The Israeli Government has voted to formally recognise the Armenian genocide, in a decision set to deepen its bitter dispute with Turkey.
The cabinet on June 28 unanimously backed a proposal by Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar to acknowledge the Ottoman Empire’s mass killing of Armenians during the First World War. The measure still requires ratification by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to take full effect.
Sa’ar, who initiated the resolution, said: “It’s never too late to do the right thing.” He cast the recognition as a moral duty for the Jewish state.
The proposal stated that some 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a campaign of massacres and deportations that began in April 1915. It called on Israel to condemn efforts to deny or minimise the atrocities.
Israel had for decades avoided the term “genocide” to protect its ties with both Turkey and Azerbaijan. Relations with Ankara collapsed after the Gaza war erupted in October 2023.
Turkey’s foreign ministry rejected the vote as a “political” decision aimed at covering up Israel’s own conduct in Gaza, where it faces a case at the International Court of Justice. It said Ankara would keep working to end what it called Israel’s destabilising regional policies.
Azerbaijan, a close partner of both Israel and Turkey, also condemned the decision. Its foreign ministry called it a “distortion of historical facts” and urged Jerusalem to reconsider.
If ratified, Israel would join 32 countries that have formally recognised the genocide, among them the United States, France and Germany. The European Parliament and the Vatican have issued similar acknowledgements.
The European Parliament first recognised the killings as genocide in 1987 and has repeatedly urged Ankara to do the same. Turkey’s bid to join the European Union has been frozen for years, with its rights record and rule-of-law standards among the obstacles cited by member states.
Turkey, a candidate for European Union membership, has long lobbied against such recognition. It accepts that Armenians died during the First World War though rejects that the killings amounted to a systematic genocide.
Ankara closed its airspace to Israeli aircraft and severed economic ties in 2025, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he personally recognised the genocide. The latest move would harden a breach between two former regional allies.
