Trump admin says doesn't recognize Armenian genocide

Duvar English

The Trump administration does not recognize the Ottoman Empire's treatment of Armenians as genocide despite the U.S. Senate passing a resolution on the matter, State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said in a statement on Dec. 17.

"The position of the administration has not changed. Our views are reflected in the President’s definitive statement on this issue from last April," Ortagus said.

In his April statement, Trump used the Armenian phrase “Meds Yeghem,” meaning “big massacres,” to describe the mass killings of Armenians in 1915.

The U.S. Senate on Dec. 12 unanimously passed a resolution that recognizes as a genocide the mass killings of Armenians a century ago, a move that infuriated Turkey.

The resolution asserts that it is U.S. policy to commemorate as genocide the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during the World War I. The Ottoman Empire was centered in present-day Turkey.

“It is the policy of the U.S to commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance,” says the resolution.

The resolution also rejects attempts to “enlist, engage, or otherwise associate” the U.S. government with denial of genocide.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were killed between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart. They say the mass killings amounted to “genocide.”

Turkey accepts that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War One, but contests the figures and denies that the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute a genocide.