The European Parliament has accepted a very lengthy decision concerning the Armenian "genocide." The text of the decision, having been most likely prepared through negotiations among different political groups, is a pell-mell text containing a number of contradicting issues. However, there is a clear issue and demand that the text makes clear: Turkey is expected to recognise the Armenian "genocide," and everything else is not important.

Turkish authorities have reacted very rapidly and bluntly, by "ignoring" the text and the demands. At the end of the day, the European Parliament, which officially recognised the Armenian "genocide" back in 1987, has reiterated its position on the subject, and the Turkish government and political parties, who recognise only a "great tragedy" but not "genocide," have maintained their initial positions.

A great opportunity has been missed. The parliament's text demands Turkey to establish an "inventory" of Armenian cultural heritage, dating back to Ottoman times, located on Turkish soil. Perhaps an equally good idea would be to ask Balkan countries to do the same thing for the Ottoman cultural legacy, and try to find out the fate of thousands of mosques destroyed, but this is very unlikely to happen. Anyhow, the European Parliament can hardly ask the Russian Federation about the fate of Muslim cultural heritage in the Caucasus, because it is already a very delicate situation in Ukraine. With regards to the situation of the cultural heritage in the Middle East, not only the Ottoman, but in a wider sense, humanity's cultural heritage, the situation is obviously not ready for such a demand.

This may appear to lack seriousness, but at the risk of sounding pedantic, let me remind you that all these territories were Ottoman provinces a century ago. A huge number of local populations were exiled, exterminated, oppressed, and dispossessed in the Balkans, in the Caucasus, in the Middle East and in Anatolia.

The Armenian tragedy is probably the biggest one, but to understand how this "senseless slaughter" happened, as said by Pope Francis, it is essential to understand how nationalisms and different alien colonialist approaches dismantled and torn apart a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society.

The dismantling of the Ottoman Empire has not caused the tragedy and extermination of only Armenians, but obviously this is no consolation for the descendants of this old culture, who live in hatred of the "Turk". Nobody can mend what has been done, a great multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-ethnic Ottoman civilisation has been lost, and its Armenian component almost totally lost.

But there are still significant numbers of Armenians living in Turkey today. The first and foremost duty of Turkish governments is to make sure that Turkish Armenians live in peace and security in their own country, Turkey. Secondly, Armenia has turned into a semi-rogue state, dependent on Russia. Its isolation should be lifted in exchange for the normalization with Azerbaijan. Thirdly, an important number of representatives of the Armenian diaspora are willing to establish a dialogue with Turkish society. A "duty of memory" for Turkey is to help all these issues to come to fruition. It would have been a good idea for the European Parliament to focus upon this.