Obama Marks Genocide Without Saying the Word
By PETER BAKER
Published: April 24, 2010
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — President Obama, who as a candidate vowed to use the term genocide to describe the Ottoman slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians nearly a century ago, once again declined to do so on Saturday as he marked the anniversary of the start of the killings.
Vahan Stepanyan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In Yerevan, Armenians on Saturday solemnly observed the 95th anniversary of the genocide that began in 1915 under the Ottoman Turk government. About 1.5 million Armenians were killed.
Trying to navigate one of the more emotionally fraught foreign policy challenges, Mr. Obama issued a statement from his weekend getaway here commemorating the victims of the mass killings but tried to avoid alienating Turkey, a NATO ally, which adamantly rejects the genocide label.
“On this solemn day of remembrance, we pause to recall that 95 years ago one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century began,” Mr. Obama said in the statement, which largely echoed the same language he used on this date a year ago. “In that dark moment of history, 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire.”
When he was running for president and seeking votes from some of the 1.5 million Armenian Americans, Mr. Obama had no qualms about using the term genocide and criticized the Bush administration for firing an ambassador who dared to say the word. As a senator, he supported legislation calling the killings genocide.
“As president I will recognize the Armenian Genocide,” he said in a statement on Jan. 19, 2008, that used the word 10 more times. He said that “the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact.” He added, “An official policy that calls on diplomats to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy.”
Two years later, as president, he used none of that sort of language, though as he did a year ago, he hinted to Armenians that he still felt the same way. “I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed,” he said. “It is in all of our interest to see the achievement a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts.”
The issue has been a point of contention in Congress as well. In March, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted narrowly to condemn the mass killings as an act of genocide, defying a last-minute plea from the Obama administration to forgo a vote that threatened to jeopardize the United States-backed efforts toward Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.
Turkey, which acknowledges the killings but denies that they were a planned genocide, briefly recalled its ambassador from Washington in protest.
On Saturday, the Armenian National Committee of America, an advocacy group based in Washington, condemned the “euphemisms and evasive terminology” and called Mr. Obama’s statement “yet another disgraceful capitulation to Turkey’s threats.”
“Today we join with Armenians in the United States and around the world in voicing our sharp disappointment with the President’s failure to properly condemn and commemorate the Armenian genocide,” said Ken Hachikian, the committee’s chairman. He added that Mr. Obama’s failure to following through on his campaign pledge was “allowing Turkey to tighten its gag-rule on American genocide policy.”
Although the president’s statement did not use the term “genocide” it was strong enough to provoke a sharp statement from the Turkish Foreign Ministry, which called the language a reflection of a one-sided political perception.
The Obama statement comes as the reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey has become deadlocked. Armenia announced Thursday that it would suspend ratification of peace accords with Turkey, apparently because it was angered that Turkey was making new demands.
Analysts indicated Armenia believed that Turkey was trying to put pressure on Armenia to reach a separate peace treaty with another neighbor, Azerbaijan, a close Turkish ally.
It’s an incredible irony of history, if you think about it, that it should be the Albert II-Leterme odd couple, a king at the end of his reign and a prime minister who rekindled the embers of identity politics, coming to the country's rescue, proclaiming the political crisis “inopportune” because it imperils the people’s well-being. They tossed that message into the troubled waters like a last lifeline, but one has to wonder today how many people in the north of the country [i.e. Flemish-speaking Flanders] will actually reach for it.