VATICAN WEBSITE HACKED OVER POPE’S ‘ARMENIAN GENOCIDE’ REMARKS

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 15 2015

April 15, 2015, Wednesday/ 12:48:49/ TODAYSZAMAN.COM / ISTANBUL

A member of a Turkish hacking team briefly blocked access to the
Vatican’s official website on Tuesday night, in response to Pope
Francis’ describing the 1915 mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman
Empire as the “first genocide of the 20th century” on Sunday.

Pope Francis made the controversial remark as he honored the 100th
anniversary of the World War I massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire on Sunday. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Vatican’s
ambassador in Ankara on the same day. Turkish officials reportedly
told the ambassador that they were “deeply sorry and disappointed”,
adding that the pope’s comments had caused a “problem of trust.”

Turkey recalled its ambassador to Vatican City, Mehmet Pacacı, who
arrived in Ä°stanbul on Monday. A Turkish hacker, who uses the Twitter
account “Herakles” (@THTHerakles) shut down vatican.va, the official
website of the Vatican, late on Tuesday. The news was first reported
by the Italian media. Turkey’s Dogan news agency reported that the
website was inaccessible up until the early hours of Wednesday.

The Vatican’s website is currently working by rerouting visitors to
the address w2.vatican.va/content/vatican/it.html.

The hacker, who is reportedly a member of “Turkhackteam,” a nationalist
group of Turkish hackers, posted messages on Twitter ahead of the
cyber-attack, accusing the Turkish media of remaining silent in the
face of Pope Francis’ Armenian genocide remark.

He also wrote messages prior to the attack saying: “Tonight I am going
to pay a visit to Catholics. Let’s give a message to Mr. Pope.” He
continued in another message by saying that “Armenians should know
that we exist. This is not the first and will not be the last, even
though our own media remains silent.”

The hacker, speaking to the website hackread.com, said, “We want
the pope to apologize for his words or we will make sure the website
remains offline.” He told the website that the pope’s comments are
unacceptable and that he is a religious figure — which the hacker
respects — however, biased comments and calling what happened with
Armenians during World War I genocide is not true.

Turkey, a majority of whose population is Muslim, accepts that many
Christian Armenians died in clashes with Ottoman soldiers beginning
in 1915, when Armenia was part of the empire ruled from Ä°stanbul,
but denies hundreds of thousands were killed and that this amounted
to genocide.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed
by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey
claims that the death toll has been inflated and that those killed
were victims of civil war and unrest.

From: A. Papazian