President Joe Biden will declare the early 20th Century Turkish campaign against the Armenians a genocide, a label to which the Turkish government has repeatedly denied, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Beginning in 1915 during the middle of World War I, the Turks, then known as the Ottoman Empire, systemically undertook an effort to slaughter, starve and isolate Armenians in an effort to exterminate the nation. It's been labeled an ethnic genocide in which more than one millions Armenians perished.
The Turks have claimed that the Armenians were revolting against the Ottoman government and that the action against them was necessary to suppress revolutionaries.
With US-Turkish relations strained, Biden's acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide will further distance his administration from the government of Turkish President Recep Erdogan, who has been favoring improved relations with Russia.