Armenian News-NEWS.am presents below an abridged version of analyst Zuber Hewrami’s article, which ran in Rudaw newspaper published in the capital city of the Iraqi Kurdistan:

Almost one hundred years since an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Turks, the United States has yet to officially recognize the act as genocide.

Current US President Barack Obama in his 2008 election campaign vowed to label the tragedy “genocide." But as president, he has failed to recognize and use the term genocide.

Gregory Aftandilian, a specialist and senior fellow at the Center for National Policy in Washington, said the US is afraid of jeopardizing strategic US-Turkish ties, because Turkey has made it clear it will affect the bilateral relationship.

“Whenever this issue is raised in the US Congress the Turkish government puts pressure on people related to the defense industry and many US defense contractors actively lobby members of Capitol Hill to oppose the genocide resolution,” Aftandilian told.

He said business interests, lobbyists and individuals such as ex-secretaries of Defense or State get mobilized against this act of denial. He described that as a “shameful exercise.” 

Aftandilian said that the US National Archives in Washington DC have collected extensive evidence on the Armenian genocide and that US diplomats at the time described it as, “race extermination,” since the word genocide was not coined by then.

“If Turkey was smart enough it would’ve said these acts were committed by Ottomans and not the modern Turkish state and come clean,” said Aftandilian. “But in reality it is a big psychological issue for them as they don’t want to admit their ancestors committed these crimes.”

Dr. Peter Balakian, an expert on the Armenian genocide and professor of humanities at Colgate University in New York, says that passing bills and resolutions by foreign countries wouldn’t change the fact that a genocide had taken place.

“This issue has been clearly established by historical records and a complete and consensual assessment of scholars of genocide; and also by the man who coined the word genocide and conceived of the idea of genocide as a crime in international law, Raphael Lemkin,” Balakian told.

Dr. Gregory Stanton, former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and the author of The Eight Stages of Genocide, said that the US State Department and one president after another consider maintaining good relations with Turkey more important than telling the truth about the Armenian Genocide.

“The main lobbying groups behind the denial of the Armenian genocide are financed directly by the government of Turkey.  They hire high-priced Washington lawyers and lobbyists to beat back recognition of the truth about the Armenian Genocide by the US government,” he said.

Stanton said that there are more people of Armenian descent in the US than Turks. Therefore, “It may seem a bit strange that the US favors Turkey over Armenia.” 

Stanton said that The International Association of Genocide Scholars, whose membership includes all the major scholars on genocide in the world, has repeatedly voted unanimously that the massacres of the Armenians would be defined today as genocide under the Genocide Convention.