Author: Kalantarian Kevo

SYRIA CONFLICT: A CENTURY AFTER THE ‘GENOCIDE’, ARMENIANS FLEE WAR AND RETURN TO LAND OF THEIR ANCESTORS

Thousands of refugees with Armenian roots are returning, hoping
to start a new life in the shadow of Mount Ararat. 100 years after
the Armenian ‘genocide’, Andrew Connelly, in, speaks to some of the
diaspora who have come home

ANDREW CONNELLY

YEREVAN

Monday 13 April 2015

In his flat on the outskirts of the Armenian capital, Yerevan, Hovig
Ashjian squints through a microscope as he plucks a minuscule shard
of diamond and gently sets it into a silver ring. Originally from
Aleppo, the jeweller moved to Armenia when fighting between militants
and government forces intensified.

“I came here with nothing,” he recalled. “One day I saw the tanks
outside my home and people shouting so I said to my wife: ‘Come on,
better run’.”

They raced to the airport in a drive that was normally 25 minutes
but took three hours as they navigated the myriad roadblocks. They
were just in time to catch what proved to be the last direct plane
from Aleppo to Yerevan.

Mr Ashjian is one of around 15,000 Syrians of Armenian descent the
United Nations estimates have sought refuge in the country since the
Syrian conflict erupted in 2011.

At the end of next week, on 24 April, Armenia – a landlocked former
Soviet nation of three million in the South Caucasus region bordering
Iran and Turkey – will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1915
massacres by the Ottoman Empire of Armenians living in what is now
eastern Turkey. Armenia and some other countries consider those events,
during the First World War, a genocide that led to the deaths of 1.5
million of their people, although Turkey denies this and disputes the
numbers killed. Those not slaughtered escaped, or were marched into
the deserts and beyond, and survivors built sizeable communities in
Syria, Lebanon and across the Middle East.

Yerevan, with a population of one million, is often called “the Pink
city” due to the abundance of rose-coloured volcanic rock used in many
of its buildings, adding a flash of colour to the sea of ramshackle
Soviet-era apartment blocks.

The crowning glory of the city’s skyline is the snowy peaks of Mount
Ararat, believed by Christians to be the final resting place of
Noah’s Ark. Its name is omnipresent in Armenia, from football teams
to cigarette brands and brandy companies, and is a rallying cry to
the global diaspora – made all the more potent by the fact that it
is located just inside Turkey, whose border with Armenia has been
closed for three decades.

As Mr Ashjian speaks, jets can be heard sporadically whooshing
overhead. Russia maintains 3,000 troops at a base in Armenia’s second
city, Gyumri, and also provides Armenia’s air defences. “It’s like
being back in Syria. Sometimes we wonder if they are coming for us!”

says Mr Ashjian with a wry smile. The planes used by the Syrian
regime of Bashar al-Assad, sometimes to bomb its people, are mostly
Russian built.

Around 15,000 Syrians of Armenian descent are estimated to have sought
refuge in the Armenia since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011(EPA)

Not that everything in Armenia is happy for the refugees from Syria who
have arrived. Finding work is difficult in a country with unemployment
at 21 per cent; the average wage is just £200 a month.

Even aside from the cultural contrasts, there are language problems
for the new arrivals: many diaspora communities speak Western Armenian,
a dialect spoken by their ancestors in the Ottoman Empire.

Although it is fundamentally the same language deep down, it is as
if Britons were welcoming visitors from Shakespearean England.

For Mr Ashjian, however, it is a cautious but hopeful beginning of a
new chapter in his family’s life. “It’s very different because we are
in our land, the land of our ancestors,” he said. “We drew pictures
of Mount Ararat in school but now we can see it with our eyes. Yes,
now it is in Turkey, but it’s a more beautiful view from our side.”

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed in a
1915-16 genocide by Turkey’s former Ottoman Empire; Turkey has the
figure at 500,000 (AFP/Getty)

Beneath Yerevan’s stylish Northern Avenue, in a chilly converted
garage of block of flats mainly populated by Syrian-Armenians,
Ani Balkhian runs the Aleppo NGO. Founded by women from the city,
it assists refugees with housing, employment, children’s education
and language classes. They keep regular contact with Armenians still
living precariously in Syria.

Ms Balkhian and her colleagues recently raised funds for families
in Kessab, an ethnic Armenian town in north-western Syria that was
attacked by al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists in March last year.

Villagers were kidnapped, churches set alight and cemeteries
desecrated. Kessab was previously the scene of a massacre by Ottoman
forces in 1915 and there is a widespread view amongst Armenians that
last year’s incursion had the assistance, if not direct involvement,
of Turkish authorities – claims vigorously denied by Turkey.

“Armenians were happy in Syria,” she said. “Now everything has
changed. The culture of killing is inside the people now, so how can
you go back, how can you send your children there? We used to dream
that someday we would go to our homeland of Armenia, but then we were
forced to come here. It’s like a second genocide for us.”

Like all those who fled, Ms Balkhian had to leave most possessions
behind. Her home and her family’s textile factories in rebel-controlled
areas were looted, she said, and belongings she tried to ship out have
been stuck at the Syrian port of Tartus for six months. One item she
managed to rescue and transport, a bookcase of carved walnut wood,
dominates her office yet stands bereft of books – emblematic of her
vanished life back in Syria.

Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan ‘meets the Kardashians’,
who are Armenian, in Yerevan this month (AP)

Even so, refugees have begun to transform Yerevan’s cultural life. Its
cuisine has been infused with lamajoun (Arabic-style flatbread pizza),
and sweet-smelling smoke clouds around pavement cafes as Yerevanites
have taken to smoking nargile water pipes. On a Saturday night in
an underground cocktail bar, Aleppo-born singer Rena Derkhorenian
and her all-Syrian band Shiver blast out jazz and soul rhythms to a
writhing crowd.

Ms Derkhorenian thinks the displacement is a chance to build something
new. “Syrian-Armenians and the locals still need to integrate more
but this was our chance to come here and make something of this
land called Armenia,” she said. “A hundred years have passed and now
we need to think differently. This is the time to start something,
especially when we have all the diaspora coming. We need to make room
for each other… and we need to stay.”

World Bulletin, Turkey
April 12 2015

Pope Francis commemorates anniversary of Armenians

Pope Francis asserts that Armenian massacre first genocide of 20th century.

World Bulletin / News Desk

Pope Francis asserts that Armenian massacre first genocide of 20th
century. Pope Francis has held a service in Vatican City for Armenians
who lost their lives in the 1915 incidents.

The spiritual leader of the world’s estimated one billion Catholics
held a rite lasting about one-and-a-half hours at St. Peter Basilica
on Sunday.

“The first ‘genocide’ of the 20th century struck Armenians,” the Pope said.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan; Catholicos Karekin II, the current
Catholicos of All Armenians and also the supreme head of the Armenian
Apostolic Church, and Aram I Keshishian, the head of the Catholicosate
of the Great House of Cilicia, also attended the rite.

The 1915 events took place during World War I when a portion of the
Armenian population living in the Ottoman Empire sided with the
invading Russians and revolted.

The Ottoman Empire relocated Armenians in eastern Anatolia following
the revolts and there were some Armenian casualties during the
relocation process.

‘Great tragedy’

Armenia has demanded an apology and compensation, while Turkey has
officially refuted Armenian allegations over the incidents saying
that, although Armenians died during the relocations, many Turks also
lost their lives in attacks carried out by Armenian gangs in Anatolia.

The Turkish government has repeatedly called on historians to study
Ottoman archives pertaining to the era in order to uncover what
actually happened between the Ottoman government and its Armenian
citizens.

The debate on “genocide” and the differing opinions between the
present day Turkish government and the Armenian diaspora, along with
the current administration in Yerevan, still generates political
tension between Turks and Armenians.

VATICAN
Le pape François utilise le terme de génocide à propos des Arméniens

Le pape François a utilisé dimanche le terme “génocide” pour le
massacre des Arméniens il y a cent ans. Une déclaration en public
inédite qui pourrait perturber les relations entre Rome et la Turquie.

“Au siècle dernier, notre famille humaine a traversé trois tragédies
massives et sans précédent. La première, qui est largement considérée
comme le premier génocide du XXe siècle a frappé votre peuple
arménien”, a déclaré le pape François dans le cadre solennel de la
basilique Saint-Pierre de Rome, en citant un document signé en 2001
par le pape Jean Paul II et le patriarche arménien.

François s’est exprimé à l’ouverture d’une messe à la mémoire des
Arméniens massacrés entre 1915 et 1917, concélébrée avec le patriarche
arménien Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni, avec des éléments du rite
catholique arménien et en présence du président du pays.

Une première pour un pape

Même si Jean Paul II avait utilisé le terme de “génocide” en 2000 dans
le document commun et que Jorge Bergoglio l’avait utilisé plusieurs
fois avant de devenir pape et même au moins une fois en privé depuis,
c’est la première fois que ce mot est prononcé publiquement par un
pontife.

dimanche 12 avril 2015,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

Personal history: Remembering the Armenian Genocide
pressherald.com/2015/04/12/remembering-the-armenian-genocide/

By John Christie
Portland Press Herald, Maine
April 12, 2015

On a spring day in 1909, in a hill town swept by the breezes of the
eastern Mediterranean Sea, a 10-year-girl was sent to her family’s
pasture to round up their cows.

She was Gulenia Hovsepian, a little Armenian girl living just outside
the Turkish village of Suediya. In English, her name means Rose.

She finished her chore and started back up the hill to her home,
running through the mulberry trees her father grew to feed the
family’s silkworms.

`And I was coming back to the mulberry trees and the mulberry trees
were tapping my face, and I was running, and I was a kid and hadn’t
eaten yet, nothing,’ she recalled in a recording she made at age
91. `A boy, a Turkish boy, by the neighbors, hollers to me, I never
forget it, never could forget it. In Turkish he said, `They’re killing
the giaour, the kafir.’ ‘

`They’ were the Turks. The Armenians were the giaour, the kafir – the
infidels.

What history records as the Adana massacre was beginning through a
region of Turkey that was Cilician Armenia 1,000 years before and was
still the home of tens of thousands of Armenians.

`Adana was the turning point for the Armenians,’ wrote Peter Balakian
in `The Burning Tigris,’ his much-praised history of the Armenian
Genocide. `The massacres there were another major step in the
devaluation of this minority culture, and a step forward on the road
to genocide.’

Balakian cites a report that 15,000 to 25,000 people were killed in
the massacres, including children and teachers in a school that was
set afire. Those that didn’t die in the fire were shot as they tried
to escape.

The Armenian Genocide – one of the earlier recorded genocides – began
100 years ago this year throughout Ottoman Turkey. Armenians all over
the world – including half a million in the U.S. – will be
commemorating the anniversary in 2015, especially on Remembrance Day,
April 24.

The massacres of the 1890s and 1900s and the genocide stemmed from a
longstanding hatred and resentment of the Christian Armenians (Armenia
was the first nation to declare itself Christian, in 301 A.D.) by the
Muslim majority, and the rise of Turkish nationalism and militarism.

Under the leadership of the minister of the interior, Talaat Pasha,
Turkey passed laws to forcibly deport Armenians and confiscate their
homes and property. Then they were marched across deserts, where many
starved to death. Others were outright murdered: shot, bayoneted,
burned to death in barns, driven over cliffs, crucified and
flayed. Woman were raped or forced to marry ethnic Turks.

The U.S. ambassador to Turkey at the time was Henry Morgenthau, a
tireless advocate for what became in the U.S. a catchphrase: `the
starving Armenians.’ In a letter to the secretary of state in July
1915, Morgenthau describes what was happening in Turkey:

The `deportation and excesses against peaceful Armenians is increasing
and from harrowing reports of eye witnesses it appears that a campaign
of race extermination is in progress …’

Except for those few Turks who were assassinated in the 1920s by
Armenian rebels, no one has ever been held responsible for the
Armenian `Race Murder,’ the title of the first chapter in Samantha
Power’s groundbreaking history of genocide, `A Problem from Hell.’

In 1939, during of the Nazi genocide of European Jews, Adolf Hitler
expressed confidence he could get away with anything: `Who today,
after all, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?’

Now, 75 years after Hitler’s dismissal, the world has not forgotten,
especially those like myself who grew up with a victim of the Turkish
atrocities.

In 1948, that little girl who ran through the mulberry trees became my
grandmother, Rose Hovsepian Banaian =80` my Nana. Until I was 12 years
old, we lived in the same tenement: she and her unmarried children in
the end unit; my mother (her oldest daughter), and my Irish father, my
brother and I in the middle tenement on a dead end street in Dover,
New Hampshire.

I knew from talks around family dinners, especially the Sunday
picnics, that Nana was a refugee from the genocide; I knew her father
and mother had died at Turkish hands; and I knew she escaped through
Egypt and came to the U.S. as the arranged bride of an Armenian man
who had also escaped the genocide.

I say I knew this, but I had never written anything down, nor asked
for precise details.

My search for Nana’s story – and my story – brought me to a 1990
recording of Nana that begins in that Turkish pasture so many years
ago.

`I SAW MY FATHER RUNNING’
Nana raced home on that day 81 years ago and 5000
miles away from where she would make her American life.

`I saw my father running. He had his rifle, his sword, his pistol
… he hugged me and he kissed me but he didn’t say nuthin’. But he
was running, he ran into that brook, to follow the brook.’

He was headed to the village center to join other Armenian men to
resist the Turks. He never made it.

Nana begins to tell what happened next: `Before he get there, on the
hill he met a …’ and her voice just stops. Nothing for
seconds. Then: `All I’ll say is, hundreds of them. He was killed. He
was beaten. Because he couldn’t fight all those people. He tried, he
did. They had taken everything off him, only his white shirt, homespun
white shirt that goes way down to the knee. It’s all homespun, rough
stuff, and left him there. Left him there.’

>From that day in 1909 until she arrived at Ellis Island in 1921 and
married John Banaian, Gulenia Hovsepian was taken out of her simple
farm life and tossed onto the world stage, one of the millions of
victims in the shattering events that culminated in World War I.

HIDING FROM THE TURKS
While her recollections at age 91 sometimes wandered across time
periods and left some crucial storylines incomplete, her gift for the
telling detail and the turning-point event is novelistic.

After her father was killed, the family – mother Marian and her five
children, from 10-month-old Movses to Sara, 13 – had to escape. They
made their way to the nearby factory where silk was woven, where the
owner agreed to hide them from the Turks. `They locked the door in
there, and we heard the soldiers going by because it was on the main
road and the baby started to cry and my mother would put her hand on
his mouth (so) they won’t hear’ her, Nana recalled.

They made their way to Antioch, where they were to be spared by
becoming – as Nana puts it – `Mohammedan.’ In the massacres and later
in the genocide, conversion was sometimes offered as a way to avoid
deportation and possible death. But before that could happen, the
official killings stopped. Nana recalled: The sultan `had given orders
for the town criers to go around – it’s not like papers now – town
criers to go around in the town, in the city, and they holler and
yell, `Stop it, don’t kill no more.’ ‘

Still, the family had lost their home, their source of income, their
very world.

Nana’s hopes were with her Uncle George, who she believed was well off
and working for an Englishman in a cigarette factory in Cairo.

George had received word that his brother had been killed and his
family members were refugees. He arrived in Antioch and organized a
rescue of Nana and 45 other Armenian girls, including Nana’s younger
sister, Violet.

=80=9CWe get all gathered, they had to take us in the dark to the
missionary … My mother bathe me and comb my hair and she took a
little piece of cloth and put in there cucumbers and some kind of
bread they make of it, a lot of sesame seeds on it. She put that in
there for the two of us to eat. And when we get to Alexandretta (on
the Turkish coast) in a building, an empty building in there, and at
midnight, they took us out, but they served a meal there.

`All of a sudden, they came around: Get your bundle, what you have
with you. They were going to transfer us somewhere else. You know what
happened? We heard the story afterward. The Turks had take, you know
the gasoline, kerosene, I mean, comes in cans, in tin cans like that,
because we had to buy it ourselves for our home. They did it all
around the building. They were gonna put it on fire there. And someone
found out about it so they had to take us. Yeah, they were gonna burn
us all to death.’

The children were taken by ship to Beirut, where a German Lutheran
orphanage and school agreed to accept them. Nana stayed from age 10 to
age 16 in 1918, relatively safe from both the war and the genocide
that was killing hundreds of thousands of Armenians in neighboring
Turkey.

`IT MADE MY HEART IN PIECES’
Her mother, though, was not as fortunate. Every time the subject of
her mother comes up on the 1990 recording, Nana answers quickly – `My
mother died on the road’ =80` and then changes the subject.

Historically, that makes sense. Even though Nana’s mother escaped the
Adana massacre, she was a refugee and without resources when the 1915
genocide began. `Died on the road’ could well refer to the most common
way Armenians were killed – by starvation and disease on forced
marches to concentration camps.

Movses, the youngest child, lived with sister Sarah and the man she
had married, in Antioch, but there was little food to feed the
family. Movses had only grass to eat and died, likely from severe
diarrhea or dysentery, Nana said.

`He died, starved to death three weeks before the armistice was
signed. The armistice was signed, they had PLENTY, PLENTY FOOD, the
Red Cross (she halts, sobs). He was about … 10 years old. He
died. I’m never going to forgive anyone for that. Never! Never! It
broke my heart, made my heart in pieces.’

A friend from the Beirut orphanage was working as a nurse’s aide in a
Cairo hospital, and helped Nana get a job there, where she stayed for
two years. Then, through a friend, the two got an offer to marry
Armenians who were living in America: `She had somebody that she knew,
she asked her how about bring two girls, there are two brothers here,
they like to marry Armenian girls. They say, they’re pretty well off,
they got money, see.’

On Aug. 9, 1921, Nana and her friend boarded a train to Alexandria,
then a ship to Piraeus, Greece, and the King Alexander ocean liner to
Ellis Island, where she arrived just before Labor Day.

`I wanted to see America. I wasn’t only interested in see a man, or
anything. I wanted to see America.’

It turns out, John Banaian, who was to be my grandfather, had no money
and lived in a shabby apartment with dish towels for curtains in the
worst section of Dover. But he was a typical immigrant – industrious
and frugal. Later, he bought the tenement house and they had six
children in seven and a half years. The youngest, Lillian, was but 10
months old when John Banaian died of pneumonia.

Nana was left with three boys and three girls; the oldest, my mother,
was 10. It was in the middle of the Depression. My mother became the
daytime mother while Nana went to work in the mills.

After World War II, my mother – who went by `Kay’ rather than the
decidedly immigrant first name she was given, Kouharig – met and
married a local Irishman, Thomas Christie. I was born in 1948, the
first grandchild on my mother’s side.

AN ANTIDOTE TO HARDSHIP
The lives of my mother and her mother – my Nana – were forged from
hardship and loss.

When I came along life was a little better. The American economy was
strong after the war: Dad, a World War II veteran, became a skilled
machinist; Mom worked the late shift at a nearby GE plant.

There were no luxuries, but my extended, deprived family made my life
as easy, as all-American, as they could. Perhaps in response to their
lives, mine was to be protected.

I was to be the antidote to their past, yet the family history seeped
into my consciousness, awaiting a deeper exploration of the past
opened up by Nana’s recording.

Now, it takes but a plate of grape leaves I make from Nana’s recipe,
and I can see her running through those mulberry trees while her
father – my great-grandfather – grabs his rifle and runs directly into
his murder. In that moment he enters the history of a people, the
history of a world soon afire, the history of one of mankind’s worst
inventions: genocide.

On the recording, Nana, who died five years later at age 96, strays
from the narrative of her life to reflect upon history and the fact
that the Turkish government to this day officially denies the Armenian
Genocide:

`I don’t know if the Turks would ever. But, ah, they’re denying
it. I’m sorry to damn them – they don’t want to admit it. I’m telling
you this: Where did I come from? Where did I get the story to tell you
about it?’

John Christie is a journalist living in Maine and writing a memoir,
`The Regretful Boy Scout.’

More People Left Than Arrived in Zvartnots Airport

Roza Hovhannisyan, Reporter
Country – 11 April 2015, 18:18

18,918 more passengers left than arrived in Armenia via Zvartnots
Airport in the first quarter of this year. According to statistics
published by the General Civil Aviation Department, in the first
quarter 183,698 people left and 164 781 arrived in Armenia via
Zvartnots Airport. The net negative balance was 19,917.

At the same time, the number of departures from Armenia in the first
quarter is down compared with the first quarter of 2014 – 183,698
against 186,493.

3558 people left and 2043 people arrived in Armenia via Shirak Airport
of Gyumri in the first quarter of this year.

Turkey accuses Pope of ‘prejudice’ over Armenian ‘genocide’

Daniel Dombey in Istanbul and James Politi in Rome
12/4/15

Turkey reacted angrily after Pope Francis called the Ottoman-era
slaughter of Armenians “the first genocide of the 20th century”, with
Ankara accusing the pontiff of distorting history and speaking out of
prejudice.

The Turkish government said it was recalling its ambassador to the
Vatican after it earlier summoned the papal envoy to complain. It said
the Pope’s statement about the killings — the centenary of which comes
this month — was “based on prejudice, distorts history and reduces
sufferings in Anatolia during the first world war to members of just
one religion”.

“Religious offices are not places through which hatred and animosity
are fuelled by unfounded allegations,” Mevlut Cavusolgu, Turkey’s
foreign minister, said on Twitter. “The Pope’s statement, which is out
of touch with both historical facts and legal basis, is simply
unacceptable.”

At a Sunday mass in the Vatican attended by Serzh Sargsyan, the
Armenian president, the Pope depicted the killings as the precursor of
attempts to wipe out whole ethnic groups by the Nazis and the Soviets,
as well as massacres in countries such as Rwanda and Bosnia.

“Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding
without bandaging it,” he said. Turkey has yet to make any official
response to his statement. Although both the Pope and his predecessor
John Paul II had used the word “genocide” before to describe the
killing of up 1.5m Armenians during the last years of the Ottoman
Empire, they di not do it in as official public speech. This made the
remarks all the more surprising to officials, particularly since the
Pope paid an apparently friendly trip to Turkey last year.

Pope Francis’s remarks come as the 78-year old Argentine pontiff has
become worried — and vocal — about the persecution of Christians,
particularly by Muslims. This month, jihadi militants attacked a
university in Kenya, focusing on Christians and killing 148 people.
Christians have routinely been the object of violence by members of
the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis). “So many of our
defenceless brothers and sisters…on account of their faith in Christ
or their ethnic origin, are publicly and ruthlessly put to death —
decapitated, crucified, burnt alive — or forced to leave their
homeland,” the Pope said.

Ankara says it is not yet established that the deaths amounted to
genocide — even though Raphael Lemkin, the scholar who coined the
word, referred explicitly to the killings as genocide.

The issue is set to attract more debate in the run-up to April 24, the
official day of commemoration of the killings, when presidents
François Hollande of France and Vladimir Putin of Russia are expected
to travel to Yerevan, the Armenian capital. Turkey has chosen the same
date to mark the centenary of the first world war Gallipoli battles
and figures including Britain’s princes Charles and Harry are due to
attend.

When Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan invited Mr Sargsyan to
attend the Gallipoli events, the Armenian president labelled it a
“cynical attempt” to distract attention from the April 24
commemoration.

Although Turkey’s stance on the killings has previously strained
relations with countries such as the US and France, Turkish officials
are hopeful that they can avoid similar rifts in the year of the
centenary.

After a recent trip to Washington to discuss the issue, a group of
ruling party MPs returned to Turkey confident that the Republican
congressional leadership was less likely than its Democratic
predecessors to allow resolutions marking the killings as genocide to
proceed.

In Turkey itself, Mr Erdogan went further than any previous leader
when last year he recognised the “particular significance” of April 24
“for our Armenian citizens and for all Armenians around the world”.

Until recently, references to an Armenian genocide risked prosecution
in Turkey, but Mr Erdogan has argued that “expressing different
opinions and thoughts freely on the events of 1915” was a requirement
of a modern pluralist democracy.

Books with the word genocide in the title have now been published in
Turkey — something that was previously unthinkable. Ethnic Armenian
Turks are running for both the ruling AK party and the main opposition
parties in June general elections, while another serves as chief
adviser to Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s prime minister.

Pope Francis has in the past praised the shift towards conciliatory
language by Mr Erdogan but his comments on Sunday suggest concern
inside the Vatican that the Turkish position may be hardening again.

The Pope met Armenia’s Catholic bishops last week, but avoided using
the term genocide in describing the 1915 slaughter — rather calling it
“martyrdom and persecution”. He also asked for “concrete gestures of
reconciliation” between the two countries.

Yet, Ankara’s position remains that a joint historical commission
should be set up to study the events of 1915 — a commission Armenia
argues is wholly unnecessary given the documentation that already
exists. Efforts to establish normal diplomatic relations between
Turkey and Armenia also ran out of steam several years ago.

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.

Press TV, Iran
April 12 2015

Turkey deplores Pope’s ‘one-sided’ genocide remarks

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has censured Pope Francis’
recent controversial comments, in which he used the word “genocide” to
describe the 1915 killing of Armenians.

In a televised speech on Sunday, Davutoglu accused the pontiff of
making “inappropriate” and “one-sided” remarks, adding, “We’d expect
the religious leaders to call for peace. Opening archives for those
whose hearts are sealed serves no purpose.”

The Turkish premier further noted that the Pope’ recent stance was in
contradiction to his former position during a November visit to Turkey
and expressed hope for a revision to his attitude.

Tensions rose between Ankara and the Vatican after the 78-year-old
head of the Roman Catholic Church termed the massacre of Armenians by
Ottoman forces during World War I as “the first genocide of the 20th
century.”

“We recall the centenary of that tragic event, that immense and
senseless slaughter whose cruelty your forebears had to endure,” he
said during a Sunday solemn mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica.

In response, Turkey recalled its ambassador to the Vatican for
consultation, with Turkey’s Foreign Ministry saying in a statement
that Pope Francis’s remarks were “incompatible with the legal and
historical facts.”

In his Twitter account earlier on Sunday, Turkish Foreign Minister
Mevlut Cavusoglu also denounced the pontiff’s comments as
“unacceptable” as well as “far from historic and legal truths.”

Ankara rejects the term “genocide” and instead says the 300,000 to
500,000 Armenians, and at least as many Turks, who perished between
1915 and 1917 were the casualties of World War I.

Armenia, however, says that up to 1.5 million of its people were
killed and demands that their death must be recognized as genocide.

BosNewsLife
April 12 2015

BREAKING NEWS: Pope Calls Mass Killings Armenians ‘First Genocide’ Of
20th Century

Sunday, April 12, 2015 (9:14 am)

By BosNewsLife News Center with reporting by Stefan J. Bos, Chief
International Correspondent BosNewsLife

VATICAN CITY, VATICAN (BosNewsLife)– In historic remarks Pope Francis
marked the 100th anniversary of the mass killings of mainly Christian
Armenians by calling it “the first genocide of the 20th century,” a
move that was expected to provoke anger in Turkey.

Francis, who has close ties to the Armenian community from his days in
Argentina, said it was his duty to honor the memory of the innocent
men, women, children, priests and bishops who were “senselessly”
murdered under Ottoman rule.

“Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding
without bandaging it,” he said during a Mass on Sunday, April 12, in
the Armenian Catholic rite in St. Peter’s Basilica honoring the
centenary.

Among those listening was Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, whose
country has long been lobbying to recognize the killing of some 1.5
million Armenians as genocide.

Turkey denies claims by Armenia and several historians that they were
systematically killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I,
saying many died as a result of hunger and general warfare.

TURKEY DENIES

The Turkish government also says the death toll was much smaller.

Ahead of the pope’s announcement Turkey’s embassy to the Vatican
reportedly canceled a planned press conference, apparently after
learning that the leader of more than a billion Catholics would utter
the word “genocide” despite its opposition to the term.

Several countries recognize the massacres as genocide, such as
Argentina, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Russia and Uruguay. However
only Italy and the United States have avoided using the term
officially because Turkey is a crucial ally, including in the NATO
military alliance.

The pope’s remarks came on the say he was to declare the mystic St
Gregory of Narek a doctor of the church. Only some 35 people have been
given the title, according to estimates by the Associated Press news
agency.

Pope Francis has in recent weeks called for prayers for persecuted
Christians around the world.

Pope Francis proclaims St. Gregory of Narek Doctor of Universal Church

12:14, 12 April, 2015

YEREVAN, APRIL 12, ARMENPRESS. At the course of the Divine Liturgy
dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide offered by
Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica today, the leader of the Catholic
Church proclaimed St. Gregory of Narek the Doctor of the Universal
Church.

As reports “Armenpress”, Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the
Congregation for the Cause of Saints, stated that by his life and
teaching, St. Gregory of Narek preached a teaching of beauty and the
people appreciated the beauty of his words and his teaching.

Among other things, Cardinal Angelo Amato underscored: “One of the
leaders of the Oriental Church, St. Ephrem the Syrian, was proclaimed
the Doctor of the Universal Church 100 years ago. Today, we ask to
proclaim Doctor of the Universal Church another leader of the Oriental
Church – St. Gregory of Narek. His continuous popularity is connected
with his major work “The Book of Lamentations”, called “Narek” by the
Armenian people, which is considered to be his most popular work among
the Armenians.”

“St. Gregory of Narek’s thoughts and words can be compared with those
of St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory the Illuminator. All the
theologians gave their positive assessment at the course of the
session of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints and signed the
declaration, by which St. Gregory of Narek will receive that honorable
title. All the Cardinals have also given their assent,” Cardinal
Angelo Amato concluded.

In addition, the Cardinal emphasized that this year marks the 100th
anniversary of a horrible evil the Armenian people was subjected to
and St. Greogry of Narek also came forth as a creator of hope and
peace amid this tragedy.

Grigor Narekatsi (951-1003) is a canonized saint. He was an Armenian
monk, poet, mystical philosopher and theologian, born into a family of
writers. His father, Khosrov, was an archbishop. He lost his mother
very early, so he was educated by his cousin, Anania of Narek, who was
the founder of the monastery and school of the village. Almost all of
his life he lived in the monasteries of Narek (in Greater Armenia, now
Turkey) where he taught at the monastic school. He is the author of
mystical interpretation on the Song of Songs (977) and numerous poetic
writings. Narekatsi’s poetry is deeply biblical and is penetrated with
images, themes and realities of sacred history, distinguished with
intimate, personal character. The mystical poem “Book of Lamentations”
(published in 1673 in Marseille) has been translated into many
languages and has played a significant role in the development of the
Armenian literary language.

For Narekatsi, peoples’ absolute goal in life should be to reach to
God, and to reach wherever human nature would unite with godly nature,
thus erasing the differences between God and men. As a result, the
difficulties of earthly life would disappear. According to him,
mankind’s assimilation with God is possible not by logic, but by
feelings.

Numerous miracles and traditions have been attributed to the saint and
perhaps that is why he is referred to as “the watchful angel in human
form”.

In 1984-1985, Alfred Schnittke composed Concerto for Mixed Chorus
singing verses from Gregory’s Book of Lamentations translated into
Russian by Naum Grebnev, according to the Russian edition Kniga
Skorbi, transl. by Naum Grebnev, Preface by Levon Mkrtchian, Sovetakan
Grokh, Yerevan, 1977.

The monastery of Narek was utterly destroyed in the 20th century after
the Armenian Genocide.
Born circa 950 to a family of scholarly churchmen, St. Gregory entered
Narek Monastery on the south-east shore of Lake Van at a young age.
Shortly before the first millennium of Christianity, Narek Monastery
was a thriving center of learning. These were the relatively quiet,
creative times before the Turkic and Mongol invasions that changed
Armenian life forever. Armenia was experiencing a renaissance in
literature, painting, architecture and theology, of which St. Gregory
was a leading figure. The Prayer Book is the work of his mature years.
He called it his last testament: “its letters like my body, its
message like my soul.” St. Gregory left this world in 1003, but his
voice continues to speak to us.

Written shortly before the first millennium of Christianity, the
prayers of St. Gregory of Narek have long been recognized as gems of
Christian literature. St. Gregory called his book an “encyclopedia of
prayer for all nations.” It was his hope that it would serve as a
guide to prayer by people of all stations around the world.

In 95 grace-filled prayers St. Gregory draws on the exquisite
potential of the Classical Armenian language to translate the pure
sighs of the broken and contrite heart into an offering of words
pleasing to God. The result is an edifice of faith for the ages,
unique in Christian literature for its rich imagery, its subtle
theology, its Biblical erudition, and the sincere immediacy of its
communication with God.