Biden made 'genocide' remarks for two reasons: Turkish VP

U.S. President Joe Biden's recognition of 1915 events as "genocide" is for two reasons; domestic politics and his declaration that Washington would return to the international stage, Vice President Fuat Oktay said on May 1.

"I guess, he's trying to use such a phenomenon as a tool to come back to one part of the world. And I strongly believe that these two reasons are totally the wrong start for him and for U.S. foreign policy," Oktay told TRT World.

Biden's remarks that called the events of 1915 "genocide" on April 24, broke with a long-held tradition by American presidents of refraining from using the term.

Turkey swiftly rejected the term as null and void and Oktay told TRT that Boden's comments have to be based on facts of the history and evidence.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called Biden's remarks "unfounded, unjust and contrary to the facts about the painful events that took place more than a century ago."

On why the international community has been ignoring Turkey's insistence to set up an international commission to examine the archives, Oktay said that even a primary school student will understand Ankara's proposition of forming a committee by historians, not by politicians.

He said that politicians might be moved by the tendency of political reason. "Just because of the lobbies, just because of the promises made to those Armenian or Armenian affected lobbies, you cannot make a historic decision and you cannot claim a nation responsible for a genocide."

"The term genocide itself is not an easy word to use for anyone. If a genocide word has to be used, that has to be used for the United States, not for Turkey," he said.

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