POPE FRANCIS RECALLS TURKISH ‘GENOCIDE’ OF 1.5 MILLION ARMENIANS
Christian Times
April 15 2015
Jonah Hicap
15 April, 2015
Photo: Pope Francis blesses the missal as he leads a mass on the 100th
anniversary of the Armenian mass killings, in St. Peter’s Basilica at
the Vatican on April 12, 2015.Pope Francis sparked a diplomatic row
on Sunday when he publicly called the 1915Turkish massacre of up to
1.5 million Armenians as “the first genocide of the 20th century,”
prompting Turkey to accuse him of inciting hatred.At a Mass in St.
Peter’s Square commemorating the massacre Sunday, Pope Francis
underscored the “three massive and unprecedented tragedies” in the
past century. “The first, which is widely considered ‘the first
genocide of the twentieth century,’ struck your own Armenian people,
the first Christian nation, as well as Catholic and Orthodox Syrians,
Assyrians, Chaldeans and Greeks. Bishops and priests, religious,
women and men, the elderly and even defenseless children and the
infirm were murdered,” the Pope said.Ankara immediately summoned the
Vatican ambassador for a dressing down and recalled its own envoy.
“The Pope’s statements, which are far from historical and judicial
facts, cannot be accepted,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said
on Twitter. “Religious offices are not places to incite hatred and
revenge with baseless accusations.”
Muslim Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians died in clashes
with Ottoman soldiers starting in 1915 when Armenia was part of the
empire ruled from Istanbul but denied that hundreds of thousands
were killed.
The late Pope John Paul II and Armenian Apostolic Church Supreme
Patriarch Kerekin II also called the massacre “the first genocide of
the 20th century” in 2001, but it was in a joint written statement,
the report said.
In 2013, Pope Francis said the same phrase in a private meeting at
the Vatican with an Armenian delegation, that also sparked protest
from Ankara.
“It is the responsibility not only of the Armenian people and the
universal Church to recall all that has taken place, but of the entire
human family, so that the warnings from this tragedy will protect
us from falling into a similar horror, which offends against God and
human dignity,” the Pope said of the massacre.
“Today too, in fact, these conflicts at times degenerate into
unjustifiable violence, stirred up by exploiting ethnic and religious
differences. All who are Heads of State and of International
Organizations are called to oppose such crimes with a firm sense of
duty, without ceding to ambiguity or compromise,” he said.
It was not the first time that Turkey reacted strongly to the mention
of the alleged genocide that took place a century ago. When the French
parliament voted in 2011 to make Armenian genocide denial a crime,
Turkey withdrew its ambassador, suspended joint military maneuvers
and stopped political contacts with France.
Armenians contend that Turkey has not yet fully owned up to its
wartime past.
Turks, on the other hand, saw the Pope’s remarks as foreign
interference by foreigners and wondered whether the U.S, a traditional
ally of Turkey, would eventually use the word “genocide” to refer to
the 1915 massacre.
Unlike most European and South American states that use the term,
Washington has been avoiding its use, even warning legislators that
Ankara could cut off military cooperation if they voted to adopt it.
“I believe Obama will call it a genocide as well, considering the
influence of the Armenian population in the United States,” said
Serhat, a university student in Ankara. “It would surprise me if no
one else called it a genocide.”