RICCIARDONE REVISES HIS RESPONSE, BUT CONTINUES MISREPRESENTING HISTORY
Armenian Weekly
Aug 22, 2011
U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Responds to Community Outrage by Finally
Conceding that Most Pre-1915 Churches are ‘No Longer Operating’
WASHINGTON-U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone, responding
to a wave of grassroots outrage and growing Congressional concern,
backed away from his most obvious and offensive misrepresentations
about Turkey’s destruction of Christian churches, but sparked renewed
controversy by artificially inflating the number of currently
operating Christian houses of worship, and again using strained
euphemisms to help Ankara escape responsibility for its crimes,
reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).
Ricciardone Following broad-based concerns expressed by Armenian
American community and religious leaders, U.S. Ambassador Ricciardone
amended his earlier response to Senate Foreign Relations Committee
member Robert Menendez (D-NJ), in which he had argued, without any
basis in fact, that a majority of Christian churches operating in the
territory of present-day Turkey prior to 1915 were still functioning
today.
In a correction obtained by the ANCA on August 22nd, Ambassador
Ricciardone explained:
Question: To the best of your knowledge, approximately how many of the
more than 2,000 Christian churches functioning prior to 1915 on the
territory of present-day Turkey are still operating today as churches?
Answer: With your permission, I would appreciate the opportunity to
clarify the record. The corrected text should read as follows. Most
of the Christian churches functioning prior to 1915 are no longer
operating as churches. Christian community contacts in Turkey report
that a total of 200-250 churches that date to 1915 and before offer
Christian worship services at least once a year. Many churches do
not offer services every week due to insufficient clergy or local
Christian populations. Some churches of significance operate as
museums, others have been converted into mosques or put to other uses.
Still others have fallen into disrepair or may have been totally
destroyed.
“It took Ambassador Ricciardone, with the help of his many State
Department colleagues, over a week to submit in writing a patently
false misrepresentation about the destruction of Christian churches
in Turkey, and another 10 days and a full wave of Senate and citizen
pressure for him to finally take half a step back from the most
offensive and obviously incorrect aspects of his response,” said ANCA
Executive Director Aram Hamparian.
“He’s just keeps digging himself into a deeper hole as an apologist
for Ankara. His use of false figures and euphemisms to try to twist
his way out of his misrepresentation – while somehow still trying to
stick to Turkey’s genocide denial narrative – clearly confirms that
Ambassador Ricciardone is not the right representative of U.S. values
and interests in Turkey.”
Last week, in a strongly worded letter to Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian demanded a retraction, correction,
and apology for Ambassador Ricciardone’s statement covering-up
Ottoman and Republican Turkey’s systematic destruction of thousands
of Christian churches.
“We have been troubled by his eagerness to embrace the government
of Turkey’s false and hateful genocide denial narrative, at lengths
beyond even the Administration’s longstanding and shameful complicity
in Turkey’s denials of the Armenian Genocide,” stated Hachikian in
his August 15th letter. “His verbal and written responses to questions
during his Senate confirmation process, regarding the Armenian Genocide
and other issues, ranged from evasive to deeply offensive.”
The ANCA has encouraged concerned citizens to contact Secretary
Clinton via the State Department Comment Line to offer their views
regarding Ambassador Ricciardone’s misstatements. The State Department
can be reached at (202) 647-6575 (Press option #1) or online at
His Eminences Archbishop Oshagan Choloyan and Archbishop Moushegh
Mardirossian, Prelates of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America
Eastern and Western United States, respectively, and Archbishop Khajag
Barsamian, Primate of the Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church –
Eastern United States each issued powerfully worded spiritual messages
in response to the Ambassador’s statement. In an August 15th statement,
Archbishop Choloyan stressed that the Ambassador’s assertion was
“so blatantly false that it cannot remain unchallenged.”
Setting the record straight, he noted that: “The facts are quite
clear. From the massacres of Armenians in 1895-96 and the Armenian
Genocide in 1915, to the decades following the establishment of the
Turkish republic, Christian houses of worship were systematically
destroyed or confiscated. My own church’s hierarchal see, the Armenian
Catholicosate of Cilicia, was a victim of this process, and today is
exiled in Lebanon. The archives of the Catholicosate contain hundreds
of original deeds and other documentation of churches and church
owned property that were confiscated.”
Archbishop Mardirossian concurred, stating, “The presence of an
Ambassador in Ankara who is unaware of or uninterested in the truth
and the consequences of the Ottoman and Republican Turkish government’s
genocide of Armenians, Assyrians, Syriacs, Greeks and other Christians
materially undermines U.S. interests, compromises American values,
and weakens international efforts to defend religious freedom for
peoples of all faiths. Sadly, but unmistakably, with this hateful and
hurtful statement, Ambassador Ricciardone has demonstrated that he
is not the right candidate to effectively and responsibly represent
the United States in Turkey.”
On August 19th, Archbishop Barsamian noted that Amb. Ricciardone’s
response had “deeply offended Armenian-Americans”, explaining that
“the loss of these many hundreds of churches, their neglect and
outright destruction, and the conversion of many of our sanctuaries
into mosques, is a matter of intense pain to Armenians: an ongoing
reminder of the loss of life and the destruction that we suffered as a
result of the 1915 Genocide… In all charity, perhaps the Ambassador
is simply unaware of certain facts. But mastery of the history of a
country, its dark as well as bright chapters, is essential to serving
the United States effectively and diplomatically in this important
and complex region.”
According to Armenian Church experts, of the over 2,000 churches
serving the Armenian community prior to 1915, less than 40 are
functioning as churches today.
Reservations about the Ambassador’s readiness to placate his foreign
hosts willingness to accept the Turkish government’s talking points
on religious tolerance at face value echo concerns expressed last
fall by then Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), who, during the last
session of Congress, placed a hold on Ambassador Ricciardone’s
nomination to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey. In an August 16,
2010, letter to Secretary Clinton, Sen. Brownback voiced disapproval
of Ricciardone’s tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, noting, among
other things, that “he quickly adopted the positions and arguments
of his Egyptian diplomatic counterparts.”
In the wake of Senator Brownback’s hold, President Obama circumvented
Senate objections by issuing a “recess appointment” of Amb.
Ricciardone. The Senate must approve his nomination in the upcoming
months, if Ambassador Ricciardone is to continue to serve in Turkey
for more than one year, of the usual three-year ambassadorial term.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will likely take up his
nomination upon their return from the August Congressional recess.
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