Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Friday that the Council of Europe will mark the Srebrenica genocide anniversary for the first time in its history, on July 11 and that Turkey supports this decision.

“On July 11, the Council of Europe (CoE) will mark the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. So far, we've remembered the Holocaust and other historic negative events. This will be the first time we'll mark the Srebrenica genocide anniversary and we support that,” Cavusoglu said in the Turkish city of Konya, where he spoke at the conference organised by the country's Directorate of Religious Affairs.

The Turkish Minister also spoke of the problem of Islamophobia which is ever present at the international level.

“When we look at the causes of Islamophobia, we can see that its advocates don't have convincing or adequate arguments. We think that the cause of all of this is populism. Unfortunately, we are witnessing the fact that political parties, politicians and even media fed by this populism, are contributing to the expansion of hostilities towards Islam and migrants,” Cavusoglu said.

He added that over the past two years since he was in office as the President of the CoE's Parliamentary Assembly, his main task was to protect human rights, democracy, liberties and the rule of law.

In April 1993, the UN had declared the besieged enclave of the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica a safe area under UN protection.

However, in July 1995, the Dutch battalion soldiers failed to prevent the town's capture by the Bosnian Serb forces and the massacre that followed.

More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in the days following July 11, 1995, and so far the remains of more than 6,600 victims have been found and buried.