Turkey on Thursday rejected a European Parliament report which accused Ankara of "backsliding" on democracy, because of references that the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide, EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir said.

"Therefore, we will consider this report as null and void," Bozkir was quoted as saying by the state-run Anatolia news agency after the parliament adopted a 2015 progress report on Turkey, long a candidate for EU membership.