On April 24th, the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, President Trump called the mass killing of Armenians from 1915-1923 "one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century." He also recognized Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, for working "to ensure atrocities like this would not be repeated." However, Trump did not designate the massacre as a genocide. This was made official on December 17th when the Trump administration released a statement explaining that they do not view the mass killings as a genocide.
On the contrary, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution on December 12th to name the massacre as a genocide by the Ottoman Empire, and the House of Representatives passed a resolution recognizing the genocide on October 29th.
So why won’t the president acknowledge the massacre of Armenians as a genocide? Morals versus ethics.
The resolutions passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives outraged Turkey, who denies that the killings constitute a genocide. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the resolution was damaging to US-Turkey relations, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to close two US military bases in Turkey. He warned the US not to “take irreparable steps in our relations." As you can see, if the president acknowledged the killings as a genocide, we could lose Turkey as our ally.
Turkey is such an important ally to the US because they are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and they are located in the Middle East–a critical region for the US. Like the US, Turkey is making efforts to defeat terrorists like ISIS, and they opened a military base to the US in order to help our efforts in destroying ISIS.
This ties to our study of morals versus ethics. It is morally right for the president to designate the massacre as a genocide to demonstrate the extent of the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians. However, it is ethically wrong. It is the president’s duty to do what is best for his country and ensure national security–and that means keeping Turkey as an ally.
To me it is morally right to classify the killings as a genocide. Regardless of Turkey's ally status they should own up to their mistakes. By Trump disregarding the genocide he is corrupting the beliefs of our countries foundation. It seems dishonorable to me to overlook this awful history just for our countries own greed and reaping the benefits we get from being Turkey's ally. In a way we are giving up our "moral high ground".
ReplyDeleteI agree with both sides. Part of me believes that Trump finally did the right thing for once. Instead of doing what was going to benefit himself, he chose what was going to benefit the country. If we lost Turkey as an ally, who knows what violence may start. On the other hand, I agree with Evelyn that it may have been wrong of him to hide what has happened in the past. For years and years, we have continued to ignore the fact that it was a genocide. Instead of America being the bigger person and admitting to the fact, we have stayed in the dark about it in order to do what will benefit ourselves. This statement could be good or selfish.
ReplyDelete