BREAKDOWN
Biden is the first US president to formally recognize the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I as “genocide”.
United States President Joe Biden has officially recognized the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I as “genocide,” a move that is expected to increase tensions between Washington and Ankara.
In a proclamation on Saturday, Biden became the first US president to formally recognize the murders of 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1917 as an act of “genocide.”
Turkey acknowledged the deaths of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, but firmly denied that the murders were systematically orchestrated and amounted to genocide.
Biden’s statement comes in the middle tight ties between the United States and Turkey, which had previously warned that recognizing the killings as genocide would further damage relations between NATO allies.
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