Turkey reinstates Vatican envoy after row over pope’s Armenian remarks
Turkey reinstates Vatican envoy after row over pope’s Armenian remarks –
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey returned its ambassador to the Vatican on Thursday, nearly 10 months after withdrawing him in protest against Pope Francis’ description of the century-old massacres of Christian Armenians as genocide.
The pope sparked a row with Turkey when he said the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in World War One was “the first genocide of the 20th century”, just days before commemorations to mark the centennial of the massacres in April.
Muslim Turkey promptly recalled its envoy. In diplomatic terms, a 10-month absence for an ambassador is a very long time.
Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed in clashes with Ottoman soldiers when Armenia was part of the empire ruled from Istanbul, but denies hundreds of thousands were killed and that this amounted to genocide.
Tanju Bilgic, the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, said the decision came after the Vatican on Wednesday praised Turkey’s willingness to open its archives to historians and create a joint commission of scholars to explore past events.