Turkey Summons US Ambassador over Biden’s Armenian Genocide Declaration 

WASHINGTON - Turkey says it summoned the U.S. ambassador to Ankara to condemn President Joe Biden’s declaration that the World War I-era massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire constituted a genocide.  “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

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal told U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield late Saturday that Biden’s statement had no legal basis and that Ankara "rejected it, found it unacceptable and condemned [it] in the strongest terms."  The Ankara government said the United States, a NATO ally, had caused a "wound in ties that will be hard to repair."  Earlier Saturday, Biden became the first U.S. president to make the genocide declaration in connection with the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire — the predecessor to modern-day Turkey — between 1915 and 1923.