City Councilmember Paul Krekorian, the first Armenian-American elected to city government in Los Angeles, responded to President Barack Obama’s refusal to refer to the mass killing and deportation of 1.5 million Armenians beginning in 1915 in what is today Turkey as a genocide, Asbarez reported.

Paul Krekorian said:

“America has always been a beacon of hope to people throughout the world who yearn for freedom and seek to escape tyranny and oppression. It is especially shameful that our government yields its own freedom to a foreign power, especially one that bears responsibility for one of the most grotesque examples of tyranny and oppression in world history. Turkey’s paranoid obsession with denying its moral responsibility for the Armenian Genocide is an outrage in the modern world. By allowing Turkey’s leaders to decide how we can or cannot speak about historical truth, our own government fails to uphold its own fundamental principles of freedom. Turkey’s supposed importance as an ‘ally’ is a miserable excuse, especially since that government has so often failed to support American military and foreign policy needs, and even now is failing to take reasonable steps to stop Islamist outrages in Syria and elsewhere in the region. Our country was born when we stood up against the mightiest nation on Earth—certainly we should now have the strength and moral courage to stand up to Turkish denialists.”