Turkey Vatican ties souring over Pope comments
Max Civili
Press TV, Rome
The Turkish government has recalled its ambassador to the Holy See following Pope Francis' statement that "the mass killing of Armenians
under Ottoman rule in WW1 was the first genocide of the 20th century".
Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has slammed the Pontiff's comments as far from the legal and historical reality and unacceptable.
Armenia estimates that up to 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed by Ottoman Turks in 1915. However, Turkey has always disputed that figure rebutting that the deaths were part of a civil conflict triggered by the First World War.
The pontiff has close ties to the Armenian community from his days in Argentina. On Sunday, at the start of a mass in the Armenian
Catholic rite in St. Peter's Basilica, he said that concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it.
Turkish authorities have also argued that the Pope has failed to notice the great sufferings caused by European colonialism in a vast
array of territories across the globe, disregarding completely the cruelty of Western colonialists.
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