US prepares to recognise Armenian genocide

US President Joe Biden is preparing to formally acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, the systematic killing and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire that occurred more than a century ago.

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While Turkey disagrees, the consensus among historians is that during the Armenian Genocide, between 1915 to 1922 in the First World War, thousands of Armenians perished due to killings, starvation and disease, when they were deported by Ottoman Turks from eastern Anatolia.

It is difficult to estimate the total number of Armenians who died during the genocide, but the Armenian diaspora says that approximately 1.5 million died.

Some researchers have asserted and drawn comparisons between the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide and this acknowledgement or wider acknowledgement of it in the international community may be unwelcome and unpalatable for Turkey.

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is marked annually on April 24.