By Robert Mackey
Turkish officials continued to vent their fury at Pope
Francis on Monday, one day after he called the mass killing of Armenians a
century ago “the first genocide of the 20th century,” at a commemorative mass
at the Vatican. https://youtu.be/wYHCrdG-iLw
The latest outraged response came from Volkan Bozkir, Turkey’s minister for
European affairs, who significantly upped the ante on his colleagues by
suggesting that Argentines as whole, and not just the pope, had been
brainwashed by rich and powerful Armenians in their midst. In remarks broadcast on national television, Mr. Bozkir
began by reminding reporters that Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in
Buenos Aires in 1936, is “an Argentine.” Mr. Bozkir then hinted that the
country has a dark past of its own. “Argentina was a country that welcomed the
leading executors of the Jewish Holocaust, Nazi torturers, with open arms,” he
said.
Turkish Minister Criticizes Pope Francis
Volkan Bozkir, Turkey’s minister for European affairs,
criticized Pope Francis for describing the World War I-era massacre of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide.
By Cihan News Agency on Publish Date April 13, 2015. Photo
by Cihan News Agency.
Mr. Bozkir then sought to provide an explanation for where
Argentines might have gotten the idea that the 1.5 million Armenians killed
between 1915 and 1923 in the last days of the Ottoman Empire had been
slaughtered intentionally.
“In Argentina,” Mr. Bozkir asserted, “the Armenian diaspora
controls the media and business.” The minister provided no evidence for his
assertion and was not asked for any. (One prominent member of the Armenian
diaspora in Argentina, Eduardo Eurnekian, is a billionaire who did once have
significant media holdings, but he sold them two decades ago, according to
Forbes.)
Argentina, which is home of the largest community of
Armenians in South America, more than 100,000, angered the Turks in 2006 by
adopting legislation that formally recognized April 24 as a day “in
commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.”
Turkey’s government has acknowledged that atrocities were
committed during the period but fiercely opposes the characterization that the
killing of Armenians was systematic and intentional.
”The 1915 events took place during World War I when a
portion of the Armenian population living in the Ottoman Empire sided with the
invading Russians and revolted against the empire,” the Turkish news agency
Anadolu reported on Monday. “The Ottoman Empire relocated Armenians in eastern
Anatolia following the revolts and there were Armenian casualties during the
relocation process,” the report continued.
In 2003, the Argentine journalist Uki Goñi revealed in his
book, “The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Perón’s Argentina,” that Juan
Perón’s postwar government had clandestinely helped Nazi war criminals flee
there at the end of World War II. Using documents from European archives, Mr.
Goñi showed that the Vatican, Swiss authorities and the Red Cross had played
key roles in the escape to Argentina of Nazis including Adolf Eichmann, Dr.
Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie, as well as dozens of French, Belgian, Italian,
Croatian and Slovak fascists, many of them Nazi collaborators.
https://youtu.be/KwKwugwJx0c
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder
Not: Yalnızca bu blogun üyesi yorum gönderebilir.