TURKISH OPPOSITION DISCONTENTED WITH US PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS AND TURKISH PRIME MINISTER’S RESPONSE TO IT

ArmInfo
2010-04-26 11:58:00

ArmInfo. Deniz Baykal, the leader of the main opposition Republican
People’s Party, or CHP, criticized Erdogan for contradicting the
Foreign Ministry. "Turkey voices one reaction in solidarity. Mr. Prime
Minister should advocate for his country, not for what Obama said,"
Baykal told reporters Sunday.

After B. Obama’s address that again avoided the word Genocide,
Erdogan declared that the address demonstrated delicate attitude of
the White House Administration to that issue. However, Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu said the speech was "unacceptable." "Turkish-American
relations need to be free from such reservations," the minister said.

"If we are going to share pain for humanitarian reasons, then we
would expect respect for our own pain as well."

Namik Tan, Turkey’s ambassador to Washington, was also unhappy. "We
will not accept whatever Obama says because it is only a political
statement without any scientific base," Tan told Turkish demonstrators
meeting outside the embassy on Sunday. "We reject any imposition but
are ready to establish a joint historical committee to investigate
what happened," he said. To recall, despite his pre-election promise
to call the incident of 1915 Genocide, Barack Obama again used the
Armenian equivalent of the legal term "Genocide" – ‘"Meds Yeghern".