4/25/21 Biden Calls Armenian Genocide What It Is

Over several years during the World War I era, the Ottoman Turks force-marched or starved or otherwise murdered 1.5 million Armenians.

It was such a brutal ethnic cleansing that Hitler praised it, saying the entire episode had effectively wiped Armenians from historical memory. “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” he said in an infamous speech in 1939, one week before Germany invaded Poland.

On Saturday, an Armenian day of remembrance, Joe Biden made the official announcement that the U.S. remembers those hideous actions -- as genocide.

At most, two million Armenian-Americans live in the United States now. They know their ethnic roots and are proud of their cultural heritage. To them, hearing their culture remembered and having their sorrow acknowledged meant a lot.

Several European countries have acknowledged the genocide, but the United States had not done so. That's because Turkey has been a semi-reliable ally over the years, and because staying friends with the nation that straddles the Bosphorus is a lot better than making it an enemy. Turkey has poured great gobs of money into lobbying to drive that point home. Turkey wants the rest of the world to believe that lots of people were killed on both sides. That isn't true.

Because of Turkey's unique willingness to play the world powers like toys, American politicians have grown timid again and again about acknowledging Armenians' tragic history.

That makes Joe Biden the ballsiest President in a hundred years.

We should be proud of him. I am.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/04/24/armenia-genocide-declaration-484546?fbclid=IwAR0rDE-DRWrsg5iEgfyAJCjihFNy22y5xN9rS8ihx-K0eAF3i9mEJOow4DE

Comments included the following, which help to fill out the situation:

KCG Comment:  I think this Presidential statement was a good step. The Genocide was so long ago - no Turks alive today are responsible for it. So hopefully Turkey won’t feel defensive.
    SM Reply: And a good second step is the acknowledge the genocide here of the indigenous people.
    SB Reply: Yes it's really hard for us to not appear as hypocrites. However, we don't have to pretend it didn't happen. We basically did the same thing with the Trail of Tears. 
    MD Reply: Turkey will take this as a great affront, and there will be repercussions. Turkey has a different narrative around this, and Biden's statement is a direct attack upon that narrative, which impacts national identity, and so Turkey will most definitely feel attacked and defensive.
            PK Reply to MD: Agree. In the past the State Dept and the US military have been defenders of Turkey. I wonder what changed, whether they got over-ruled or whether Erdogan has aggravated them so much they just kept quiet. We still have national security interests involving Turkey including Ukraine and the Black Sea.
PK Comment: It's much more complicated than this. The term genocide did not exist at the time and the Armenians and Kurds in the region where it happened had been in open revolt against the Sultan. They were supported by the Tzar in a Russian territorial grab against a weakening Ottoman Empire.

I think Greeks in the region were negatively affected too. Another story of a crumbling Empire in an age of nationalism.

Yes what happened in what became Eastern Turkey was a blood bath. Yes both Armenians and Kurds were killed or forced to flee.

But no, unlike in Europe decades later, Armenians, Kurds and Greeks were not touched in other parts of the Ottoman Empire - like Istanbul or along the coast. Furthermore, the European Jews were not revolting against the German government, they were simply trying to live in places they had for generations.

The Ottoman Empire ceased to exist in the early 1920s so in a way this is akin to beating a dead horse.

I think if the Turkish government had opened the Ottoman archives to both Armenian and Turkish scholars who read the Ottoman script, the genocide or not question could have been resolved years ago. This did not happen and as far as I know, it has not happened.

So these are basically political decisions in Ankara and Washington done for domestic political reasons.

SB Comment:  At what point does ethnic cleansing become definable as genocide? It was clearly ethnic cleansing on a large scale. It can vary depending on how haphazardly it is carried out; does the place on the moral yardstick change therefore? Maybe, if the hesitancy of perpetrators is the source, but not by much.