Kim Kardashian, the Armenian-American businesswoman and media personality, who is one of the most famous women on the planet, thanked President Biden for his recognition of the Armenian genocide on Saturday.
On Saturday, April 24, the 106th anniversary of the horrific event, President Biden became the first US president to officially acknowledge the massacre of over 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottomans as a “genocide.”
“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,” the American President said.
Kim Kardashian: “Today the Armenian people received the recognition we have all been hoping and praying for”
Kardashian, whose father was renowned Armenian-American attorney Robert Kardashian, has been outspoken about Armenian causes for years, as she lobbied the American government to recognize the Armenian genocide.
Kardashian thanked Biden on Twitter and expressed her pride in her own Armenian heritage, writing:
“After more than a century of fighting for truth and acknowledgment, today the Armenian people received the recognition we have all been hoping and praying for.”
“I’m so proud of my heritage, proud of the Armenian communities and grateful to President Biden for granting every Armenian this day, and this truth,” Kim Kardashian continued.
Kardashian has visited Armenia, as well as the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, the country’s capital, multiple times.
Biden breaks tradition
Breaking the consistent policy of non-recognition that has long guided Biden’s predecessors, the President affirmed that the systematic killing and displacement of millions of Armenians in modern-day Turkey was a genocide, not simply the result of skirmishes and battles, as Turkey contends.
The vast majority of historians agree that the massacre of Armenians, along with Greeks and Assyrians, by the Ottomans was a genocide, and have long urged the world to recognize it as such.
Although the massacre of the Armenians occurred before the word genocide — which was coined after the horrific murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust — even existed, historians and experts now argue that it was the first genocide of the 20th century.
Turkey erupts over Biden’s official recognition of the Armenian genocide
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused “third parties” of interfering in Turkey’s affairs.
“Nobody benefits from the debates – which should be held by historians – being politicized by third parties and becoming an instrument of interference in our country,” Erdoğan said in a message to the Armenian patriarch in Istanbul.
Turkey “entirely rejects” Biden’s recognition of the 1915 events as a genocide, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said, minutes after Biden’s declaration.
“We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past. Political opportunism is the greatest betrayal to peace and justice,” Çavuşoğlu said on Twitter.
“We entirely reject this statement based solely on populism.”
The Turkish foreign ministry denounced the move in a statement:
“We reject and denounce in the strongest terms the statement of the President of the U.S. regarding the events of 1915 made under the pressure of radical Armenian circles and anti-Turkey groups… It is clear that the said statement does not have a scholarly and legal basis, nor is it supported by any evidence. This statement …will open a deep wound that undermines our mutual trust and friendship. We call on the U.S. President to correct this grave mistake.”
Ibrahim Kalin, Chief Counselor to Erdogan, accused Biden of “alienating a NATO ally,” “distorting historical facts,” and “politicizing history” by recognizing the Armenian genocide in a tweet on Sunday.
We strongly reject and condemn @POTUS’s unfounded statement on the events of 1915. Politicizing history is never a rational and moral act. It is a pity that the US has succumbed to an interest group at the expense of distorting historical facts and alienating a NATO ally.
— Ibrahim Kalin (@ikalin1) April 24, 2021
The history of the Armenian Genocide
The atrocities started with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople in 1915 and continued with a centralized program of deportations, murder, pillage and rape until 1923.
Ordinary Armenians were then driven from their homes and sent on death marches through the desert without food or water.
Ottoman death squads massacred Armenians, with only 388,000 left in the empire by 1923 from a population of two million in 1914. Turkey estimates the total number of deaths to be 300,000.
The countries of Armenia and Greece are inextricably linked by history, religion, and, sadly, tragic moments in history.
Along with the over 1.5 million Armenians killed during the Genocide in modern-day Turkey, hundreds of thousands of Greeks in Asia Minor were also killed. Some scholars estimate the number of Greeks killed ranged from 300,000 to 900,000.
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