The Ottoman Road Untraveled
April 27, 2021 | By Alberto M. Fernandez
The Biden administration's recognition of the 1915 Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks initially received a relatively muted response by Turkish officials. Foreign Minister Cavusoglu tweeted "We have nothing to learn from anybody on our own past," while Erdoğan's nationalist political ally Devlet Bahçeli retorted that Turkey's history was "faultless" with "neither genocides nor massacres" by the Turkish nation. Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin chided the U.S. president to "look to his own history and present."[1] When Erdoğan finally did respond to the Biden declaration, 48 hours later, the tone and content of his remarks were negative, but seemed more in sorrow than in anger.[2]