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Joe Biden has become the first incumbent U.S. president to refer to the mass murder of Armenians a century ago in what is now Turkey as genocide, in an announcement that would likely cause more friction among Washington in Ankara.
Discussing the announcement, which was launched by the White House on the occasion of Armenia’s Remembrance Day, a senior administration official said the recognition was aimed at “honoring the victims” and not “attributing it.” it’s not her fault. “
Biden called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday to inform him of the announcement in advance, an administration official said. A reading in the White House of the call between Biden and Erdogan, which was their first official contact, did not mention this part of the conversation, but said the two leaders would hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit. ‘NATO in June.
Biden’s recognition comes after a markedly cooler period for relations between Washington and Ankara following disputes over Turkey’s purchase of an advanced Russian anti-aircraft system designed to shoot down NATO planes and over the accusation by US federal lenders against the Turkish state lender. Halkbank for allegedly violating sanctions against Iran.
A Biden administration official said the call between the two leaders was “very professional”.
“The two leaders have a long history, they worked very closely together during the Obama-Biden administration,” said the official, who added that there are “a very large number of issues” in which Washington and Ankara could work. closely, along with “A number of known differences. . . it needs to be addressed ”.
Erdogan has said he wants to “turn a new page” with the United States and Europe, two of Turkey’s most important trading partners, as the country aims to attract investment in its $ 717 billion economy and curb inflation and inflation. atur.
Most historians and nearly 30 countries judge the assassination of 1.5 million Christian Armenians as of 1915 as state-orchestrated genocide. Turkey claims that both Muslims and Christians died during the chaos of World War I and the consequent collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Fearing that they would side with enemy Russia, Armenian Christians were rounded up and killed or marched from their former homeland in some parts of present-day Turkey to the Syrian desert, where they starved to death. The campaign, as well as those against ethnic Greeks and Syrian Christians, helped forge a more homogeneous nation when the Turkish republic was established in 1923 from the ashes of the multicultural Ottoman Empire.
Former US presidents have fled the label of genocide, aware of the risks it would pose to the strategic relationship with Turkey, where the US operates an air base. A Biden official said the US still recognized Turkey as “a critical ally of NATO.”
Still, Biden has said he will pursue a values-based foreign policy and has vowed during his presidential campaign to recognize genocide as part of a commitment to defending “universal rights.” Both houses of Congress passed resolutions in 2019 classifying the killings as genocide and last month nearly 40 senators from both sides called on Biden to do the same.
For most Turks, acknowledging genocide would challenge the myths and founding leaders of their nation and amounts to admitting a historical lie. While in recent years Erdogan has expressed his condolences to Armenians for the loss of lives, he has also attacked foreign governments calling for the genocide of the massacre, recalling ambassadors and canceling trade agreements.
Today there are less than 60,000 ethnic Armenians left in Turkey, mostly in Istanbul, and they are sporadically targeted for hate crimes, such as church vandalism. In 2007, Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish newspaper editor, was assassinated outside his office after calling for reconciliation between Turks and Armenians.
Turkey’s strong support for Azerbaijan in last year’s war with Armenia highlighted how historical divisions continue to shape Ankara’s policy in the region. Ankara supplied weapons and, according to the UN, Syrian mercenaries to help its next ally Azerbaijan reclaim much of the disputed territory that Armenia had won in a war in the 1990s.
Erdogan has since discussed restoring relations with landlocked and impoverished Armenia, with which Turkey has no diplomatic ties after sealing the border in 1993 over the conflict with Azerbaijan. The news has said that Turkey could now retaliate against the recognition of genocide by the Biden administration, punishing Armenia and filing any approach.
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