In response to your question in “Views on the News: Armenian Genocide” (Apr. 28):

When a U.S. Senator, Barack Obama claimed: “... the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence ...”

However, after becoming a President, he used all the possible euphemisms to avoid the ‘g-word’. 

Criteria defining a genocide are sharply set by Article II of the United Nations Convention No. 1021. 

According to the document, a genocide is an event that aims to destroy an ethnic, racial or religious group by at least one of the following: killing the members of the group, causing bodily or mental damage, inflicting conditions making the survival of the group impossible, preventing births among the group and forcibly transferring the children from one group to another group. 

As then - Sen. Obama said, all of these were used in 1914 to 1920 against Armenians. Interestingly, 43 US states have recognized the events as a genocide, and the process is ongoing (the latest were Hawaii, Vermont and  South Dakota all in 2015), and it looks like we will end up in a situation when all the 50 states, but not the Federal government, have recognized the fact. The reasons were given by the Prime Minister of Norway Erna Solberg: “We do not recognize it as a genocide, since it would threaten our relations with Turkey.” 

By using its political, economic and military power, Turkey pressures governments all over the world to avoid the reparations and restitutions inevitable in case of a recognition. 

However, considerable progress has been made during the recent years: France, Russia, Italy and many other governments and organizations (among them the EU) made official statements urging Turkey to recognize what they call an obvious fact. 

In the United States, the attitude of politicians has been mixed. President Gerald Ford was the first one to address the issue, while President Ronald Reagan condemned it as a crime ‘never to be forgotten.’ Still, most of the American political spectrum lies under the Turkish influence. 

Thus, what is considered a genocide according to the international law and what is officially recognized as one has little to do with facts and a lot to do with the political climate. 

As Albert Einstein said: “The international law exists only in textbooks for international law.”