The State Department on Tuesday rebuked the Senate’s latest move to recognize the mass killing and deportation of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during the first half of the 20th century as genocide, releasing a statement that the administration continues to view the events as “one of the worst mass atrocities.”
“The position of the Administration has not changed,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement. “Our views are reflected in the President’s definitive statement on this issue from last April.”
The global Armenian Remembrance Day is marked on April 24 each year and was commemorated by President Trump with a statement recognizing that beginning in 1915, more than 1.5 million Armenians were “deported, massacred or marched to their deaths” under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.
The president did not describe the events as a genocide.
Turkey has spoken out against the U.S. government’s defining of these events as genocide. It claims that the events of the early 20th century are disputed and lack academic consensus.
Last week, the Senate passed by unanimous vote a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide as official U.S. policy.
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The passage of the resolution was meant as a rebuke of Turkey in response to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s October decision to launch an offensive into northeastern Syria against Syrian Kurdish forces that the U.S. is allied with in the fight against ISIS.
The resolution is nonbinding, expresses the sense of the Senate and does not need to be signed by the president. The White House had lobbied senators to block the resolution at least three times before it succeeded in coming to the floor.
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JUST IN: Trump administration rejects Senate resolution recognizing Armenian genocide https://t.co/bCWHOunx4I pic.twitter.com/EblBZMVdE0
— The Hill (@thehill) December 17, 2019
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