The Italian Parliament passed a resolution calling on the government to "officially recognize the Armenian Genocide and give the issue international attention." The resolution received 382 votes in favor from all parties, no votes against and 43 abstentions from Silvio Berlusconi's conservative Forza Italia party.
The government is expected to follow up on the parliament's resolution, although it is under no legal obligation to do so. Omer Celik, representative of the Turkish ruling party "Justice and Development" condemned in his statements to journalists the resolution of the Italian Parliament, stressing that Italy was deceived by the Armenian diaspora.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned the Italian ambassador in Ankara after the resolution was submitted to the Italian Parliament in order to express its "regret". Twenty governments, including those of France, Germany and Russia, have recognized the Armenian Genocide. The Pope referred in 2015 to the events as "the first genocide of the 20th century".
Successive Turkish governments have denied using the term genocide for the mass persecution and killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians during the Ottoman Empire, of which Turkey is the successor state. Ankara maintains that between 300,000 and 500,000 Armenians died and that these deaths were largely the result of unrest during World War I and cannot be called genocide.
SOURCE:APE-ME