Germany takes step to soothe Turkey ire

Germany yesterday reiterated that a parliamentary resolution on Turkey's World War I-era massacre of Armenians was non-binding but denied it was distancing itself from the vote to appease Ankara.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said it had always been clear that the June vote calling the Ottoman-era mass killing a "genocide" had no legally binding character, a question he said was of great interest to Ankara.

But Seibert rejected as "misleading and wrong" a report by news site Spiegel Online that, by reiterating this point, Merkel's government was seeking to appease Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"There is a false assertion that the German government wants to distance itself from the resolution of the Bundestag. This is absolutely not true," he said.

He added that parliament, as a sovereign body, had the right to issue statements on political issues of its choice, "even if they are not legally binding, as it says on its website".

A Spiegel reporter fired back, tweeting that Seibert "is doing exactly what it says in the report which he is denying: explicitly pointing out that the resolution is non-binding".

Already tense relations between Berlin and Ankara took a nose-dive after the vote three months ago.