Issue date: 10/15/07 Section: Editorial/Opinion

Here's a quick question for you history buffs out there - do you know when and where, in a two year period, up to 1.5 million people of a single ethnic group were systematically killed? Would it help if you knew it was sometime in the 20th century during a World War? Maybe if you knew it happened in a modern day European country?

Give up? It's not your fault you don't know. In fact, if you don't, that's exactly what the U.S. and Turkish governments want to happen. The mass killings in question are known as the Armenian Genocide, which occurred from 1915 to 1917 in the Ottoman Empire - modern day Turkey. While many in the historical and political community have over the years recognized the killings of the Armenians during this period as a full-fledged genocide, there still exists a culture of denial between the United States and Turkey about the tragedy. Now the Turkish government is using recent attempts to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide to excuse their severance of ties with the United States while preparing itself for a possible invasion into northern Iraq to stamp out Kurdish rebels, who Turkey has been fighting since 1984. Turkey's actions should not frighten us from calling a genocide a genocide; their reasons for their actions run deeper than just the threat of recognition for the Armenian Genocide and only serve as a distraction for doing what is right for the Armenian people.

Though many presidents, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford, have made reference to the Armenian Genocide, they only describe it as a "tragedy" or "a crime against humanity," but never what it was - genocide. It seems our current president will follow suit; on October 10, almost immediately after the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a non-binding resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide, the Bush administration let it be known they would not support it. The resolution calls for the president to "accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation" of Armenians as a genocide in his annual message commemorating the killings. Members of the administration reacted quickly, claiming it was a step in the wrong direction in regard to relations with Turkey. The Turkish government removed its ambassador to the United States on October 11, signaling their continued disapproval with the idea of calling the massacre of the Armenians a genocide. Bush himself responded by saying the resolution was "not the right response to these mass killings."

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