ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey’s foreign ministry has summoned the U.S. Ambassador in Ankara to protest the U.S. decision to mark the deportation and killing of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire as “genocide.” Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal met with David Satterfield late Saturday to express Ankara’s strong condemnation. The ministry said the U.S. statement “does not have legal ground in terms of international law and has hurt the Turkish people, opening a wound that’s hard to fix in our relations.” On Saturday, U.S. President Joe Biden followed through on a campaign promise to recognize the events that began in 1915 and killed an estimated 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians as genocide.
