HULIQ.com, SC
April 23 2010
Obama marks Armenian holocaust, declines again to call it genocide
For the second year in a row, President Barack Obama has issued a
statement commemorating the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians by
the Ottoman Turks on the anniversary of the day it began. And for the
second year in a row, one word ` a word the President had pledged to
use ` was conspicuously absent from the statement: genocide.
In his statement, issued from Asheville, N.C., where the President and
First Lady Michelle Obama are vacationing for the weekend, Obama
called the massacre `one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century’
and `a devastating chapter in the history of the Armenian people.’ He
also said that the world must keep the memory of the event alive `so
that we do not repeat the grave mistakes of the past.’
Obama’s refusal to use the word `genocide’ in his statements marking
the Armenian massacre stands in sharp contrast to his pledge to use it
on the campaign trail, a promise he first made on Jan. 19, 2008, when
he told a campaign crowd, `I will recognize the Armenian genocide.’ As
a U.S. senator from Illinois, Obama had consistently stood with
Armenian-Americans who called on the Turkish government to acknowledge
the massacre ` the first effort to exterminate an entire people in the
modern era — as an act of genocide.
U.S.-Turkish relations loom large in the President’s ignoring of his
pledge. Turkey has long been a key military ally of the U.S. in a
sensitive region, and Turkish cooperation has been valuable in
America’s efforts to combat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and pursue the war
in Iraq. Despite calls even from within Turkey for the government to
acknowledge the genocide as a step towards healing, the Turkish
government remains sensitive to the charge of genocide; its official
view is that the murder of the Armenians took place in the context of
widespread ethnic violence, a view most scholars who have studied the
events of the period do not share.
Turkey has also warned of dire consequences if the President fails to
block a resolution making its way through the House that would put the
United States on record as recognizing the Armenian massacre as an act
of genocide. When the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to send
the resolution to the full House last year, Turkey recalled its
ambassador to Washington. The ambassador, Namik Tan, has since
returned, but the Turkish government remains opposed to any American
move to officially recognize the genocide.
In an effort to finesse the issue, Obama also said in his statement
that his views on the events of 1915 remain unchanged and added, "It
is in all of our interest to see the achievement a full, frank and
just acknowledgment of the facts."
Written by Sandy Smith
For HULIQ.com