Articles on Obama's Statement‏

The Independent
April 28, 2009
Robert Fisk: Obama falls short on Armenian pledge

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 - 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-stricken 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.

Et Tu Obama?

Letter from a Former Admirer

By Harut Sassounian
The California Courier
USA Armenian Life Magazine

Mr. President, how could you!

Your candidacy was a breath of fresh air. You stood for change. You made

wonderful promises and the Armenian-American community put its trust in

you.

We are now terribly disappointed because you acted not much differently

than your predecessors on the Armenian Genocide issue. Your April 24

statement fell far short of your solemn pledge to recognize the Genocide.

As a Senator and presidential candidate, you left no doubt about your

intentions on this issue. You spoke about it eloquently and passionately.

Yet, when the time came to issue your April 24 statement, we were

surprised to find out that “genocide” had been replaced by "Meds Yeghern,"

a clever ploy, no doubt suggested by one of your ingenious aides.

You may want to know that "Meds Yeghern" does not mean genocide; it

means "Great Calamity." Armenians used that term before the word

"genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin in the 1940’s. "Genocide"

in Armenian is "Tseghasbanoutyoun," which is a much more precise term

than "Meds Yeghern," in case you decide to use it in the future.

Not only did your aides come up with the wrong Armenian word, but they

failed to provide its English translation, so that non-Armenians could

understand its meaning. What was, after all, the point of using an Armenian

word in an English text? Did your staff run out of English euphemisms for

genocide?

Just in case your resourceful advisors think that they were the first to devise

the clever ploy of replacing "genocide" with "Meds Yeghern," let me inform

you that several previous leaders have employed that same trick. Pope

John Paul II used that term in 2001 during his visit to Armenia. The BBC

observed that the Pontiff had said "Meds Yeghern" in order not to offend

Turkey. Your immediate predecessor, Pres. George W. Bush, used the

English translation of that same tricky word in his April 24, 2005 statement

-- "This terrible event is what many Armenian people have come to call the

‘Great Calamity.’"

Mr. President, last year when you were seeking votes and financial support

from Armenian-Americans, you did not promise them to recognize the "Meds

Yeghern!" You actually told them: "As President, I will recognize the Armenian

Genocide." Moreover, you did not state that your acknowledgment of the

Genocide is contingent upon Armenian-Turkish negotiations, opening

Armenia’s border, war in Iraq or anything else. You made a flat out promise,

with no ifs or buts.

There are also two sets of serious contradictions in the words you used

before and after your election to the presidency. In your April 24, 2009

statement, you said: "I have consistently stated my own view of what

occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed." Yet,

on January 19, 2008, as a presidential candidate, you had said: "The

Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point

of view." Furthermore, on April 24, 2009 you stated: "My interest remains

the achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts." Yet,

as a candidate, you stated that the Armenian Genocide is "a widely

documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence.

The facts are undeniable."

Mr. President, twice in one month, both in Ankara and Washington, you

made a reference to your past statements on the genocide, in order to

avoid using that word as president. This is an old trick that was also

utilized by Pres. George H. W. Bush (Senior). In his presidential message

of April 20, 1990, Bush stated: "My comments of June 1988 represent the

depth of my feeling for the Armenian people and the sufferings they have

endured." In order to avoid saying genocide, Pres. Bush, like you, made

an indirect reference to that word, by mentioning his earlier remarks as

Vice President and presidential candidate: "The United States must

acknowledge the attempted genocide of the Armenian People in the last

years of the Ottoman Empire, based on the testimony of survivors, scholars,

and indeed our own representatives at the time, if we are to ensure that such

horrors are not repeated."

Dear Mr. President, there was no need for your staff to waste their valuable

time trying to come up with such ploys and verbal gymnastics. If you did not

want to say genocide, you did not have to say anything at all. The Armenian

Genocide has already been acknowledged by another U.S. president, Ronald

Reagan, who signed a Presidential Proclamation on April 22, 1981, in which

he referred to "the genocide of the Armenians.”

Armenians actually gain nothing by having one more U.S. president reiterate

what has been said before. As you know, presidential statements, just as

congressional resolutions, have no legal consequence. Pres. Reagan’s

proclamation and the adoption of two House resolutions on the Armenian

Genocide in 1975 and 1984 have brought nothing tangible to Armenians in

terms of seeking reparations for their immense losses in lives and property.

By not keeping your word on April 24, however, you have only succeeded in

undermining your own credibility in front of the American people and world

public opinion. Already, the Obameter website (politifact.com) has labeled

your April 24 statement as “a broken promise.” This week, as you complete

the first 100 days in office, major TV networks and the press are widely

reporting your broken promise on the Armenian Genocide, thus undermining

the trust of the American public in your other promises.

Finally, Mr. President, it was improper for you to exploit Turkey’s

“make- believe” negotiations with Armenia by using it as a pretext for avoiding

the "genocide" word in your April 24 statement. Given your high position, you

must know that the Turkish government’s intent all along has been to create the

false impression that its discussions with Armenia are proceeding smoothly,

making everyone believe that the border would be opened shortly. Turkish

leaders have been dangling that carrot in front of Armenia for many years.

The fact is that, once you were elected president, Turkish officials took

seriously your campaign pledge to recognize the Armenian Genocide and

were told by your close aides that unless Ankara made a friendly gesture

towards Armenia, you could well carry out your promise to the

Armenian-American community.

While Turkish officials, with their fake diplomatic initiatives, managed to

deceive the rest of the world, including Armenia’s relatively inexperienced

leaders, you, Mr. President, knew better. You went along with Turkey’s false

gestures knowingly, thus bartering away your principled stand on the Armenian

Genocide in order to secure Turkish participation in the Afghan war, and carry

out its U.S. assigned role with respect to Iraq, Iran, and Israel.

You must have also known that Turkey would not open its border with Armenia

in the foreseeable future, unless the Karabagh conflict was resolved to

Azerbaijan’s satisfaction. Using various carrots and sticks, with the connivance

of Russia, which pursues its own economic and political interests in Turkey and

Azerbaijan, U.S. officials succeeded in pressuring Armenia into agreeing to

issue a joint declaration with Turkey and Switzerland as mediator on the eve

of April 24. This declaration was a convenient cover for you to duck the genocide

issue in order to appease Turkey.

Mr. President, by compelling Armenia to sign such a declaration, you have

managed to pit the Armenian Diaspora, as well as the people in Armenia against

the government in Yerevan. As a direct result of that action, the ARF, one of

Armenia’s influential political parties, quit the ruling coalition this week. The ARF

did not wish to associate itself with a government, still reeling from last year’s

contentious presidential elections, which is negotiating an agreement with Turkey

that could compromise the country’s national interests and historic rights. The ARF

also vehemently opposes Armenia’s announced intention to participate in a bilateral

historical commission that Turkey would use to question the facts of the Armenian

Genocide.

Mr. President, in the coming days, as your administration invites Armenia’s leaders t

o Washington in order to squeeze more concessions from them, please realize that

they can only be pressured so much before they lose their authority. As was the case

with Armenia’s first president, crossing the red lines on the Genocide and Karabagh

issues could well jeopardize the tenuous hold on power of the remaining ruling

coalition, regardless of how many promises are made and carrots extended to them

by Washington.

TURKEY SUMMONS U.S. AMBASSADOR IN ANKARA TO EXPRESS DISCOMFORT OVER OBAMA'S SPEECH
Anadolu Agency
April 27 2009
Turkey

ANKARA (A.A) - 27.04.2009 - Turkey summoned the U.S. Ambassador in
Ankara, James Jeffrey, and expressed discomfort over U.S. President
Barack Obama's statement on the occasion of the "Armenian Remembrance
Day" on April 24. Jeffrey was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs on Saturday and Turkey's reaction, and views were communicated
to him, said sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Obama's statement on April 24, "Armenian Remembrance Day" stirred
wide reaction and drew severe critism from Turkey's top officials
and politicians on the grounds that it was biased.

Turkey's President Abdullah Gul was the first to criticize Obama. He
told reporters the following day that not only Armenians but hundreds
of thousands of Turks and Muslims had lost their lives during the
events of 1915, adding that pain and suffering of all people who lost
their lives in 1915 should be remembered.

Gul said statesmen and politicians could not pass judgement on events
in the history, adding that it was time to look to the future and
give a chance to diplomatic efforts for solution of issues between
Turkey and Armenia, and Armenia and Azarbaijan.

Gul was followed by Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan who argued that
Obama's statement was related with a pledge he made to Armenian
lobbies during his election campaign.

"Such a sensitive issue requiring expertise, which should in fact be
left to historians, is continuously being used as a tool for politics
and exploited by lobbies every year, and this prevents normalization of
relations between people and countries," Erdogan was quoted as saying.

Parliament Speaker Koksal Toptan also criticised Obama's statement and
said such statement on events of 1915, seriously harmed the process
for normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia.

Turkish Foreign Ministry regarded Obama's statement unacceptable in
a press release issued Sunday, noting that history could be construed
and evaluated only based on undisputed evidence and documents. (OZG-AO)


'MEDS YEGHERN'
SUAT KINIKLIOLUT
Today's Zaman
April 27 2009
Turkey

US President Barack Obama did the anticipated and avoided using the
term "genocide" when referring to the events of 1915 in the midst of
World War I in eastern Anatolia. Yet, no one is happy about it.

Neither the Armenians nor the Turks thought the statement appropriately
reflected how to describe the complicated events of 1915. However,
the statement actually attempts to find a middle path between Obama's
election promises and the realities on the ground. What is troubling
from the Turkish perspective is the persistence in interpreting
the events of 1915 solely from one perspective, namely the Armenian
one. There is an abundance of evidence about the hundreds of thousands
of Muslim losses during the time span in question. However, this is
not what this piece intends to accentuate. Instead, I want to look
into the possibility of whether the term "Meds Yeghern" could offer
a new opening for a common narrative between Turks and Armenians.

Obama's statement is interesting from a variety of perspectives,
and I believe it is worth examining whether the term "Meds Yeghern"
has the potential to become a mutually acceptable term for both sides
to commemorate the events in question. As is now commonly known,
"Meds Yeghern" denotes "Great Calamity/Great Disaster" in the Armenian
language. Although I am not in a position to fully comprehend the
context in which this term is being used in Armenian, I am willing
to venture into the following.

I believe the events of World War I constituted a Great Calamity for
Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Anatolian Greeks and probably other peoples
of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, it was a great trauma for the Turks,
who saw their great empire collapse in front of their own eyes and
who saw a multitude of peoples rebel against the state and side
with the invading enemies of the time. It was a Great Calamity to
the Armenians who had to be relocated during harsh war conditions
and subsequently suffered immensely. It was a disaster for them as
they left behind their homes and memories, similar to the millions of
Turks who were chased out of the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle
East. It was a Great Calamity for the Turks and the Kurds fighting
on the eastern front against the invading Russian armies, who were
intent on grabbing the eastern part of the remaining territories of
the Ottoman realm. It was a true disaster for all involved as the
war time conditions of eastern Anatolia were brutal and certainly
far from being hospitable to any of the struggling sides. Famine,
disease and misery were the order of the day.

Yet, as President Abdullah Gul said in response to Obama's statement,
we need to look forward and see whether the Turks and the Armenians
will be able to normalize relations in the coming months and
years. Therefore, the term "Meds Yeghern" should not be chided right
away because it is an Armenian term. I think it harbors the potential
to bring all of the aggrieved parties together. "Meds Yeghern" could
become the cornerstone of a positive language about the events of
1915, one which signifies the calamity that the competition over
the Ottoman realms between the imperial powers brought about, which
ultimately led to the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the
loss of the Armenian population. It also resulted in the loss of the
empire's Greek subjects. We Turks built a new nation-state from the
ashes of the empire, but one consequence of these historic events was
the loss of the richness and diversity of the Ottoman days and the
change in the social fabric of these lands. Could it be possible to
utilize this term as a base around which all of us could mourn the
losses we all incurred during the fateful days of World War I?

All interested in the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations
should look into the potential of whether the term "Meds Yeghern"
could be applied to the wider pain and disaster that occurred in
eastern Anatolia during World War I and thus could pave the way for
a common language on this painful chapter of history.

A DECENT COMPROMISE (II)

American Conservative Magazine
April 27 2009

Alex Massie and Michael Crowley are less impressed with Obama's
statement on the Armenian genocide than I was. Ben Smith records
the official lobby reactions, which I think are mistaken on both
sides. Contrary to the Turkish Coalition's awful statement, Obama did
not "defer" to historians (by which they mean embrace whitewashing
of the record), but he made quite clear that he regarded it as one
of the great atrocities of the last century and used an Armenian
phrase, Meds Yeghern, to describe it that conveys the message that
these were criminal acts. Not unfortunate incidents or unavoidable
wartime excesses, as the hacks and paid-off spokesmen would have it,
but crimes and atrocities. That implies willful mass murder directed
against an entire people, which in the end is quite close to what
people understand when someone refers to genocide. In my modern Eastern
Armenian dictionary, yeghern means "slaughter, carnage, genocide"
or a "crime" or "evil deed," and the word yeghern has been and can
be used in the context of referring to the genocide.

The one thing lacking from the statement, which we know is lacking
not for any good historical reason but obviously because of sheer
politicking and interest group lobbying, is the word itself and the
attribution of responsibility to the elements of the Ottoman government
that organized and carried out the genocide. The statement is therefore
incomplete, and it does fall short of what Obama promised he would do,
but there is little cause for the pro-Turkish side to be particularly
pleased about the result. It is understandable that advocates of
recognition are disappointed, but one need only compare statements
of the last two Presidents to appreciate how much of an improvement
this statement is over what we have been offered before. In his last
statement in 2000, the same year he scuppered a House resolution
acknowledging the genocide, Clinton referred to the genocide as a
"great tragedy," which is rather less strong than referring to it
as a great atrocity. Bush's 2001 statement was relatively stronger,
inasmuch as he described it as "forced exile and annihilation,"
but did not go so far as to call it an atrocity, and by 2008 the
word annihilation had dropped out all together to be replaced by
"mass killings." By comparison, Obama's statement is a significant
improvement, especially when he says:

I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915,
and my view of that history has not changed. My interest remains the
achievement of a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts.

In every way short of using the word, he is saying that it was a
genocide, and I think he reasonably refrains from using the word,
which might badly damaged U.S.-Turkish and Turkish-Armenian relations*,
while all but conveying the same meaning.

* It is worth noting that Reagan publicly referred to "the genocide
of the Armenians" almost thirty years ago, and somehow our alliance
with Turkey endured. I am still inclined to think that waiting
until relations are somewhat better is the wiser thing to do, but
a President has already acknowledged the truth and our relationship
with Turkey survived intact because of shared interests. My guess is
that the Turkish Coalition's boast that "his administration will not
sacrifice long-term strategic allies for short-term political gains"
will be thrown back in their faces in the event it becomes clear that
neither Washington nor Ankara is willing to end our long-term strategic
alliance over this question. Indeed, my guess is that over the next few
years we will find out that Ankara has been engaged in an extraordinary
bluff that multiple administrations have never had the courage to call.
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