Last Tuesday, President Obama called for “a full, frank and just acknowledgement” by the Turkish government that this year marks a century following what Obama called the “massacres of Armenians.” Beginning on April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Turks ordered the deportation of Christian Armenians for fear of their potential alliance with Russia during World War I, leading to the deaths of some 1.5 million. However, despite a 2008 campaign promise, Obama refused to use the term “genocide” to describe the event. According to an April 21 New York Times article, this is largely due to fear of alienating NATO ally Turkey, which has historically denied the event was a genocide. Last Sunday, Pope Francis expressed that the atrocities in Armenia describe “the first genocide of the 20th century.” How do you react to Obama’s decision to not call the massacres of Armenians “genocide,” and what effect do you think that decision has on setting international precedent for what is and isn’t considered genocide?

Prof. Leigh Swigart (PAX)
The 1951 Genocide Convention has been ratified by most of the world’s nations, including the U.S. in 1988. The understanding of what constitutes genocide, and the critical element of intent underlying it, has been subsequently articulated by the UN International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, although not without some inconsistencies or challenges. The refusal by some world leaders to use the “g-word” should be understood for what it is—the playing out of realpolitik to maintain relations with strategic allies or to avoid an obligation to take action in the face of atrocities (think “Darfur” here). It is perhaps most important to acknowledge the extent of the loss of Armenian life in 2015 and afterward, which President Obama has done. The “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, recently explored at a Brandeis conference, calls for international intervention if a sovereign state cannot protect its own population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity. Turkish Armenians were clearly subject to one or more of these acts, whether or not the term “genocide” is used.
Prof. Leigh Swigart (PAX) is the director of Programs in International Justice and Society at the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. 

Prof. Jonathan D. Sarna (NEJS) ’75
“It appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion,” Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, wrote to his superiors in 1915 concerning the Armenian massacres.  Some three decades later, amid the horrors of the Holocaust, Raphael Lemkin coined a new word for what had been done to the Armenians and what was then being done to the Jews.  The word was “genocide.”  National interests connected to relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan explain why President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have both been reluctant to use the “g-word” to characterize the Armenian massacres. But national interests, in this case as in so many others, conflict with values that we all hold dear. Regardless of what terms our leaders may employ, the rest of us should not labor under any illusions. The policy of “race extermination” employed against the Armenians paved the way for subsequent genocides. We need to remember the Armenian genocide if we truly mean what we say by “never again.”
Prof. Jonathan D. Sarna (NEJS) ’75 is Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish history. 
Rebecca Ottinger ’15
Given the current implications of using or not using the word “genocide” to describe mass atrocities, it is ridiculous to me that the United States would stray away. President Obama agrees that there was a mass killing, and is protecting our country from potentially severing relations in the Middle East, that if broken, could cause a major shift in alliances and power of the United States. But, that may be what needs to happen. Acknowledging a genocide should not be side-stepped by monetary or political gains. I am aware that there is plenty I do not know about the (inferred) ramifications if Obama uses the word, but those ties that will be broken are worth breaking if we want to live in a world that places human rights over economy. If our political ties sever, it reflects on the ideals and priorities of our relations, and they may need to be reexamined.
Rebecca Ottinger ’15 is the publicist for Brandeis STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition. She is also of Armenian-Jewish ancestry.

Samuel Chakmakjian ’17
Though it saddens me to say this, having grown up aware of this conflict, I’m no longer surprised.  When President Obama goes back on his word, and year after year avoids the word “genocide” to describe the government-ordered, calculated and systemic  extermination of my people, we are simply reminded that the world does not value our lives the same way that it values the lives of others.  America’s “interests” in the Middle East make it necessary to maintain good relations, and therefore access to military bases in southern Turkey.  Essentially, oil and war are more important than the survival of an ethnoreligious minority. Oil and war are more important than American citizens. My great-grandmother, an Armenian Genocide survivor herself was still alive when I was little.  She loved America because she knew she would have been martyred with the rest of her village without it.  I shudder to think of how disgraced she would feel by the United States’ denial of her suffering today.
Samuel Chakmakjian ’17 is of Armenian ancestry.