Omar Faces Blowback After Voting PRESENT Concerning Turkey's Genocide

It's a common fact that 100 years ago the Muslims of Ottoman Turkey empire went into Armenia and killed over one million Christians.  They deny it, deny it, deny it in hopes that if they keep denying it that the facts will eventually go away. 

Turkey has now gone into Syria and is attacking the Kurds with a certain amount of ruthlessness, even though I believe Erdogan told Trump that he wouldn't.  Regardless of exactly HOW this all came to fruition, the US Congress voted to recognize Turkey's genocide of the Armenians.  Both Democrats and Republicans could see the facts and voted overwhelmingly to condemn Turkey over this fact.

But there were three that voted PRESENT.   One would be the Muslim from MN, Ilhan Omar.

But it was Omar's vote that drew the dismay of Armenian advocacy groups and political organizations.

Omar's "votes and actions ... do not represent the best of American or Muslim values," said Van Krikorian, the co-chair of the Armenian Assembly of America. "Innocent people were and are being slaughtered, and there is a universal need to defend the victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing, not to stand with or defer to the murderers."

Krikorian said his organization would request a meeting with the freshman Democrat to "clarify her views."

In the statement to CNN on Tuesday night, Omar said she believes "accountability for human rights violations — especially ethnic cleansing and genocide — is paramount."

Turkey has long disputed the description of the killings as a genocide, insisting that the death toll has been inflated and the people who died were victims of a civil war.

"It worries us," Hamparian said in a phone interview, referring to Omar's statement and its implications. "It reminds us of talking points from Ankara."

The Armenian Council of America, a California-based group, went even further, accusing Omar of using "official genocide denialist rhetoric to justify her silence" and suggesting that the lawmaker, who regularly speaks out on issues of human rights, was behaving hypocritically in this case.

Omar also faced blowback from Boston Celtics player Enes Kanter, a Swiss-born Turk who has been vocal in his criticisms of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Here;  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ilhan-omar-faces-blowback-after-voting-present-armenian-genocide-resolution-n1073991