POPE’S USE OF GENOCIDE INFURIATES TURKEY
Bureaucracy Today, India
April 13, 2015 Monday
New Delhi
New Delhi, April 13 — Pope Francis uttered the word “genocide”
on Sunday to describe the mass murder of Armenians 100 years ago,
sparking anger from Turkey, which summoned the Vatican’s ambassador
for an explanation.
“In the past century our human family has lived through three massive
and unprecedented tragedies,” the pope said during a solemn mass in
Saint Peter’s Basilica, to mark the centenary of the Ottoman killings
of Armenians.
“The first, which is widely considered ‘the first genocide of the
20th century’, struck your own Armenian people,” he said, quoting
a statement signed by Pope John Paul II and the Armenian patriarch
in 2001.
Many historians describe the slaughter as the 20th century’s first
genocide, but Turkey hotly denies the accusation. Ankara summoned the
Vatican envoy and an official statement from the foreign ministry was
expected late on Sunday, television reports said. The pope’s comments
were extensively reported on the country’s main news websites.
“The pope, the first guest in the palace, used the world ‘genocide’,”
said the Cumhuriyet daily on its website, referring ironically to
the fact that the pope was President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s first
top-ranking visitor to his new presidential palace in Ankara, when
he visited Turkey in November 2014.
While Pope Francis did not use his own words to describe the slaughter
as genocide, it was the first time the term was spoken aloud in
connection with Armenia by a head of the Roman Catholic Church in
Saint Peter’s Basilica. “It was a very courageous act to repeat
clearly that it was a genocide,” Vatican expert Marco Tosatti said.
“By quoting John Paul II he strengthened the Church’s position,
making it clear where it stands on the issue,” he added.
The Argentine pope described the “immense and senseless slaughter”
and spoke of the duty to “honour their memory, for whenever memory
fades, it means that evil allows wounds to fester.” The 78-year-old
head of the Roman Catholic Church had been under pressure to use the
term “genocide” publicly to describe the slaughter, despite the risk
of alienating an important ally in the fight against radical Islam.
Before becoming pope, Jorge Bergoglio used the word several times in
events marking the mass murders, calling on Turkey to recognise the
killings as such.
As pope, Francis is said to have used it once during a private audience
in 2013 – but even that sparked an outraged reaction from Turkey.
Armenians say up to 1.5-million of their kin were killed between 1915
and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, and have long sought
to win international recognition of the massacres as genocide.
But Turkey rejects the claims, arguing that 300,000 to 500,000
Armenians and as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose
up against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.
More than 20 nations, including France and Russia, recognise the
killings as genocide.
Vatican expert John Allen said ahead of the mass that the “truly
bold” thing for Pope Francis to do was “show restraint” – something
the pope may feel he has achieved by uttering the word “genocide”
but only while quoting his Polish predecessor. When Pope Francis
visited Turkey, Mr Erdogan offered the pontiff a pact under which he
would defend Christians in the Middle East in exchange for the Church
tackling Islamophobia in the West, Mr Allen said – describing it as
“a potential game-changer”.
In 2014, Mr Erdogan, then premier, offered condolences for the mass
killings for the first time, but the country still blames unrest and
famine for many of the deaths.
Pope Francis said the other two genocides of the 20th century were
“perpetrated by Nazism and Stalinism”, before pointing to more recent
mass killings in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia.
“It seems humanity is incapable of putting a halt to the shedding
of innocent blood,” he said. The Armenian victims a century ago were
Christian, although the killings were not openly driven by religious
motives.