The United States officially recognized the mass killings of ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the XNUMXth century as genocide. This is stated in the statement of the President of the country, Joe Biden, published on the website of the White House.
"Every hour on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died during the Armenian genocide during the Ottoman Empire, and we again pledge not to allow the repetition of such an atrocity. Beginning on April 24, 1915, when the Ottoman authorities arrested representatives of the Armenian intelligentsia and community leaders in Constantinople, one and a half million Armenians were deported, killed, or sent to die as part of the extermination campaign. We honor the memory of the victims of Meds Yeghern (from Armenian - "great crime", - ed.), so that the horrors of what happened will never be forgotten by history," said the head of the White House.
Turkey has already reacted sharply to this statement.
"Political opportunism is the greatest betrayal of peace and justice. We completely reject this explanation, the only basis of which is populism," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu wrote on Twitter.
Also, the presidents of Turkey and Azerbaijan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ilham Aliyev, held telephone talks and discussed the joint steps of the two countries against the background of US President Joe Biden's statement on the Armenian Genocide.
"During a telephone conversation, the heads of state condemned the false statement of US President George Biden about the so-called Armenian genocide," the message says.
Aliyev called the words of the American head a "historical mistake." In his opinion, such a statement is unacceptable. The President of Azerbaijan also noted that Biden's words damaged emerging trends in cooperation in the region and threatened the United States with unpleasant consequences.
As stated in Baku, the American leader's statement "distorts the historical truth about the events of 1915 and causes regret."
The Armenian Genocide, which claimed the lives of about 1,5 million people (about half of all Armenians in the world at that time), is the second most studied act of genocide in history after the Holocaust.
Modern Turkey and Azerbaijan, as well as the official historiography of these countries, deny the fact of genocide, but recognize numerous Armenian victims. Ukraine also does not recognize the killing of Armenians as genocide, in response to the fact that Armenia does not recognize the Holodomor as a genocide of Ukrainians.
