"Relations between Christians and Muslims have not been cloudless all the time; there have been times of forced Islamization and conquests of Christian lands. But if you do not take into account the military operations, which were always accompanied by losses, then what is happening today has never been seen before. For example, let’s take the Ottoman Empire. There were Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire, but they were not destroyed," the patriarch said.
Note that, Russia’s State Duma recognizes the events of 1915 as “Armenian genocide.”