ASIA/TURKEY – Even the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople will commemorate the victims of the Genocide

Thursday, 16 April 2015

Istanbul (Agenzia Fides) – Even the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople, based in Istanbul, will commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the systematic massacres against the Armenian people which began on April 24, 1915 with the roundup and killing of hundreds of intellectuals of the Armenian community that resided in the metropolis on the Bosporus. A Mass presided by the Patriarchal Vicar Aram Ateshian, will be celebrated in the church of the patriarchal Seat to commemorate the victims of mass murder, which on this occasion will be commemorated as saints. The Turkish press emphasizes that the celebrant will not use the definition of Genocide to remember the suffering experienced "from all sides" in the tragic events of a hundred years ago.
In the meantime, journalist and Turkish Armenian writer Etyen Mahcupyan, current first counselor of Turkish Premier Ahmet Davutoglu, acknowledged that the massacres of Armenians perpetrated in Anatolia in 1915 under the direction of ideological Young Turks may legitimately be defined as genocide. "If one recognizes that those that occurred in Bosnia and Africa were Genocide - Mahcupyan said in an interview for an online site - it is impossible not to call genocide also what happened to the Armenians in 1915", adding that the use of such term for the Armenians has a "more psychological than political" meaning.
Prime Minister Davutoglu, said that with his citation of the Armenian Genocide, the Pope has sided with the "face of evil" hostile to Turkey. While President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in statements relaunched by Turkish media said that Turkey "acts generously" by not expelling 100 thousand Armenian immigrants working in the country without being Turkish citizens, even if he "could do it". (GV) (Agenzia Fides 16/04/2015)


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