acknowledge the genocide of the Armenian people by the Turkish government in 1915

The government of Turkey has long waged a world-wide campaign to expunge the memory of the genocide of Armenians in which nearly 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, during World War I. While Pope Francis has acknowledged this tragedy, the United States, for foreign policy reasons, has not. A move in the Senate to call upon Turkey to recognize this stain on its history was stalled by vigorous lobbying efforts on behalf of the Turkish government.