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

Turkey's foreign ministry said the US president's proclamation opened "a deep wound" that undermines Turkish-US ties, yet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not immediately respond.
People wave Armenian and US flags in front of the US embassy in Yerevan after US President recognized the 1915 killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide, on April 24, 2021.

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.”

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