Turkey’s reaction to Biden’s recognition of Armenian genocide more bark than bite for now

Turkey reacted angrily to President Joe Biden’s widely anticipated use of the term genocide in a formal statement to mark the 106th anniversary on April 24 of the mass extermination of more than a million Ottoman Armenians in 1915. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu took to Twitter to air his displeasure. “Words cannot change or rewrite history. We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past. Political opportunism is the greatest betrayal to peace and justice. We entirely reject this statement based solely on populism,” he wrote.

The Turkish foreign ministry accused the United States in a statement of distorting historical facts and said Biden had opened “a deep wound that undermines our mutual trust and friendship.” The ministry called on the US president “to correct this grave mistake.”

But there were no immediate threats of retaliation. The US ambassador to Ankara, David Satterfield, has not been summoned to the foreign ministry as of yet, nor has Turkey’s new man in Washington, Murat Mercan, been ordered to return to Ankara “for consultations.”

Turkey has spent decades and millions of lobbying dollars to prevent the US Congress and the president from joining most credible historians in labeling the tragedy of 1915 a genocide. The battle in Congress was lost in 2019 and Biden today became the first US president to use the term in a formal statement to mark the anniversary. “One and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination,” Biden said. “We remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring.”