Reuters/AFP
Ankara/Izmir
When Pope Francis became the first Pontiff to publicly call the 1915 Armenian massacre a genocide this weekend, the reaction from Ankara was swift and irate: it summoned the Vatican ambassador for a dressing down and recalled its own envoy.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, in an unusual attack by a world leader on the Pontiff, accused Francis of a “one-sided” and “inappropriate” attitude that he said ignored the suffering of Muslims in World War I.
The exchanges have intensified tensions ahead of the 100th the anniversary of the start of the killings on April 24.
Even before the Pope waded into the controversy, Armenians accused Turkey of trying to overshadow what they call their genocide commemorations by staging ceremonies on the same day to mark the centenary of the famous World War I battle of Gallipoli.
Reaction in the Turkish media yesterday ranged from indignant to indifferent, depending on how close the newspaper is to the government.
“Mind your own business, Pope,” screamed the headline in the pro-government Star daily.
“The New Crusade,” fumed the Aydinlik daily
A Turkish government source told AFP that Ankara had been “truly surprised” by the comments, which were made in a Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican to mark the Ottoman killings of Armenians.
The response on Turkish street corners was muted, with many Turks dismissing the spat as empty politics and voicing a desire to leave history in the past.
Francis sparked the diplomatic row on Sunday by calling the massacre of up to 1.5mn Armenians “the first genocide of the 20th century”, prompting Turkey to accuse him of inciting hatred.
Muslim Turkey agrees that Christian Armenians died in clashes with Ottoman soldiers beginning in April 1915, when some Armenians lived in the empire ruled from Istanbul, but denies hundreds of thousands were killed and that this amounted to genocide.
“The Pope’s statements, which are far from historical and judicial facts, cannot be accepted,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Twitter. “Religious offices are not places to incite hatred and revenge with baseless accusations.”
The fact that Vatican City is the world’s smallest state may have precluded further repercussions.
When France’s parliament voted in 2011 to make Armenian genocide denial a crime, Turkey withdrew its ambassador, suspended joint military manoeuvres and stopped political contacts for a while.
Sitting on a ferry off the western port of Izmir, a man who declined to give his full name said it was time to stop bickering about the past.
“Every year, it’s the same thing. April comes and all the Western politicians are talking about genocide. There is no such animosity between the people of these two countries,” said Ibrahim, 48, taking a sip of tea. “We must leave history behind us and focus on the future.”
Armenia and its large diaspora in the United States argue that Turkey has not fully owned up to its war-time past.
“If you ask any ordinary Armenian or Turk, I am positive we do not care about this as much as people think we do,” said Dursun Okan, a 27-year-old banker.
Still others saw the Pope’s remarks as interference by foreigners and wondered whether the United States, a traditional ally of Turkey, would eventually use the word “genocide”.
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 co-operation if they voted to adopt it.
“I believe Obama will call it a genocide as well, considering the influence of the Armenian population in the United States,” said Serhat, a university student in Ankara, adding: “It would surprise me if no one else called it a genocide.”
Pope Francis appeared to refer to his use of the term “genocide” yesterday, saying in a sermon that “today the church’s message is one of the path of frankness, the path of Christian courage”.
While President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Islamic-rooted ruling party has been credited with assisting Turkey’s religious minorities, they have shown no sign of budging in the genocide controversy.
The president offered an expression of condolences to Armenians in 2014 but this has not been followed by any further steps, with rhetoric sharpening even further.
“It is unlikely that Turkey will change its position after Pope Francis’s statement,” said Marc Pierini, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, pointing to June 7 legislative elections where nationalist votes will be crucial.
He said an “entrenched position” by Turkey on the issue “clearly entails the risk of deterioration of the climate between Turkey and Western countries” ahead of the April 24 anniversary.
“There is no period of time in Turkey’s history that it would be ashamed of,” said Europe Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir, describing the Pope’s statements as “null and void”.
