Israel cabinet unanimously backs recognition of Armenian genocide, straining ties with Turkey
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s cabinet voted unanimously on Sunday to formally recognize the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as a genocide, a largely symbolic step that still requires final approval from parliament but signals a clear break with decades of careful diplomacy toward Turkey.
The decision, brought to the government by Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, is the latest sign of deteriorating relations between the two regional powers. Turkey, which has long lobbied aggressively against any official recognition of the events of 1915 as genocide, has seen its ties with Israel sour sharply over the past two decades, particularly since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rise to power and the escalation of wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, a massacre widely recognized by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey has consistently denied that the deaths amount to genocide, arguing that the toll is inflated and the victims died in the chaos of civil war. For years, Israel avoided taking an official position on the issue, fearing damage to its strategic alliance with Ankara.
“Despite the extensive and unambiguous historical documentation, the Armenian Genocide remains to this day the subject of an institutionalized campaign of denial and minimization, including a manipulative rewriting of history, mainly by the Turkish government,” Saar said Sunday. “It is never too late to do the right thing.” He described the vote as fulfilling a “moral and historical duty.”
Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have previously used the term “genocide” in reference to the Armenian killings, but a formal Knesset vote had never been taken. Sunday’s cabinet decision now goes to parliament, though no date has been set for a vote. There was no immediate reaction from Ankara, which has previously recalled ambassadors and severed trade ties over similar moves by other nations.
The recognition places Israel in the company of 32 countries, including the United States, Syria and Lebanon, that have officially classified the World War I-era violence as genocide. But the move comes at a particularly delicate moment for Israel, which is facing repeated accusations — including from the United Nations and Turkey itself — that its military offensive in Gaza amounts to genocide. Israel, founded in the wake of the Holocaust, has vehemently denied those allegations.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, which killed around 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Gaza’s Health Ministry, run by Hamas, reports more than 73,000 Palestinian deaths, roughly half of them women and children. Israel says it does not target civilians and accuses Hamas of using human shields, a charge the group denies.
Last week, a team of independent experts commissioned by the United Nations accused Israel of deliberately shooting children in Gaza and repeated earlier claims that Israel has carried out a genocide. Israel dismissed the report as a “libelous sham.”
The cabinet’s Armenian genocide vote is unlikely to have immediate practical consequences, but it underscores how regional realignments — driven by Erdogan’s Islamist policies, the Gaza conflict and shifting alliances — are reshaping Israel’s foreign policy calculus. For decades, Israel prioritized its relationship with Turkey, a fellow military power and NATO member. That partnership, once built on intelligence sharing and trade, has eroded to the point that both countries now routinely trade public accusations.