Pope Leo lays wreath at grave of Turkish leader Atatürk despite links to anti-Christian genocides

Pope Leo XIV paid homage at Atatürk’s tomb on November 27, 2025, at Anıtkabir in Ankara, despite the Turkish leader’s links to genocides against Christian minorities.

On November 27, 2025, in Ankara, Pope Leo XIV – arriving for his first apostolic visit to Turkey – paused at Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, where he laid a wreath and signed the Honor Book. The visit, carried out according to a protocol consolidated over recent decades for diplomatic reasons, preceded the official meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the presidential palace, with the stated intention of promoting regional stability and dialogue among peoples at a time marked by international tensions and Turkey’s internal crises.

“May Turkey be a source of stability and of drawing peoples closer together, in the service of a just and lasting peace,” Pope Leo XIV declared, speaking before a large globe at the entrance of the presidential palace.

Atatürk remains, in fact, a deeply controversial figure. Referred to as the “Father of the Nation” for having led the War of Independence and launched an extensive modernization program, historians highlight troubling aspects of his political legacy. For example, under Atatürk’s leadership, his forces committed systemic murder and persecution of countless thousands of Greek, Armenian, and other Christians in Turkey, executed Christian clergy, and destroyed Christian monuments in the region, which was home to ancient Christian communities.

The new republican direction did not openly address the memory of the Armenian genocide committed by the Young Turk government between 1915 and 1923.

The tribute to Atatürk – the founder of the Turkish Republic in 1923 – has by now become standard diplomatic practice during papal visits to Turkey since the era of John Paul II. It was not always so: when Paul VI visited the country in 1967 he avoided Anıtkabir.

The turning point came with John Paul II in 1979, followed by Benedict XVI in 2006 and Francis in 2014, thereby consolidating in international protocol a gesture that acknowledges the founder of the Turkish secular state while avoiding the political interpretations surrounding his figure.

Some scholars also recall that the Young Turk movement, to which Atatürk was connected and which perpetrated the Armenia genocide, had significant ties with Masonic circles of the time, an element that for decades has fueled critical interpretations of the nation-building process.

This balancing strategy has been particularly evident in the fact that a very large segment of the Turkish population openly supports the Palestinian cause and calls for an end to the conflict in Ukraine.

However, foreign policy is not the main concern of most citizens. The persistent cost-of-living crisis, fueled by high inflation and market fluctuations made worse by political uncertainty, remains the dominant issue.

This explains why Leo XIV’s jorney, although symbolically and diplomatically significant, went largely unnoticed in Turkish society and the local media, with the exception of the small but ancient Christian community. Fatma Cicek Geyik, a 57-year-old artist interviewed by the Associated Press, said that the Pope’s visit should not be “exaggerated” and that Turkey does not need to “elevate” foreign presences. “They will leave just as they came,” Geyik told reporters.

At the institutional meeting, Erdoğan welcomed the Pontiff with all the honors required by protocol, aware of the international weight of the visit in such a delicate moment. The Pope, who since the beginning of his pontificate has insisted on disarmed peace among peoples, reiterated the need to promote dialogue.

For the small Turkish Christian community – 0.6 percent of the population – the visit represents a sign of attention and hope. Yet the reason for Pope Leo’s apostolic visit to Ankara is primarily ecumenical, taking place on the occasion of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and in the wake of the publication of the controversial Apostolic Letter In unitate fidei, in which the Catholic dogma of the Filioque appears to have been minimized in the name of dialogue with Eastern Orthodox Christians.

” Even before accepting the religion of the Arabs, the Turks were a great nation. After accepting the religion of the Arabs, this religion, didn’t effect to combine the Arabs, the Persians and Egyptians with the Turks to constitute a nation. (This religion) rather, loosened the national nexus of Turkish nation, got national excitement numb. This was very natural. Because the purpose of the religion founded by Muhammad, over all nations, was to drag to an including Arab national politics.

For nearly five hundred years, these rules and theories [regarding civil and criminal law] of an Arab Shaikh and the interpretations of generations of lazy and good-for-nothing priests have decided the civil and criminal law of Turkey. They have decided the form of the Constitution, the details of the lives of each Turk, his food, his hours of rising and sleeping the shape of his clothes, the routine of the midwife who produced his children, what he learned in his schools, his customs, his thoughts-even his most intimate habits. This theology of an immoral Arab [presented as Islam] is a dead thing. Possibly it might have suited tribes in the desert. It is no good for modern, progressive state. God’s revelation! There is no God! These are only the chains by which the priests and bad rulers bound the people down. A ruler who needs religion is a weaklings. No weaklings should rule!

I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the teachings of science. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow man.”

-Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

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Pope Leo lays wreath at grave of Turkish leader Atatürk despite links to anti-Christian genocides

Under the leadership of Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, his forces committed widespread murder and persecution of Greek, Armenian, and other Christian minorities.