(CNSNews.com) – President Trump in a statement Tuesday used the Armenian phrase translated “great evil” or “great calamity” to describe the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. He did not use the word “genocide,” a term crucial for many Armenians but hotly rejected by Turkey.
“Today we commemorate the Meds Yeghern, one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century, when one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in the final years of the Ottoman Empire,” he said. “We recall the horrific events of 1915 and grieve for the lives lost and the many who suffered.”
“We also take this moment to recognize the courage of those individuals who sought to end the violence, and those who contributed to aiding survivors and rebuilding communities, including the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, who sought to end the violence and later raised funds through the Near East Relief to help the Armenian people,” Trump continued. “We note with deep respect the resilience of the Armenian people, so many of whom built new lives in the United States and have made countless contributions to our country.”
“As we honor the memory of those who suffered, we also reflect on our commitment to ensure that such atrocities are not repeated,” the president said. “We underscore the importance of acknowledging and reckoning with painful elements of the past as a necessary step towards creating a more tolerant future.”
“On this solemn day, we stand with the Armenian people throughout the world in honoring the memory of those lost and commit to work together to build a better future.”
Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) executive Director Aram Hamparian expressed disappointment at the decision not to call the mass killings genocide, accusing Trump of “caving in to Turkish pressure.”
“In his annual April 24th statement, the President once again enforced Ankara’s gag-rule against honest American condemnation and commemoration of the Armenian Genocide,” he said.
“In outsourcing U.S. leadership on genocide prevention to [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan – who openly undermines U.S. interests, attacks U.S. allies, threatens U.S. troops, imprisons American clergy, and even orders the beating of American citizens – President Trump is emboldening a foreign dictator who revels in the public spectacle of having bullied successive American presidents into silence on Turkey’s still unpunished murder of millions [of] Christians.”
In a statement Tuesday, Erdogan said Turkey has a “conscientious and ethical responsibility to share the historical pain of our Armenian citizens” over the “1915 events.”
He extended condolences to the Armenian community, but added “condolences to the Turkish nation over loss of lives of millions of Ottoman citizens due to wars, migrations, conflicts and diseases during the same period.”
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(CNSNews.com) – Armenians marking the 103rd anniversary Tuesday of the mass killing of their forebears in Ottoman Turkey are hoping President Trump will go further than last year, and use the word “genocide” to describe the atrocities.
On April 24 last year, Trump’s statement used the Armenian phrase Meds Yeghern, which is variously translated “great evil,” “great crime” or “great calamity.”
President Obama also used the term in his later annual Apr. 24 statements – although he pledged while running for the White House to call the episode genocide – while his predecessors used words like “tragedy” or “massacres.”
Armenians and Armenian-Americans look back to President Reagan, who in a 1981 Holocaust Remembrance Day proclamation referred to “the genocide of the Armenians.”
The issue goes well beyond semantics, since the Turkish government has made it a foreign policy priority to deny that what happened a century ago constituted genocide. Genocide is legally defined as the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, accompanied by atrocities aimed at achieving that goal.
Even though Trump last year did not use the term genocide, Turkey’s foreign ministry condemned his statement, saying it “contained misinformation and false definitions, and were derived from the information pollution created over the years by some Armenian circles in the U.S. by means of propaganda methods.”
The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) refers to Turkey’s “gag rule” – the perception that U.S. administrations have essentially given a troubling NATO ally a pass by avoiding use of the charged word.
In recent days, more than 100 U.S. lawmakers from both parties, including the chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees, Reps. Ed Royce and Devin Nunes, put their name to a letter urging Trump to “properly commemorate the 103rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.”
“The Armenian Genocide continues to stand as an important reminder that crimes against humanity must not go without recognition and condemnation,” the letter reads.
“Through recognition of the Armenian Genocide we pay tribute to the perseverance and determination of those who survived, as well as to the Americans of Armenian descent who continue to strengthen our country to this day.”
The Armenian-American community is unofficially estimated to be around 1-1.5 million strong, the second-largest diaspora community after Russia.
“It’s time to end America’s ‘Turkey First’ approach to the Armenian Genocide,” said ANCA executive director Aram Hamparian, whose organization lobbied for the letter.
“[Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s traditional apologists have abandoned him – and rightfully so,” he said. “Devoid of allies across the American political landscape – from left to right, hawk to dove – he’s turning to the White House as his last line of defense against the truth. The choice rests with President Trump, to put America first or to enforce a foreign gag rule.”
Historians record that around one-and-a-half million Armenians were killed in 1915 and the following years, as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated amid World War I. April 24, 1995, one day before Allied troops landed at Gallipoli, is generally is regarded as the date the atrocities began.
In a unanimous resolution in 1997, the Association of Genocide Scholars affirmed “that the mass murder of over a million Armenians in Turkey in 1915 is a case of genocide which conforms to the statutes of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.”
For its part, Turkey acknowledges that between 250,000 and 500,000 Armenian died during that period, along with at least as many Muslims, but attributes the deaths to war, civil strife, disease and famine.
Ankara strongly denies the genocide claims. It has lobbied hard against any move by the U.S. or European governments to call the episode genocide.
This year’s commemoration comes at a time when the relationship between the U.S. and Turkey’s Islamist government is already strained over Erdogan’s post-coup attention crackdown, a politically-charged extradition tussle, the trial of U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson, and differences over U.S. support for Syrian Kurdish fighters.
Armenia is a majority orthodox Christian country in the Caucasus, neighboring Turkey. A former Soviet republic a little smaller than Maryland, it has a population of some three million people.
In Armenia, this year’s April 24 commemoration has been overshadowed by political drama. On Monday, Serzh Sargsyan resigned as the country’s prime minister after 11 straight days of street protests against what critics saw as an attempt to extend his rule indefinitely.
Sargsyan was president from 2008 to earlier this year, and last week was confirmed in the post of prime minister, in line with a controversial 2015 referendum in favor of moving from a presidential to parliamentary system.
Sargsyan was accused of doing virtually the opposite of what Erdogan has done in Turkey – overseeing a shift that creates a more powerful presidency, in order to prolong his rule.
Erdogan was prime minister from 2003-2014 before being elected president. A referendum a year ago narrowly approved sweeping new powers for the president, and Erdogan last week announced a snap election that will speed up the change.
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