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 by US President Joe Biden of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.
“After the statement of US President Joe Biden about the events of 1915, US Ambassador David Satterfield was summoned to our ministry and received by Deputy Minister Sedat Onal,” a source quoted by RIA Novosti on Sunday, April 25.
It is clarified that the ambassador was told about the invalidity of the statement of the American president from the point of view of international law, as well as that it damages the population of Turkey and relations between the two countries.
Earlier, 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.
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 great losses were suffered by each side of the conflict.
The Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide in Armenia is annually celebrated on April 24