Reality TV star Kim Kardashian West is urging President Obama to use the word “genocide” to describe the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.
“I would like President Obama to use the word ‘genocide.’ It’s very disappointing he hasn’t used it as President,” she wrote in an op-ed for Time published Friday
“We thought it was going to happen this year. I feel like we’re close — but we’re definitely moving in the right direction,” added Kardashian, who is of Armenian heritage.
{mosads}The 100-year anniversary of the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks has sparked controversy with Armenian civil rights groups and lawmakers resuming their push to have the violence designated a genocide.
Turkey, though, a key U.S. ally, has strongly opposed any such efforts.
Kardashian said she doesn’t blame the event on current Turks but urged them to acknowledge their history and call the violence a genocide.
“It is not the fault of the people who live there now; it was 100 years ago on Friday,” she wrote. “I believe in moving on and looking toward a brighter future, but you can’t move on unless you acknowledge the past.”
A number of Armenian civil rights groups and lawmakers have urged the president to also use the term to describe the massacre.
Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) introduced a resolution to mark the deaths while urging Obama to call it a genocide.
“One hundred years ago, 1.5 million Armenian men, women, and children were killed by Ottoman Turks during the Armenian Genocide,” Menendez said in a statement.
“It is past time for this atrocity to be recognized for what it was: a targeted ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population.”
Obama called the event a “mass atrocity” during a statement released Thursday marking the anniversary, but didn’t use the word genocide. The administration has balked at using the word each year despite widespread calls.
National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said on Tuesday that the White House would mark the occasion in a way that is “in the interest of all parties.”