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Christian victims of Ottoman genocide

By

The Washington Times

6:48 p.m., Wednesday, February 9, 2011

President Obama had promised to support the demand for a congressional resolution on the Armenian genocide (“Round two,” Geopolitics, Feb. 7). I have great empathy for the Armenians and the genocide they suffered in Asia Minor by the Ottoman Turks.

However, I feel strongly that reference to the genocide should also acknowledge the murder of many Christians, which numbered approximately 1.8 million Armenians, 1.7 million Greeks and 750,000 Syrians. These estimates were given at the 75th anniversary of the destruction of Smyrna in Washington, on Sunday, Sept. 7, 1997, an event I attended.
In 1918, then-U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau wrote: “The Armenians are not the only subject people in Turkey which have suffered from this policy of making Turkey exclusively the country of the Turks. The story which I have told about the Armenians I could also tell with certain modifications about the Greeks and the Syrians. Indeed, the Greeks were the first victims of this nationalizing idea.”
As long as America’s president - from whichever political party - refuses to recognize the vast slaughter of Christians in Asia Minor, nothing will ever be done. As of today, not only have the Turks refused to apologize for the carnage they perpetrated, they haven’t even acknowledged that it happened.
STELLA L. JATRAS
Camp Hill, Pa.

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