Boston (AP) -- The Anti-Defamation League on Tuesday reversed itself and called a World War I-era massacre of Armenians a genocide, a change that comes days after the ADL fired its New England regional director for taking the same stance.
ADL President Abe Foxman's statement that the killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire were "indeed tantamount to genocide" follows a week of controversy in which critics questioned whether an organization dedicated to remembering Holocaust victims could remain credible without acknowledging the Armenian genocide.
The New York-based organization had called the deaths of up 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of Muslim Turks an atrocity, but stopped short of saying it was genocide -- a planned extermination of the Christian Armenian minority.
Last week, the town of Watertown, which has a large Armenian population, withdrew from the ADL's "No Place for Hate" anti-bigotry program because of the organization's refusal to call the massacres a genocide. The ADL also fired regional director Andrew Tarsy after he said he agreed the killings were genocide.
The town of Acton and Newton were also considering whether to break ties with the ADL, and several Jewish organizations signed a letter urging the organization to acknowledge the killings as genocide.
In a statement Tuesday, Foxman said he consulted with historians and his friend and Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel after the controversy began, and became convinced genocide had occurred.
Nurten Ural, president of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, said she was disappointed by the ADL's decision. Suffering was shared by both Turks and Armenians during a time of war, and calling it genocide by the Turks is like being accused of a crime you didn't commit, she said.
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