OIL FACTOR AND MILITARY BASES IN TURKEY EXPLAIN US UNCERTAINTY OVER ARMENIAN GENOCIDE, US NEWSPAPER WRITES

PanARMENIAN.Net - The reasons of the US uncertain stand in the issue of recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Turkey lie in oil and military bases in Turkey, "San Francisco Chronicle" newspaper considers. At that the article says the US not always denied the Armenian Genocide, "Arminfo" agency reported. Thus, e.g. in June 1998 an association of scholars studying the Armenian Genocide qualified the massacres of Armenians as the first genocide of the 20-th century. Two years later, 126 scientists studying holocaust, among whom was Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, published a petition in "New York Times", declaring the Armenian Genocide is an irrefutable fact. Before World War I Americans were getting exact information about crimes committed against Armenian people. In 1890-s American reformers launched a human rights campaign directed against repeated mass crimes being committed against Armenians, and in September 1895 "New York Times" published an article titled "Another Armenian Genocide." Only in 1915 American newspapers published 145 articles on extermination of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire, which were qualifying those crimes as "recurrent" and "government-organized." In 1918 Theodore Roosevelt called the Armenian Genocide "the greatest war crime." In May 1915 the allies called what happened to the Armenian population of Turkey "a crime against humanity." Thus, according to the article, the further uncertainty of the US in the issue of the Armenian Genocide was introduced by the oil factor and the US military bases in Turkey. After the World War I a US oil campaign in the Middle East resulted in a union with the Turkish Republic. During the Cold War Turkey got more opportunities for denying the Armenian Genocide, as it became a strategic center for the US and NATO military bases in the region.