ANCA: Obama disgracefully capitulated to Turkey’s threats

April 24, 2011 - 16:32 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - On the eve of Easter and the April 24 National Day of Prayer for the victims of the Armenian Genocide, President Barack Obama again betrayed his pledge to properly condemn and commemorate this crime against humanity, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

Despite his repeated, detailed, and unambiguous pledges to recognize the Armenian Genocide, the President offered only euphemisms and evasive terminology to describe the murder of over 1.5 million men women and children - effectively keeping in place the gag rule imposed by the Turkish government on the open and honest discussion of this crime. In refusing, under foreign pressure from Turkey, to his honor his pledge, he again fell far short of his own view, as voiced during his campaign, that America deserves a President who uses the term "genocide" to convey the full factual, moral, legal, and contemporary political meaning of this crime against all humanity.

“President Obama's disgraceful capitulation to Turkey’s threats, his complicity in Turkey's denials, and his Administration’s active opposition to Congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide represent the very opposite of the principled and honest change he promised to bring to our country’s response to this crime,” said ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian.

“Instead of standing up for the truth, and standing by the extensive U.S. record on the Armenian Genocide, President Obama is today, under threat from an increasingly unfriendly foreign power, standing in the way of the broad-based American civil society consensus for a truthful and just resolution of this crime,” Hachikian added.

"For a President who ran for office on the platform of ‘change’ and ‘honesty’, his record on this score – including, notably, his deeply offensive reference today to ‘contested history,’ has been shameful. He has, in addition to betraying his own words and compromising America’s moral standing, gravely disappointed Armenians here in the United States, in Armenia, and around the world who had looked to him as an example of courage, conviction, and conscience,” he said.

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres and deportations, involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, Italy, 45 U.S. states, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Argentina, Belgium, Austria, Wales, Switzerland, Canada, Poland, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, the Vatican, Luxembourg, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, Paraguay, Sweden, Venezuela, Slovakia, Syria, Vatican, as well as the European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.