“The American people honour all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today,” Biden said in a statement on Saturday.
“Beginning on 24 April 1915 with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination.”
Biden called the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Friday, to inform him that the US would make the designation on the 106th anniversary of the genocide. The conversation was reported to be tense and the issue was not mentioned in official accounts of the conversation.
President Biden on Saturday formally recognized as a genocide
the killing of more than 1 million Armenians starting in 1915, a label long used by historians but resisted by U.S. presidents to avoid angering Turkey, an important ally.
The decision is a victory for Armenian diaspora communities, notably in Southern California, that have spent decades fighting for such recognition only to be repeatedly disappointed by previous presidents. It will buoy Armenia as well, with the announcement coming months after the nation lost territory to its neighbor Azerbaijan in a bloody conflict over a disputed border region.
“Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” Biden said.
President Biden s Armenian Genocide Reaffirmation Shows America At Its Best
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WASHINGTON, April 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ On the 106th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, U.S. President Joe Biden officially affirmed that the massacre of the 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish authorities between 1915 and 1923 was an act of genocide. This affirmation marks a watershed moment in U.S. history, as it reaffirms what has been U.S. policy since the creation of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, as reflected in the U.S. brief filed with the International Court of Justice, reported the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly). It is also a categorical rejection of a decades-long, well-funded denial campaign by the Turkish government and a signature moment for human rights.
Biden recognizes as genocide the 19th century killing of 1.5M Armenians by Ottoman Turks Deirdre Shesgreen, USA TODAY
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WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Saturday formally recognized the systematic killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923 as an act of genocide, a long-sought declaration among Armenian-Americans that could further strain U.S.-Turkey relations. Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination, Biden said in a statement on Saturday, marking Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. He emphasized the need to recognize and remember such atrocities so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history.
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