On April 24, 2021, the 106th anniversary of the Armenian Massacre, president Joe Biden officially recognized the event as genocide.

The Armenian genocide was the systematic murder and deportation of more than a million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World War I. After coming to power in 1913 by a coup, the Young Turks Movement and the subgroup Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) conducted these mass killings because of their loss in the First Balkan War and rejection by Armenians to fight in World War I for them. More than 90 percent of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were killed or deported.

Although Turkey admits that these events happened, the Turkish government does not call this atrocity a genocide. For years, the U.S. has stepped back from this issue and former presidents have been reluctant to call this event a genocide because of Turkey’s strategic importance to the U.S. 

However, Biden released a statement on Saturday that said, “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.” This announcement has solidified the Biden’s administration’s promise to call the Armenian mass killing a genocide and its human rights stance on foreign policy.

The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has announced that Turkey will “defend the truth against the lie of the so-called ‘Armenian genocide.’” Armenians and human rights advocates appreciate the declaration; however, they do not see it making any changes in the Turkish government’s stance on the issue.

by Kevin Lee