Systems

Tell you what, we can say that was genocide and you can say that was and is systemic racism.

Joe Biden has become the first US president to issue a statement formally describing the 1915 massacre of Armenians as a genocide.

The killings took place in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of modern-day Turkey.

But the issue is highly sensitive, with Turkey acknowledging atrocities but rejecting the term “genocide”.

Just as many people in the US reject the term “systemic racism.” But the racism wasn’t and isn’t random or accidental, and the Turkish atrocities happened to a particular set of people, a geno.

Armenia says 1.5 million people were killed in 1915-16 in an effort to wipe out the ethnic group. They regard it as genocide, and many historians and governments agree the killings were orchestrated.

Turkey accepts that atrocities were committed, estimating that 300,000 died. But it argues there was no systematic attempt to destroy the Christian Armenian people and says many innocent Muslim Turks also died in the turmoil of war.

Armenians, however, are not convinced.

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