A time to heal

NOTHING inflames the present like the past. When Pope Francis said on April 12th that the “first genocide” of the 20th century was of the Armenians in 1915, Turkey angrily recalled its ambassador to the Vatican. Far from being resolved, the argument over exactly what to call the death of as many as 1m-1.5m Armenian citizens of the Ottoman empire still spreads hatred. This fight does nothing for Turks and Armenians—nor for the century-old memory of the victims.At issue is not the terrible fate that befell the Armenians of eastern Anatolia, in massacres, forced labour and death marches towards the Syrian desert. It is whether to use the word “genocide”. Historians differ, not just Armenians and Turks, on whether extermination was a side-effect or the intention, as genocide requires. As America’s president, Barack Obama has talked only of the (“great crime” in Armenian), despite promising the Armenian lobby as a candidate to call it genocide. Yet, on the face of it, the facts support Pope Francis, not least because Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who coined the word in 1943, cited the Armenian case.