German Chancellor Angela Merkel said accusations levied by Turkey against German lawmakers of Turkish origin after its parliament passed a resolution declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a genocide were incomprehensible, Reuters reports.
“The lawmakers in Germany’s lower house of parliament are freely elected without exception and the accusations and statements which have been made by the Turkish side are incomprehensible,” Merkel told a joint news conference with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev in Berlin.
On Sunday, Erdogan lashed out at the German parliament for passing the resolution and suggested that Germany was being hypocritical given its own history.
Erdogan has also been widely reported in German media as saying that German lawmakers of Turkish origin who voted for the resolution have “tainted” blood and that their blood must be tested in a lab.