Turkey anger at Pope Francis Armenian ‘genocide’ claim
39 minutes ago/12/04/15
>From the section Europe
Turkey has summoned the Vatican ambassador after Pope Francis used the
word “genocide” to describe mass killing of Armenians under Ottoman
rule in WW1 100 years ago, reports say.
Armenia and many historians say up to 1.5 million people were
systematically killed by Ottoman forces in 1915.
Turkey has consistently denied that the killings were genocide.
The Pope’s comments came at a service to honour a 10th Century mystic,
attended by Armenia’s president.
The dispute has continued to sour relations between Armenia and Turkey.
‘Bleeding wound’
The Pope first used the word genocide for the killings two years ago,
prompting a fierce protest from Turkey.
At Sunday’s Mass in the Armenian Catholic rite at Peter’s Basilica, he
said that humanity had lived through “three massive and unprecedented
tragedies” in the last century.
“The first, which is widely considered ‘the first genocide of the 20th
Century’, struck your own Armenian people,” he said, in a form of
words used by a declaration by Pope John Paul II in 2001.
Analysis: David Willey, BBC News, Rome
The Pope was perfectly conscious that by using the word “genocide” he
would offend Turkey, which considers the number of deaths of Armenians
during the extinction of the Ottoman Empire exaggerated, and continues
to deny the extent of the massacre.
But the Pope’s powerful phrase “concealing or denying evil is like
allowing a wound to bleed without bandaging it” extended his
condemnation to all other, more recent, mass killings, including those
in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia and today’s massacres by
Islamic State.
Pope Francis’ focus today on Armenia, the first country to adopt
Christianity as its state religion, even before the conversion of the
Roman Emperor Constantine, serves as yet another reminder of the
Catholic Church’s widely spread roots in Eastern Europe and the Middle
East. More than 20 local Eastern Catholic Churches, including that of
Armenia, remain in communion with Rome.
Pope Francis also referred to the crimes “perpetrated by Nazism and
Stalinism” and said other genocides had followed in Cambodia, Rwanda,
Burundi and Bosnia.
He said it was his duty to honour the memories of those who were killed.
“Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding
without bandaging it,” the Pope added.
Many members of the Armenian clergy were at the ceremony Turkey
rejects the use of the term “genocide” to describe the 1915 mass
killings of Armenians
On Sunday, Pope Francis also honoured the 10th Century mystic St
Gregory of Narek by declaring him a doctor of the church. Only 35
people have been given the title, reports AP.
Armenia marks the date of 24 April 1915 as the start of the mass
killings. The country has long campaigned for greater recognition of
what it regards as a genocide.
‘Political conflict’
In 2014, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered condolences to the
grandchildren of all the Armenians who lost their lives for the first
time.
But he also said that it was inadmissible for Armenia to turn the
issue “into a matter of political conflict”.
Armenia says up to 1.5 million people died in 1915-16 as the Ottoman
empire split. Turkey has said the number of deaths was much smaller.
Most non-Turkish scholars of the events regard them as genocide. Among
the other states which formally recognise them as genocide are
Argentina, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Russia and Uruguay.
Turkey maintains that many of the dead were killed in clashes during
World War I, and that ethnic Turks also suffered in the conflict.