During the June 20 session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland gave a speech and answered questions from delegates. 

According to Panorama.am, member of the Armenian Delegation to the PACE Naira Karapetyan also asked the Secretary General a question, saying that on 2 June, the German Bundestag almost unanimously passed a resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide, before and after which pressures had been exerted on German Members of Parliament and that the Turkish President and other high-ranking officials gave rather crude and offensive evaluations of that decision.

“President Erdogan even called on checking the blood of all the deputies of Turkish descent who had voted in favor. Unfortunately, the idea of so-called “pure blood” is very familiar to Europe starting from the ideology of the Nazis.

How do you view the pressures exerted on the deputies? How can one member state of the Council of Europe have such an attitude towards another member state as a result of a fair and democratic voting held in its own parliament?” Naira Karapetyan asked.

The Secretary General of the Council of Europe replied that his opinion was what is stated in the famous Armenia-Turkey Protocols signed in Zurich, by which it was envisaged that historians had to find the answer to the question of what happened.

The Secretary General stated that the Council of Europe didn’t have an unambiguous opinion on the issue.

 “I see that others have other opinions and that national parliaments have adopted resolutions on this matter, but at this moment, I don’t know what the PACE has to do. However, I believe we need to leave it up to those dealing with history to treat history the right way. Every time I meet with the leaders of Turkey and Armenia, I call on them to return to the signed Protocols, but it isn’t realistic for the time being,” Thorbjørn Jagland said.