Novinite.com, Bulgaria
April 25 2009
Armenia, Turkey Unhappy with Obama Armenian Massacre Message
World | April 25, 2009, Saturday
The US annual message about the massacre of Armenians by Turks has
been written this year by President Barack Obama himself, but left
both Ankara and Erevan unhappy. Photo by BGNES The Turkish Foreign
Ministry defined some wording of the US annual message, dedicated to
the 1915 massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, as unacceptable.
This year’s message has been written by President Barack Obama
himself.
During his election campaign, Obama used the term genocide when
referring to the killings of Armenians by Turks in World War I, but
refrained from using the term in his address.
Despite that, Ankara, which denies committing genocide, is unhappy
because the US President described the killing of hundreds of
thousands of Armenians as "one of the great atrocities of the 20th
century" and stated that 1,5 Armenians were slaughtered.
Turkey says the number of victims is anywhere between 300 000 and 500
000.
The Armenian community in the US, on their part, strongly criticized
Obama for being lenient towards Turkey, a NATO member and key American
ally in the Muslim world, and for failing to fulfill the promise of
his election campaign to admit that the massacre was indeed genocide.
In a January 2008 statement on his campaign website, Obama wrote: "The
Armenian genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion or a point
of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an
overwhelming body of historical evidence. America deserves a leader
who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide and responds
forcefully to all genocides."