Big — Biden is about to officially recognize the Armenian genocide.https://t.co/LMLTGEQ3DA
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) April 21, 2021
Since rumors of such acknowledgement go back as far as I can remember, I’ll believe it when it happens, but I hope President Biden will finally make it happen. From the Boston Globe (Boston has a large Armenian-American community):
More than a century after the Ottoman Empire’s killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenian civilians, President Joe Biden is preparing to declare that the atrocities were an act of genocide, according to officials familiar with the internal debate. The action would signal that the American commitment to human rights outweighs the risk of further fraying the US alliance with Turkey.
Biden is expected to announce the symbolic designation on Saturday, the 106th anniversary of the beginning of what historians call a yearslong and systematic death march that the predecessors of modern Turkey started during World War I. He would be the first sitting American president to do so, although Ronald Reagan made a glancing reference to the Armenian genocide in a 1981 written statement about the Holocaust, and both the House and the Senate approved measures in 2019 to make its recognition a formal matter of US foreign policy.
At least 29 other countries have taken similar steps — mostly in Europe and the Americas, but also Russia and Syria, Turkey’s political adversaries.
A US official with knowledge of the administration’s discussions said Biden had decided to issue the declaration, and others across the government and in foreign embassies said it was widely expected…
… Turkish officials have been bracing for the genocide declaration ever since Biden committed to it during his presidential campaign, and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned earlier this week that it would set back the already strained relationship between the two North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.
“Statements that have no legal binding will have no benefit, but they will harm ties,” Cavusoglu said in an interview with the Turkish broadcaster Haberturk. “If the United States wants to worsen ties, the decision is theirs.”
The legal definition of genocide was not accepted until 1946, and officials and experts said Biden’s declaration would not carry any tangible penalties beyond humiliating Turkey and tainting its history with an inevitable comparison to the Holocaust…
I wonder if Biden will do this then finally talk to Erdogan soon after. Seems counterintuitive, but I wouldn’t rule it out. https://t.co/srP86XWAvy
— Nahal Toosi (@nahaltoosi) April 22, 2021
Foreign (& Also American) Affairs Open Thread: Acknowledging A GenocidePost + Comments (28)