Erdogan angered by Pope's use of 'G-word’
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was saddened to hear Pope Francis calling the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks as "the first genocide of the 20th century" and urging the international community to recognize it as such. According to Turkish media (“Sabah”, “Yeni akit”, “Anadolu”), addressing a meeting with members of the Turkish Exporters Assembly in the presidential palace, Erdogan said, “"I would like to warn the honorable Pope not to make such a mistake again.” Recalling the Pope's visit to Turkey in November 2014, Erdogan said his remarks had been very different at the time. "When Pope came to Ankara, I regarded him as a political figure. Now, after his [Pope’s] remarks, I have different opinion about him both as a politician and a religious man. 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 and nation,” said the Turkish president. Pope Francis 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. Pope Francis described the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as “the first genocide of the 20th century” during a mass on Sunday, in which the Armenian Catholic rite was celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica. The pope added that “concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it.”
