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During her visit to Armenia on July 5, U.S. Secretary State Hillary Clinton placed a wreath at the Armenian Genocide Monument at Tsitsernakaberd in Yerevan. Regrettably, however, the U.S. Embassy in Armenia issued a press release describing the visit as “private.” By using such a characterization, U.S. officials were trying to preempt any backlash from the Turkish government. \u00a0 In my opinion, the State Department mishandled Secretary Clinton\u2019s visit to the Armenian Genocide Monument. Here are the reasons why:<\/p>\n
Even though the State Department downgraded Secretary Clinton\u2019s visit to the Monument, Armenian officials did their best to publicize it as much as possible! This time they acted more decisively than last May, when Mevlut Cavusoglu — Turkish President of Council of Europe\u2019s Parliamentary Assembly — refused to visit the Genocide Monument. They insisted that the Secretary add to her itinerary a stop at the Genocide Monument. They then arranged for Armenian Public TV and other TV stations to repeatedly air the video of Clinton\u2019s July 5 visit to the Monument.<\/p>\n
In addition, the website of the State-owned Armenian Genocide Museum prominently featured Clinton\u2019s visit by displaying photos of her wreath with ribbons that carried a visible inscription of her name and title, and an authentic medal issued by the American Near East Relief Committee that Museum Director Hayk Demoyan presented her.<\/p>\n
Pointing across the Turkish border, Demoyan told Secretary Clinton that Mount Ararat is “a symbol of Armenia.” In addition to explaining the basic facts of the Armenian Genocide, Demoyan told her that the graves of heroes fallen in Artsakh (Karabagh) were located near the Monument, since Armenians consider that war to be a continuation of the Armenian Genocide. The Secretary was also given a historical photo in which Armenian children in the American orphanage of Alexandropol (Gumri) were standing in formation that spelled out the words: “AMERICA, WE THANK YOU.”<\/p>\n
Clinton\u2019s visit was both praised and criticized by Armenian-American organizations. The Armenian National Committee of America took Clinton to task for her “secret” visit to the Genocide Monument, while the Armenian Assembly of America commended her for the visit. Former U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, told The California Courier that “Clinton\u2019s visit was a small, but positive step forward.” The last Secretary of State to have visited Armenia was James Baker in 1992, who did not, however, make a stop at the Genocide Monument.<\/p>\n
In my view, Secretary Clinton should be commended for making such a positive gesture, but also blamed for going to such lengths to downplay her visit to the Genocide Monument. Why was she so concerned about offending Turks who have brazenly undermined every major U.S. foreign policy initiative in recent months? \u00a0 Unfortunately, Secretary Clinton, Vice President Biden and Pres. Obama have drifted far away from their campaign promises to recognize the Armenian Genocide! Clinton\u2019s brief stop at the Genocide Monument on July 5 is a welcome first step that fell short of her solemn commitment to support recognition of the Armenian Genocide.<\/p>\n
================== COMMENT —- YORUM ================================================<\/p>\n
Democrats are in serious trouble. They need every vote they can get in November so that is why they are posturing around.
\nI would like to see the day when Turkey can care less and shrug off\u00a0 the American and Armenian clamors, resolutions etc\u00a0 about this farce of genocide.
\nTurkey and Azerbaijan should unite more and defy this idiotic nonsense..
\nAlmost 80 million Turks being manipulated by a 2 million weakling nation and its masters in Washington…Disgusting….<\/p>\n
.. Oya Bain [oyabain@gmail.com]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During her visit to Armenia on July 5, U.S. Secretary State Hillary Clinton placed a wreath at the Armenian Genocide Monument at Tsitsernakaberd in Yerevan. Regrettably, however, the U.S. Embassy in Armenia issued a press release describing the visit as “private.” By using such a characterization, U.S. officials were trying to preempt any backlash from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":76533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[145,957,1571,120,1153,1018,2129],"class_list":["post-20450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenian-question","tag-barack-obama","tag-cia","tag-ahmet-davutoglu","tag-gulen","tag-politics","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-turkey-and-armenia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}