The Turkish Foreign Ministry defined some wording of the US annual message, dedicated to the 1915 massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, as unacceptable.

This year's message has been written by President Barack Obama himself.

During his election campaign, Obama used the term genocide when referring to the killings of Armenians by Turks in World War I, but refrained from using the term in his address.

Despite that, Ankara, which denies committing genocide, is unhappy because the US President described the killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians as "one of the great atrocities of the 20th century" and stated that 1,5 Armenians were slaughtered.

Turkey says the number of victims is anywhere between 300 000 and 500 000.

The Armenian community in the US, on their part, strongly criticized Obama for being lenient towards Turkey, a NATO member and key American ally in the Muslim world, and for failing to fulfill the promise of his election campaign to admit that the massacre was indeed genocide.

In a January 2008 statement on his campaign website, Obama wrote: "The Armenian genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence. America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides."

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!