{"id":52897,"date":"2012-04-24T19:45:03","date_gmt":"2012-04-24T16:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=52897"},"modified":"2023-04-03T14:13:58","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T11:13:58","slug":"obama-again-avoids-the-word-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2012\/04\/24\/obama-again-avoids-the-word-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Again Avoids the Word \u2018Genocide\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-52898\" title=\"OBAMA-WH\" src=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/OBAMA-WH1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"204\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/a.abcnews.com\/images\/Politics\/Tapper_cutout.png\" alt=\"Jake Tapper\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\" \/><span> By <\/span>Jake Tapper<br \/>\n<span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/jaketapper\">@jaketappe<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"font-toggle\">\n<p>On the fourth Armenian Remembrance Day of his presidency, President Obama has for the fourth time in a row broken his promise to the Armenian community to use the word \u201cgenocide\u201d in describing what happened at the hands of the Turks roughly a century ago.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212; Turkish Forum Insert to Article &#8211;\u00a0 &#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Please look at the following pages for Accurate description of Armenian issue in Turkish \u2013( English version is on the way)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For Germany : \u00a0http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GwZ9pO2FDK0<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>For All other countries : <\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;Article Continues &#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>As a senator, and then <strong>as a presidential candidate<\/strong>, \u00a0Barack Obama often talked about how bold he was to call the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire just what it was: a genocide.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmerica deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides,\u201d he said. \u201cI intend to be that president.\u201d In a January 2008 letter to the Armenian Reporter, Mr. Obama said he shared \u201cwith Armenian Americans \u2014 so many of whom are descended from genocide survivors \u2014 a principled commitment to commemorating and ending genocide. That starts with acknowledging the tragic instances of genocide in world history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In <strong>a statement<\/strong>, Ken Hachikian, the chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America said, \u201cPresident Obama today completed his surrender to Turkey, shamefully outsourcing U.S. human rights policy to a foreign state, and tightening Ankara\u2019s gag on American recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The President\u2019s capitulation to Turkey \u2013 on this, the last April 24th of his term \u2013 represents the very opposite of the principled and\u00a0honest change he promised to Armenian Americans and to all the citizens of our nation. President Obama\u2019s pledge to recognize the Armenian Genocide stands today as a stark lie, a painful promise etched on the hearts of all who had hoped and worked for change, but who, today, have been betrayed by a politician who failed to live up to his own words.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 2006, Mr. Obama noted, \u201cI criticized the secretary of state [Condoleezza Rice] for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Evans, after he properly used the term \u2018genocide\u2019 to describe Turkey\u2019s slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. I shared with Secretary Rice my firmly held conviction that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asserted Mr. Obama, back then: \u201cThe facts are undeniable. An official policy that calls on diplomats to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That was then, this is now. As previous presidents have concluded, Mr. Obama has decided that distorting the historical facts is better than alienating ally Turkey, which disputes that term. And that policy has been, at least in the short term, quite tenable.<\/p>\n<p>The president in his statement today said \u201cI have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915. My view of that history has not changed. A full, frank, and just acknowledgement of the facts is in all of our interests. Moving forward with the future cannot be done without reckoning with the facts of the past. \u2026Some individuals have already taken this courageous step forward. We applaud those Armenians and Turks who have taken this path, and we hope that many more will choose it, with the support of their governments, as well as mine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>-Jake Tapper<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jake Tapper @jaketappe &nbsp; On the fourth Armenian Remembrance Day of his presidency, President Obama has for the fourth time in a row broken his promise to the Armenian community to use the word \u201cgenocide\u201d in describing what happened at the hands of the Turks roughly a century ago. &#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212; Turkish Forum Insert to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":52898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[490,7],"tags":[4035],"class_list":["post-52897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-north-america","category-armenian-question","tag-asala-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52897","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=52897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}