Persecution of Christians

Former Superman Dean Cain is taking on a much more serious subject than most men in tights these days. The actor has produced a new film, “Architects of Denial,” which delves into the Armenian genocide and the denial by the Turkish government and other authoritative bodies that atrocities ever took place.

On this date in 1915, hundreds of Armenian intellectuals – Christians, for the most part – were forcibly deported from the Turkish capital of Constantinople. The number soon escalated into the thousands, and most were eventually murdered.

For more than a century, Turkey has denied any role in organizing the killing of Armenians in what historians have long accepted as a genocide that started in 1915, as World War I spread across continents. The Turkish narrative of denial has hinged on the argument that the original documents from postwar military tribunals that convicted the genocide’s planners were nowhere to be found.

Turkey has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump over his statement to commemorate the mass killings of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, voicing expectations that the new administration will not lend credence to "a one-sided historical narrative." 

U.S. President Donald Trump called the 1915 killings of Armenians "Meds Yeghern," an Armenian term meaning "great calamity," avoiding the use of the word "genocide." 

Trump chose to opt for the wording in his first commemorative statement on April 24, just like his predecessor, Barack Obama.

I could not help but notice that several of our readers commented on my article last week about this year's Easter celebration in Phanar, Istanbul. Some confirmed their sadness at the low attendance of the faithful for the most important date in the Orthodox calendar.

Cosmos Philly, a web-site with Greek-American news from Philadelphia, published a small but important analysis that sheds light to the Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor by the Ottoman Turks.

It compares it with the Jewish Genocide and it attempts to answer the question, why it is that so few know of the Genocide of the Greeks of Anatolia.

Some 957 suspected militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were apprehended in security operations carried out across Turkey in February. Some 122 militants were arrested, while security forces seized ammunition, weapons, documents and explosive materials, state-run Anadolu Agency has reported. 

Turkey was not vigilant enough in monitoring border crossings to Syria in the initial two or three years of the civil war there. The government was probably hoping that additional manpower would contribute to what it expected to be the rapid fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

Three people accused of planning suicide attacks on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have been arrested in the southeastern provinces of Gaziantep and Adıyaman, the Gaziantep Governor's Office said in a statement on Feb. 28.