President Joe Biden, 78, made good on a campaign promise to recognize the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks [1915-1917] during which Interior Minister Talaat Pasha, with full approval from Sultan Mehmed VI, deported and marched 1.5 million Armenians to their deaths. While Pasha marched Armenias to their deaths in 1915, the Bolshevik Revolution was starting to take place [1917-1923], where Russia’s last Tzar Nikolai II Aleancrovich Romanov was driven from power. World War I was well underway [Jan. 28, 2014 to Nov. 11, 1981, in which the allied powers battled the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany and the Ottoman Empire all simultaneously, to at the end of WW 1 Nov. 11, 1918 to start redrawing the world map at the June 28, 2019 Treaty of Versailles where the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empire lost much of their occupied lands.
Biden’s statement today recognizing the Armenian genocide, since Polish Lawyer Raphael Lemking coined the term “genocide” in 1943 discussing the Nazi Holocaust but used the Ottoman death marches of Armenians as the early 20th century massacre to define the term “genocide.” To Lemkin, genocide was not just to unfair treatment or persecution of one group or another, it was the systematic attempt to exterminate an identified ethnic, racial or religious group. Generations of American presidents refused to acknowledge the Armenian genocide because of threats by modern-day Turkey, denying any connection to Mehmed VI’s regime. But like so many other things, there’s a back story or context as to why the Ottoman Turks, after 600 years, decided to persecute the Armenian population. Whether Armenians actively conspired to end the Ottoman Empire is anyone’s guess.
When it came to the Armenians, they were an Eastern [Armenian] Orthodox Christian faith, very different from the Sultan’s Turkish Sunni Islam AKA Salafism. More aligned religiously with Russia Eastern Orthodox Faith, the Sultan accused the Armenian population of collaborating with the Bolshevik revolution, a Marxian movement to install socialism in Russia, ending the 1613-1917 reign in Russia by the Romanov family dynasty. Fearing that the Sultan Mehmed VI faced the same fate as Tsar Nicholas II, he targeted Armenians as undermining his 600-year rule, seeking to topple the Ottoman Empire’s rule from 1299 AD to 1923. So it was in that context that Sultan Mehmed the VI tasked his Interior Minister Alaat Pasha with getting rid of the Armenian population. Biden’s recognition of the Armenian genocide ends the long debate in the United States.
Biden’s effort to position U.S. foreign policy as a defender of human rights around the globe required him to step up on the Armenian question. Biden’s approach to foreign policy in his first 100 days has upended U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Chinese relations, especially accusing China of committing genocide against its Muslim Uyghur population in Xinjiang province. When the U.S. held it’s Anchorage, Alaska summit March 18-20 with China, 58-year-old Secretary of State Tony Blinken and 44-year-old National Security Adviser Jake accused China of “genocide” against its Muslim Uyghur population . While there’s a case for discrimination, forced labor and re-education camps there’s no “genocide” meeting Lemkin’s 1943 definition. When it comes to the 1.5 million Armenians that were slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks, it’s much closer to Lemkin’s original definition of genocide.
Turkey’s 67-year-old President Recp Tayyip Erdogan rejected Biden’s declaration of the historic Armenian genocide. “We reject and denounce in the strongest terms the statement of the President of the U.S. regarding the events of 1915 made under the pressure of radical Armenian circles and anti-Turky groups,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. Armenia’s reaction was exactly the opposite. Recognizing the genocide “is important not only in terms of respecting the memory of 1.5 million innocent victims, but also in preventing the repetition of such crimes,” Armenian Prime Minster Nikol Pashinyan told Biden. Pashinyan has been under extreme pressure to resign after the Azerbaijan massacre of Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, where Turkey helped Azerbainjani troops to root out Armenian enclaves in the disputed mountainous region of Azerbaijan.
Biden did the right thing acknowledging the historic record of what happened to Armenians under the Ottoman Empire [1915-1917]. Complicating the picture is Erdogan’s hatred of the Kurdish population living in the hinterlands of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. While the Kurds PKK militia worked hard with the U.S. to rid the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] from Iraq and Syria, Erdogan still views Kurds, like Armenians, as Turkey’s natural enemy. Biden created more complications for U.S. foreign policy dealing with Turkey, a member of NATO, now driven closer into the Russian Federation orbit. What happened to Armenians 106 years ago was inexcusable but when you consider the crumbling of the 600-year-Ottoman Empire, the historic context is important that the Sultan saw Armenians backing Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution toppling the Romanov dynasty.
