Agence France Presse
May 1, 2018 Tuesday 4:03 PM GMT


Turkey condemns 'unacceptable' attack on Armenian church in Istanbul

Istanbul, May 1 2018

The Turkish government on Tuesday strongly condemned an attack on an
Armenian church in Istanbul which saw nationalist graffiti scrawled
outside the building and rubbish dumped at its door.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the attack Monday on
the Surp Takavor church in the Kadikoy district of Istanbul was
"unacceptable" and emphasised security forces were investigating who
was behind it.

It said after the incident Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu had spoken
to the acting Istanbul Armenian Patriarch Aram Atesyan and the head of
the church in Kadikoy to pass his best wishes.

The attack saw piles of rotten rubbish dumped outside the entrance to
the church and the words "from an Erzurum resident, this homeland is
ours" scrawled on a wall.

Relations between Turkey and the modern state of Armenia remain held
up by the dispute over the massacres of Ottoman Armenians from 1915
which Yerevan says was a genocide while Turkey strongly rejects the
term.

Only a fraction of the historic population of Armenians remain in
Turkey but a culturally-dynamic community numbering tens of thousands
lives on, concentrated in Istanbul, where there are numerous Armenian
churches.

Such attacks on the places of worship of Istanbul's present day
Christian and Jewish communities are extremely rare.

Erzurum, a major city in northeastern Turkey, was home to a large
community of Armenians before 1915 whereas today there are none.