On April 26, local time, the Turkish president made his first official response to U.S. President Joe Biden’s statement about the Armenian “genocide.”
“On 24 April, President Biden made a baseless, unjust and untrue account of the tragic events that took place in our region a century ago. These statements have no historical or legal basis.
Erdogan called on Biden to withdraw his statement immediately, calling it disturbing and “devastating to bilateral relations.” Erdogan argued that Biden had made a statement under pressure from Armenian radicals that it was up to experts, historians, not politicians, to investigate historical events and uncover the truth, and again proposed the creation of a common historical commission on the events of 1915.
Erdogan said the “wrong steps” by the United States would hinder the development of relations between the two countries and suggested that the United States “look in the mirror”, calling it a “genocide” in its history.
But before the speech, Mr Erdogan said he hoped a meeting between the two leaders at a NATO summit in June would “open new doors” to Turkish-American relations.
U.S. President Joe Biden issued a written statement Thursday calling the mass killing of Armenians during the Ottoman rule of Turkey in 1915 a “genocide.” Previous Biden U.S. presidents have been careful not to use the term, using the term “catastrophe” only to refer to the event.
Analysts believe Mr Biden’s move could further affect already frosty relations between the two countries. On the 26th local time, the Turkish lira fell to a near all-time low against the dollar.
