Washington, D.C. – President Donald J. Trump issued a remembrance statement on the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide that employed a dictionary definition of genocide similar to many of his predecessors. This year’s presidential April 24th statement does not constitute a change in U.S. policy since the legislative and judicial branches have already clearly affirmed the historical record and with Presidents Ronald Reagan and President Joe Biden explicitly invoking genocide in their observances.
President Trump’s statement read in part: “Today we commemorate the Meds Yeghern, and honor the memories of those wonderful souls…Beginning in 1915, one and a half million Armenians were exiled and marched to their deaths in the final years of the Ottoman Empire…As we honor the memory of those lost, my Administration remains committed to safeguarding religious freedom and protecting vulnerable minorities.”
“The U.S. record and policy on the Armenian Genocide is clear,” said Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny. “We remain steadfast in working together to prevent a second Genocide against the Armenian people, as Azerbaijan continues to threaten Armenia’s security, and as 23 known Armenian hostages remain unjustly held in Baku. The Assembly, therefore, strongly urges the Administration to implement President Trump’s pledge last year to protect Armenian Christians who ‘were horrifically persecuted and forcibly displaced in Artsakh,'” Ardouny emphasized.
It is a well-established fact that the lack of international response to the commission of genocide only emboldens criminal regimes, and the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh and the abuse of the Armenian captives by Azerbaijan is a continuation of the Young Turk policies of the 20th century. Everyone is aware of the lesson Adolf Hitler drew from the Armenian Genocide when he stated: “who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” and by that license, embarked upon global war and carried out the Holocaust. Azerbaijan’s president Aliyev intoned the same viral language when he boasted as he attacked the Armenians of Artsakh that “we are driving them away like dogs.” The Armenian Genocide and its ongoing denial have real consequences just as Holocaust denial and antisemitism and other forms of racism do.
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The American record on the Armenian Genocide has been abundantly clear. The historical evidence is clear and overwhelming, beginning with Ambassador Morgenthau, who first alerted the world to the horrors that were unfolding by cabling back to the State Department that a “campaign of race extermination” was underway. Henry Morgenthau, who was the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916 further stated: “the great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the suffering of the Armenian race in 1915.”
Thereupon in May 1915, the Allied Powers at war against Germany, Austria and Turkey jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time another government of committing crimes “against humanity and civilization.” While in 1916, a Senate Concurrent Resolution was agreed to and called upon “the President of the United States [Woodrow Wilson]…to designate a day on which the citizens of this country may give expression to their sympathy by contributing funds now being raised for the relief of the Armenians,” who at the time were enduring “starvation, disease and untold suffering.”
Major General James G. Harbord, who served as General John J. Pershing’s Chief of Staff during World War I, led an American Military Mission to Armenia and submitted his report from the U.S.S. Martha Washington in 1919, which read in part: “mutilation, violation, torture and death have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages.”
Fully aware of the mistreatment of the Armenian people, in 1920, President Woodrow Wilson stated that “the sympathy for Armenia among our people has sprung from the untainted consciences, pure Christian faith, and an earnest desire to see Christian people everywhere succored in their time of suffering…”
The same awareness prompted Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer and Holocaust survivor to coin the term “genocide,” and who repeatedly cited the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust as examples of the crime of genocide. It was due to his selfless effort that the United Nations adopted the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. When in 1951, the U.S. government submitted a written statement to the International Court of Justice that specifically highlighted: “The Roman persecution of the Christians, the Turkish massacres of Armenians, the extermination of millions of Jews and Poles by the Nazis are outstanding examples of the crime of genocide.” In another example, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1993, after review of documents pertaining to the policy record of the United States, noted that the assertion on the ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian Genocide “contradicted longstanding United States policy and was eventually retracted.”
Ronald Reagan was the first U.S. president who used the word genocide to describe the Armenian atrocities during his Holocaust Remembrance Statement on April 22, 1981: “Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it – and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples – the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.” Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, all issued Remembrance Day statements on April 24, along with President Barack Obama who referred to 1915 by its Armenian designation as the Meds Yeghern. President Joe Biden during his tenure directly invoked the Armenian Genocide in every April 24th statement.
During the first Trump Administration, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly adopted a resolution (H.Res.296) affirming the U.S. record on the Armenian Genocide by a vote of 405-11 in October 2019, and the Senate adopted a companion resolution in December 2019 by unanimous consent. All 50 U.S. States have also recognized the Armenian Genocide through resolutions and proclamations.
As the Assembly commemorates the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and reflects on the tragic losses and continued denialism, we also recommit our efforts to help advocate for security and peace for the Armenian people.
Established in 1972, the Armenian Assembly of America is the largest Washington-based nationwide organization promoting public understanding and awareness of Armenian issues. The Assembly is a strictly non-partisan, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt membership organization.
Armenian Assembly of America