Posted on 04/17/2015 2:43:14 AM PDT by markomalley
As Turkey’s leaders fume over Pope Francis’ use of the term “genocide” to describe mass killings of Armenian Christians a century ago, the country’s top religious figure invoked the crusades and said the furor would accelerate a controversial scheme to turn Istanbul’s most famous historical church into a mosque.
“The statement that the Catholic world’s spiritual leader delivered three days ago, saying Armenians had been subjected to a genocide, is extremely spectacular,” Mefail Hizli, the mufti of Ankara, said in a written statement, Hurriyet daily reported.
Hizli said the pontiff’s comment “reflected a modern color of the crusader wars launched in these lands for centuries.”
“Frankly, I believe that the pope’s remarks will only accelerate the process for Hagia Sophia to be re-opened for [Islamic] worship.”
Built in the sixth century – before the founding of Islam – Hagia Sophia served variously as an Orthodox and Catholic cathedral until the 15th century, when the Ottomans began using it as a mosque.
In the 1930s Turkey’s secular government declared the building a museum, but under the Islamist ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party a campaign has grown to return it to a place of Muslim worship. Early his month a Muslim cleric recited a passage from the Qur’an at a high-profile event in the Hagia Sophia. Local media said it was the first time that had occurred in 85 years.
The mufti’s statement is the latest fallout in Turkey over Pope Francis’ description Sunday of the events of 1915-1918 as “the first genocide of the 20th century.”
Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu accused the pope of joining an “axis of evil” with Turkish opposition parties, aimed at weakening the ruling AK Party ahead of June 7 legislative elections.
“An axis of evil is being created against us,” Today’s Zaman newspaper quoted Davutoglu as telling a party meeting. “An axis whose entire motivation is to hinder the AK Party is being formed.”
Pointing fingers at the party’s political opponents, he added, “The pope has joined these plots against the AK Party and Turkey.”
In a further dig at the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Davutoglu brought up another controversial historical event, attaching the genocide term to the Spanish Inquisition.
“I am addressing the pope: Those who escaped the genocide carried out by the Catholic world in Spain via the Inquisition found peace and safety in our just system,” he said, adding that Turks “will not let our nation be insulted over history.”
Earlier, Ankara called the pope’s comment “unfounded” and recalled its ambassador from the Vatican in protest.
Turkey is bitterly opposed to growing international acknowledgment that the killings of up to 1.5 million orthodox Christian Armenians as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated during World War I amounted to a deliberate genocide.
A campaign is underway in the U.S. to urge President Obama to honor a campaign pledge and make a public statement to that effect. Next Friday, April 24, marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the atrocities.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is due to travel to Washington in the coming days, for meetings with Secretary of State John Kerry and others designed, according to Turkish media, to influence the wording the administration will use in this year’s April 24 statement.
On Thursday, the pope’s spokesman said the Vatican has taken note of the Turkish criticism, Italy’s La Stampa reported.
Fr. Federico Lombardi told reporters that the pope’s message regarding the mass atrocities was, “let us take stock of history so as to have an appropriate attitude that will allow us to go on ensuring that such acts are not repeated.”
“His message was very clear for those who wanted to embrace it and included a positive reference to his hopes for a reconciliation and dialogue between the Turkish people and the Armenian people,” he said.
“We take stock of any reactions, objections and criticisms from Turkey, but we did not think it was the case to start an argument or to bicker,” Lombardi said. “We take stock of the fact that there were reactions.”
On Wednesday the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling the mass killings of Armenians Christians a century ago “genocide,” and calling on Turkey to end a policy of denial.
While Turkey strongly denies that a genocide occurred, it says strife, disease and famine costs the lives of hundreds of thousands of people over that period, but that killings were not systematic and Christians and Muslims alike were affected.
Ok, let’s talk about the crusades, originally organized to rescue people abducted and carried off into slavery by muslims.
> Ok, let’s talk about the crusades, originally organized to
> rescue people abducted and carried off into slavery by
> muslims.
As well as to drive the moslems out of Christian lands that they had conquered with savagery and barbarity and treated Christians with the same brutality we can see in Isis and Al Shabaab and Boku Haram and Al Qaeda, etc ad infinitum.
Murder, death, rape, pillage, conquest, slavery... the foundation stones of the anti-religion called islam. Over the centuries, in India muslim conquerors killed 80 million people. 80 million. That’s eight zero million.
“Hizli said the pontiff’s comment “reflected a modern color of the crusader wars launched in these lands for centuries.”
If I had my way, any current “crusade” would last about an hour.
Again...history has been shown that the Crusades were in a direct response to Islamic aggression spreading in that region and threatened Christianity. ...such a statement only brings attention to how backwards Islam is and those that follow that death cult of perverted child molesting...women hating...submissive mind set that has been wrapped up in a religious cloak....
When Obama hears about this guy bashing Christians for the Crusades and the Inquisition...
He’ll join in the bashing ...
Barry Soetoro is a communist, a homosexual, a mohammedan, and abortionist, and a supporter of terrorism, and a tyrant.
Maybe we ought to piss off the Turks even more by referring to this sad period in history as the Turkish Jihad against the Armenians. Remind them of their twisted religion and the people of the world that radical Islam played a large part in this genocide.
Free Constantinople Now!
The Seljuk Turks turned to Islam as their religion, and it was against their cruelty that the First Crusade was mounted.
The genocide of their Armenian predecessors is not a new thing to them. Such annihilation is a part of the Turkish history. It was the Ottoman Muslim Turks that were stopped from expanding further west than Vienna by Jan Sobieski, but who occupied eastern Europe for hundreds of years until World War One, when they were defeated and destroyed.
It was in this time that the Armenian genocide took place. Wherever they have gone, the Turkish Muslims when in control have treated the subjugated people (Greeks, Romanians, Albanians, etc.) as lower than dogs, fit to be killed at the whimsy of any of their Muslim overlords.
This is exactly why the recent Bosnian war they experienced the desire of their victims to annihilate Islamism from that area. We in the USA should take note of this whole process. If these Mohmmedans take root here and multiply, they will do the same.
The Pope is right, and the Turks complaining about the Crusades is a lame response to their nature, which is to exterminate any opposition to their culture.
Right now, they are in continual battle with the Kurds in the eastern part of Turkey, whom they would utterly destroy, if they could. The Kurds are now fighting just to exist, even though they are also Muslims. The Turks wish to completely stamp out Christianity.
That's the way I see it, and I've known them personally and how thy operate, for forty years.
.....Yet they too, in the course of time will fail against any efforts to get rid of the Christian faith, by killing Christians they produce new believers.
The Muslim Inquisition has lasted 1400 years.
The last crusade was in the mid 13th century. The latest muslime atrocity was ... wait, what is today?
Muslimes: Quit justifying your savagery by dredging up acts from a millennium ago, and address the very real offenses that you endorse every day through your inaction.
Your post #12 is an excellent summary.
I guess this means they are giving the Hagia Sophia and Constantinople back to the Christians?
How about condemning Turkey for letting terrorist fighters cross from Turkey into Syria and Iraq? How about condemning the genocide that's going on NOW?
What Pope Francis is saying is true, for sure. But it isn't going to make it easier to get Turkey to stop abetting Muslim terrorists.
When I was deployed to Uzbekistan I learned how closely Uzbeks in Central Asia identify with their Turkish cousins in Asia Minor. Many proudly claim to have one Turkish parent & Uzbek-Turk marriages are commonplace. I made a friend just by pointing out that Uzbekistan’s conversion to the Latin alphabet made it look like Turkiye outside our perimeter.
One Uzbek officer joked that since American Indians are descended from Sibero-Asians, “We Uzbeks headed west and conquered Constantinpole; we headed east and defeated Custer!” They also identify closely with Uighurs in west China.
The Turks I knew from active duty were pleasant enough but they were clearly secular & urban; Ataturk was their hero & we know what he thought of Islam (a pestilence out of Arabia). Their wives wore nonveiled Western garb just like the Uzbek girls who worked for us at K-2.
If Caliph Erdogan remosquifies Hagia Sophia, all bets are off only it will be rival Muslim empires squaring off at each other. Israel does not lie along the traditional invasion routes.
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