Political Quotes

“Today we are commemorating the 79th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. This is the week when people around the world pause to remember the victims of the intentional genocide of the Armenian people in 1915-23. There are those who deny that this atrocity ever occurred. But there is an overwhelming and objectively undeniable body of historical documentation and eyewitness account proving beyond a doubt that the appalling events of 1915-23 occurred during the time of the Ottoman Empire. Because of systematic and intentional policies, up to 1.5 million Armenians perished. This commemoration is not intended as a condemnation of our ally, the Republic of Turkey. But our mutual interests with our NATO partner and our close friendship with, and respect for, the Turkish people are not reasons to rewrite or deny historical fact. The historical evidence that the Armenian people were the victim of a genocide is unambiguous. Indeed, the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, recognized the crimes committed by the Ottoman Empire. As I've discussed on this floor before, in a 1926 interview Ataturk himself stated that those responsible 'should have been made to account for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred.' Denying the events of 1915-23 is as offensive and corrupting as denying the Holocaust in the 1940's.”