Armenian Americans hope to hear President Biden refer to Armenian Genocide as that exactly

For more than 100 years, Armenians have mourned and remembered the tragedy suffered by their people at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.

Historians have claimed that an estimated 1.5 million people lost their lives during the events known as the Armenian Genocide, which began in 1915 and carried into the 1920s.

At Laguna Beach High School, sophomore Ashton Azadian aimed to raise awareness of those historical events. He spoke about them during the morning announcements, sharing a personal anecdote of his great-grandfather surviving the Armenian Genocide when he was just 4 years old.

Azadian’s message to his Laguna Beach High School community was one that has been heard before.

“I did this because if we don’t learn from history, we’ll definitely repeat it, again,” Azadian said.

But Azadian took his efforts further, hanging a banner in the school’s common area with a QR code that took those who scanned it to the 2019 U.S. congressional proclamation recognizing the Armenian Genocide.

Asked how bringing up the topic was accepted on campus, Azadian said there were people who did not previously know about the genocide, but they thought he was brave to speak out about it.

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is Saturday, April 24, which marks the 106th anniversary of the beginning of the atrocities. Azadian’s request is the same one that Armenian Americans have long been asking for — for the president of the United States to recognize the tragic events by using the word “genocide.”

Ashton Azadian, a sophomore at Laguna Beach High School, raised awareness about the Armenian Genocide at school.

(Kevin Chang / Staff Photographer)

“I would really like to hear them recognize the truth,” Azadian said, expressing that he feels that specific word must be used “because that’s what happened.”

James Azadian, 42, Ashton’s father, said he feels that economic and political reasons have stood in the way of U.S. presidents using the term “genocide” publicly in the past.

“I’m not entirely hopeful that we’re going to be addressed as like the Jewish Holocaust has or other terrible atrocities have because … there isn’t really much to gain politically to do that as a nation,” James Azadian said in a phone interview on Thursday. “But it doesn’t detract from the fact that it is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do.”

A Bloomberg report on Friday said President Joe Biden has contacted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to tell him that he intends to refer to the mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as a genocide.

State Assemblyman Adrin Nazarian (D-Toluca Lake), the chairman of the California Armenian Legislative Caucus, said Armenians have consistently been let down by heads of state since Ronald Reagan used the word “genocide” to label the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire early in the 20^th Century.

Nazarian said it appears inevitable that Biden will use the term “genocide” in his remarks this weekend. He added that he is thankful to the administration for that decision, but he acknowledged that there may be mixed feelings in the public after a ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan was broken in the fall.

“There’s nothing but for me to be thankful to this administration, to President Biden, and to Vice President Kamala Harris, who I worked with very closely, especially on issues pertaining to Armenia and [the Republic of] Artsakh,” Nazarian said. “I think in the public, there’s going to be a sense of gratitude, maybe to some extent also a sense of frustration that, did it take the United States yet another attack by Turkey, a Turkish-orchestrated Azerbaijani attack on Armenia and Artsakh, in order to finally come to this conclusion?”

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