On 2 June 2016, the German Bundestag voted in favour of a motion jointly proposed by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Green Party that officially recognised the events concerning the mass deportation and killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 as a Genocide, in line with a similar decision taken by the European Parliament a year before. Prior to the decision, Prime Minister Yıldırım claimed that he had warned German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Germany would be undergoing a 'friendship test with Turkey' during the vote and that such a decision would be irrational and detrimental to relations between the two countries.