Ambassador Francis Ricciardone, President Obama’s nominee to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, in a written response to questions submitted to him by Senator Robert Menendez), 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,” reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

“Ambassador Ricciardone’s demonstrably false assertion betrays a callous disregard for Ottoman Turkey’s wholesale destruction of Christian churches, and for the fate of the millions of Christian faithful, who worshipped in their homeland within these holy sites until their genocidal annihilation,” said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the ANCA.

“Whether his response is due to a truly remarkable lack of awareness or, instead, to a willful distortion of the facts of history to fit Ankara’s genocide denial narrative, this nominee has clearly shown he’s unable to effectively advance U.S. interests or American values as our nation’s representative in Ankara.”

The historical record shows that of the over 2000 Armenian Churches that were functioning on the territory of present-day Turkey in 1915, less than 50 operate today.

This assessment is sharply at odds with reports by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which raised the following alarm in its 2011 report: “The Turkish government continues to impose serious limitations on freedom of religion or belief, thereby threatening the continued vitality and survival of minority religious communities in Turkey.”