ert-fisk-obama-falls-short-on-armenian-pledge-1675 197.html
The Independent
April 28, 2009
Robert Fisk: Obama falls short on Armenian pledge
It was clever, crafty – artful, even – but it was not the truth. For
in the end, Barack Obama dishonoured his promise to his
American-Armenian voters to call the deliberate mass murder of 1.5
million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 a genocide. How
grateful today’s Turkish generals must be.
Genocide is what it was, of course. Mr Obama agreed in January 2008
that "the Armenian genocide is not an allegation… 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… I intend to be that President." But he was not
that President on the anniversary of the start of the genocide at the
weekend. Like Presidents Clinton and George Bush, he called the mass
killings "great atrocities" and even tried to hedge his bets by using
the Armenian phrase "Meds Yeghern" which means the same thing – it’s a
phrase that elderly Armenians once used about the Nazi-like slaughter
– but the Armenian for genocide is "chart". And even that was missing.
Thus once more – after Hilary Clinton’s pitiful response to the
destruction of Palestinian homes by the Israelis (she called it
"unhelpful") – Mr Obama has let down those who believed he would tell
the truth about the truth. He didn’t even say that Turkey was
responsible for the mass slaughter and for sending hundreds of
thousands of Armenian women and children on death marches into the
desert. "Each year," he said, "we pause to remember the 1.5 million
Armenians who were massacred or marched to their death in the final
days of the Ottoman Empire." Yes, "massacred" and "marched to their
death". But by whom? The genocide – the deliberate extermination of a
people – had disappeared, as had the identity of the perpetrators. Mr
Obama referred only to "those who tried to destroy" the Armenians.
Instead, he waffled on about "the efforts by Turkey and Armenia to
normalise their bilateral relations" – a reference to the appeal of
landlocked Armenia appeal to reopen its border with Turkey thanks to
Swiss mediation (via another of America’s favourite "road maps") – and
the hope that Turkish and Armenian relations would grow stronger "as
they acknowledge their common history and recognise their common
humanity". But the only real improvement in relations has been an
Armenian-Turkish football match.
Turkey is still demanding a commission to "investigate" the 1915
killings, a proposal the poverty-stricken Armenian state opposes on
the grounds (as Obama, of course, agreed before he became President)
that the genocide was a fact, not a matter in dispute. It doesn’t have
to be "re-proved" with Turkey’s permission any more that the Jewish
survivors of their own genocide have to "re-prove" the crimes of the
Nazis in the face of a reluctant Germany.
Armenian historian and academic Peter Balakian – speaking as he stood
by a 1915 mass grave of Armenians in the Syrian desert – was quite
frank. "What is creating moral outrage," he said, "is that Turkey is
claimed to be trying to have a commission into what happened – when
the academic world has already unanimously agreed on the historical
record." So much, then, for one-and-a-half-million murdered men, women
and children.