President Barack Obama declined to call the 1915 massacre of Armenians a genocide for the eighth consecutive year, outraging many in the Armenian community in Southern California as they prepare for Armenian Remembrance Day.
Obama issued a statement about Armenian Remembrance Day, acknowledging in part, “one and a half million Armenian people were deported, massacred, and marched to their deaths in the final days of the Ottoman empire.”
The statement was 403 words long, but was missing one key word: Genocide.
The U.S. has never applied the label of genocide mainly because Turkey is considered an ally in the war against terror and allows the U.S. to maintain military bases there. Source
During the genocide, which began in 1915, 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire, which is modern-day Turkey.
