President Joe Biden on Saturday became the first US president to acknowledge the killing of more than a million Armenians by Ottoman Turks more than a century ago as genocide.
The White House released an official statement about it.
“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. 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,” Biden’s statement reads.
As DW reports, Biden’s step may harm the US-Turkey relations.
A day earlier, while having a phone conversation with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Biden asked him to understand his step.
