US President Barack Obama on Friday avoided calling the 1915 massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks “genocide” despite vowing to use that exact term during his run for the White House.
Obama followed recent US diplomatic tradition by issuing a written statement on Armenian Remembrance Day, branding the killings of more than 1.5 million people as “one of the great atrocities of the 20th century.”
But after pressure from key US ally Turkey, which is currently involved in reconciliation talks with Armenia, he trod a delicate diplomatic path and pointedly refrained from using the English word “genocide.”
Instead, he used the Armenian term for the killings, “Meds Yeghern,” which has been variously translated as “The Great Calamity” or “Great Disaster.” The term predates the use of the word “genocide,” but is sometimes used by Armenians to refer to the killings.
Obama said reckoning with the past was the best way for the Turkish and Armenian people to work through their “painful history” in a “way that is honest, open and constructive.”
During his election campaign, Obama said in a speech that he had stood with the Armenian American community in calling for Turkey’s acknowledgement of the “Armenian Genocide.”
Despite bowing to diplomatic convention, Obama said in his statement issued on Friday that he had not changed his mind.
“I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915 and my view of that history has not changed. My interest remains the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgement of the facts,” he said.
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been a long-term supporter of referring to the massacres as “genocide” and did so in her own statement.
“It is long past time for the US government to formally recognize the Armenian genocide,” Pelosi said.
“If we ignore history then we are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. The genocides in Rwanda and Darfur remind us that we must do more to prevent this from ever happening again,” he said.
The Armenian Assembly of American complained that Obama had “failed to deliver on the change he promised.”
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