Turkey considers the statements of the President of the United States Joe Biden, who recognized the Armenian genocide, to be inappropriate. This was announced on April 26 by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after a cabinet meeting.
The Turkish leader said that the American president recognized the genocide because of the “radical initiatives of the Armenian and anti-Turkish circles.”
“These are unlawful, unfair and contrary to history words. They upset us. These words have no historical and legal basis, ”the NTV channel quoted Erdogan as saying.
Moreover, the Turkish President recalled the initiative to create a commission of historians who would study the events of a century ago and noted that there was no response from the United States.
“We are ready to open the archives. We have documents about 1915. Come explore. But the United States will open documents about its history? ” – concluded the Turkish leader.
On April 24, Biden called the events of the early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire “the Armenian genocide.” Biden’s predecessors as head of state avoided using the term.
The next day, United States Ambassador to Ankara David Satterfield was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Turkey, where the department expressed a strong protest to him in connection with the official recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire by US President Joe Biden.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Ottoman Empire persecuted the Armenian population. According to a number of historians, over 1.5 million Armenians were killed in 1915. The fact of genocide was recognized by more than 20 countries, Ankara rejects the very term “genocide”, claiming that in those years there was a fratricidal war, and each side of the conflict suffered heavy losses.