Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Ankara on Thursday and laid a wreath at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatü...

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Ankara on Thursday and laid a wreath at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, triggering an immediate backlash from Greek-Canadian and Pontic diaspora organizations. The visit also produced a new Canada-Turkey strategic agreement covering defence-industry cooperation. The Pan-Pontian Federation of USA-Canada, co-signed by its Youth Coordinating Committee, released a statement on Friday calling the wreath-laying a direct insult to the memory of victims of the Genocide of the Greeks of Pontus, Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace, as well as Armenians, Assyrians and Chaldeans. The federation pointed out that Canada officially recognized the Armenian Genocide back in 2006, and said Carney's actions contradict that recognition. Their statement was blunt: historical justice requires actions, not words. The Hellenic Community of Toronto, together with the Hellenic Canadian Research Institute, also pushed back hard. They criticized Ottawa's framing of the visit as "values-based realism", arguing that signing a defence cooperation deal with a country that militarily occupies part of the Republic of Cyprus directly contradicts Canada's stated foreign policy principles. Both organizations said the gesture at Atatürk's mausoleum causes real pain to hundreds of thousands of Greek-Canadians descended from survivors of persecution in Asia Minor and Pontus. They are calling on the Carney government to explain how honoring Atatürk squares with Canada's genocide recognition and its commitments to international law. The broader question raised by the diaspora cuts to the heart of the controversy: where do values end and interests begin? #GreekCanadian #PonticGenocide #Carney