Turkey’s foreign ministry says that it has summoned the Vatican’s Ankara envoy to express its unease after Pope Francis called the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks 100 years ago genocide.
On Sunday, the pope called the slaughter of Armenians around the time of World War I “the first genocide of the 20th century” and urged the international community to recognize it.
Turkey has long refused to call it the event a genocide and has insisted that the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.
