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Finally, Pres. Biden Acknowledges The Genocide! What’s next?

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By Harut Sassounian,

Genocide in a Presidential Proclamation, Pres. Joe Biden used the term Armenian Genocide, despite the gag-rule imposed on the United States government by the denialist rulers of the Republic of Turkey! For  good measure, Pres. Biden used the word genocide not once, but twice, in his “Statement on Armenian Remembrance Day.”

Last year, when Biden was a presidential candidate, he promised to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. But, since Armenian-Americans were deceived so many times by previous presidents who had not kept their campaign promises, they were cautiously optimistic about Biden’s commitment.

Even though the United States had repeatedly recognized the Armenian Genocide starting from 1951 when the U.S government submitted an official document to the World Court; the House of Representatives adopted three resolutions in 1975, 1984, and 2019; the U.S. Senate adopted unanimously a resolution in 2019; and Pres. Reagan issued a Presidential Proclamation on April 22, 1981, Pres. Biden’s acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide in 2021 is a major step forward with several positive consequences:

1)    As the mass murder of 1.5 million people is a very emotional issue, the descendants of Armenian Genocide victims felt a deep sense of satisfaction that the genocide suffered by their ancestors is formally and correctly acknowledged by the President of the United States.

2)    This most recent and authoritative acknowledgment by the American President will enable U.S. Courts to go forward with lawsuits making claims by Armenians on genocide era-demands from the government of Turkey. In the past, such lawsuits were dismissed by Federal judges who claimed (wrongly) that since the U.S. government had not acknowledged the Armenian Genocide, individual states like California could not pass laws allowing these lawsuits to proceed. Nevertheless, if the courts decide that Pres. Biden’s statement on the Armenian Genocide is not sufficient to allow the filing of such lawsuits, then Armenian-Americans would be obliged to push for the adoption of a proposed law, not a commemorative resolution, which needs to be adopted by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President into law. That should be the final word on fulfilling the legal requirements for filing lawsuits against Turkey.

3)    As the United States is a superpower, pronouncements by the President have a major effect on other countries — particularly Great Britain, Australia and Israel. Therefore, it is expected that several countries would follow suit in recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

4)    Pres. Biden’s acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide comes at a particularly sensitive time for Armenians worldwide following the disastrous defeat in last fall’s Artsakh War by the hands of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Islamic Jihadist mercenaries. Pres. Biden’s April 24 statement will boost the spirits of Armenians and could create an atmosphere of goodwill by world powers towards the just resolution of Artsakh’s status and the protection of its population.

5)    The struggle for genocide recognition is also a political battle by the country that perpetrated that mass crime on one hand and the descendants of the victims on the other. The Government of Turkey, as in past years, did everything in its power to prevent the United States from acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. Turkey paid millions of dollars to American lobbying organizations to deny the genocide, pressured and threatened the United States with dire consequences should it acknowledge the genocide. Nevertheless, Turkey suffered a devastating political blow. Turkey’s arrogant President, thinking that no country can go against his wishes, was sternly put in his place by the President of the United States. I am sure Pres. Erdogan spent a sleepless night after Pres. Biden called him on April 23, advising him of his decision to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. Hopefully, the humiliated Erdogan understood that the world does not rotate around Turkey.

Let us now see what the Turkish government may do in retaliation. Will it temporarily recall its Ambassador from Washington, threaten to cut off commercial ties, or block the U.S. Government from using the Incirlik airbase in Turkey? I hope Erdogan will take all of these steps and many more. With such actions, Turkey will exacerbate U.S.-Turkish relations, provide worldwide publicity to the Armenian Genocide, and drive its failing economy into bankruptcy. This could lead to internal turmoil and the eventual removal of Erdogan from the presidency during the next election, if not sooner. Interestingly, in a lengthy televised speech to the Turkish nation late at night on April 26, besides his usual lies on the Armenian Genocide, Erdogan dared not announce any actions against the United States in retaliation to Biden’s April 24 statement. Thus, Erdogan displayed his utter humiliation and impotence.

As usual, not having been able to bully the United States to abandon its plans to recognize the Genocide, Turkish leaders are now resorting to their usual tricks by stating that the U.S. recognition does not mean anything. If it meant nothing, why did Turkey spend millions of dollars on lobbyists for several decades and pressure the U.S. government, threatening dire consequences?

Rather than continuing the lies and denials for over a century, it would be much better for Turkey to simply acknowledge the crimes of its predecessors, ask for forgiveness, and make amends for the horrendous damages caused to the Armenian people. Turkey would do well to follow the example of Germany after the Holocaust. Germany apologized for Hitler’s mass crimes, erected memorials for the Holocaust victims and paid billions of dollars in reparations. This is what a civilized nation does when its leaders commit a grave crime.

In the meantime, Armenians in the Diaspora and Armenia should pursue their demands through legal channels by filing multiple lawsuits against Turkey in various country courts and the European Court of Human Rights, seeking restitution for the damages caused by the Genocide. The Government of Armenia, on the other hand, should take Turkey to the International Court of Justice (World Court), where only governments have standing to file lawsuits.Finally, this is the appropriate moment to remember and acknowledge a great friend of Armenians, former U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Marshall Evans, whose diplomatic career was cut short in 2006 after he told the truth about the Armenian Genocide during a visit to California. It would be only proper for the Biden Administration to appoint John Evans as the next U.S. Ambassador to Armenia. This is the least the U.S. government could do, after the President issues an official apology to him.

How Biden ended Turkey’s genocide blackmail – columnist

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The Biden administration has put an end to Turkey’s bluff over the recognition of the Armenian genocide, which asserted that Ankara would move to close U.S. bases and quickly begin cooperation with Russia, Iran and China, Jerusalem Post columnist Seth Frantzman wrote on Sunday.

Pointing out that Turkey’s attempt to hold countries hostage regarding the Armenian genocide has been effective for many years, Frantzman said that Ankara must now consider whether Washington’s proclamation will lead it to work with authoritarian regimes or opt for “reconciliation” with countries it has attacked over the last few years.

On Saturday, Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to formally recognise the killings of 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Empire during WWI as genocide, in a move that threatens to further complicate relations with NATO ally Turkey, who has long vehemently denied the claim.

Those who opposed the genocide recognition argued that Turkey would drift away from NATO and work with Russia and China – all steps that Ankara has already taken, according to the analyst.

Under the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Ankara has been accused of increasingly drifting out of the transatlantic alliance and severing ties with the West.

In recent years, Turkey has increased cooperation with Russia and China, purchasing S-400 missile systems from the former despite objections from NATO and the United States, and deepening economic ties with the latter.

“Turkey’s policy was to pretend it was above history, above ever being held to account or even critiqued. Many US diplomats went along with this; for years they appeared almost more pro-Turkey than Turkey’s own diplomats,’’ Frantzman wrote. 

Moreover, “There is no evidence that denying the genocide helped keep Ankara more liberal, tolerant, democratic and open minded and more close to the West,’’ the analyst said.

VICE World News: ‘They Chained Me to a Radiator and Beat Me’: Armenian POWs Speak Out

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Armenian fighters tell VICE World News stories of brutal abuse at the hands of soldiers from Azerbaijan following the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

By Cristina Maza,


It was late at night and Armen, a 20-year-old soldier in the Armenian military, was sleeping in an abandoned hut when he was startled awake by a sudden burst of gunfire.

He ran outside to locate the source of the shooting, leaving seven comrades inside the hut, and immediately came under fire from soldiers from Azerbaijan, Armenia’s neighbour and rival in the ongoing dispute over who should lay claim to Nagorno-Karabakh, a tiny territory in the Caucasus region that has long been a point of contention.

“The Azerbaijanis began shooting at us, but we couldn’t see them,” said Armen, who along with every Armenian soldier VICE World News spoke to did so on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. 

“Once we had all been injured, they shouted at us in Russian that we should surrender. They said that they would take us to the Red Cross.”

The Armenians surrendered, but according to Armen the Azerbaijani soldiers began to beat them as soon as they were in custody.

The soldiers kicked Armen in the head and poked him with a metal cooking skewer, he said. They bound his hands so tightly that he now has scars across his wrists.

After the Armenians were transferred to a military police station in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, the beatings continued, Armen said. He said he remembered being kicked and punched in the head, and hit with pieces of wood. He had wounds on his head, his eyes were swollen shut, and the Azerbaijanis threatened to kill him.

“The military police did not interrogate us; they only beat us. On the first day, they chained my hands to the heating system, and I remained in that position, seated on the floor, throughout the whole night,” Armen said. “I was not able to sleep because of the pain. My face, my eye, and my knee ached. They had hit my knee a lot, and it was swollen.”

Armen, who was held for several months before being released, is just one of the many Armenians who former detainees, Armenian officials and human rights groups say has been abused in custody following last year’s hostilities. Azerbaijan says it has been treating POWs and civilians detained in Azerbaijan in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

The most recent stage of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh ended last November with a one-sided peace treaty. But between 60 to 220 prisoners are estimated to still be in Azeri custody. Armenian officials say that many of these prisoners have been mistreated. 

“We are concerned about their psychological health and ability to survive given the brutal treatment of prisoners in Azerbaijan,” says Tigran Balayan, the Armenian ambassador to the Netherlands and Luxembourg. 

Balayan is lobbying the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights to pressure Azerbaijan to release Armenian prisoners.  

“We’ve seen innumerable videos and photos of abuse posted by the Azerbaijani and Turkish soldiers. That causes suffering, not only for the families of those who are imprisoned but also for Armenians worldwide,” Balayan said.

Azerbaijan, however, says that the prisoners are little more than terrorists who entered their territory illegally.

In public statements, officials from Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs argued that Baku already returned all prisoners of war captured before the ceasefire was signed last November. Those who remain in custody were discovered illegally in Azerbaijan after the fighting stopped, officials say. 

This dispute over whether the prisoners are prisoners of war has led to confusion over what will happen to them now. 

On the 9th of April, a plane that was expected to bring 25 Armenian prisoners to Yerevan from Baku arrived empty, sparking accusations that Azerbaijan isn’t upholding its part of the ceasefire agreement, which stipulated that everyone captured during the conflict would be returned.  

The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh had been mostly frozen since the mid-1990s, but its origins stretch back a century.

In the 1920s, when the Soviet government solidified its grip over the Caucasus, the Bolsheviks made Nagorno-Karabakh, a region where around 95 percent of the population was ethnic Armenian, an autonomous region within Azerbaijan.

Some historians say the Soviets did this to stoke ethnic tensions between neighbours and make Azerbaijan and Armenia more dependent on Moscow.

Regardless of the reason, the region remained peaceful until the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late 1980s. Then simmering tensions erupted into war between Armenia and Azerbaijan from 1988-1994.

Armenians argue that Nagorno-Karabakh is rightfully theirs and that to wrest control of the region from them is an attempt at genocide. 

Azerbaijanis, however, say that they must reclaim their territory as a matter of national dignity. 

The debate over whose culture first sprung from this fertile region of fewer than 2,000 square miles continues to spark passions and ignite violence. 

Russia first brokered a ceasefire between the two countries in 1994, but for decades afterward, frequent skirmishes erupted along the border regions.

The majority of the international community recognises Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. But the territory has been populated by ethnic Armenians and governed in close cooperation with Armenia’s capital Yerevan for decades.

When fighting began again in earnest in 2020, thousands of Armenians mobilised to fight. With the help of its powerful neighbour Turkey, Azerbaijan unleashed sophisticated military weaponry, including drones, against the Armenian fighters, who had difficulty competing against the more advanced weaponry. 

The violence lasted for six weeks, leaving over 5,000 people dead and tens of thousands displaced.  

It only came to a halt after Russia, one of the region’s most powerful and influential players, brokered yet another uneasy ceasefire.

Since then, Armenian prisoners have languished in Azerbaijan’s custody, while others were captured in Nagorno-Karabakh after the ceasefire.

The organisation Human Rights Watch says that many of these prisoners, like Armen, have been subjected to brutal or degrading treatment. 

“Azerbaijani forces abused Armenian prisoners of war (POWs) from the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, subjecting them to cruel and degrading treatment and torture either when they were captured, during their transfer, or while in custody at various detention facilities,” a report from the group issued in March said.

Giorgi Gogia, a representative of Human Rights Watch in the Caucasus, and one of the report’s authors, says that the Armenians should be considered prisoners of war and released.

“Regardless of the status of these individuals in Azerbaijan, Baku still has a very clear and binding obligation to protect their rights to decent conditions in custody and to ensure that they aren’t subjected to torture or other forms of cruel or degrading inhumane treatment,” Gogia said.

In a statement sent to VICE World News, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the Human Rights Watch report “one-sided.”

“Armenian POWs and civilians detained in Azerbaijan were treated in accordance with the requirements of the 1949 Geneva Conventions,” the statement reads, referring to the international rules of armed conflict. “They were not subjected to torture, humiliation and inhuman treatment, and they were provided with the necessary medical care.”

Many of those who made it back to Armenia say that they were given food and medical treatment while in custody, but they were also beaten and tortured.

David, a 19-year-old who was completing compulsory military service in Nagorno-Karabakh when the fighting broke out, says that Azerbaijanis captured him following a gunfight near a village along the road to the Fizuli district.

All of the soldiers in his unit were killed in the fighting or died of thirst after getting stranded without food or water for days. David was left alone with a young Armenian volunteer he met during the conflict.

The young man told David that he would rather die than be captured by the Azerbaijanis. As the enemy soldiers closed in on the two men, David watched as the volunteer shot himself in the head.

At first, the Azerbaijanis gave David water and helped bind his wounds so he wouldn’t bleed to death, he said. Then they tied up his hands and brutally beat him.  

Later he was transferred to a hospital in Baku, he said, where the doctors bandaged his wounds and brought him bread and water.

“They kept me there for 4 or 5 days and then transferred me into the investigation office,” David said..

In an interrogation room, David was forced to record a confession that was later published online. The Azerbaijanis made him say that the Armenian military had relied on paid mercenaries, including Kurdish fighters, to wage war with them, he said. It wasn’t true, but David said he had no choice but to repeat what the Azerbaijanis wanted him to say. 

“There were electric shock devices and clubs in the room, and they said that they would beat me to death if I did not say what they wanted,” he said. “They told me what I had to say in advance. I wrote it down, and they made me learn it by heart and recite the text. I was not provided with a lawyer.” 

David, who also suffers from poor eyesight, said that the guards kept taking his glasses and breaking them. Even after the Red Cross brought him a new pair of glasses, the Azerbaijanis broke those, too.

Vazgen, a 25-year-old from Armenia who had volunteered to fight in Nagorno-Karabakh, was similarly taken captive following a gunfight, this time by foreign mercenaries fighting for Azerbaijan near Hadrut, he said.

He was severely wounded by the time the mercenaries captured him. He had been lying immobilised for seven days and living off apples that fell from a nearby tree, he said.

The mercenaries brought him, bleeding, to an Azerbaijani military facility. Over the next few hours, he was transferred from unit to unit and brutally beaten, he said.

“The Azerbaijani soldiers inserted their hands into the wound in my stomach. They blew chili pepper into my eyes, and they burnt my hands,” he said. “They beat me with batons. Every time I was passed onto a new group of soldiers, I was beaten and tortured.”

Vazgen was also forced to record a video in which he insulted Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. In the video, seen by VICE World News, Vazgen’s face is drawn from exhaustion and he is wearing camouflage fatigues. An Azerbaijani soldier hits him on the head until Vazgen calls his prime minister a bitch.

Armenia is now asking the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to intervene and ensure that the Armenians who remain in Azerbaijan don’t suffer similar abuse. 

Artak Zenalyan, a politician and Armenia’s former Minister of Justice, says that the country has opened cases with the ECHR seeking the return of individuals believed to still be alive in Azerbaijan’s custody.

“We don’t know the exact number of our prisoners of war or who is still alive,” Zenalyan said. “We believe that Azerbaijan has killed Armenian prisoners of war.”

In a statement sent to VICE World News, the ECHR said it is dealing with interim requests concerning 218 alleged captives. The court has applied Rule 39, which is only applicable when there is imminent risk of irreparable harm, to 186 of them. 

Armenian officials, meanwhile, claim that the bodies of Armenian soldiers who appeared alive in videos in Azerbaijan’s custody just months ago have appeared recently in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In a video circulating on social media in late November, an 18-year-old Armenian is seen lying on the ground as an Azerbaijani soldier screams at him. That same young man’s body was discovered in Nagorno-Karabakh in April, his family says.

Azerbaijan’s government did not respond to questions about these allegations.

The soldiers interviewed say they believe they were released because the Red Cross or Russian peacekeepers knew where they were and visited them in prison. They are afraid that their compatriots whom international actors did not discover could be executed in custody.

Nevertheless, negotiations are still quietly underway between the two countries as Armenia works to secure the release of its fighters.

“I feel indescribable joy because I am back in my motherland. I feel like I am reborn,” says Vazgen, who is now walking with a cane due to his injuries. “But I want the other prisoners of war to return to Armenia.”

Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/akgdgk/armenia-azerbaijan-prisoners-of-war-nagorno-karabakh

Turkey says it will respond in time to ‘outrageous’ U.S. genocide statement

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Turkey with 700 Billion dollars economy versus US 25 Trillion dollars Economy, Turkey no much to US mighty power…

Dominic Evans Orhan Coskun,

U.S. President Joe Biden’s declaration that massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide is “simply outrageous” and Turkey will respond over coming months, Turkey’s presidential spokesman said on Sunday.

Biden broke on Saturday with decades of carefully calibrated White House comments over the 1915 killings, delighting Armenia and its diaspora but further straining ties between Washington and Ankara, both members of the NATO military alliance.

“There will be a reaction of different forms and kinds and degrees in coming days and months,” Ibrahim Kalin, President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman and adviser, told Reuters in an interview.

Kalin did not specify whether Ankara would restrict U.S. access to the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, which has been used to support the international coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, among measures it may take.

After other Turkish officials swiftly condemned Biden’s statement on Saturday, Erdogan would address the issue after a cabinet meeting on Monday, Kalin said. “At a time and place that we consider to be appropriate, we will continue to respond to this very unfortunate, unfair statement,” he said.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces in World War One, but denies the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute genocide.

For decades, measures recognising the Armenian genocide stalled in the U.S. Congress and most U.S. presidents have refrained from calling it that, held back by concerns about straining relations with Turkey.

But those relations are already troubled. Washington imposed sanctions on Turkey over its purchase of Russian air defences, while Ankara has been angered that the United States has armed Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria and not extradited a U.S.-based cleric Turkey accuses of orchestrating a 2016 coup attempt.

Navigating those disputes will now be even harder, Kalin said. “Everything that we conduct with the United States will be under the spell of this very unfortunate statement,” he said.

Kalin said Turkey’s parliament is expected to make a statement this week. Analysts say lawmakers may hit back rhetorically against Biden by classifying the treatment of Native Americans by European settlers as genocide.

As well as limiting access to Incirlik, Turkey also has options to reduce military coordination with the United States in northern Syria and Iraq or scale down diplomatic efforts to support Afghan peace talks, said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, director of the German Marshall Fund research group in Ankara.

In reality, though, Erdogan’s options are limited as he is already battling one of the highest rates of daily COVID-19 cases globally and has seen the lira currency fall close to all-time lows against the dollar last week.

“This is a difficult period for Turkey and it’s not a time when Turkey wants to pick a fight with anyone, let alone the United States,” Unluhisarcikli said.

Kalin said U.S. officials had told Turkey the declaration would not provide any legal basis for potential reparation claims.

YouTube deletes video of Turkish businessman saying Armenian Genocide is “slander of the century”

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by Paul Antonopoulos,

YouTube has deleted a propagandistic video made in Turkey that denies the Armenian Genocide.

“Doğan Kasadolu, a Jewish-Turkish businessman living in Constantinople and known for his anti-coup speeches, made a statement on a television channel the day Biden made a statement,” Super Haber reported.

YouTube deleted a video of Kasadolu describing the Armenian Genocide, and in effect the Greek and Assyrian Genocides too, as the “slander of the century.”

It was deleted because of the obvious hate speech in the video.

In speaking to Super Haber, the businessman said “this is acceptable.”

“YouTube does not want to face the facts,” he claimed, before saying what legal avenues he can pursue.

Azerbaijanis demolish statues of angels on gates of Shushi’s Ghazanchetsots Cathedral

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Azerbaijani invaders have demolished the statues of angels on the gates of the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi, an Artsakh town occupied by Azerbaijan in the recent war, according to a tweet of the Republic of Artsakh page.

“A video posted on Azerbaijani social networks shows that the Azerbaijani occupiers demolished not only the statues of angels, but also the fence around the temple,” it tweeted on Monday.

https://twitter.com/artsakheng/status/1386603582347038721

Azerbaijan has also begun an illegal “restoration” of the church, which will undoubtedly result in the “Albanization” of the Armenian church, the Republic of Artsakh added.

Armenian MP proposes genocide recognition act in Turkish parliament

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Garo Paylan, an Armenian lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish left-wing Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), has proposed a law to officially recognise the Armenian Genocide, news website Bianet reported on Saturday.

Paylan called the events of 1915 the “Great Calamity” in his speech in Turkish parliament on Saturday, arguing for the mass deportation and death of some 1.5 million Armenians under the World War I-afflicted Ottoman Empire to be recognised as genocide.

The Armenian lawmaker has family members personally affected by the mass deportations.

“Orphans like my grandmother passed from this world without seeing justice delivered,” Paylan said. “As did the second-generation (of survivors), my father. As a third-generation Armenian from Turkey, I seek justice in Turkey, in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.”

“The Armenian Genocide happened on these lands, and justice for the Armenian Genocide can only be achieved on these lands, in Turkey,” Paylan said.

Turkey confronting the genocide would “remove the significance of what any other parliament says”, he added. “The matter continues to be a topic in other parliaments, for other presidents, because for 106 years the Armenian Genocide has been denied.”

Turkey maintains that the Ottoman-era deaths occurred under wartime conditions without planning or forethought, and were at a much lower scale than the academic near-consensus of 1.5 million Christians.

“No one has benefited from the discussions which in fact must be made by historians but have been politicized by third parties and turned into a tool of intervention against our country,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in a statement addressing the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul, Sahak Mashalian, on Saturday. “I believe that building our identity solely upon the pains left by the past to our souls is also a grave injustice to new generations.”

On the same day, following a phone call with Erdoğan, U.S. President Joe Biden officially recognisedthe events as genocide, sparking condemnation from Ankara

Jewish Journal: Recognizing Armenian Genocide Was Long Overdue, But It’s Not Enough

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Saturday’s announcement by President Biden is both a welcome change from past administrations—and a sign of how obstinate the United States has been on this issue until now.

Armenian supporters outside the Turkish Embassy on April 24, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Stephen Smith

On Saturday, President Biden took the long overdue step of recognizing the Armenian genocide. Between 1915 and 1923, 1.5 million Armenians were systematically murdered by the Ottoman government in modern-day Turkey. That the President of the United States finally used the word ‘genocide’ is a critical and historic step.

It is also cold comfort. America has been on the wrong side of history for over a century. Imagine if the British government denied the Holocaust for 106 years in order to normalize relations with Germany? It would mean Jews would still have to wait to 2051 to hear a British Prime Minister find the courage to say the word ‘The Holocaust.’

Saturday’s announcement by President Biden is thus both a welcome change from past administrations—and a sign of how obstinate the United States has been on this issue until now.

Does the word genocide matter? Yes. In 2004, I attended the Stockholm Forum on the Prevention of Genocide as an advisor to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson. Attended by 1,000 delegates from forty-five national governments, the forum was in many ways a success. Among other concrete measures, the conference prompted then-Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Anan to announce a new permanent position of Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide.

But as I left, I found a young woman in tears. She told me through her sobs that she was deeply upset that every single delegate had studiously avoided applying the word “genocide” to what her Armenian ancestors had suffered. It was ninety years after the genocide at that point. She looked at me and said, ‘What about me?’

Many in the Armenian community are relieved and encouraged by the Biden administration’s declaration. But I am not celebrating. I am calling to account multiple administrations for the pain they caused, for political integrity traded for political expediency, for collaborating with the deniers of history, for allowing American Armenians who survived the genocide to go to their deaths with no justice, no recognition.

There may be no justice for a single Armenian child, and it is unlikely there will be restitution of a single home, but recognition does rehumanize those who were dehumanized.

Historical memory of genocides matters, as the trauma and pain carry forward for generations.

In January 2015, I was in Yerevan, Armenia for the centennial of the genocide. I watched as ten-year-old descendants of genocide victims stood in their school dresses, read poems, and lit candles. As I was leaving, descendants of that genocide walked up the hill. They weren’t coming to lay wreaths. They were coming to ‘be’—to live with the memory of their ancestors who had been murdered for no reason except that they were Armenian.

President Obama did not attend the event, but there was much anticipation that he would at last call the Armenian genocide by its name. But like so many U.S. presidents before him, he declined to name the genocide. I sat listening to System of Down, the rock band that has told the story of the genocide though their music. Like the young woman I had met a decade earlier in Sweden, I began to cry.

Here’s what the word genocide means to the woman at the 2004 conference, to the Yerevan memorial visitors, to the Armenian diaspora: It means that the loss of lives, family, property, home, churches, identity, and dignity has finally been defined. What happened to the Armenians 106 years ago was genocide. There may be no justice for a single Armenian child, and it is unlikely there will be restitution of a single home, but recognition does rehumanize those who were dehumanized. It tells the world that they were the victims of senseless, systemic hatred, and that while their families perished in a hateful action, their descendants can live with purpose.

I believe the U.S. government owes the Armenian community a museum equal to the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

President Biden had the decency to do the right thing. But let us hope that his statement is a first step. Importantly, there has been remarkably muted media coverage of his words; at our institute, which houses 1,900 testimonies of Armenian genocide survivors, we have not had a single call from news outlets asking to use the testimony of those that lived through the Genocide.  To give the word a voice. That’s because, after a century of denial and ugly geopolitics, the Armenians who perished are all but forgotten. I believe the U.S. government owes the Armenian community a museum equal to the U.S. Holocaust Museum—and it owes a commitment to tell and retell the story of what happened, so that it may never happen again.

Stephen D. Smith is Finci-Viterbi executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation. The first episode of “The Memory Generation” was released on April 15, 2021, and can be found here: https://www.memorygenerationpodcast.com/episodes

Turkish FM Summons US Ambassador to Ankara Over Biden’s Recognition of Armenian Genocide

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On Saturday, US President Joe Biden announced that from now on, Washington recognises the actions of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century against the Armenians as a ‘genocide’.

The American ambassador to Turkey, David Satterfield, has been summoned by the Turkish foreign ministry on Saturday, over US President Joe Biden’s recognition of the actions of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 against the Armenians as a ‘genocide’.

The Turkish foreign ministry announced that its deputy foreign minister, Sedat Onal, told the US ambassador, David Satterfield, that Biden’s move had no legal basis and had caused a “wound in ties that will be hard to repair,” a source in the Turkish ministry told Sputnik.

“Our harsh reaction was expressed to the ambassador, he was informed that we consider this statement unacceptable, devoid of any historical and legal basis, therefore we completely reject and strongly condemn it,” a source said.

Amid tensions between Washington and Ankara, the US embassy in the country announced that the diplomatic mission would be closed for routine services from April 26-27, citing possible protests.

“Demonstrations or protests may occur following the April 24 White House statement remembering the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide. As a precautionary measure, the US Embassy in Ankara, the US Consulate General in Istanbul, the US Consulate in Adana, and the US Consular Agency in Izmir will be closed for routine American Citizen and visa services on Monday, April 26 and Tuesday, April 27,” the embassy said in a statement.

The recognition of the genocide by the US comes on the day Armenians commemorate the victims of the killings by the Ottoman Empire in 1915.