In his statement, Biden said he and all Americans honor the memory of all those Armenians who perished in a genocide that began exactly 106 years ago. Thousands of people in Armenia's capital Yerevan have been commemorating the mass killings, deportations and forced marches.
Armenian officials led the nation in commemorating the horrors of the past. The procession at this hilltop memorial in the capital Yerevan, included Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Members of the public too streamed in, to honor the dead.
And they welcome the announcement from Washington, calling those past events a genocide. In 1915, a million Armenians were brutally murdered by Ottoman Turks. Many more were deported and sent on death marches into the Syrian desert.
Armenians have long campaigned for the crimes against their people to be recognized internationally as genocide. Turkey argues that there was no systematic attempt to wipe out Armenians, and no such order from the Ottoman authorities.
But nearly thirty countries have recognized the atrocities as genocide.
Many Armenians would consider the diplomatic spats over terminology a distraction from the memory of atrocities of more than a century ago that haunt their nation to this day.
