations of the East and what steps it will take to ensure that Turkey, as an accession state, complies with its international obligations and the principles of good neighbourliness by recognising the genocide of the Christians of the East (Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians).