President Barack Obama launched a major outreach initiative to Islam on Monday, urging Muslims to join America in fighting common enemies.
And signaling the strategic importance of the U.S. alliance with this majority-Muslim country, the president made a sharp retreat from a campaign promise to press Turkey on the issue of Armenian genocide.
“Let me say this as clearly as I can: The United States is not at war with Islam,” Obama said. “In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical in rolling back a fringe ideology that people of all faiths reject.”
Obama came to Turkey at the end of a European tour of summits designed to restore ties to nations frustrated with American foreign policy, especially in Iraq.
In a closely watched address to the Turkish assembly, Obama continued a line he started in Europe, admitting American fallibility in an effort to rebuild ties with nations tired of America’s arrogance.
Obama, who downplayed his own family ties to Islam during last year’s presidential campaign, found them of greater use in the Turkish capital, telling a gathering of the Grand National Assembly that “the United States has been enriched by Muslim-Americans.
“Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country,” Obama said. “I know, because I am one of them.”
Obama, a Christian whose Kenyan father was Muslim, was raised partly in majority-Muslim Indonesia.
Praising Turkey’s recent advances in civil society, including the creation of a television station for the Kurds, Obama said minority rights are an important element of democracy.
“I say this as a president of a country that not too long ago made it hard for someone who looks like me to vote,” Obama said. “But it is precisely the capacity to change that enriches our countries.”
Obama backed off a campaign promise to pursue the issue of Armenian genocide with the Turks, and instead used his speech to compare Turkey’s history with the Armenians to America’s treatment of American Indians.
“History unresolved can be a heavy weight,” Obama said. “Each country must work through its past.”
During the presidential campaign, Obama was emphatic in his support of Armenians who demanded Turkish acknowledgment of the slaughter of a million Armenians from 1915-1923.
At the time, he strongly protested former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s firing of a former ambassador to Armenia over his use of the term “genocide” to describe Turkish aggression.
But once in Turkey, Obama took a different tack, saying his views are the same but that it’s up to the Turks and Armenians to work it out themselves.
“What I want to do is not focus on my views right now, but focus on the views of the Turkish and the Armenian people,” Obama said in a joint press conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gul. “If they can move forward and deal with a difficult and tragic history, then I think the entire world should encourage them.”
