Ankara – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday he did not expect U.S. President Barack Obama to use the word “genocide” in reference to the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One.
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Expectations had grown that Obama might fulfill a campaign pledge to describe the massacre of up to 1.5 million Christian Armenians as a genocide to mark the centennial of the killings, which began in 1915.
But news reports citing White House sources late on Tuesday said Obama would shun the term.
“I would not want Obama to use the word ‘genocide’, and I would not expect such a thing,” Erdogan told a joint press conference with Iraqi President Fuad Masum.
Erdogan has expressed condolences for the loss of Armenian life during World War One, but refuses to call the mass killings a genocide. Turkey denies that the Ottoman regime, which collapsed in 1923, deliberately sought to wipe out Armenians and says Muslims also died in the chaos of a global war.
Most Western scholars and about two dozen governments describe the massacres as a genocide, and more are following suit on the 100th anniversary.
Some of Turkey’s NATO partners are reluctant to risk a diplomatic backlash from a strategic partner that borders Syria, Iran and Iraq.
Germany is set to use the term genocide on April 24, and Austria did so this week.
In comments broadcast live, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday and asked her to intervene in parliament.
Pope Francis this month called the massacres a genocide, prompting Turkey to summon the Vatican’s envoy and recall its own.
He most likely wont, never fails to appease a Muslim, always finds an excuse or precident to embaress an Israeli.
Yeah, Obama is very sympathetic to the Muslim world, but not to anyone else. He basically hates all that America represents.
Does anyone really care or believe what he says
To the first two moronic comments above: Israel has for decades refused to categorize the murder of the Armenians as genocide because Israel and Turkey had good relations until very recently. Does that make people like Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon and Bibi “Muslim lovers”? Really, there seems to be no limit to the depths of frum ignorance and stupidity.
What do you expect from a president who refuses to call global terrorism “Muslim” terrorism?
This is one of those rare occasions when Erdogan is undeniably correct. Barack wouldn’t call terrorism “muslim” or even “islamic” and until very recently avoided using even the word “terrorism.” And Barack actually denied that Jews were the target of those beasts who singled out Jewish supermarket for an attack on erev shabbos. So the Armenians expect that Barack will acknowledge that they were the victims of the religion into which Barack (Barry?) was born, in which he was brought up and educated, and with which he still undoubtedly identifies, they are in for a huge disappointment.
I am aware that Barack doesn’t resent Armenians nearly as much as he hates Jews, but he will never side with them against muslims anyway.
Once again our president stays faithful to his Moslem roots.
reply to #7 -
ahh my friend, but u see, eisav sonei es Yaakov.
Bibi is a jew. Obama is not.
simple.
he doesn’t need any “anti-Semitic” comments to prove anything.