The coalition partner of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) targeted the ‘non-Muslim minorities’ in his parliamentary group address on Wednesday.

Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), called MP Paylan ‘rotten’ for proposing a bill for the legal recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Garo Paylan is an Armenian MP for the Peoples’ Democratic Party.

In his address to MHP MPs, Bahçeli said:

“Dear friends, a day before 23rd of April, when we were preparing to celebrate the 102nd anniversary of the establishment of our veteran parliament, a filthy member of the HDP proposed a bill demanding an alleged Armenian genocide to be recognised. Thank God, this daring proposal was returned at once to the proposer. Unfortunately, there is an agent of the diaspora inside the Turkish parliament. Preparing a bill on an alleged Armenian genocide is an insult to our ancestors. It is betrayal, it is absolute slander. It is a degregation for all of us that such a servile mischief maker sits as a MP in the parliament.”

He continued:

“It is apparent from whom this rotten MP takes courage, with whom he is cooperating. Turning allegations of genocide into a bill has been used as an opportunity to provoke Turkey and to accuse our people.”

He added:

“I am warning everyone. Turkish parliament is not the Ottoman parliament of the constitutional era. It is not at all a place where non-Muslim minorities can voice their defiance. It is not a place where those who call the Turkish nation perpetrators of massacre and genocide will be able to take shelter, will exist, or will be able to look at us straight in the eye.”