During his 2008 run for office, President Obama pledged to recognize the Armenian Genocide, the mass killing of over 1.5 million ethnic Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and other ethnic groups by the Ottoman Empire. The 100th anniversary of the genocide on April 24 marked the seventh year that he has not fulfilled this pledge.

Many countries, including the USA, have followed Turkey in refusing to refer to the mass killings of 1915 as a “genocide.” This standpoint is disputed by the majority of historians, who consider it to be the first genocide of the modern era. In fact, the term “genocide” was first coined by a historian, Raphael Lemkin, to describe the Armenian catastrophe in particular.

And I can understand why Obama hesitates to recognize the genocide. America has two military bases in Turkey which proved to be instrumental in the beginning of the Iraq war and are still strategically significant. And modern Turkey denies the slaughter despite its occurring during the reign of the Ottoman Empire. So at its heart, Turkey’s denial of the genocide stems from national pride.

However, that is not to say that the problem must be dealt with by Turkey alone. We as a country should push for Obama to recognize it, so that he and other world leaders might pressure Turkey to recognize it. On a personal level, the widespread denial of the genocide disturbs me because of the precedent it sets. Governments will often locally edit their accepted history, drawing out their citizens’ chauvinism to support their actions. Textbooks are edited to become agreeable, authorities publicly dispute statistics and certain opinions become verboten. While censorship is already unacceptable on a cultural scale, the multinational denial of the Armenian Genocide is the first of its kind. No other issue comes to mind where one country’s censorship extends well beyond its borders.

A few nations have owned up to their crimes. Germany apologized for instigating WWI, as well as for the actions of the Nazis in WWII. America apologized for the wartime internment policies against the Japanese. Spain even apologized to former Jewish citizens for the Inquisition. But there are still several atrocities that have been denied or forgotten – such as the Rape of Nanking, the Rwandan Genocide and Korean comfort women. And although recognizing the Armenian Genocide would only be one step by one country for one atrocity, it would set an American precedent of seeking the truth. As it is now, America is an international bystander.