"As a candidate, Barack Obama repeatedly promised to refer to the almost century-old massacre of Armenians in Turkey as a genocide. But since becoming president, Obama has twice passed up opportunities to do so," the Washington Post has reported after the latest presidential statement on the tragedy of 1915.
Some say that the wording of Obama demonstrates the rising power of Turkey and the fall of Armenian diaspora, as well as the insignificance of Armenia. I don't think that it's totally accurate.
I believe that Obama is an honest guy. If he really believed that it was a genocide, he would tell it now. He doesn't do it, because he knows that his rhetoric in the past was just a method to woo Armenian American voters.
I won't be surprised if Obama calls it a genocide in 2011, right before his candidacy for a second term. It won't change a thing anyway. This word will remain as a piece of politics, not history.
The truth will always triumph in the long term: Simply, it was not a genocide. It was an irresponsible self-defence for the Ottoman Empire.
And it's still something that today's Turkey should apologize to, because many Ottoman officials have been committing a war crime by not taking enough steps to protect the deported Armenians all through the way, even though hundreds of them were clearly collaborating with an invading enemy who kept equipping them with weapons during World War I.
