Turkey has vowed to respond to President Joe Biden’s use of the term genocide in a formal statement April 24 to mark the 106th anniversary of the mass killings of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915. It was the first time a US president referred to the Armenian tragedy in those words, a measure of the awful state of US-Turkish relations but also of Biden’s ethical foreign policy stance.
In an April 25 interview with the Reuters news agency, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin called the characterization “simply outrageous” and said, “There will be reaction of different forms and kinds and degrees.” He did not specify what these would be and would only say, “At a time and place that we consider to be appropriate, we will continue to respond to this very unfortunate, unfair statement.”
