President Joe Biden released a document on Saturday that Armenian Americans have pursued for decades. It is a declaration that the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenian citizens by the Ottoman Empire was a genocide.
It is a seemingly simple action and has no legal power. Still, this is a bold move for Biden. Biden goes beyond what the US president was trying to do. So far, the president has refused to formally apply the term “genocide” for fear of violently denying the opposition from Turkey. Turkey explained that the violence between the Ottoman Empire of Muslims and the Armenians of Christianity during the First World War caused great casualties on both sides. However, according to most historians, there is clear evidence that the Turks have engaged in years of ethnic cleansing campaigns, including a death march and mass hunger.
Biden’s Declaration represents an important step towards fulfilling America’s commitment to human rights around the world. At home, it begins to close the open wounds that are central to the Armenian-American experience.
All Armenian Americans, and in fact all Armenians in the global diaspora, live with the ghosts of the Armenian Genocide. We learn stories of miserable families from an early age. I will show you an unforgettable photo.The soundtrack to our lives Der Voghormia, An unforgettable liturgical hymn “The Lord has mercy.”
It is not only the pride and joy of our ancient heritage that connects us, but also the common sense of sadness for this brutal, unfinished historic business. Whether or not it’s an Armenian-American community such as California, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, or Philadelphia, the truth of what happened in 1915 has been denied and the burning experience of loved ones has disappeared. ..
America played an important and positive role in this epic tragedy. The missionary and diplomat were one of those who bravely warned about the atrocities committed to lesser-known Christians thousands of miles away. It served as a haven for the survivors of the myriad genocide.
Those who were lucky enough to go to America were grateful until their death. This country has given them a lot — the opportunity to recover, rebuild and live without fear. It was their beacon in an impossibly cruel world, a place that gave them more opportunities and hopes that could not have been imagined just a few years ago.
My grandfather was one of those survivors. He arrived here from the other side of the world to an orphan teenager. The only one in his family that brought it to life. His love for America eventually burned so brightly that he proudly sent his two sons to war for adoption.
Survivors like him were almost always traumatized so much that they couldn’t look back, fearing what they might see. I didn’t have time to focus on the past. They were too absorbed in the struggle for immigrants. They left the burden on the next generation.
But genocide’s explanation, US-led moral calculations, never arrived. Other countries (including Germany, France and Russia) have revealed that the genocide is a state-sponsored genocide. But not in America.
In the United States, efforts to secure that declaration were dismissed as an attempt to resolve some ancient tribal feuds. This was a dispute that did not involve the United States. However, there was good reason to exercise its moral authority by characterizing Turkey’s actions towards the Armenian people in clear and clear terms. This was the first modern genocide, and its design was so clever and effective that even Adolf Hitler spoke brilliantly about it.
Almost all Armenians know the line from the bottom of their hearts.
“After all, who is talking about the Armenian Genocide today?” Hitler said in his infamous Hitler’s Obersberg speech in 1939, a week before Germany’s invasion of Poland.
The failure to call genocide by its name allowed and facilitated the growth of a genocide denial industrial park funded by Turkish interests. For decades, Armenian-Americans (500,000 to 2 million, depending on sources) have been dictated by Ankara and have stood from Washington, DC lobbyists and former parliamentary members of the K Street beachhead. I was fighting the raised attack. In the past, he defended the approval of the Armenian Genocide as an elected official — a tireless effort to prevent it from happening.
They were armed with arguments that proved to be compelling enough to subordinate America’s founding principles. Genocide’s approval is said to have been against our national security interests as it had to subdue Turkey, an important strategic ally.
For the Turkish government, genocide’s affirmation was a red line, a breach that threatened to unravel the entire relationship. Even the decisive efforts of heavyweights, such as Senator Robert Dole, who are nobles due to their long-standing commitment to the cause among Armenian Americans, to alienate such important allies. Wasn’t enough to overcome the fear of.
In the end, Turkey undermined its own most powerful argument. It proved the lack of credibility as an ally under Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and changed political calculations that prevented even the U.S. president, who wanted to assert that the murder was a genocide, directly say so. ..
It left Biden an opening to fulfill the promise of his campaign to officially acknowledge the Armenian genocide. At the time, his vow wasn’t taken at face value — Barack Obama said exactly the same thing on the trail, but every year on April 24th, the true moment, recognized worldwide as the Armenian Genocide Anniversary. I was shy about the day.
Biden now records the United States as the latest country to officially acknowledge and condemn the Armenian genocide.
There is a counterattack from the Turkish government. Relationships can get worse.
However, Biden placed the United States on the right side of history, allowing the sons, daughters, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Armenian genocide survivors to respect their heritage. Equally important, he permanently seized the option of a future president to call the horrific violence of 1915 something other than its real name.