YEREVAN, APRIL 23, ARMENPRESS. In a telephone conversation with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, U.S. President Joe Biden said he will name the developments of the beginning of the 20th century a genocide in his speech dedicated to the 1915 ‘’Medz Yeghern’’, ARMENPRESS reports, citing Bloomberg, which got the information from a source familiar with the content of the conversation between the two presidents.

‘’President Joh Biden told Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday that he plans to recognize the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century a genocide’’, Bloomberg’s publication says.  

According to Bloomberg, President Biden is expected to use the word ‘’genocide’’ in his Saturday statement, implementing his pre-election campaign promise. He would be the first U.S. president in 40 years to publicly recognize the 1915 mass killings as a genocide. Ronald Reagan was the last U.S. president to call the atrocities committed against the Armenians a “genocide,” in 1981, but he soon backtracked under pressure from Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire.