TURKISH PM HOPES OBAMA WILL NOT USE THE TERM GENOCIDE ON APRIL 24
armradio.am
13.04.2010 18:38
U.S. President Barack Obama will meet Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdoðan today on the sidelines of his nuclear security summit
in Washington, the White House said.
The meeting, which was not previously announced, will occur just over
a week after Turkey decided to return its ambassador to Washington
after a row over moves in Congress to recognize the World War I
massacres of Armenians as genocide.
Turkey recalled Ambassador Namýk Tan on March 4 immediately after
the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee adopted
a resolution recognizing 1915-17 massacres of Armenians under the
Ottoman Empire as genocide.
Prior to the meeting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told
CNN he was confident that the U.S. president would not use the term
genocide to describe the incidents of 1915.
"That would be my expectation, because to this day, no American leader
has uttered that word, and I believe that President Obama will not,"
he said.
Erdogan said the time when the killings took place was a period of
war and revolts, and pointed out that the Turkish people also suffered
terrible losses during the 1914-18 conflict.
"No nation, no people has the right to impose the way it remembers
history to another nation or people – and Turkey does not try to do
that," he added.