American president Joe Biden is preparing to have the United States formally recognise the 1915 genocide of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman empire, according to Al-Monitor.
This would mark the second time an American president has recognised the atrocity as genocide: Ronald Reagan recognised it as such, but this was retracted after pressure from the Turkish government, which claims that the deaths of the Armenian population were not as a result of systematic killings by government forces.
The United States government has for decades sought to avoid the issue, as it is still a serious source of tension between Armenia and Turkey, still a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
The move by Biden’s administration comes after 100 members of the US congress signed a bipartisan letter circulated by the Armenian caucus urging Biden to stand by a campaign promise to recognise the genocide as such. Barack Obama had made a similar pledge but did not follow through during his time in office.
This move is part of a growing rift between former allies Turkey and the United States, and is said to threaten to destabilize NATO.
[Image: Aerial view of the Armenian Genocide memorial complex on a hill above Yerevan, Aleksey Chalabyan, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62969981]