By Washington Post
President Joe Biden is preparing to formally acknowledge that the systematic killing and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Turkey more than a century ago was genocide, according to U.S. officials.
The anticipated move — something Biden had pledged to do as a candidate — could further complicate an already tense relationship with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Administration officials had not informed Turkey as of Wednesday, and Biden could still change his mind, according to one official. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Lawmakers and Armenian-American activists are lobbying Biden to make the announcement on or before Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, which will be marked on Saturday.
One possibility is that Biden would include the acknowledgement of genocide in the annual remembrance day proclamation typically issued by presidents. Biden’s predecessors have avoided using “genocide” in the proclamation commemorating the dark moment in history.
A bipartisan group of more than 100 House members on Wednesday signed a letter to Biden calling on him to become the first U.S. president to formally recognize the World War I-era atrocities as genocide. Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California spearheaded the letter.
“The shameful silence of the United States Government on the historic fact of the Armenian Genocide has gone on for too long, and it must end,” the lawmakers wrote. “We urge you to follow through on your commitments, and speak the truth.”
Turkey’s foreign minister has warned the Biden administration that recognition would “harm” U.S.-Turkey ties.
Biden as a candidate marked the remembrance day last year by pledging that if elected he would recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1923, saying “silence is complicity.” He did not offer a timeline for delivering on the promise.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday said the president would have more to say Saturday on this remembrance day.
The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal first reported that Biden is preparing to acknowledge the genocide.
Should Biden follow through, he’ll almost certainly face pushback from Turkey, which has successfully pressed previous presidents to sidestep the issue.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier this week insisted Turkey wasn’t concerned by any decision that Biden might make, but also suggested that such a move would be met with a harsh reaction.
“If the United States wants our relations to get worse, it’s up to them,” he said in an interview with Turkey’s HaberTurk news channel.
The relationship between Biden and Erdogan is off to a chilly start. More than three months into his presidency, Biden has yet to speak with him.
Ties between Ankara and Washington — which once considered each other strategic partners — have steadily deteriorated in recent years over differences on Syria, Turkey’s cooperation with Russia and more recently on Turkish naval interventions in the eastern Mediterranean, which U.S. officials have described as destabilizing.
Biden during the campaign last year drew ire from Turkish officials after an interview with The New York Times in which he spoke about supporting Turkey’s opposition against “autocrat” Erdogan. Still, Turkey was hopeful of resetting the relationship. Erdogan enjoyed a warm relationship with former President Donald Trump, who didn’t give him any lectures about Turkey’s human rights record.
“In the past, the arm twisting from Turkey was, ’Well we’re such a good friend that you should remain solid with us on this,’” said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, whose members have started a campaign to encourage Biden to recognize the genocide. “But they’re proving to be not such a good friend.”
Hamparian said he’s hopeful that Biden will follow through. He noted that the sting of former President Barack Obama not following through on his 2008 campaign pledge to recognize the Armenian genocide still lingers for many in the Armenian diaspora.
Samantha Power, who served as Obama’s United Nations ambassador and has been nominated by Biden to serve as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes both publicly expressed disappointment that Obama didn’t act on the matter. Obama was concerned about straining the relationship with Turkey, a NATO member whose cooperation was needed on military and diplomatic efforts in Afghanistan, Iran and Syria.
Power said in a 2018 interview with Pod Save the World that the administration was “played a little bit” by Erdogan and others invested in delaying a genocide declaration.
Biden has sought to send the message that the U.S. will be a greater force on calling out human rights abuses and promoting democratic norms under his watch. That’s a departure from Trump, who found rapport with autocrats, including North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Erdogan and others.
Still, early in his presidency, Biden has faced criticism for failing to take action directly against Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, even after the publication of U.S. intelligence findings that the crown prince had approved an operation to kill or capture U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He’s also been criticized for not following his condemnations of China’s oppression of Uyghurs and other minorities in western China with tougher action.
Gonul Tol, director of the Turkish program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said Erdogan’s leverage has diminished and with Turkey’s economy suffering the Turkish leader’s reaction could be muted.
“Biden has been vocal about human rights abuses in countries across the world, including in Turkey, but it hasn’t gone very far beyond his rhetoric,” Tol said. “This is a chance for him to stand up on human rights with lower stakes.”
What it means for the United States to recognize massacre of Armenians as genocide
By Miriam Berger
That could change Saturday, when President Biden is expected to recognize it as a “genocide” in an annual Remembrance Day declaration.
Here’s what that could mean.
Why does Turkey oppose the term ‘genocide’?
The 1948 United Nations convention on genocide defines it as the crime of acting “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”
Historians estimate that around 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed during massacres and deportation campaigns carried out by the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1915. Many use the word genocide to describe it.
Instead, Turkey says that some 300,000 Armenians died during World War I as a result of the civil war and internal upheavals that consumed the Ottoman Empire as it splintered. In addition to Armenian Christians, Turkey says that many Muslim Turks died during this period.
Armenians today are considered among the world’s most dispersed peoples, according to the BBC. The mass killings more than a century ago are a defining moment for Armenia and its diaspora.
But for Turkey, the term genocide threatens the story it tells about the founding of its modern nation state. Writers who use the term have been prosecuted under Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code, which criminalizes “insulting Turkishness.”
Why has the United States refrained from using the word?
Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, among others, did not use the word to avoid angering Turkey. Ankara is a longtime U.S. ally and a NATO member. More recently, it was part of the fight against the Islamic State.
Turkey frequently complains when other countries use the term genocide. Some 20 countries do so, among them Russia, France and Canada, while other key U.S. allies including Israel and Britain do not.
In 2019, Congress passed a resolution calling the killings a genocide. The move infuriated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Trump officially rejected it.
Obama, in contrast, had pledged to formally recognize the Armenian genocide when he first ran in 2008. By the end of his eight years in office, he had not done so.
Samantha Powers, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations and now Biden’s nominee to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development, said during a 2018 interview that she and others in the administration were “played a bit” by Erdogan.
“Every year there was a reason not to,” Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration, said in the same interview 2018. “Turkey was vital to some issue that we were dealing with, or there was some dialogue between Turkey and the Armenian government about the past.”
“Frankly, here’s the lesson, I think, going forward: Get it done the first year, you know, because if you don’t, it gets harder every year in a way,” he said.
What would be the impact of the change?
Biden, who as Obama’s vice president was presumably privy to these discussions, has not confirmed whether he will. Press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that the president will “have more to say about Remembrance Day on Saturday.”
“If elected, I pledge to support a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide and will make universal human rights a top priority for my administration,” Biden said in a statement marking Armenia’s Remembrance Day last year.
How have Turkey and Armenia’s supporters responded?
Erdogan briefly weighed in Thursday, saying that Turkey will continue to defend its history of what Turkish media called “the events of 1915.”
Many Armenian American activists have been pushing Biden to fulfill his campaign promise. On Wednesday, over 100 members of Congress sent a letter to Biden urging him to do so.
“We join with the proud Armenian American community and all of those who support truth and justice in asking that you clearly and directly recognize the Armenian Genocide,” they wrote.
