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ERDOGAN CONDEMNS POPE FOR #ARMENIA 'GENOCIDE' COMMENT
MWC - Media With Conscience
April 15 2015
Wednesday, 15 April 2015 08:21
Turkish president warns pontiff not to repeat comments on 1915
killings, but US urges Ankara to admit "historical fact".
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned Pope Francis
for calling the 1915 mass killing of Armenians genocide, and warned
him not to make such a statement again.
"We will not allow historical incidents to be taken out of their
genuine context, and be used as a tool to campaign against our
country," Erdogan said in a speech to a business group on Tuesday.
"I condemn the pope and would like to warn him not to make similar
mistakes again."
The pope became the first head of the Roman Catholic church to publicly
call the killing of as many as 1.5 million Armenians "genocide" on
Sunday, prompting a diplomatic row with Turkey, which summoned the
Vatican's envoy and recalled its own.
Muslim Turkey agrees Christian Armenians were killed in clashes with
Ottoman soldiers that began 100 years ago on April 15, 1915, when
Armenians lived in the empire ruled by Istanbul, but denies hundreds
of thousands were killed and that this amounted to genocide.
While other Turkish politicians, and now Erdogan, have lashed out at
the pope, some ordinary Turks have dismissed the row as empty politics
and voiced a desire to leave history be.
Pope Francis appeared to refer to his use of the term "genocide"
on Monday, saying in a sermon that "today the Church's message is
one of the path of frankness, the path of Christian courage".
Erdogan's comments are likely to put a focus on whether the United
States, a traditional ally of NATO-member Turkey, will eventually
use the term "genocide" for the mass killings.
Full, frank acknowledgement of facts
Unlike almost two dozen European and South American states that use
the term, Washington avoids it and has warned legislators that Ankara
could cut off military cooperation if they voted to adopt it.
On Tuesday, the US State Department called for a "full, frank"
acknowledgement of the facts surrounding the mass killing of Armenians
in World War I, but shied away from calling it "a genocide".
"The president and other senior administration officials have
repeatedly acknowledged as historical fact, and mourned the fact,
that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their deaths
in the final days of the Ottoman empire," State Department acting
spokeswoman Marie Harf said.
Harf added that "nations are stronger and they progress by
acknowledging and reckoning with pretty painful elements of their
past".
Such moves were "essential to building a different, more tolerant
future," she said.
However, she refused to term the mass killings a genocide, even
though during his 2008 campaign for the White House, then senator
Barack Obama had pledged to "recognise the Armenian genocide".
http://mwcnews.net/news/europe/50956-erdogan-condemns-pope.html
From: Baghdasarian
MWC - Media With Conscience
April 15 2015
Wednesday, 15 April 2015 08:21
Turkish president warns pontiff not to repeat comments on 1915
killings, but US urges Ankara to admit "historical fact".
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned Pope Francis
for calling the 1915 mass killing of Armenians genocide, and warned
him not to make such a statement again.
"We will not allow historical incidents to be taken out of their
genuine context, and be used as a tool to campaign against our
country," Erdogan said in a speech to a business group on Tuesday.
"I condemn the pope and would like to warn him not to make similar
mistakes again."
The pope became the first head of the Roman Catholic church to publicly
call the killing of as many as 1.5 million Armenians "genocide" on
Sunday, prompting a diplomatic row with Turkey, which summoned the
Vatican's envoy and recalled its own.
Muslim Turkey agrees Christian Armenians were killed in clashes with
Ottoman soldiers that began 100 years ago on April 15, 1915, when
Armenians lived in the empire ruled by Istanbul, but denies hundreds
of thousands were killed and that this amounted to genocide.
While other Turkish politicians, and now Erdogan, have lashed out at
the pope, some ordinary Turks have dismissed the row as empty politics
and voiced a desire to leave history be.
Pope Francis appeared to refer to his use of the term "genocide"
on Monday, saying in a sermon that "today the Church's message is
one of the path of frankness, the path of Christian courage".
Erdogan's comments are likely to put a focus on whether the United
States, a traditional ally of NATO-member Turkey, will eventually
use the term "genocide" for the mass killings.
Full, frank acknowledgement of facts
Unlike almost two dozen European and South American states that use
the term, Washington avoids it and has warned legislators that Ankara
could cut off military cooperation if they voted to adopt it.
On Tuesday, the US State Department called for a "full, frank"
acknowledgement of the facts surrounding the mass killing of Armenians
in World War I, but shied away from calling it "a genocide".
"The president and other senior administration officials have
repeatedly acknowledged as historical fact, and mourned the fact,
that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their deaths
in the final days of the Ottoman empire," State Department acting
spokeswoman Marie Harf said.
Harf added that "nations are stronger and they progress by
acknowledging and reckoning with pretty painful elements of their
past".
Such moves were "essential to building a different, more tolerant
future," she said.
However, she refused to term the mass killings a genocide, even
though during his 2008 campaign for the White House, then senator
Barack Obama had pledged to "recognise the Armenian genocide".
http://mwcnews.net/news/europe/50956-erdogan-condemns-pope.html
From: Baghdasarian