Turkey accuses Pope of 'prejudice' over Armenian 'genocide'

Turkey reacted angrily after Pope Francis called the Ottoman-era slaughter of Armenians "the first genocide of the 20th century", with Ankara accusing the pontiff of distorting history and speaking out of prejudice.

The Turkish government said it was recalling its ambassador to the Vatican after it earlier summoned the papal envoy to complain. It said the Pope's statement about the killings - the centenary of which comes this month - was "based on prejudice, distorts history and reduces sufferings in Anatolia during the first world war to members of just one religion".

"Religious offices are not places through which hatred and animosity are fuelled by unfounded allegations," Mevlut Cavusolgu, Turkey's foreign minister, said on Twitter. "The Pope's statement, which is out of touch with both historical facts and legal basis, is simply unacceptable."

At a Sunday mass in the Vatican attended by Serzh Sargsyan, the Armenian president, the Pope depicted the killings as the precursor of attempts to wipe out whole ethnic groups by the Nazis and the Soviets, as well as massacres in countries such as Rwanda and Bosnia.

"Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it," he said. Turkey has yet to make any official response to his statement. Although both the Pope and his predecessor John Paul II had used the word "genocide" before to describe the killing of up 1.5m Armenians during the last years of the Ottoman Empire, his remarks took officials by surprise, particularly since the Pope paid an apparently friendly trip to Turkey last year.

Pope Francis's remarks come as the 78-year old Argentine pontiff has become worried - and vocal - about the persecution of Christians, particularly by Muslims. This month, jihadi militants attacked a university in Kenya, focusing on Christians and killing 148 people. Christians have routinely been the object of violence by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis). "So many of our defenceless brothers and sisters…on account of their faith in Christ or their ethnic origin, are publicly and ruthlessly put to death - decapitated, crucified, burnt alive - or forced to leave their homeland," the Pope said.

Ankara says it is not yet established that the deaths amounted to genocide - even though Raphael Lemkin, the scholar who coined the word, referred explicitly to the killings as genocide.

The issue is set to attract more debate in the run-up to April 24, the official day of commemoration of the killings, when presidents Francois Hollande of France and Vladimir Putin of Russia are expected to travel to Yerevan, the Armenian capital. Turkey has chosen the same date to mark the centenary of the first world war Gallipoli battles and figures including Britain's princes Charles and Harry are due to attend.

When Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan invited Mr Sargsyan to attend the Gallipoli events, the Armenian president labelled it a "cynical attempt" to distract attention from the April 24 commemoration.

Although Turkey's stance on the killings has previously strained relations with countries such as the US and France, Turkish officials are hopeful that they can avoid similar rifts in the year of the centenary.

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In Turkey itself, Mr Erdogan went further than any previous leader when last year he recognised the "particular significance" of April 24 "for our Armenian citizens and for all Armenians around the world".

Until recently, references to an Armenian genocide risked prosecution in Turkey, but Mr Erdogan has argued that "expressing different opinions and thoughts freely on the events of 1915" was a requirement of a modern pluralist democracy.

Books with the word genocide in the title have now been published in Turkey - something that was previously unthinkable. Ethnic Armenian Turks are running for both the ruling AK party and the main opposition parties in June general elections, while another serves as chief adviser to Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's prime minister.

Pope Francis has in the past praised the shift towards conciliatory language by Mr Erdogan but his comments on Sunday suggest concern inside the Vatican that the Turkish position may be hardening again.

The Pope met Armenia's Catholic bishops last week, but avoided using the term genocide in describing the 1915 slaughter - rather calling it "martyrdom and persecution". He also asked for "concrete gestures of reconciliation" between the two countries.

Yet, Ankara's position remains that a joint historical commission should be set up to study the events of 1915 - a commission Armenia argues is wholly unnecessary given the documentation that already exists. Efforts to establish normal diplomatic relations between Turkey and Armenia also ran out of steam several years ago.

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