Biden considers considering the killing of Armenians as genocide despite opposition from Turkey

US President Democrat Joe Biden plans to acknowledge the genocide of the Armenian people despite the risk of straining relations with Turkey, according to US media reports. Biden is scheduled to make the announcement next Saturday, the 106th anniversary of the start of the genocide against 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. This gesture is something the Democrat had promised to do during the election campaign. The United States has so far been reluctant to recognize the massacre of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 as a genocide so as not to damage relations with Turkey, the heir state to the Ottoman Empire and Washington's partner in NATO. If recognition is confirmed,Biden would become the first president in the history of the United States to classify what happened in this way, although former president Ronald Reagan made an allusion in 1981 in a statement about the Holocaust.

In 2019, both Houses of the US Legislature passed resolutions recognizing genocide for the first time.

However, Donald Trump, who had a good relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, did not take these resolutions into consideration.

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At the time, Erdogan warned that "if necessary" he could order the closure of the US Incirlik airbase, which has played an important role in the Pentagon's operations in Syria. "It is very important for both sides that the United States does not take irreparable steps in relations," said the Turkish president, who also warned that he would take "reciprocal" measures. In 2010, also after a motion by the US Congress to acknowledge the genocide, Ankara withdrew its ambassador from Washington in protest.

Turkey, which denies the Armenian genocide and speaks of "regrettable excesses", has been hostile against those who recognize it internationally, such as France or Germany.

In 2019, Erdogan accused Paris of being responsible for the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. In 2011, the French Parliament had passed a bill that punished denial of the Armenian genocide, resulting in Turkey suspending political relations and military with the country.

Already in 2016, the German Parliament passed a resolution in which it recognized the Armenian genocide, which opened a diplomatic crisis between Berlin and Ankara.

Pope Francis, a year earlier, explicitly referred to the Armenian as the "first genocide of the 20th century."

On this occasion, Turkey also called its ambassador in the Vatican for consultations.