President Biden: Fulfill Your Promise and Recognize the Armenian Genocide

This year marks the 106th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, the systematic murder of 1.5 million Armenian women, men and children by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923. But even now, more than a century later, America still struggles to recognize this basic truth.

In his first year in the Oval Office, President Biden has an opportunity and responsibility to right that wrong and recognize the Genocide for what it was: one of the gravest violations of human rights the world has ever known. He can do that without passing legislation, but by just using one of the most powerful tools he possesses – his words.

The facts of the Genocide are not in serious dispute. They were recorded in real time by American diplomats who lacked a name for the barbaric and systematic extermination of the Armenian people but knew that it was without precedent in human history. Millions of Armenians were beaten, raped, killed and marched across deserts by the Ottoman Empire.

From the blood and rubble, the Armenian people survived. Tens of thousands of orphaned children owe their lives to the generosity of Americans who created the Near East Relief Foundation. Those children and their descendants crossed the ocean to build lives, in Los Angeles and across the nation. 

President Biden knows these facts well and has spoken about them directly, including as a candidate for President. But as President, his words have new power and meaning. He can speak for America, and for the ages. 

Armenians across the United States have been disappointed by Presidents of both parties who have pledged to support recognition and then caved in to the demands of the Turkish Republic. I hope and pray that President Biden will turn his promise into action and, in so doing, help restore America to its rightful place of leadership in human rights.   

The word “genocide” has contemporary significance because it is not a problem of the past. In Xinjiang, Uyghurs face a relentless campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to wipe out their culture. And in Artsakh, where Turkey assisted Azerbaijan in making war on the Armenians again, their actions raise grave threats of another genocide. What a comfort it would be to the perpetrators of crimes against humanity in the present day if the most powerful nation on earth could be cowed into silence about the events of a century ago.

In recognizing the Genocide, President Biden would be joining both the House and the Senate which voted overwhelmingly in 2019 to do so. For decades, those of us who supported recognition of the Genocide faced a ferocious opposition, premised on the harm that such a vote would cause to our relations with Turkey and to our national security.

Yet what happened is precisely what we all predicted. Turkey protested but the relationship between Turkey and the United States did not change ­– or if it has changed it has done so for reasons having nothing to do with Genocide recognition and everything to do with Turkey’s drift towards autocracy. The Turkish government and its well-heeled DC lobby have mobilized as they do every year around this time. They are spinning up fear aimed at keeping the gag order in place.

But we must not resort to euphemisms or half-truths. The murder of 1.5 million Armenians was an atrocity but it was more than that. The act of seeking to destroy a people and a culture is a different kind of evil, and it was not until Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” that we had a word to describe it. Denial of genocide is a profanity and in the words of Elie Wiesel it is a “double killing.”

Millions of Armenians, in Yerevan and across the world including tens of thousands of my constituents, anxiously wait to see if America will join France, Germany, the European Union, the Vatican and 49 states in recognizing the Genocide. They must not be disappointed again. It’s time to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Rep. Adam Schiff