Kalin: Turkey will respond in time to Biden’s “outrageous” statement on genocide

The statement of US President Joe Biden that the massacres of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire constitute genocide is outrageously and Turkey will respond in various ways in the coming months, a spokesman for the Turkish presidency said today. Ibrahim Kalin.

Joe Biden bypassed decades of carefully censored White House language about the 1915 massacres, appealing to Armenia and its dispersion to the United States, but further escalating tensions between Washington and Ankara, two NATO allies.

“There will be a reaction of different form and type and degree in the coming days and months,” Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman and adviser to President Tayyip Erdogan, told Reuters.

Kalin did not specify whether Ankara would restrict US access to Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, which has been used to support the international coalition fighting Islamic State jihadists in Syria and Iraq, or other measures that could be taken. take.

Turkish officials immediately condemned Biden’s statement, and Kalin said Erdogan would settle the matter after Monday’s cabinet meeting. “At a time and place we deem appropriate, we will continue to respond to this very unfortunate and unjust statement,” he said.

Turkey acknowledges that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces in World War I, but denies that the killings were organized and constituted genocide.

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