The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has encouraged Armenian Americans to contact their legislators to express their opposition to Amb. Ricciardone’s confirmation.

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey nominee Francis Ricciardone, through errors of fact and bias in his responses to Senate inquiries, has proven to be the wrong candidate to continue his posting as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, ANCA says in a statement.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to vote on his nomination on Tuesday September 13th. U.S. Ambassador to Armenia nominee John Heffern will also be considered that day, in addition to several other nominations.

ANCA recalls that in a written response to questions submitted to him by Senator Robert Menendez, Amb. Ricciardone made the patently incorrect claim that “most of the Christian churches functioning [on the territory of present-day Turkey] prior to 1915 are still operating as churches.”

Responding to a wave of grassroots outrage and growing Congressional concern, Ambassador Ricciardone backed away from his most obvious and offensive misrepresentations about Turkey’s destruction of Christian churches, but sparked renewed controversy by artificially inflating the number of currently operating Christian houses of worship, and again using strained euphemisms to help Ankara escape responsibility for its crimes.