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Former President Robert Kocharyan holds his first election rally.
The Armenian Parliament is officially dissolved.
Author: Jalatian Sonya
Armenia ruling party MP: Armenian authorities are strong and aren’t afraid of anyone in and out of country
News.am, Armenia
Armenia ruling party MP: Armenian authorities are strong and aren’t afraid of anyone in and out of country
18:32, 10.05.2021
The Armenian authorities aren’t afraid of anyone. This is what Chair of the Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly of Armenia, deputy of the ruling My Step bloc Vladimir Vardanyan said during today’s briefings in parliament.
According to him, people in Armenia and abroad need to clearly understand that there is a power in Armenia that is strong and is fighting for its interests within the country and beyond the country’s borders.
Ishkhan Saghatelyan: New bloc committed to stopping collapse of Armenian statehood
Panorama, Armenia
May 6 2021
Ishkhan Saghatelyan, one of the leaders of the opposition Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, Dashnaktsutyun) party, said that the party will run in the upcoming snap parliamentary elections in alliance with Armenia’s former President Robert Kocharyan and the Reviving Armenia party.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Saghatelyan said the new electoral bloc is committed to stopping the collapse of the Armenian statehood.
“The alliance is ready to take full responsibility, form a new quality government, handle the serious challenges facing the country, stop the collapse of the statehood and build a guaranteed future for Armenia through national unity and joint efforts,” he wrote.
Journal Times editorial: Finally, a U.S. president acknowledges the Armenian genocide
Journal Times, Wisconsin
May 5 2021
This newspaper told Vartenie Dadian’s story in 2000. She was 94 at the time. Rob Golub, later managing editor of The Journal Times, told her story.
When she was a preteen, Mrs. Dadian said, soldiers took the Armenian men away from the village of Tomarza, Turkey, including Mrs. Dadian’s father. She never saw him again.
Perhaps days or weeks later, she said, “somebody came in the morning and said ‘This house has to be empty in an hour or two.’ “ Her mother gathered up bread, and they joined the walk.
“Turks, they take everything and they let us walk,” Dadian said. “We left everything … I lost my family. I lost my mother.” Dadian’s mother died on the walk, after mother and daughter somehow became separated.
The Armenian refugees walked from Turkey to the Syrian desert. Dadian was placed in a British orphanage. She was brought to the United States by the man who became her husband.
In Golub’s telling of Dadian’s story, he quoted her eldest daughter, Akgulian, regarding being awed by her mother’s story. Akgulian said: “I think all of us feel very special, that we are existing because of her.”
Golub’s report was published on April 24, 2000; that night, people of Armenian ancestry around the world held their annual remembrance of the Armenian genocide, when 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed by the soldiers and government of the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
Five years and four days after we told Vartenie Dadian’s story, we published a letter to the editor from Zohrab Khaligian, a Racinian and a member of the Armenian National Committee of Wisconsin.
“It was deeply insulting to read the article ‘Some Turks confront World War I massacre of Armenians’ on April 17th because it continues The Journal Times’ policy of publishing articles that deny the Armenian genocide,” he wrote, adding that in a 2004 Associated Press report we published, “the Armenian genocide is referred to as an Armenian allegation with statements like ‘Armenians say.’ “
Citing a bill adopted by both houses of the Wisconsin Legislature and a proclamation by then-Gov. James Doyle in 2005 that designated April 24 as “Wisconsin Day of Remembrance for the Armenian Genocide of 1915 to 1923,” he wrote: “Isn’t it enough … for The Journal Times to also characterize the Armenian genocide as genocide?”
Mr. Khaligian was right, and we knew it. So we published his letter with an editor’s note: “It is not Journal Times policy to deny historical fact, as the Armenian genocide clearly is. Stories in The Journal Times will reflect this policy.”
From that point forward, whenever The Journal Times published an Associated Press report regarding the matter, we inserted the following sentence: “The Journal Times recognizes the Armenian genocide as historical fact.”
Why did we do this?
For our neighbors.
Racine doesn’t make the City-Data.com list of the 101 U.S. cities with the largest number of people born in Armenia. But all the proof you need of the sizable Armenian-American community in Racine is the presence of two Armenian Apostolic churches — St. Hagop, 4100 Newman Road, and St. Mesrob, 4605 Erie St.
In a city where so many survivors of the genocide had settled and raised families, we could no longer refuse to stand with our Armenian-American neighbors.
“Too many people get the wrong idea, why we remember,” the Rev. Yeprem Kelegian of St. Mesrob, himself the son of survivors of the genocide, said in 2000. Forgetting he said, “becomes mental and moral sloth.” Kelegian said a tendency toward hate and genocide always exists, and without memory, “you allow those tendencies to creep back in.”
But four presidents, two Republicans and two Democrats, failed to acknowledge historical reality in the 21 years after we told Mrs. Dadian’s story. Finally, on April 24, President Joe Biden acknowledged it.
“The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today,” Biden said in a statement. “We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated.”
We’re thankful that President Biden took a stand and formally recognized the Armenian genocide.
We wish, for the sake of our neighbors, that it hadn’t taken from Woodrow Wilson onward for an American head of state to do so.
Rep. Schiff renews call for sanctions against Azerbaijan
Public Radio of Armenia
May 5 2021
Cenbak governor forecasts increase in crediting interest rate
16:58, 4 May, 2021
YEREVAN, MAY 4, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank governor Martin Galstyan forecasts a certain increase in the crediting interest rates after they raised the refinancing rate.
At its meeting today, the Board of the Central Bank of Armenia raised the refinancing rate by 0.5 percentage point to 6.0%,
The Lombard repo facility rate was set 7.5%, while the Deposit facility rate at 4.5%.
The Central Bank is forecasting external and internal inflation effects on the Armenian economy but the 12-months inflation – after a certain acceleration in the short-term sector- will gradually decrease and stabilize around a targeted 4%, the Armenian Central Bank’s governor Martin Galstyan at a news conference after the refinancing rate was raised.
The Economist on infamous “macabre” Azeri park
11:52,
YEREVAN, APRIL 30, ARMENPRESS. Both past and present haunt relations between Turkey and Armenia, The Economist’s editorial board wrote in an article, stating that the two countries don’t show any sign of reconciling.
“A century ago, Ottoman troops committed an Armenian genocide. A few months ago, Turkey helped Azerbaijan defeat Armenia in a war,” the article says.
Noting that despite some Turkish official circles have been talking about a possible “new-era” in the Armenia-Turkey relations, their actions prove otherwise.
The Economist quoted Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan’s earlier interview where he said that the re-opening of the borders with Armenia from the Turkish side would de-escalate tension. He had also noted that Armenia is ready to establish relations with Turkey without preconditions.
Nevertheless, The Economist writes that the actions of Turkey and Azerbaijan prove otherwise.
“Turkey and Azerbaijan were not really reassuring. During this victory parade in Azerbaijan, Erdogan praised Enver Pasha, one of the architects of the genocide. Mr. Aliyev recently presided over the opening of a macabre “Spoils of War” theme park, featuring mannequins of wounded Armenian soldiers with hooked noses and grotesque faces, and neatly tidy helmets of Armenians killed in the war. How to reconcile such displays with Azerbaijan’s peace offers is a guess. What MM. Erdogan and Aliyev, Armenia looks less like an olive branch and more like the short end of the stick.”
RFE/RL Armenian Report – 04/29/2021
Thursday,
Sarkisian’s Party Seeks Election Alliance With Former Security Chief
• Artak Khulian
Armenia -- Former President Serzh Sarkisian holds a news conference in Yerevan,
August 19, 2020.
Former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK) announced on Thursday
its decision to seek an electoral alliance with another opposition party led by
former National Security Service (NSS) Director Artur Vanetsian.
The HHK and Vanetsian’s Hayrenik (Fatherland) party have been affiliated with
the Homeland Salvation Front, a coalition of opposition forces that have tried
to toppled Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian over his handling of last year’s war
in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Unlike Hayrenik, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) and
other members of the alliance, the HHK until recently signaled its desire to
boycott snap parliamentary elections expected in June, saying that they could be
rigged by Pashinian.
But the former ruling party eventually decided against an election boycott at a
meeting of its governing body headed by Sarkisian. In a statement, it cited the
“vital need” to oust Pashinian.
“Given the existing political realities, we believe that the Hayrenik party’s
possible political cooperation is the most effective way to dethrone the
capitulator [Pashinian,]” Armen Ashotian, the HHK’s deputy chairman, told a news
conference.
The HHK thus chose not to team up for now with Robert Kocharian, another former
president who is expected to join forces with Dashnaktsutyun. Kocharian again
said earlier this month that he will be Pashinian’s main challenger.
Hayrenik did not immediately react to the HHK announcement. Vanetsian founded
the party a year ago after being relieved of his duties in September 2019r.
Vanetsian, 42, was appointed as head of the NSS immediately the 2018 “Velvet
Revolution” that toppled Sarkisian and brought Pashinian to power. He quickly
became an influential member of Pashinian’s entourage, overseeing high-profile
corruption investigations into former government officials and Sarkisian’s
relatives.
Ashotian downplayed this fact and said the former security chief has cooperated
with various opposition forces since his resignation.
Iran’s Khamenei Notes ‘Common Interests’ With Armenia
Iran -- Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivers a speech in Tehran, March
20, 2021.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has reaffirmed support for closer
relations with Armenia sought by the Islamic Republic.
Khamenei wrote to President Armen Sarkissian on Wednesday in response to the
latter’s recent message congratulating him on Nowruz, the ancient Persian New
Year.
According to Sarkissian’s office, Khamenei said he hopes that the two
neighboring states will deepen their “long-standing” relationship for the sake
of stability in the region, “global justice” and other “common interests.”
Visiting Yerevan in late January, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif
likewise reaffirmed Tehran’s desire to continue seeking closer relations with
neighboring Yerevan after the autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Zarif expressed strong support for Armenia’s territorial integrity when he
discussed regional security and bilateral ties with his Armenian counterpart Ara
Ayvazian. The two countries are concerned about the “presence of terrorists and
foreign fighters” in the region, he said, seemingly alluding to the widely
documented participation of Middle Eastern mercenaries in the six-week war on
Azerbaijan’s side.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian met with Khamenei during an official
visit to Tehran in February 2019.
Khamenei reportedly urged Pashinian at the time to strengthen Armenian-Iranian
relations “contrary to what the United States desires.” “Iran and Armenia have
never had any problems with each other,” he said.
Minister Offers Rosy Outlook For Armenian Economy
• Robert Zargarian
Armenia -- Armenian Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian attends a cabinet meeting in
Yerevan, January 14, 2021.
Economy Minister Vahan Kerobian said on Thursday that he will resign if the
Armenian economy does not grow at a double-digit rate this year.
Kerobian insisted that this is a realistic target despite the continuing
coronavirus pandemic that plunged Armenia into a recession last year.
“True, I’m not quite happy with month-on-month economic growth in March,” he
told reporters. “Instead of 7-7.5 percent projected by us, only 3.8 percent
[growth] was registered, according to preliminary data. But that will still be
enough to ensure our double-digit economic growth by the end of this year.”
The Armenian Finance Ministry expects the country’s GDP to increase by only 3.2
percent in real terms after shrinking by 7.6 percent last year. The Armenian
Central Bank has forecast an even lower 2021 grow rate: 1.4 percent.
Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have offered similar
outlooks. “The recovery will be slow; the economy is unlikely to return to
pre-COVID output levels until 2023,” the bank said in a report released late
last month.
“I will resign if Armenia does not have double-digit economic growth,” Kerobian
declared after a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
The 44-year-old businessman joined the government in November 2020 in a cabinet
reshuffle initiated by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. He was the chief
executive of Armenia’s largest food delivery company until then.
Kerobian spoke to journalists as he faced protests against his decision to lay
off about 70 employees of the Armenian Ministry of Economy for cost-cutting
purposes. The latter have worked at nationwide ministry divisions providing
counseling to farmers and monitoring the use of the government’s agricultural
subsidies.
Many of the affected officials gathered outside the government headquarters in
Yerevan to demand that Kerobian annul his decision.
“Imagine a wheat farming program subsidized by the state. Shouldn’t we verify
whether public funds have been used efficiently and whether the wheat was
actually planted?” said Artak Khachatrian, the acting head of one such division
based in northwestern Shirak province.
Kerobian said these monitoring functions must be outsourced to banks and
financial institutions working with the government. “We are trying to spend
taxpayers’ money as efficiently as possible,” he said.
Pashinian Decries Slow Pace Of COVID-19 Vaccination In Armenia
• Nane Sahakian
Armenia - Armenian Health Minister Anahit Avanesian is vaccinated against
COVID-19 in Yerevan,
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian complained on Thursday about a lack of progress
in the Armenian government’s vaccination campaign against COVID-19, telling his
ministers to get vaccine shots and thus set an example to skeptical citizens.
Pashinian said that only about 2, 700 people making up less than 0.1 percent of
Armenia’s population have been vaccinated since the campaign was launched on
April 13. “This is a shamefully low figure,” he told a weekly cabinet meeting in
Yerevan.
Pashinian said the vaccination is critical for not only minimizing coronavirus
infections and resulting deaths but also accelerating the country’s recovery
from a recession caused by the pandemic.
“If we don’t register a significant vaccination rate over the next month our
tourism industry may have very serious problems this year as well,” he warned.
Armenia received 24,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine on March 28 and
43,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V jab in the following weeks. The government
plans to import more vaccines in the coming weeks.
The campaign was initially limited to medical workers, seniors and people
suffering from chronic diseases. With few of them apparently showing an interest
in the vaccines, Health Minister Anahit Avanesian allowed medical centers late
last week to administer AstraZeneca shots to all adults willing to take them.
Many Armenians remain wary of doing so because of recent reports linking the
Astra Zeneca vaccine to a rare blood clotting disorder. Both Pashinian and
Avanesian insisted on Thursday that the risk of serious side-effects is minimal.
Avanesian and Deputy Minister Tigran Avinian publicly took AstraZeneca shots on
Wednesday in an effort to allay the fears and encourage Armenians to follow
their example.
“I’m feeling very well and hope that this example will be contagious,” the
health minister told fellow cabinet members. She urged them to also get
vaccinated.
Pashinian said in this regard that all government members must receive vaccine
injections within a week.
Armenia has been hit hard by the pandemic, with a total 215,528 infections and
almost 5,090 coronavirus-related deaths officially confirmed to date. The
Armenian Ministry of Health reported on Thursday that 20 more people infected
with COVID-19 have died in the past day.
An ongoing third wave of infections in the country of about 3 million began in
late February. Critics blame the resurgence of COVID-19 on the authorities’
failure to enforce their physical distancing and sanitary restrictions.
EU Urges Release Of Armenian Prisoners Held In Azerbaijan
• Susan Badalian
Belgium - European Union flags flutter outside the European Commission
headquarters in Brussels, August 21, 2020.
The European Union has called on Azerbaijan to free all Armenian soldiers and
civilians held by it more than five months after a Russian-brokered ceasefire
stopped the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In a statement released late on Wednesday, the EU welcomed the “consolidation of
the ceasefire on the ground,” repatriation of the remains of people killed
during the fighting and humanitarian aid provided to civilians in the conflict
zone.
“The European Union reiterates, however, that renewed efforts are necessary to
build confidence between both countries and make progress towards sustainable
peace,” read the statement submitted to the Council of Europe.
“This includes refraining from hostile and offensive rhetoric, finalizing, as
soon as possible, the return of all remaining prisoners of war and detained
persons, regardless of the circumstances of their arrest, and cooperating also
on other important issues such as demining,” it said.
The truce agreement calls for the unconditional release of all prisoners held by
the conflicting sides. The Russian peacekeepers stationed in Karabakh arranged
several prisoner swaps in December and early this year. No Azerbaijani prisoners
are known to be held in Armenia or Karabakh at present.
A total of 69 Armenian prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians have been freed to
date. More than 100 others are believed to remain in Azerbaijani captivity.
Azerbaijan says that they are not covered by the truce accord because they were
captured after it took effect on November 10. Azerbaijani officials have branded
them as “terrorists” and said Baku does not intend to release them.
In recent months, Baku has also reportedly refused to provide the European Court
of Human Rights (ECHR) with information about the whereabouts of the remaining
Armenian prisoners.
The EU statement stressed that the Azerbaijani authorities are obliged to comply
with relevant “interim measures” issued by the ECHR in response to lawsuits
filed from Armenia. “We call on Azerbaijan to provide the outstanding
information requested by the Court,” it said.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian hailed the “very important” EU statement
during a weekly session of his cabinet on Thursday. He said the growing
international pressure on Baku “increases our optimism about achieving concrete
results on this issue.”
“We need to be as united, patient and consistent as possible,” added Pashinian.
The U.S., Russian and French mediators co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group also
called for the release of the Armenian POWs civilians earlier this month.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
CoE Commissioner for Human Rights condemns opening of “ trophy park” in Baku
15:56,
YEREVAN, APRIL 27, ARMENPRESS. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, has sent a letter to President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, where she condemned the recent opening of a “military trophy park” in Baku, which reportedly displays Armenian military equipment taken as a trophy during the war and shows dehumanizing scenes, including wax mannequins depicting dead and dying Armenians soldiers, the CoE website reports.
The CoE Commissioner for Human Rights expressed her concerns over the opening of the “park”. “I consider such images highly disturbing and humiliating”, said the Commissioner. “This kind of display can only further intensify and strengthen long-standing hostile sentiments and hate speech, and multiply and promote manifestations of intolerance.”
She therefore called on the Azerbaijani President to take a firm stance against any rhetoric or actions which lead to triggering animosity or hatred and instead, provide his full support and political backing towards efforts aimed at promoting peace and reconciliation between the populations affected by the conflict, particularly bearing in mind the wellbeing of the future generations of Azerbaijan and Armenia.
The Azerbaijani side replied to the CoE Commissioner’s letter with tough rhetoric, accusing the Commissioner of impartiality, once again showing their intolerance and inability of taking into consideration the criticism made by the leading international organizations. The reply has been made by Azerbaijan’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe.
Biden to Say Armenians Suffered Genocide. Here’s Why It Matters.
New York Times
Events more than 100 years ago during the breakup of the Ottoman Empire are back in the news, with President Biden’s intention to declare the killing of 1.5 million Armenians a genocide.
A memorial to Armenian victims in a chapel in Antelias, Lebanon.Credit…Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Updated 3:26 p.m. ET
At the risk of infuriating Turkey, President Biden is set to formally announce on Saturday that the United States regards the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by Turks more than a century ago to be a genocide — the most monstrous of crimes.
Mr. Biden would be the first American president to make such an announcement, breaking with predecessors who did not wish to antagonize Turkey, a NATO ally and a strategically pivotal country straddling Europe and the Middle East.
The expected announcement, which Mr. Biden had signaled when he was a candidate last year, has been welcomed by Armenians and human rights advocates. It carries enormous symbolic weight, equating the anti-Armenian violence with atrocities on the scale of those committed in Nazi-occupied Europe, Cambodia and Rwanda.
Use of the term is a moral slap at President Tayyip Recep Erdogan of Turkey, a fervent denier of the genocide. He has fulminated at other leaders, including Pope Francis, for describing the Armenian killings that way.
Genocide is generally defined as the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political or cultural group, with the intent to destroy that group.
The term did not exist until 1944, when a Polish Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, combined the Greek word for race or tribe, “geno,” with “-cide,” from the Latin word for killing. Mr. Lemkin said the killings of the Armenians and the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis shaped his thinking.
Image
An Armenian cemetery in Istanbul in 2015.Credit…Bryan Denton for The New York Times
The term was incorporated into a 1948 United Nations treaty that made genocide a crime under international law.
Although partisans in a number of current conflicts have often used the term to discredit and stigmatize opponents, genocide prosecutions are rare. Special courts were created to prosecute crimes including the 1975-1979 genocide in Cambodia, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and atrocities including genocide in the former Yugoslavia.
The International Criminal Court, which was created in 2002 in part to prosecute such crimes, has only one pending genocide case — Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, former president of Sudan, who is wanted on two warrants for crimes including genocide in the Darfur region between 2003 and 2008. The court cannot prosecute crimes committed before its inception.
The International Court of Justice, the highest court of the United Nations, ruled in January 2020 that Myanmar must take action to protect Rohingya Muslims, who have been killed and driven from their homes in what the country’s accusers have called a campaign of genocide. The ruling, which has no enforcement power, was the outcome of a lawsuit filed on behalf of Muslim countries that wanted the court to condemn Myanmar for violating the genocide treaty.
The violence against Armenians began during the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkey, which included an area that is now Armenia, a landlocked country ringed by Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran.
Starting in 1915, the Ottomans, aligned with Germany in World War I, sought to prevent Armenians from collaborating with Russia and ordered mass deportations. As many as 1.5 million ethnic Armenians died from starvation, killings by Ottoman Turk soldiers and the police, and forced exoduses south into what is now Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.
About 500,000 Armenians survived, and many eventually scattered into Russia, the United States and elsewhere in what became one of the world’s most far-flung diasporas.
Many historians now consider the deaths of the Armenians to be the first genocide of the 20th century. For many Armenians, it is a scar carried down through generations, still evoking strong emotions, aggravated by Turkey’s insistence that the genocide is a fiction.
Turkey’s government has acknowledged that atrocities were committed during that period but has argued that a large number of Turks were also killed and that the Armenian casualty figures are wildly exaggerated. A succession of Turkish leaders have denounced the genocide as a falsehood intended to undermine their account of the creation of modern Turkey.
Turkey’s denial of genocide is ingrained into Turkish society. Writers who have dared to use the term have been prosecuted under Section 301 of Turkey’s penal code, which bans “denigrating Turkishness.” The denial is taught at an early age, with school textbooks calling the genocide a lie, describing the Armenians of that period as traitors and declaring the actions by the Ottoman Turks as “necessary measures” against Armenian separatism.
Some have come close. President Ronald Reagan tangentially referred to the “genocide of the Armenians” in an April 22, 1981, statement commemorating the liberation of the Nazi death camps.
But American presidents have generally avoided describing the killings this way to avoid any backlash from Turkey that would endanger its cooperation in regional conflicts or diplomacy.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Biden signaled his intentions a year ago in a speech on April 24, Armenia’s official day of remembrance of the genocide. He used the term “Armenian genocide” and asserted that “we must never forget or remain silent about this horrific and systematic campaign of extermination.” And in recent years, bipartisan anger toward Mr. Erdogan has grown. In 2019, the House and Senate passed resolutions calling the Armenian killings a genocide.
As vice president in the Obama administration, Mr. Biden never enjoyed an easy relationship with Mr. Erdogan, an autocratic leader who gave him an icy reception in August 2016. The two met a month after the failed coup in Turkey that Mr. Erdogan blamed on a Turkish cleric living in exile in the United States.
Perhaps more important, Mr. Erdogan’s closeness to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Turkey’s testy relations with other NATO allies and its purchase of Russian antiaircraft missiles have irritated the Biden administration and both houses of Congress. And Turkey’s increasing economic problems under Mr. Erdogan may have made him less likely to retaliate against any American declaration that offends him.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Erdogan held no substantive discussions for the first three months of Mr. Biden’s term, an indication that the White House ascribes less importance to Mr. Erdogan as a partner.
Ian Bremmer, the founder of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, said last month that he believed Mr. Biden would make the genocide declaration despite knowing that a reset of U.S.-Turkey relations would then become “much harder.”
Mr. Erdogan’s aides have signaled that Mr. Biden’s declaration would face a hostile reaction in Turkey. The foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said in a Turkish media interview this week that “if the United States wants to worsen ties, the decision is theirs.”
According to a tally by the Armenian National Institute, a Washington-based group, at least 30 countries have done so.
The answer is more complicated concerning the United Nations, which played a central role in the treaty that made genocide a crime but has not taken a position on what happened in 1915 — 30 years before the global body was created. The website of its Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, in describing the origin of the term genocide, does not mention Armenia. António Guterres, the secretary-general, has skirted the issue.
Asked on Thursday about Mr. Guterres’s view, his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said: “We have no comment, as a general rule, on events that took place before the founding of the U.N.” Genocide, Mr. Dujarric said, “needs to be determined by an appropriate judicial body, as far as the U.N. is concerned.”
Lara Jakes contributed reporting.