It is one of the inherent hallmarks of nationalists everywhere, that in order to assert their ideological and national superiority over the rest of the world, historical crimes and failures of their motherland/fatherland, must be denied, erased from history, or, if that fails, excused, diminished, or justified.
Erdogan’s outrage and denial of his country’s history, is neither unexpected, nor unusual, not even among “more civilised” countries.
It is easy for other countries, who are not affected by the guilt these crimes evoke, to condemn other countries for their dark history.
That is why neither Erdogan’s protestations, nor the Colonies’ public acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide, matter.
What would matter, is countries acknowledging and dealing with their own dark past. Their own atrocities and injustices committed in both distant and recent past.
Them realising that they have a responsibility, both to restitute the victims and their descendents, and to make sure that these failings are never repeated. Responsibility not personally, but collectively, as a society and as a nation.
There are very, very few countries that are willing to do that, and those that do, only in a limited capacity.
The UK still mourns its fallen empire. Still thinks it somehow is. India’s uprising for independence in the mid 19th century, is still referred to as the “Indian Mutiny”.
A certain political spectrum in the colonies, denies that the civil war was about slavery.
They deny that slavery was all that bad for black people.
For the rest, the tenor is “it has nothing to do with me”.
Japan, I think, barely teaches to its children the atrocities they committed in WW2.
Poland recently criminalised depicting and describing polish people as collaborating with the Nazis, no matter how true, how well documented it is.
Even Germany, which rightly infuses this sense of collective responsibility for the Holocaust into its new generations, only does this for the crimes committed during the 3rd Reich. Anything before that, and they bicker about it like any other country.
So again, Erdogan being “ticked off” does not matter.
Biden’s proclamation does not matter.
It is all just empty theatre, firmly in the realm of transparent virtue signalling.