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History

POV: President Biden Confirms Armenian Genocide as “Historical Fact”

Simon Payaslian, BU’s Kenosian Professor of Modern Armenian History and Literature, says the words carry “enormous historical significance for the Armenian community”

President Joe Biden’s statement on Saturday about Armenian Remembrance Day, officially labeling the Ottoman Turkish government’s killing of 1.5 million of its Armenian citizens as “genocide,” is the culmination of years of effort by the Armenian community to affirm the historical truth of the genocide. April 24 has served as Armenian Genocide commemoration day because on that date, in 1915, the Young Turk nationalist leaders arrested the Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople (Istanbul), then the Ottoman capital. Thus, traditionally April 24 has come to symbolize the launching of the Armenian Genocide.

Dispersed throughout the world, many of the survivors of the genocide immigrated to the United States. Here, as elsewhere, they sought to restart life anew and to rebuild their lost homes and communities in the New World. The United States offered the hope and opportunity to recollect the shattered pieces of their tormented lives, and they remained forever grateful to their host society.

Armenian survivor memoirs offer insights into the mindset of those Armenians who found refuge in the United States. These writers praise the United States for having offered them a safe haven when they arrived at its shores as orphans and refugees, penniless and homeless. One often reads “God Bless America,” “falling in love with America,” or being “eternally grateful for the life in America”—the country where, despite the initial difficulties encountered in their new environment, they found safety and security, away from Turkish persecution and atrocities.

Yet, while counting their blessings in the United States, the survivors of the genocide felt victimized again, this time by the US government, as it pursued its interests in line with Turkish geopolitical priorities and repeatedly denied their loss and traumatic experiences. Nevertheless, the survivors were successful in transmitting to the future generations their memory of the genocide and determination to seek justice.

The US government denial of the Armenian Genocide as a historical fact proved unsustainable over the long haul. Thousands of documents in the US archives, including the numerous reports dispatched by US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau and American consuls to Washington from different regions in the Ottoman Empire, have documented what Ambassador Morgenthau in his book, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (1918), referred to as the Turkish “extermination” of Armenians and other Christians across the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, the United Nations, the European Parliament, several countries, genocide scholars, Pope Francis, and NGOs over the years affirmed the applicability of the term “genocide” to the Turkish massacres of Armenians. Nearly all US states have issued declarations affirming the genocide, and in 2019 both houses of Congress adopted resolutions affirming the genocide. Despite the overwhelming evidence, US presidents, with the exception of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, adhered to the inherited policy of refusing to use the term “genocide.”        

President Biden’s affirmation of the Armenian Genocide as a historical fact is significant on several accounts. The statement reaffirms the American ideals of human rights and condemns intolerance, bigotry, and racism here at home and abroad. Further, President Biden’s statement enhances the cultural and political legitimacy of the use of the term “Armenian Genocide.” Finally, President Biden’s statement carries enormous historical significance for the Armenian community in the United States and Armenians worldwide. Combined with the resolutions adopted by the House and the Senate in 2019, the president’s statement confirms the truth regarding the genocide as a historical fact. The survivors of the genocide, who are no longer with us, expected and demanded from the US government no more than a formal expression of the truth, the truth to counter Turkish denial, the truth that could remind the American people, the international community, or whoever was willing to listen, about the genocide—not a genocide in abstract sense, but the genocide in all its concrete, horrendous realities, the genocide that murdered their families and caused the destruction of their communities, the genocide that brought incomprehensible, and for many unsurmountable, personal sufferings at the hands of the Young Turk regime. Today, while Armenians welcome President Biden’s affirmation of the genocide, neither his statement nor any other proclamations can heal the profound emotional wounds suffered by the Armenian communities. For ultimately, it is the Turkish government—not the American government—that should recognize and accept responsibility for the genocide.