Biden’s Recognition of the Armenian Genocide Ended the US' Denial of It

 Jennifer M. Dixon

On April 24th last year, President Biden officially recognized the Armenian Genocide. Last year’s announcement constituted an important reversal of decades of US complicity in Turkey’s denial of the Genocide. In the wake of Biden’s statement, commentators highlighted its importance in terms of what it said about the state (read: nadir) of US-Turkish relations and about Biden’s commitment to a moral foreign policy. While such analyses captured central factors behind this long-resisted official acknowledgment, its most important function was to end the US’ own denial of the Armenian Genocide. 

An Explanation of Recent Developments Regarding US Recognition of the Genocide

 Paul Vartan Sookiasian

With just a month left until April 24, the 106^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian-American community once again awaits a new president to see if he will keep his promise on recognition of this historical fact. While President Ronald Reagan did use the term in a remembrance message, the federal government continued to appease Turkey for decades to come through refusing to use the word, keeping it an outstanding issue. As scholarly research has made the truth of the genocide even harder to deny, tactics by Turkish lobbyists evolved from outright denialism to more nuanced technicalities or just plain threats as to why the president and Congress should not use the ‘g-word’. As candidates, both George W. Bush and Barack Obama pledged to recognize the genocide, yet both broke their pledges, with Bush strongly urging Congress to reject a genocide recognition bill in 2007, while Obama referred to the event by other names. 

Two Genocides, Two Peoples, and One Grievance: Armenians in Dhaka

Adnan Morshed

Turkey seems to have a burlesque history of genocide denial. On June 2, the German Parliament voted to recognise the 1915 killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as "genocide." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's reaction was predictable: “Germany has no right to comment on genocide.” Ankara recalled its ambassador from Berlin.

Sounds familiar? Ankara's recent withdrawal of its ambassador to Bangladesh following the execution of an indicted “war criminal” reveals the Erdogan regime's grotesquely negligent attitude toward the genocide in Bangladesh during 1971. 

Germany Recognizes the Armenian Genocide

Germany will officially recognize the killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by the Turkish Ottoman regime 100 years ago as genocide. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition will vote on April 24 to label the murders as genocide as defined by the United Nations in 1948.

Germany’s ruling parties plan in their resolution to “find a formulation which states the fact that a genocide took place in Turkey,” Franz Josef Jung, deputy faction leader of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said in a statement on April 20. The fate of the Armenians “exemplifies the history of mass extermination, ethnic cleansing, expulsion and genocide that characterizes the 20th century in such a terrible way,” Jung added.

U.S. Should Call Armenian Genocide by Its Name

On Sunday, Pope Francis took the audacious step of celebrating a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians, and then calling those killings by their name: genocide. For that, the Turkish government summoned the Vatican's envoy in Ankara for a talking-to and recalled its own ambassador to the Vatican for “consultation.” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced that “the pope's statement, which is out of touch with both historical facts and legal basis, is simply unacceptable.”

That's right: A full century after the mass killings by the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish government continues to reject the documented historical reality that Turkey was responsible for the first genocide in what turned out to be a century of grotesque ethnic, religious and political violence, from the Holocaust to the Cambodian killing fields to the Rwandan genocide.

A Blueprint for Diaspora Representation in Negotiations with Turkey over Reparations

Avedis Hadjian

 

In the course of almost a century, Armenian institutions’ and individuals’ various stances on Turkey and genocide recognition have hardened into maximalist positions. For Armenian maximalists, anything short of a full and complete apology, full and complete restitution of the stolen and expropriated property, as well as full reparations, is to be dismissed as nothing but smoke screens or deliberate attempts by the Turkish state to mislead Armenians and non-Armenians alike. This maximalism is understandable and unsurprising in the face of consistent Turkish negationism. It also blinds to nuances in the extremely complex world of Turkish politics, reducing it to zero-sum games and black-and-white dualities. It prevents Armenians from seeing the subtleties in Turkey’s political scene that may still nudge the Turkish state towards coming to terms with the Armenians and the genocide, a problem that has been nagging it acutely for the last 50 years, increasingly tarnishing its image and violently contradicting its own historical narrative.

What Did Uruguay Foreign Minister Actually Say about Karabagh’s Recognition?

Vartan Matiossian

 

An interesting new chapter in the Armenian-Azerbaijani diplomatic "war" seems to have opened in Latin America after declarations ascribed to Uruguayan Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis Almagro during a seminar organized by the Armenian National Committee (ANC) of Uruguay and the Uruguay-Armenian Interparliamentary Friendship Group in Montevideo on Sept. 9.

Nothing New Under the Sun, But...

Vartan Matiossian

The waiting ended. President Barack Obama issued his statement on “Armenian Remembrance Day” on Saturday, April 23, 2011. The text says: