Joe Biden's statement was published on the official White House website.
Thus, Biden became the first U.S. president in 40 years to publicly recognize the massacres of the Armenian population in 1915 as genocide.
“Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination,” the statement reads.
"Every year on this day we remember the lives of all those who died during the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman era, and once again commit ourselves to preventing the recurrence of such atrocities... We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.," Joe Biden said and added that Americans honor all the Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.
Joe Biden's statement was instantly reacted to in Turkey. With this, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called the words of the U.S. President "populism" and said that Ankara rejects the statement.
“Words cannot change or rewrite history. We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past. Political opportunism is the greatest betrayal to peace and justice. We entirely reject this statement based solely on populism. #1915Events,” Ceausoglu wrote on Twitter.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has also added that Joe Biden's statement "underminates mutual trust and friendship" between the two countries.
"This statement of the US, which distorts the historical facts, will never be accepted in the conscience of the Turkish people, and will open a deep wound that undermines our mutual trust and friendship,"Turkish Foreign Ministry statement reads.
Turkey called on the US President “to correct this grave mistake” and “to support the efforts aiming to establish a practice of peaceful coexistence in the region, especially among the Turkish and Armenian nations, instead of serving the agenda of those circles that try to foment enmity from history”.