A Turkish shepherd and his family’s protection of a Greek Orthodox church is saving it from looting and the weather. The church in northern Turkey’s Giresun province used to serve a large community. It was abandoned following the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The exchange involved about two million people (around 1.3 million Anatolian Read more
Turkey’s deputy prime minister says Pope Francis reflects a “crusader mentality” for once again using the word “genocide” about a 1915 massacre in Armenia. During a visit to Armenia, Francis used the word in a speech. Francis departed from a carefully prepared text to use the word. As the prepared text indicated, Francis first referred Read more
This Sunday Armenians and people of good will around the world will commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide. A century ago millions of men, women and children – including Assyrians and Greeks – were brutally tortured and exterminated upon the direct order and plan of the Ottoman Turkish government, thereby emptying the region of Read more
Pope Francis expressed “prayerful solidarity” with victims of the suicide bombing in Istanbul on Saturday. “[Pope Francis grieved] to learn of the casualties caused by the bombing in Istanbul … and he expresses his prayerful solidarity with all touched by this tragedy,” read a telegram to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Read more
President Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey must feel like a chess grand master playing several games simultaneously. He has far more neighbours and different cultures to contend with than most leaders: eight in all. They are a mixed bag across more than 2600 kms of borders – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, an Azerbaijan enclave, Georgia, Bulgaria Read more
The twentieth century saw major advances in technology and communications, economy and human rights. It was also the bloodiest century in history. Think of the mass deportations, starvation and extermination of perhaps 14 million people in Stalinist Russia and even more in Maoist China; the Holocaust of 6 million Jews under the Nazis, as well Read more
A church like that can help a person, says Armen. It can help them from giving up hope — and that is indeed something. The fact that the church is even standing here — beautiful and steadfast in a place that was only recently the site of ruins — instills a sense of courage, says Read more
The Armenian and Assyrian genocide that took place between 1914 and 1923, along with the Pontian Greek mass murders, provided the template for the Holocaust: forced emigration, expulsions, property confiscations, forced labour, public torture and executions, medical experiments, elementary gassings, starvation and death marches. These resulted in the deaths of up to 1,500,000 Armenians, perhaps Read more
Turkey has recalled its envoy to the Vatican after Pope Francis described the mass killing of Armenians under Ottoman rule in World War One as “genocide”. Turkey has reacted with anger to the comment made by the Pope at a service in the Armenian Catholic Rite in Rome on Sunday. Pope Francis said that humanity Read more
One key to understanding how Pius XII responded to the Holocaust – both his hesitation to name both murderers and victims and his efforts to save as many lives as possible – is the Vatican’s diplomacy during World War I when Benedict XV (1914-22) unsuccessfully attempted to save the Armenians during the genocide of 1915-18 Read more