The Trump administration has attracted anger by refusing to recognize the Armenian genocide as a “genocide.” But why is this issue so controversial? Why does every president shy away from stating the obvious?

This issue sits at the intersection of historic suffering and contemporary politics. But regardless of how you want to refer to it, the Armenian genocide or atrocity that began in 1915 led to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians — it is likely that more than one million lost their lives in total. These deaths were not accidental, but rather a direct result of an intentional campaign by the Ottoman Empire.