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It was
clever, crafty --artful, even --but it was not the truth. For in
the end, Barack Obama dishonoured his promise to his
American-Armenian voters to call the deliberate mass murder of
1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 a genocide.
How grateful today's Turkish generals must be.
Genocide is what it was, of course. Mr Obama agreed in January
2008 that "the Armenian genocide is not an allegation... but
rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming
body of historical evidence. America deserves a leader who
speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide... I intend to be
that President." But he was not that President on the
anniversary of the start of the genocide at the weekend. Like
Presidents Clinton and George Bush, he called the mass killings
"great atrocities" and even tried to hedge his bets by using the
Armenian phrase "Meds Yeghern" which means the same thing --it's
a phrase that elderly Armenians once used about the Nazi-like
slaughter --but the Armenian for genocide is "chart". And even
that was missing.
Thus once more -- after Hilary Clinton's pitiful response to the
destruction of Palestinian homes by the Israelis (she called it
"unhelpful")-- Mr Obama has let down those who believed he would
tell the truth about the truth. He didn't even say that Turkey
was responsible for the mass slaughter and for sending hundreds
of thousands of Armenian women and children on death marches
into the desert. "Each year," he said, "we pause to remember the
1.5 million Armenians who were massacred or marched to their
death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire." Yes, "massacred"
and "marched to their death". But by whom? The genocide --the
deliberate extermination of a people 's had disappeared, as had
the identity of the perpetrators. Mr Obama referred only to
"those who tried to destroy" the Armenians.
Instead, he waffled on about "the efforts by Turkey and Armenia
to normalise their bilateral relations" --a reference to the
appeal of landlocked Armenia appeal to reopen its border with
Turkey thanks to Swiss mediation (via another of America's
favourite "road maps") --and the hope that Turkish and Armenian
relations would grow stronger "as they acknowledge their common
history and recognise their common humanity". But the only real
improvement in relations has been an Armenian-Turkish football
match.
Turkey is still demanding a commission to "investigate" the 1915
killings, a proposal the poverty-broken Armenian state opposes
on the grounds (as Obama, of course, agreed before he became
President) that the genocide was a fact, not a matter in
dispute. It doesn't have to be "re-proved" with Turkey's
permission any more that the Jewish survivors of their own
genocide have to "re-prove" the crimes of the Nazis in the face
of a reluctant Germany.
Armenian historian and academic Peter Balakian --speaking as he
stood by a 1915 mass grave of Armenians in the Syrian desert
--was quite frank. "What is creating moral outrage," he said,
"is that Turkey is claimed to be trying to have a commission
into what happened --when the academic world has already
unanimously agreed on the historical record." So much, then, for
one-and-a-half-million murdered men, women and children.
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