Armenia in the news (slightly embellished)

Turkish officials are angry at Pope Francis for referring to an Armenian genocide during his Easter remarks yesterday. By this point in history I don't know what the Turks are worried about. If the Greeks aren't going to get the reparations for World War II they want from Germany I doubt anyone will want Turkey to pay anything out to Armenia except maybe in the pages of history. Yet for generations the Turks have acted as if they'd get sued the minute they acknowledged what appears to be the historical truth. You'd think it'd be easier to resolve now that Turkey has an Islamist government: blame it all on those Young Turk secular humanists, the same people who made Turks use the Latin alphabet and stop wearing fezzes. But I guess there's something about genocide-deniers everywhere. Their attitude seems toward their victims seems to be: we hate you and wish you were all dead, but we didn't nearly wipe you out back then, though maybe somebody should have.

In a related story, Kanye West, who is Armenian-American by marriage, threw himself into a lake while performing in Armenia, where his in-laws are visiting genocide memorials. Mr. West is reported (here if nowhere else) to have said during his fit that the Armenian genocide was in fact the greatest genocide of all time. Mr. West also reportedly claimed that the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, didn't give a damn about Armenians. This was later confirmed by President Erdogan, who also urged tourists to visit the centennial commemoration of the siege of Gallipoli on April 24 instead of an Armenian genocide commemoration scheduled for the same day. No matter how you look at it, or where you look, the Turks killed a hell of a lot of people in 1915, and some of them were armed. The Turkish government pleads self-defense on all counts.