ISTANBUL (AP) – The Turkish Foreign Ministry has summoned the US Ambassador to Ankara to denounce the US government’s decision to label the deportation and murder of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire as “genocide”. Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Onal met David Satterfield on Saturday evening to express his strong condemnation of Ankara. “The declaration has no legal basis in terms of international law and has hurt the Turkish people, opening a wound that is difficult to repair in our relations,” the minister said. On Saturday, US President Joe Biden kept his election promise by recognizing as genocide the incidents that began in 1915 and which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians. The statement was carefully crafted to highlight that deportations, massacres and death marches took place in the Ottoman Empire. “We see this pain. We reaffirm history. We are not doing this to find the culprits, but to make sure that what happened does not happen again, ”the US government said. The White House proclamation immediately prompted condemnatory reactions from Turkish officials, although President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has yet to comment on the matter. Turkey rejects the use of speech, arguing that Turks and Armenians were killed in the fighting during World War I and called for the creation of a joint history commission to investigate the events. For years, US presidents have avoided using the term “genocide” to describe what Armenians call “Meds Yeghern,” or the great crime. Erdogan and Biden spoke by phone on Friday for the first time since the US presidential election. “President Erdogan opened the national archives of Turkey and called for the establishment of a joint historical committee to investigate the events of 1915, to which Armenia never responded. It is a pity that @POTUS has ignored, among other things, this simple fact and has taken an irresponsible and unprincipled position, ”Ibrahim Kalin, spokesperson for the Turkish president, tweeted on Sunday, referring to the account of the American president on the social network .