'Mentality of Crusades'

Pope Francis yesterday released peace doves on the Armenia-Turkey border in a gesture of reconciliation as Ankara slammed the pontiff for denouncing the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces as "genocide".

Standing on a terrace of the Khor Virap monastery, Francis and the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church Karekin II released the two white birds in the direction of Mount Ararat -- the Biblical final resting place of Noah's Ark -- now in modern-day Turkey.

The long-planned gesture at the end of a three-day visit to ex-Soviet Armenia came in the face of fresh Turkish ire after Francis used the word "genocide" to refer to the century-old slaughter that Ankara furiously rejects.

The Vatican was forced to refute claims from Turkey that Pope Francis showed a "mentality of the Crusades" over his use of the term.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli late on Saturday  said it bore traces of "the mentality of the Crusades."

 The Vatican rejected the allegations and said the pontiff was trying to build "bridges not walls" and had nothing against Turkey.

When Francis first used the term "genocide" in 2015, on the centenary of the 1915-1917 killings that Armenians say wiped out some 1.5 million of their people, Ankara angrily recalled its envoy from the Holy See for nearly a year.

Armenians have long sought international recognition for the World War I killings as genocide. Turkey -- the Ottoman Empire's successor state -- argues that it was a collective tragedy in which both Turks and Armenians died.