Hürriyet, Turkey
Feb 22 2009

Armenian expert: US will refrain naming 1915 incidents as "genocide"

U.S. President Baracak Obama will refrain from naming the 1915
incident as "genocide" since his country will need Turkey’s support
for Afghanistan policy, the latest key factor in U.S. foreign policy,
an Armenian expert claimed on Saturday.

"The U.S. key dimension is Afghanistan, which sidelined Iran and
Iraq," PanArmenia.net website quoted professor Ruben Safrastyan,
director of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the RA National
Academy of Sciences, as saying.

Washington would need Ankara’s support for this purpose, Safrastyan
said, adding that "proceeding from national interests, Obama will not
use the term `genocide’ in his annual April 24 statement."

The Armenian lobby organizations put their efforts to have recognized
their claims regarding the 1915 incidents to U.S. Congress. During the
election campaign, Obama had pledged to recognize the Armenian claims.

Turkey says it would be unfair to accept a one-sided characterization
of the incidents by ignoring independent and impartial assessments by
historian and scholars, reminding casualties suffered by Ottoman
Muslims during World War One.

"Keep in mind that CIS chief (Leon Panetta) arrived in Turkey
immediately after Obama’s phone talks with President (Abdullah) Gul
and Prime Minister (Tayyip) Erdogan," he was also quoted as saying
adding that Panetta was reported to discuss a possibility of deploying
of a U.S. base in Turkey.

The issue of 1915 incidents is highly sensitive for Turkey as well as
Armenia. Around 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks, died in
civil strife that emerged when Armenians took up arms, backed by
Russia, for independence in eastern Anatolia.

However Armenia, with the backing of the diaspora, claims up to 1.5
million of their kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings in
1915. The issue remains unsolved as Armenia drags its feet in
accepting Turkey’s proposal of forming a commission to investigate the
claims.