Trump refuses to call genocide the mass killings of Christian Armenians by Muslim Turks during World War One
By Julio
Severo
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday
marked the Ottoman Turks’ century-old massacre of 1.5 million Armenians, but
declined to label it a genocide.
Such a declaration, even though avoiding
the term “genocide” and refusing to mention that the killers were Muslim and
the victims were Christian, angered Turkey, whose cooperation Trump seeks
against the Syrian government.
“We consider that the misinformation and
false definitions contained in U.S. President Trump’s written statement of
April 24, 2017 regarding the 1915 events are derived from the information
pollution created over the years by some Armenian circles in the U.S. by means
of propaganda methods,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“We expect from the new U.S.
Administration not to accredit the one-sided historical narrative of these
circles which are known for their tendency to violence and hate speech and to
adopt an approach which will take into consideration the sufferings of all
sides,” the statement read.
In contrast, many Armenian-Americans,
including Kim Kardashian, have protested the U.S. government’s omission.
Kardashian has called for the use of the word “genocide” and compared a refusal
to use it to Holocaust denial.
Previous presidents, including former
President Barack Obama, also refused to call the mass killings a genocide.
Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton avoided the term “genocide” after
pledging during their campaigns to recognize it as such.
On April 10, in a bipartisan letter
calling upon the President to “appropriately mark April 24th as a day of
American remembrance of the Armenian Genocide,” more than eighty U.S.
congressmen said that “by commemorating the Armenian Genocide, we renew our
commitment to prevent future atrocities.”
“We join with Members of Congress in
calling upon President Trump to reject Turkey’s gag rule and embrace an honest
American remembrance of the Armenian Genocide,” said Aram Hamparian, Executive
Director of the Armenian National Committee of America. “It’s long past time
for America to stop outsourcing our national policy on the Armenian Genocide to
Recep Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian and anti-American regime.”
In calling upon President Trump to
properly mark April 24th, the signatories highlighted the U.S. record of past
recognition, including “President Reagan, who recognized the Armenian Genocide
in 1981.”
The letter specifically cites Christian
populations targeted by the Ottoman Empire’s genocidal campaign, including “Armenians,
Assyrians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Pontians, Syriacs, and other persecuted
peoples.”
The Turkish government has resisted the
genocide label for the actions of the Muslim forces of the Ottoman Empire in
1915, but Armenian-American groups have long urged U.S. presidents to change
course.
“The president’s statement fails to stand
up for human rights and is inconsistent with American values, and represents
the same kind of capitulation to Turkish authoritarianism which will cost more
lives,” said Anthony Barsamian and Van Krikorian, co-chairs of the Armenian
Assembly of America, on Trump’s statement.
The group called for an investigation into
“surreptitious Turkish influence on the U.S. government.”
Christian group are not happy about
Trump’s behavior.
“Sadly, he ended his first 100 days in
office on the most shameful of notes, and has cemented his position as the
ultimate Washington politician,” Steve Oshana, executive director of the Middle
East Christian advocacy group A Demand for Action, wrote on Facebook after
seeing Trump’s statement.
For years, concerns about angering Turkey,
a U.S. ally, and strong lobbying efforts by the Turks have blocked attempts to
change official U.S. government policy to acknowledge the genocide. Presidents
Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan did use the term in office, but George H.W.
Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama shied away from it, even
fighting congressional efforts to endorse it.
“The statement that was put out is
consistent with the statements that have been put out for at least several of
the past administrations,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary,
speaking on Trump. “So I think if you look back to the language that President
Obama, President Bush, etc., have used, the language that the president used is
consistent with all of that.”
Trump crafted an image of himself as a
gutsy outsider on the campaign trail and in doing so had raised expectations
that he might challenge the taboo, Oshana said. But his statement reflected the
power that neocons ― who include the “swamp” that he pledged to drain
―
retain in the U.S. government.
Trump has distanced himself from his
campaign views against neocons and he has tried to forge a closer bond with
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, even phoning him last week to
congratulate him on a contested referendum that was criticized as an
authoritarian power grab.
The White House later said the two leaders
mostly discussed joint counterterrorism efforts. This is very strange, because
as an Islamic nation, Turkey does not fight terrorism, especially from ISIS.
According to a 2014 WND (WorldNetDaily) report, “Turkey
backs ISIS to eliminate Assad.”
ISIS has committed genocide against
Christians in Syria and Iraq. According to Trump, Obama
founded ISIS. And Obama worked closely with Turkey. So if Trump refuses the
term “genocide” to please Turkey and has this Islamic nation as an ally against
ISIS, is not he helping the ISIS genocide against Christians? To have Islamic
Turkey as an ally against Islamic terror is so insane as to have the Nazi
Germany as an ally against Nazism or have the Soviet Union as an ally against
Soviet Marxism.
Armenia was
the first officially Christian nation in the world. Armenia, as a Christian
Orthodox nation, is allied with Russia, the largest Christian Orthodox nation
in the world.
Because the United States is the largest
Protestant nation in the world, Trump could have an alliance with Armenia and
Russia against Islamic terrorism, and this was his intent in 2016, but now he
is privileging an insane alliance with Islamic Turkey and Saudi Arabia to fight
the Islamic terrorism created and supported by the Saudi and Turkish Muslims.
If
Trump cannot recognize as genocide the slaughters of Christians by Muslims 100
years ago, how can he be able to recognize current genocides against
Christians? How can he be able to recognize that Islam was and is a genocide
machine against Christians?
So far, just 23 nations have recognized
the Armenian genocide, among them France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Greece,
Russia, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile and Bolivia.
“Today, on the day of remembrance of the
Armenian genocide victims, we note the need to remember our holy martyrs,”
stated Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan on Monday
In 2015 Russian President Putin was the
only president of a major power to attend commemorations of 100 years of
Armenian Genocide in 1915. The commemorations were held at the Armenian
Genocide Memorial on Tsitsernakaberd Hill, in Armenia’s capital city of
Yerevan, to pay tribute to the genocide victims.
In the occasion, Turkish President Tayyip
Erdogan was angered at Putin for calling the mass killing of Christian
Armenians by Turkish Muslims a genocide. He said, “It’s not the first time
Russia used the word genocide on this issue. I’m personally sad that Putin took
such a step.”
An estimated 1.5 million Armenians in 66
towns and 2,500 villages were massacred; 2,350 churches and monasteries were
looted, and 1,500 schools and colleges were destroyed.
Yet, Muslims in Turkey and in other
nations understate and deny that Armenian Christians suffered a genocide, just
as neo-Nazi groups understate and deny the Holocaust against the Jews and
ultra-radical Catholics understate and deny the Inquisition against the Jews
and Protestants.
With information from Washington Times, The Hill,
Armenian Weekly, Sputnik News, Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, Huffington Post,
DailyMail, Associated Press and Tert.
Portuguese version of this article: Trump recusa
chamar de genocídio as matanças em massa de cristãos armênios cometidas por
turcos muçulmanos na Primeira Guerra Mundial
Source:
Last Days Watchman
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