Biden is set to officially recognize the Armenian genocide, despite warnings from Turkey it could 'worsen ties' even more

Biden Erdogan — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and then-Vice President Joe Biden attend a press conference after a meeting at the Beylerbeyi Palace on November 22, 2014 in Istanbul, Turkey.
Kayhan Ozer/Getty Images

Biden is set to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide on Saturday, the NYT reported.
No US president has officially recognized the killing of 1.5 million Armenians during WWI as genocide.
Turkey has warned that such a move would harm relations at a time when they're already strained.
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President Joe Biden is poised to formally recognize the Armenian genocide on Saturday, The New York Times reported per officials familiar with deliberations on the matter, in a historic move that could further roil US-Turkey relations.

Turkey has urged Biden against recognizing the killings as genocide at a time when the dynamic between Washington and Ankara is already historically contentious. Speaking on the matter during an interview with the Turkish broadcaster Haberturk on Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, "Statements that have no legal binding will have no benefit, but they will harm ties."

"If the United States wants to worsen ties, the decision is theirs," Cavusoglu added.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

Biden would be the first sitting US president to officially recognize the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as genocide. That said, former President Ronald Reagan made a reference to the "genocide of the Armenians" in a 1981 statement on the Holocaust. The step Biden is reportedly set to take would be more official and occur in concert with Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, which happens every year on April 24.

Every president since Jimmy Carter has made public statements memorializing the atrocities committed against the Armenians during the first world war, but stopped short of referring to the killings as genocide. In a statement on the annual remembrace day last year, for example, then-President Donald Trump characterized the killings as "one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century."

Forty-nine US states and dozens of countries, including key US allies and fellow NATO members such as France, Germany, and Canada, have recognized the killings as genocide. In 2018, both the House and Senate passed resolutions designating the slaughter as genocide.

Turkey has dismissed any characterization of the massacare as genocide, even as historians widely regard it as an indisputable fact.

But US presidents have consistently avoided this terminology to avoid angering Turkey, a country long regarded in Washington as a vital NATO ally (the US also has nuclear weapons stored in Turkey).

Not long after his inauguration, Biden pledged

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