Every year on April 24, the day commonly accepted as the beginning of the Armenian genocide, Ankara vehemently refuses to recognize the 1915 massacre and deportation of Ottoman Armenians living in Anatolia as genocide, and focuses on Washington and whether the US president will use the word "genocide" in his April 24 message. As this year was the centennial of the Armenian genocide, Ankara and the Armenian diaspora as well as Yerevan paid special attention to the matter. The general expectation was that even though it is the centennial, President Barack Obama would not want to damage bilateral ties with Turkey. This is in fact what happened, and Obama did not say the word.

From Ankara’s viewpoint, Obama's refraining from saying "genocide" meant that the campaign for international recognition was over without inflicting heavy damages to Turkey.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis did use the word in the mass observing the centennial at the Vatican’s San Pietro Basilica, and the European Parliament accepted by a vast majority a resolution defining the April 1915 events as genocide.

In Yerevan, where I spent the week with a group of journalists as guests of the Hrant Dink Foundation, Al-Monitor looked into what kind of an agenda now awaits Turkey on the Armenian issue. The foundation, set up in memory of the Armenian-origin journalist assassinated by a Turkish right-wing extremist, lists among its objectives developing a culture of dialogue, peace and empathy in relations between Turkey and Armenia.