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U.S. Vice President JD Vance visited Armenia’s Armenian Genocide Memorial—Armenia’s official national monument—during a trip that included later travel to Azerbaijan, according to the Associated Press. The memorial honors Armenians who died under Ottoman Empire control during World War I, a topic that has long carried legal and diplomatic weight for governments that must choose whether to use the term “genocide.”
AP reported that Vance’s team posted and then deleted a message on Vance’s official X account describing the visit as being “to honor the victims of the Armenian genocide.” The posting was later replaced, AP said, with another message that included what the vice president wrote in the guest book and footage showing Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, laying flowers at the memorial.
When asked on Tuesday whether he was “recognizing” genocide in connection with his visit, AP reported that Vance avoided using the word itself. Vance said the hosts “asked us to visit the site,” adding, “Obviously, it’s a very terrible thing that happened a little over a hundred years ago and something that’s very, very important to them culturally,” and he said the visit was “a sign of respect, both for the victims but also for the Armenian government that’s been a very important partner for us in the region.”
The White House response, AP said, was that the original post came from a staff member and reflected a mistake. AP noted the episode was the second time in less than a week that the West Wing blamed an unnamed aide for a controversy involving a social media post, referring to an earlier incident involving a racist video that Trump had shared on Truth Social before criticism led to deletion.
AP also framed the dispute around terminology, saying “genocide” is a legally distinct and carefully used term for national governments, international bodies and media organizations. The AP account cited the U.N. 1948 definition of genocide—“certain acts, enumerated in Article II, committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part” a protected national, ethnical, racial or religious group—and it pointed to the U.S. State Department’s long-held understanding of that definition.
AP said it is not questioned that many thousands of Armenian citizens, most of them Christians, died following actions directed by the Committee of Union and Progress that led the Ottoman Empire government in Constantinople, now known as Istanbul. It also cited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s estimate that “at least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million” died.
In explaining why the choice of word matters politically, AP reported that the U.S. government historically has not recognized what happened as a “genocide” out of fear of alienating Turkey, a key U.S. ally in the region. AP said the Biden administration in 2021 formally recognized that the systematic killings and deportations of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces were a part of a “genocide,” and it reported Turkey reacted “with fury,” with the foreign minister saying his country “will not be given lessons on our history from anyone.”
AP said it is not yet clear whether there will be diplomatic consequences from the incident. It reported Vance seemed intent on keeping the attention on the central purpose of his trip, saying, “I think the president struck a great peace deal. I think the administration is really making it stick.” The AP account also said there is a political question of how Armenian Americans respond to the incident as another reminder of how reluctant the U.S. has been to use the word “genocide” for what Armenians remember that way.