NNY residents with ties to Armenia say resolution on genocide will stall

MASSENA — Although a congressional committee last week approved a resolution branding the World War I-era killing of Armenians as genocide, area residents with family roots in Armenia don't expect official recognition by the U.S. government to go much further.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee endorsed the resolution by a 23-22 vote and sent it to the full House, where its fate is uncertain.

But Massena resident Walter V. Basmajian, who had relatives who were killed, said he doesn't believe the resolution will go any further. His father, he said, escaped and went to Argentina, and other families made their way to the United States and Canada.

"The president won't recognize it," Mr. Basmajian said. "Obama said during his campaign he was going to recognize the genocide and he never did it. Now he denies doing it. He won't do it. Congress is sitting on it. We don't have the population for the votes. There's a lot of Armenians here and in Massachusetts and California and that's about it. We don't have enough power."

An Associated Press report said historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks during World War I. That was widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.

But Turkish officials have denied it was a genocide, instead saying the toll had been inflated and those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

President Obama last April failed to brand the killings as genocide in an annual White House statement on the day marking Armenian remembrance.

Mr. Basmajian said, "They didn't want to call it genocide. (But) that's what happened. They say a lot of Turks were fighting. They say they lost a lot of people too and they won't consider it a genocide."

Turkey withdrew its U.S. ambassador, Namik Tan, last week after the congressional committee approved the resolution. Turkey also warned that the resolution's approval could jeopardize cooperation with the United States and could set back negotiations aimed at opening the border between Turkey and Armenia that has been closed since 1994.

Mr. Basmajian said that's why the United States won't consider passing the measure in the long run.

"A lot of little countries did recognize it," he said, but if the United States goes along the same lines, Mr. Basmajian said, there would be retaliation from Turkey.

Ike Bogosian took a trip to Armenia and Turkey two years ago, and he said that while citizens in Turkey were willing to admit what happened, the government will never do that.

"They just don't want to do it. They know what happened. We know what happened," Mr. Bogosian said.

He said that during his trip to Turkey, he went to a church in the village where his father lived.

"I was there and those people apologized to me. It's all political," he said. "They know what it was."

Mr. Bogosian said members of the U.S. government, including President Obama, have admitted it was genocide.

"They all say it just to get in. Then they just forget about it, twist it around and say it's not the right time. When is the right time? They either did or they didn't do it," he said.