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World News

Turkish PM brands Pope part of 'evil front' over Armenia comments

by Hannah Tooley

USA Today reported that Ahmet Davutoglu made the comments when he was outlining the party's plans for the June election and presenting its candidates.

Historians have estimated that around 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire around the First World War .

During a Mass to mark the 100th anniversary of the killings Pope Francis said they were the "first genocide of the 20th century".

"In the past century our human family has lived through three massive and unprecedented tragedies."

Pope Francis had been under pressure to use the word genocide by the Armenian Church, but in a meeting at the beginning of April he avoided using the word - instead saying Ottoman officials were guilty of "systematically planning the annihilation of their brothers".

Turkey has insisted that this figure has been inflated, and it has been lobbying to stop other countries formally recoginising the massacre as genocide.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said: "An evil front is being formed before us... Now the Pope has joined it and these plots."

He said Turkey had confronted its history but added: "We won't allow our nation to be insulted through history, we won't allow Turkey to be blackmailed through historic disputes."

The Turkish President, Recept Tayyip Erdogan, seconded this. Defending Turkey's present-day treatment of Armenians when asked about the killings in European Parliament.

He said: "There are 100,000 Armenians who are either Turkish citizens or not citizens in my country. Have they been submitted to any different treatment?

"They benefit from all kinds of opportunities. We could deport them, but we don't. They are guests in our country."

He added that no resolution made by the European Parliament would be relevant as Turkey would not accept genocide in its history, he said: "It is not possible for the Turkish Republic to accept such a sin, such a crime."

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