US Supreme Court passed resolution selling atrocities committed by Ottoman Empire to Armenian nationals • The move sparked outrage in Ankara

• Capitol Building, US Congress Building // Photo: AP

The U.S. Senate passed on Thursday a resolution to recognize the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenian minority during World War I.

This is a historic decision after two months ago, the lower House of Congress passed a similar resolution. Earlier this week, the Senate rejected the motion, under pressure from the White House, but a campaign of persuasion by Democratic Senators among their Republican colleagues tipped the scales.

Initiative of the decision, Democratic Senator Bob Mendez of the state of New Jersey said with the news of the decision: "It is proper and proper for Congress to stand on the right side of history. The Armenian genocide is the truth."

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Republican Sen. Ted Cruz also sided with the decision: "I'm glad we were able to pass that important decision. It's a moment of truth that waited too long to arrive."

The memorial site for the Armenian genocide victims in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia // Photo: Reuters

According to the newspaper Raki Horite, Ankara officials expressed anger at the decision, but no official release has yet been made. The Turkish authorities deny the Armenian genocide and claim that Armenians were injured alongside other minorities as a result of the war that was taking place and that Western historians deliberately inflated the number of Armenian victims.

Unrelenting Turkish pressure has managed to prevent sweeping American recognition of the genocide for nearly fifty years, wiping out almost a third of the world's Armenian population, but Erdogan's aggressive policy, and not its historical sense of justification, ultimately knocked the wall of silence around the genocide.

Victims of systematic war or genocide?

Following several resistance actions by Armenian civilians, especially around the city of Van, the Turkish army ordered the disarmament of all Armenian soldiers and begin a massive evacuation of the Armenian civilian population towards Deir a-Zor in northern Syria. Hundreds of thousands died on the roads, others were slaughtered by soldiers at various points along the roads. In some places, the Gil and Armenians resisted, as in Musa Fish, Mount Moshe, now in southeastern Turkey, where Armenian civilians managed to repel the Turkish army until the arrival of a French naval rescue who transferred them to Egypt.

Marched to death, Armenian deportees alongside Turkish soldiers // Photo: Wikipedia

In all accepted sources, the deportation of the Armenians was carried out by the Turkish army soldiers without proper preparation, adequate supply of water and food, and under constant threat of execution by the deportees who did not keep up with the cruel pace dictated by the Turkish army soldiers. Today, historians estimate the number of victims ranges from 800,000 to one million and a half are murdered. Many Turkish historians claim that the death toll did not exceed 300,000 and that it was a military necessity since the Armenians actively assisted the Russians in their war against Turkey.

Despite Turkish allegations that no genocide took place and that Armenian victims found themselves dead in war, evidence of various assassinations and statements by senior Turkish officials at the time that the measures were intended to eliminate Armenians and not to move them reinforces the claim among historians that this is a planned and systematic genocide.

In Israel, there has been a struggle for years to recognize the Armenian genocide, but despite this, a decision on sweeping government recognition has not yet been made and many in the Israeli public are waiting for it. Today, over thirty countries, including Western countries, and now also the United States, officially and fully recognize the Armenian genocide, will only days say whether Israel will join their ranks.