The American-Turkish Council (ATC) and the Turkish-American Business Council (TAİK), joint organizers of an annual conference on relations between the United States and Turkey have announced that the 29th Annual Conference on US-Turkish Relations, scheduled for April 11-14 in Washington, D.C., will not be held as scheduled.
“This change is required because of the impossibility of holding the conference as planned,” the ATC said in a press release on Friday, recalling that earlier this month a US House committee approved a non-binding resolution calling on US President Barack Obama to recognize the World War I killings of Anatolian Armenians as genocide.
While expressing regret about the postponement, the ATC and TAİK stressed their confidence in the durability of a strong trade and investment relationship between Turkey and the US and said they have agreed to reschedule the annual conference at a later date. The ATC and TAİK said they believed that this decision will lead to a stronger and more effective conference.
“The ATC and a number of our corporate members had worked very hard on Capitol Hill to defeat this resolution in the committee, but with the advice that no ministers, no military officers and few senior-level bureaucrats and business leaders from Turkey would attend the April conference, we had to act. To protect the integrity of the conference and to minimize the ATC’s financial losses, the executive committee directed the cancellation of the event,” James Holmes, a retired US ambassador and the president and chief executive officer of the ATC, said in a separate statement.
Last week, the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSİAD) called off a trip to the US scheduled for March 16-17, arguing that it would be tainted by the current tension between Ankara and Washington.
Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan had already announced that he had postponed a planned trip to the US.
While expressing regret about the postponement, the ATC and TAİK stressed their confidence in the durability of a strong trade and investment relationship between Turkey and the US and said they have agreed to reschedule the annual conference at a later date. The ATC and TAİK said they believed that this decision will lead to a stronger and more effective conference.
“The ATC and a number of our corporate members had worked very hard on Capitol Hill to defeat this resolution in the committee, but with the advice that no ministers, no military officers and few senior-level bureaucrats and business leaders from Turkey would attend the April conference, we had to act. To protect the integrity of the conference and to minimize the ATC’s financial losses, the executive committee directed the cancellation of the event,” James Holmes, a retired US ambassador and the president and chief executive officer of the ATC, said in a separate statement.
Last week, the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSİAD) called off a trip to the US scheduled for March 16-17, arguing that it would be tainted by the current tension between Ankara and Washington.
Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan had already announced that he had postponed a planned trip to the US.
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