President Biden on Saturday became the first U.S. president to formally recognize the systematic deportation and massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as a genocide — something the successive White Houses have avoided out of concern for damaging relations with Turkey.
“Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” Biden said in a statement.
An estimated 2 million Armenians were deported and 1.5 million killed between 1915 and 1925 in what has…
