Ottoman massacres against Armenians: Between American recognition and failure of Erdogan

Mohammed Abdul Ghaffar

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) strongly seek to prevent international recognition of their ancestral massacres against the Armenians, a genocide that occurred between 1915 and 1920. But Erdogan’s regime seems to have failed to manage this file, among other files.

Recognition of the massacre

Bob Minnendez, a Democratic senator and a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, introduced a bill declaring the United States to recognize the Turkish massacre of Armenians and the genocide of more than a million people.

The bill won the support of 15 members of the Democratic and Republican parties, and was signed by 89 deputies in the House of Representatives. This comes in addition to the support of some potential candidates for the US presidency in 2020, to the draft petition.

President Donald Trump is expected to issue a formal confession on the anniversary of the Armenian massacre, which he described earlier as “one of the worst mass atrocities of 20th century history” in his April 2018 statement.

The US House of Representatives tried to get approval for the genocide in 2010, 2014 and 2018 when 100 public figures in America signed a letter demanding Trump to recognize the massacre, as did Obama when he was a member of the Senate.

Pro-Armenian lobbyists such as the Armenian American, the Christian Defense, and the pro-Turkey lobbyist are competing to push the bill, which opens the way for more countries around the world to recognize the Turkish massacre of the Armenians.

Paris on the front line

The United States of America was not alone on the front line with the Erdogan regime, but France was also there. Sonia Karimi, the French parliamentarian for the Republican Party, attacked the Turkish Foreign Minister, Tchaoucheğlu, during the meeting of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly North Atlantic “NATO”, against the backdrop of massacres and genocide of Armenians.

France also commemorated the anniversary of the Turkish army’s genocide during World War I against the Armenians, after French President Emmanuel Macaron announced in February that the event was a national day in France.

To cover up his scandals, Erdoğan, the Turkish president, said in a speech during a popular rally in Ankara on April 24, 2019, that his country’s archive was open to anyone who wanted to see. He also said that displacement is a thing while massacres is another thing Instead, which is an implicit admission of massacres against the Armenians.