Obama Administration Refuses to Recognize Armenian Genocide

As the world commemorates the 100th anniversary of the slaughter of nearly 2 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, President Obama and his administration are refusing to refer to the massacre as a genocide – the term most historians use to describe the event, as well as the same language Obama used before taking on the office of president.

“President Obama’s surrender to Turkey represents a national disgrace. It is, very simply, a betrayal of truth, a betrayal of trust,” Ken Hachikian, the chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, said.

Officials decided against calling the massacre a genocide after some opposition from the State Department and Pentagon.

“We know and respect that there are some who are hoping to hear different language this year,” CNN quoted an administration official.

“We understand their perspective, even as we believe that the approach we have taken in previous years remains the right one — both for acknowledging the past and for our ability to work with regional partners to save lives in the present,” the official said.

On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Empire set out to expel the Armenians from their region. Armenians had lived in what is now Turkey for 3,000 years, but by the early 1920s, a million and a half of them were dead, with many more expelled from the country. In 2010, a Congressional committee voted to recognize the massacre as a genocide, but the Obama administration still has not done so.

This move by the White House may not have stirred up so much passion had then-Senator Obama not made a campaign promise to call the incident a genocide. Critics suggest that Obama has performed his about-face as an act of loyalty toward Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan.

CNN reports that even California Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic leader of the House Intelligence Committee, expressed disappointment with the White House decision.

“How long must the victims and their families wait before our nation has the courage to confront Turkey with the truth about the murderous past of the Ottoman Empire?” Schiff wrote in a statement.

“If not this president, who spoke so eloquently and passionately about recognition in the past, whom? If not after 100 years, when?” he asked.