TURKEY VOWS TO RESPOND TO ‘OUTRAGEOUS’ U.S. GENOCIDE STATEMENT

US President Joe Biden's declaration that massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide is "simply outrageous" and Turkey will respond over coming months, Turkey's presidential spokesman said late on Sunday.

Biden broke on Saturday with decades of carefully calibrated White House comments over the 1915 killings, delighting Armenia and its diaspora but further straining ties between Washington and Ankara, both members of the NATO military alliance.

"There will be a reaction of different forms and kinds and degrees in coming days and months," Ibrahim Kalin, President Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman and adviser, told Dominic Evans and Orhan Coskun of Reuters in an interview.

Kalin did not specify whether Ankara would restrict US access to the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey, which has been used to support the international coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, among measures it may take.

Turkey also has options to reduce military coordination with the US in northern Syria and Iraq or scale down diplomatic efforts to support Afghan peace talks, said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, director of the German Marshall Fund research group in Ankara.

In reality, though, Erdogan's options are limited as he is already battling one of the highest rates of daily COVID-19 cases globally and has seen the lira currency fall close to all-time lows against the dollar last week.

After other Turkish officials swiftly condemned Biden's statement on Saturday, Erdogan would address the issue after a cabinet meeting on Monday, Kalin said.

"At a time and place that we consider to be appropriate, we will continue to respond to this very unfortunate, unfair statement," he said.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces in World War I but denies the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute genocide.

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