YEREVAN, JUNE 23, ARMENPRESS. The Vatican archives prove that during the WWI the Turks did not pursue a goal of replacing Armenians, as the current Turkish authorities claim, but pursued a goal of exterminating them, German historian Michael Hezeman told during a conference headlined “The Vatican and the Armenian genocide” at Armenian-Genocide Institute Museum, presenting the results of his research done in the archives of the Holy See of Rome.

“At that time the Turkish leadership had a goal to exterminate the Christian population. There are indisputable evidences that forceful solution of the Armenian issue had been planned years before the World War I. The war was just a pretext for them to implement what they had been looking forward for years. The Young Turks wanted to strengthen the Turkish nation by creating a homogeneous population sharing common values. They believed that only Turks could form the population of the future Turkey, who would be consolidated by on and the same religion, Sunni Islam. Ethnic and religious minorities could have no place in this ideology”, “Armenpress” reports the historian mentioning. He quoted the July 16, 1915 report of the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau addressed to Washington as saying, “it appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion”.

Hezeman also quoted Talaat Pasha as saying “The Turkish Government uses the war as a pretext to get rid of its domestic enemies, which are the local Christians, and this is done without the interference of foreign diplomatic missions in Turkey”.

The German historian brought a number of other examples proving that the Armenian Genocide really took place. He added that according to the Vatican documents show that the number of victims caused by the Turkish atrocities exceeds 1 million. He stated that the Armenian Catholic Patriarchy wrote in February, 1916 that 1 million deaths were already recorded not counted the massacres in the Syrian deserts. 

Michael Hesemann Michael Hesemann Michael Hesemann Michael Hesemann

Photos by Gevorg Perkuperkyan