Armenian Genocide - Erdogan and Pope Francis

Prime Time TV Interview with Jerry Tutunjian Michael Coren - Turkey, the Pope, and the Armenian Genocide / Turkish-Armenian relations were back on the agenda again, if only momentarily, after Pope Francis expressed his “dream” last week of seeing the border between the two countries reopened to contribute to reconciliation between the two estranged nations. Prospects for the pope’s dream, however, looked dim as Turkish analysts indicated that little progress has been made in resolving the issues that divided the sides. Meanwhile, Ankara is bracing itself against the campaign by the Armenian diaspora in the United States to make 2015 the year when the mass killing of Armenians in 1915 under the Ottoman Turkish government is finally recognized by Washington as genocide. Remarks by Turkish officials show that there is real concern in Ankara that these efforts may succeed on the centenary of the killings. Armenians, with significant international support, say the events of 1915 amounted to a genocide resulting in the death of 1.5 million Armenians in Anatolia, a claim that Turkey rejects. Although it acknowledges that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died during World War I, Turkey says millions of Muslims, including Turks, Kurds and Arabs, also lost their lives during the war. Aboard the papal flight from Istanbul, after completing his three-day trip to Turkey, the pope was asked why he had not brought up the Armenian issue during his visit, the pope responded only by referring to the message of condolence to the Armenian president that Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued in 2013 while he was still prime minister. Erdogan's message, which was issued on April 24, the date when Armenians commemorate the 1915 killings, was a first for Turkey. In an indication of how sensitive the topic still is in Turkey, though, Erdogan was lambasted by nationalists for allegedly playing into the hands of the country’s enemies, and reinforcing a major calumny against the Turkish nation. Franci