US President Joe Biden might become the first president to recognize the killing of more than a million Armenians a century ago, after nearly 150 lawmakers asked him in recent letters to make the acknowledgment.
Biden had already spoken with Erdogan yesterday regarding the matter, and will be expected to make a statement today to follow through on a campaign pledge to formally recognize that atrocities committed against the Armenian people by the Ottoman Empire more than a century ago.
Such a declaration will clearly damage the US-Turkey relations, but it is unthinkable that no US President has recognized the genocide before. Between 1915 and 1922, approximately 1.5 million Armenians out of a population of 2.5 million were killed by the Ottomans. When the genocide was over in 1922, there were just 388,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire.
Let’s wait and see.