The ad, which ran on the back page of The Washington Post on Thursday, says there is no “academic consensus” that the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians should be labeled genocide.
The mass killings are considered by many — including most recently, the pope — to be the first genocide of the 20th century. The deaths occurred during a campaign carried out by the Ottoman Turks that included mass executions and so-called death marches through the Syrian desert that drove many to starvation.
But on Thursday, the Turkish American Steering Committee (TASC) — an organization that formed to dissuade Congress and the White House from officially recognizing the Armenian genocide — ran a full-page ad in The Post claiming there was "no academic consensus" on how to label the mass killings.
BuzzFeed News
The open letter, addressed to President Obama and the U.S. Congress, goes on to state that "a substantial number" of scholars have declined to use the genocide label, "instead finding a multitude of causes of suffering with widely varying outcomes" for the Ottoman Armenians.
Turkey has long argued that activists have seized on the calamity surrounding the end of World War I to inflate the number of Armenians killed and the circumstances of their deaths.
"One hundred years ago, a brutal war started neither by Turks nor Armenians cost the Ottoman Armenians, the Ottoman Turks and many other groups to dearly," the letter states.
The TASC ad, which it also posted on Facebook, goes on to call for a "peace and solidarity walk" Friday starting at the White House and ending at the Turkish embassy.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1KbhGyp
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