VATICAN IN ROW WITH TURKEY OVER POPE’S ARMENIA ‘GENOCIDE’ COMMENTS
Centenary News
April 14 2015
Posted on centenarynews.com on 14 April 2015
Pope Francis has sparked a diplomatic row with Turkey by describing the
mass killings of Armenians during the First World War as ‘genocide.’
His comments came during a Centenary service at St. Peter’s in Rome
on April 12th 2015, attended by Armenian clergy and President Serzh
Sargsyan.
Turkey, which strongly denies that genocide took place, has recalled
its ambassador to the Vatican in protest. It says the Pope’s remarks
“regarding the 1915 events contradict historical and legal facts.”
In his address, the Pope Francis said: “In the past century our human
family has lived through three massive and unprecedented tragedies.
The first, which is widely considered ‘the first genocide of the
twentieth century’ struck your own Armenian people.
“We recall the centenary of that tragic event, that immense and
senseless slaughter whose cruelty your forebears had to endure. It
is necessary, and indeed a duty, to honour their memory, for whenever
memory fades, it means that evil allows wounds to fester.
“Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding
without bandaging it.”
The other two unprecedented killings of the 20th century had been
perpetrated by Nazism and Stalinism, Pope Francis argued.
Turkey swiftly issued a statement condemning his comments. It accused
him of “falling under the influence of the Armenian narrative” and
selectively ignoring “the tragedies that befell the Turkish and Muslim
peoples who had lost their lives in World War I.”
A Foreign Ministry statement said Pope Francis had called “the events
of 1915′ a ‘genocide’, despite the absence of any such competent
court judgment.”
The Vatican Ambassador in Ankara was summoned to hear the government’s
objections. Turkey has also recalled its envoy to the Holy See for
consultations, in effect a diplomatic protest.
Bitter legacy
The mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during the First
World War remains one of the most bitter legacies of the conflict.
Armenia will commemorate the centenary of what it regards as the
start of genocide on April 24th 2015.
On that day 100 years ago, the eve of the Allied landings at Gallipoli,
the Ottoman government ordered the arrest and removal of Armenian
intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople (now Istanbul).
Estimates of the numbers of Armenians who were killed or died from
starvation and disease during subsequent deportations from Turkey to
the Syrian desert and elsewhere vary widely, from 500,000 to 1,500,000.
Armenia has issued a Pan-Armenian declaration for the Centenary,
under the motto ‘I remember and demand,’ calling on the Republic of
Turkey to “recognise and condemn the Armenian Genocide committed by
the Ottoman Empire.”
But Turkey insists that “no authentic evidence exists” to support
the claim of a premeditated Ottoman plan to kill off Armenians.
It says the aim was to move the Armenian population from the war zone
and the advancing Russian army, to southern provinces of the empire.
Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, and Russia are among countries which
have formally recognised the killings as genocide.
*The full text of Pope Francis’s address can be found on the Vatican
Daily Bulletin.
*Ankara’s response is on the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
website.
*The Pan-Armenian Declaration was issued on January 29th 2015.
*A statement of Turkey’s position can be found on the Foreign Ministry
website.
Sources: Vatican City Daily Bulletin; Turkish Foreign Ministry
Images courtesy of the President of the Republic of Armenia’s Office
Posted by Peter Alhadeff, Centenary News