Turkey's President Erdogan warns German lawmakers against Armenia genocide resolution

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned Germany on 31 May, ahead of a parliamentary vote to pass a resolution declaring the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 as genocide .

He said that if the resolution is passed it will "naturally damage future diplomatic, economic, business, political and military relations between the two countries - and we are both also NATO countries."

On Monday (31 May), Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildrim, in a phone conversation with Chancellor Angela Merkel said, the proposed resolution makes "baseless and unjust political judgements." German magazine Der Spiegel reported.

The resolution called "Remembrance And Commemoration Of The Genocide Of Armenians And Other Christian Minorities In 1915 And 1916" calls the mass killings of Armenians during the First World War as genocide and the word is included multiple times in the text of the resolution, Politico reported.

According to Deutsche Welle – the text reads: "The fate of the Armenians is exemplary in the history of mass exterminations, ethnic cleansing, deportations and yes, genocide, which marked the 20th century in such a terrible way." The resolution also points towards the responsibility of German Reich in the killings.

In April last year, on the 100th anniversary of the genocide, Bundestag (lower house of parliament) postponed a vote to pass the resolution to classify the killings as genocide.

RT reported that chairman of the Green Party, Cem Ozdemir, who is of Turkish origin, was one of the MPs who received abusive messages on Facebook and Twitter.

"It's always the same terms: 'Traitor', 'Armenia's pig', 'son of a bitch', 'Armenian Terrorist' and even 'Nazi'," he told ARD, with regards to the hate message he received.

The approval of the resolution was greeted with cheer by many Armenian supporters who gathered outside the parliament building to commemorate the genocide..

An estimated 1.2 million Armenians were massacred between 1915 and 1917 in what is often called the "Armenian Holocaust". The killings began on 24 April when Armenian intellectuals were detained by Ottoman authorities and executed in their then capital of Constantinople, which is present day Istanbul.