Biden becomes first US president to recognise Armenian genocide
Foreign Policy,Foreign Affairs,Joe Biden,Armenia,Turkey
Joe Biden has become the first US president declare formal recognition of the Armenian genocide, more than a century after the mass killings by Ottoman troops and opening a rift between the new US administration and Ankara.
“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 exchange.
