Biden becomes first US president to recognise Armenian genocide

President had pledged during election campaign to make formal recognition

Joe Biden has become first US president to recognise the Armenian genocide, in a remembrance day statement.

The White House broke with previous administrations by using the phrase to describe the killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks, beginning in 1915.

“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,” said Mr Biden in the statement.

American presidents have long avoided using the term in order to not anger Turkey, a major ally in the region, but it was a campaign promise of Mr Biden’s.

Modern-day Turkey, which emerged from the Ottoman era, has always denied that a genocide took place.

And the president added: “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. 

“We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.”

And he concluded: “The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today,”

Presidents Obama and George W Bush had promised to recognise the genocide but instead referred to it as a “mass atrocity” or “mass killings.”

Ronald Reagan referred to it as a genocide but only in the context of a statement on the Holocaust.

In 2019 Congress passed a resolution to declare it was official US policy to recognise the Armenian genocide but Donald Trump refused to make a similar statement.

Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Mr Biden’s recognition of the genocide was based on “political motives.”

But it was welcomed by Armenian groups in the US.

“President Biden’s affirmation of the Armenian Genocide marks a critically important moment in the arc of history in defense of human rights,” said Bryan Ardouny, executive director of the Armenian Assembly of America.

“By standing firmly against a century of denial, President Biden has charted a new course.”