Joe Biden
Joe BidenReuters

US President Joe Biden is set to announce the formal recognition of the murder of between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during WW1.

The declaration that the massacre was a genocide risks angering ally Turkey but makes good on a campaign pledge to recognize the Armenian Genocide, a term previous presidents always avoided, ostensibly for reasons of geopolitics.

CNN reported that officials said the President was expected to declare that the mass killings were a genocide this Saturday, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. They added that it was possible Biden might change his mind and instead allude to the tragic event without going as far as to label it a genocide.

The Turkish government sends official complaints to governments that describe the Armenian Genocide as a genocide. Turkey claims that the killings were the result of wartime hostilities on both sides and greatly downplays the number of Armenians who were murdered.

Both former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump chose not to use the word genocide in order to not harm relations with Turkey.

The Armenian Genocide is considered by scholars to have been an influence on the Nazi's Final Solution for the Jews. At the end of a 1939 speech, Hitler may have said, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” though there has been debate in the years since the Nuremberg trials on the veracity of the quote.