It’s betting season again for Turkish-US ties. Will US President Barack Obama use the “G-word” on April 24 in his message of sympathy to the Armenians, or will he skirt the issue and use the term Meds Yeghern — which in Armenian means the Great Crime — instead of genocide to describe what befell the Armenians in 1915?

Should he go for the latter option, as he has done before, Ankara will still protest and refer to the need for “justice in remembrance,” pointing in this way to the millions of non-Armenians killed in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It has, however, learned to live with statements that do not openly refer to genocide.

But what if Obama uses the term genocide this time? We are led by Turkish officialdom to believe this will poison Turkish-US ties and leave an indelible mark. These strategic ties have prevented successive US presidents from bowing to pressures from Armenian-Americans, and their supporters in Congress, to refer to the events of 1915 as “genocide.”

Otherwise, Turkish officials know that the Armenian genocide is considered an incontrovertible fact across the board in the United States, and that past presidents have refused to spell this out in order not to anger a strategic ally in a volatile part of the world.