Turkey recalls its Vatican envoy over 'genocide' remark

ANKARA 

Turkey's ambassador to Vatican has been summoned to Ankara for consultations, Turkish Foreign Ministry has said in a statement Sunday.

Ambassador Mehmet Pacaci has been called back to Ankara after Pope Francis called the 1915 incidents involving Armenians "genocide" on Sunday during a Mass in the Armenian Catholic rite at the St. Peter's Basilica, which Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan also attended.

"In the past century, our human family has lived through three massive and unprecedented tragedies," Pope said.

"The first, which is widely considered the first genocide of the twentieth century, struck your own Armenian people, the first Christian nation, as well as Catholic and Orthodox Syrians, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Greeks and, more recently, there have been other mass killings, like those in Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi and Bosnia," the pontiff said.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry said, "Pope Francis, who has defended the opinion of building peace and friendship between different groups around the world since the day he was assigned as Pope, has discriminated about people's suffering, overlooked atrocities that Turks and Muslims suffered in the First World War and only highlighted the Christian suffering, especially that of the Armenian people.

"It is meaningful that Pope Francis describes the tragedies in Bosnia and Rwanda as ‘mass killings,’ which were proven as genocide by authorized international courts, while describing the incidents in 1915 as ‘genocide’ disregarding the fact that there is not a single court ruling on them (incidents),” the statement added.

The ministry said the pontiff’s remarks are "null and void," and added that the Pope was under the influence of Armenian narrative, "which insists on fomenting hostility instead of leaving behind peace and friendship for the next generations."

Cavusoglu also slammed Pope's statement earlier in the day via social media, saying: The Pope's statement, which is out of touch with both historical facts and legal basis, is simply unacceptable.

"Religious offices are not places through which hatred and animosity are fueled by unfounded allegations," Cavusoglu shared through Twitter.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned Vatican's envoy to Ankara, Antonio Lucibello, earlier on Sunday to relate the message that the incident has caused "loss of trust" and would be met with a response.

'Great tragedy'

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

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. 

Turkey's official position against allegations of “genocide” is that it acknowledges the past experiences were a great tragedy and that both parties suffered heavy casualties, including hundreds of Muslim Turks.

Ankara agrees that there were certainly Armenian casualties during World War I, but says that it is impossible to define these incidents as “genocide.”

In 2014, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his condolences for the first time to all Ottoman citizens who lost their lives in the events of 1915.

"May Armenians who lost their lives in the events in the early twentieth century rest in peace, and we convey our condolences to their grandchildren," Erdogan said.