Turkish history and religious policy today

In his Easter Day sermon the Archbishop of Canterbury lamented the mass persecution of Christians in the Middle East and rightly called the victims martyrs of the faith. On 12 April Pope Francis led an Armenian-rite mass to mark the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman state and the ‘Young Turk’ movement of Attaturk. Francis called this the first ‘genocide’ of the 20th Century, a charge that Turkey has long rejected, although in the teeth of plain evidence.

British governments have resisted using the term ‘genocide’ for the massacre, and the well-known human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson researched the matter using the freedom of information legislation to get relevant documents from the government. Robertson is clear that in April 1915 the Ottoman Empire ordered the deportation of up to two million Armenians from Anatolia, clearing an ancient Christian population from a whole region. They were marched forcibly towards Syria and hundreds of thousands died en route from disease, exhaustion, lack of water, and armed violence.

This was the first holocaust of the century and clearly genocidal – but the UK’s diplomatic interests are best served by not using that term, such was Robertson’s conclusion. Pope Francis is basically telling the truth plainly, and in the context of ever increasing brutality against whole Christian populations in the Middle East, with similar lack of any real interest from the Western powers.

Historians of the 19th Century will point to the Armenian massacres of the Armenians in 1894-5, mass murder that was passionately condemned by Prime Minister Gladstone and the Nonconformist Conscience in Britain. But no action was taken against the Ottoman Empire, which rightly calculated that the great powers were too divided to act. Gore, in a sermon in Westminster Abbey in 1895, pointed out that Britain had scuppered an earlier Russian plan to give Armenians protected status against Turkish persecution.

There is a long history of European powers preferring their own interests to the cause of saving the Armenians from genocidal massacre. France has recognised the need for the truth about the 1915 genocide to be told and not suppressed, but not the UK, and the Pope’s truth-telling example should be followed and supported. This should not be done in an aggressive manner, but as stating fact for the record.

Turkey continues its denial of this dark part of its history, and has accused Francis of speaking out of prejudice and distortion of history.

In fact Turkey has chosen to stage a memorial to the battles of Gallipoli, 1915, at the same time as Armenians will commemorate their holocaust – Prince Harry is due to attend the Turkish celebrations. It is to be hoped that Britain will send a high level representative to the Armenian commemoration, and certainly the Church of England is honour bound to send one its Archbishops to join in solidarity – whatever bluster of ‘offence’ be declared by Turkey.

Turkey in fact is not a state that permits other faiths to function freely, and needs to reform itself accordingly.