Pope John Paul II has reassured Turkey his visit to its arch-foe, Armenia, this week will not be used as an opportunity to tarnish Turks, who are accused of genocide against Armenians, a Turkish diplomat said yesterday.
John Paul II reassured Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in a letter ahead of the visit to Yerevan yesterday that Turkey had "nothing to worry about" from the trip, said the diplomat.
The letter came in response to a message by Ankara to the Vatican that the papal visit to Armenia "should not tarnish the Turks and their history", he added.
The Vatican has been under pressure from Armenia to recognise that the controversial killings of Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s amounted to genocide.
During a visit to a memorial in Yerevan for victims of the killings, the pope used careful wording to describe the massacres.
In a homily delivered in English, the Pope used the Armenian phrase "Metz Yeghern", which for Armenians is synonymous with genocide, but which direct translation means only "big calamity".
"Listen, O Lord, to the lament that rises from this place, to the call of the dead from the depths of the Metz Yeghern, the cry of innocent blood that pleads like the blood of Abel," the pope said.
Turkey rejects genocide claims, saying 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed in fighting when Armenians, then subjects of the Ottoman Empire, sided with invading Russian troops in the hope of carving out an independent state in eastern Anatolia.