Beginning with the U.S. House of Representatives voting 405 to 11 on October 29, 2019 to recognize the Armenian Genocide, and continuing with an unprecedented unanimous vote of the U.S. Senate on December 21, 2019 to confirm recognition of the Armenian Genocide, the Congress of the United States has unambiguously gone on record, “recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire from 1915-1923, and providing relief to the survivors of the campaign of genocide against Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maranites, and other Christians.” [Text of House of Representatives Resolution 296 in the 116th Congress].1
Both the overwhelming vote in the House and the remarkable unanimous vote in the Senate convey very clearly a joining together of Democratic and Republican lawmakers in a most unusual display of collaboration and unity in a period where the American political system is overwhelmingly polarized along party lines.
The votes are all the more memorable given the fact that the administration of President Donald Trump opposed vigorously the passage of the legislation. The UK’s Guardian headlined the story of the Senate vote, “US Senate defies Trump in unanimous vote to recognize Armenian genocide.” Following the House vote, the Turkish strongman leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he believed “the Senate will act prudently and will not repeat the mistake the House of Representatives made… If the U.S side really wants to act fairly, it should refrain from taking a political stand on a matter that historians should decide,” Erdogan explained disingenously.2 Following the vote, The New York Times reported from Reuters that the “Trump Administration Refrains from Endorsing U.S. Senate Measure on Armenian Genocide.”3
The following is the very clear and compelling text of the House of Representatives bill. It includes a review of a number of instances in the past when the House and/or a President have recognized the Armenian Genocide, but the processes in each case never reached the status of full recognition by the United States.
1 Editor’s Note: Although there is no question that the bulk of victims of the Armenian Genocide were Christians, and it has made sense when proposals have been made to refer to the genocide also as the “Christian Genocide,” there were also several non-Christian peoples, such as the Yazidi and others who were murdered by the Turks. To many scholars, the organizing and motivating concept of the genocide was the elimination of all non-Muslim Turks, with a great deal of emphasis on the loyalty to Islam and the exclusion of all infidels, but also an implicit or explicit intent of ethnic cleansing of all non-Turks. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/296/text
2 Günerigök, Servet (November 14, 2019). US Senate will not pass Armenia resolution: Erdogan – ‘If the U.S. side really wants to act fairly, it should refrain from taking a political stand,’ says Turkish leader. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-senate-will-not-pass-armenia-resolution-erdogan/1644911
3 Reuters (December 17, 2019). Trump Administration Refrains From Endorsing U.S. Senate Measure on Armenian Genocide. New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/12/17/us/politics/17reuters-usa-turkey-armenia.html