ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Candidate Barack Obama repeatedly promised he would call the almost-century-old massacre of Armenians in Turkey genocide. President Obama twice now has refused to do so.
Obama on Saturday declined to call the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I a genocide as he had promised as a presidential hopeful, instead painting the massacre as “one of the worst atrocities” of the 20th century and “a devastating chapter” in history.
Obama’s statement, issued as he and first lady Michelle Obama spent a weekend getaway in western North Carolina, earned him criticism from all corners. The Turkish foreign minister said it was “unacceptable,” and activists took issue with the president’s tone in the statement that marked the 95th anniversary of the start of the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.
It is “a devastating chapter in the history of the Armenian people, and we must keep its memory alive in honor of those who were murdered and so that we do not repeat the grave mistakes of the past,” Obama said in his statement.
Yet now well into his second year in office, he has not in public used the word many historians employ for the first mass killing of the 20th century.
For Obama, referring to the killings as genocide could upend pledges to have a closer partnership with Turkey, a vital ally in a critical region.
He said he had not changed his view from the campaign, even as he declined to state it.
“I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed,” Obama said in his statement, issued as he played golf at a mountaintop resort. “It is in all of our interest to see the achievement a full, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts.”
