The pope, the Armenian genocide and other 20th-century massacres

The Turkish foreign ministry’s criticism of the pope’s statement describing the Armenian genocide as the first genocide of the 20th century is revealing (Report, 13 April). It has called the statement discriminatory because it only mentions the pain suffered by Armenian Christians and not that of Ottoman Muslims and other groups. It suggests that Ottoman Muslims, Armenian Christians, Orthodox Greek Christians, Assyrian Christians and Yazidis suffered equally during the first world war, Dr Michael Herron, PhD for Denial of the Armenian genocide in American and French politics, London, wrote in his letter to the Guardian.

“This deliberately clouds the fact that while Ottoman Muslims largely suffered due to the privations of war, the latter groups, including Armenians, suffered as a consequence of a planned and coordinated campaign to homogenise Anatolia by the Young Turk government during the war and by the subsequent Kemalist government.

“The fact that the Turkish foreign ministry has acknowledged the suffering of these other groups perhaps opens the door for the Turkish state to recognise that the Armenians were the key victim group of this policy of state reorganization,” Dr Michael Herron writes.