CANADA-TURKEY SPAT WON’T AFFECT NATO OPERATION

Embassy, Canada
Canada’s Foreign Policy Newsweekly
May 17 2006

Last week’s diplomatic storm over Stephen Harper’s use of the term
‘genocide’ will not affect Canada’s relations with the Turkish head
of NATO’s Afghan mission, but it does signal a policy shift.

The Turkish-Canadian spat over Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s comments
recognizing the Armenian genocide two weeks ago will not spill over
into Afghanistan where a senior Turkish diplomat presently occupies
the position of NATO’s top Civilian Representative to Afghanistan,
according to the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa.

Despite Ankara’s withdrawal last week from NATO military exercises
in the Canadian province of Alberta, Turkey’s leading NATO role
in Afghanistan with Canada will not be affected, says Yonet Tezel,
Counsellor at the Turkish Embassy.

“Our contribution is still going on and it is above our relations
with Canada,” says Mr. Tezel.

NATO is scheduled to take over military operations from the U.S. in
Afghanistan in the summer.

Mr. Tezel also says Turkey is not likely to pull out its most senior
diplomat, Hikmet Cetin, who is NATO’s Civilian Representative to
Afghanistan.

With 825 troops, Turkey has the third largest contingent in
Afghanistan, after Germany and Canada. Its role is considered important
because it is also the only Muslim country with troops in Afghanistan.

In what may signal a decrease in tensions between Canada and Turkey,
Mr. Yonet also says Turkish Ambassador Aydemir Erman is expected to
return to Canada this week. Turkey called its envoy to Canada back to
Ankara for consultations on May 6 in protest of Mr. Harper’s comments.

Mr. Harper became the first Canadian prime minister to utter the word
‘genocide’ in recognizing the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in
Turkey in 1915. The statement also marks a major shift in Canadian
foreign policy towards Turkey, which also temporarily withdrew its
ambassador to France as a result of an impeding vote in the French
parliament that would make it a crime to deny the that genocide was
committed in Armenia.

But while it withdrew its envoy from Paris, the Turkish government
also sent a delegation to meet French legislators on the issue. It did
not do the same thing in Canada. Mr. Tezel says the circumstances are
totally different, hence the type of reaction to the French situation.

“The situation is philosophically and intellectually unacceptable,”
Mr. Tezel says of France’s decision to make it a crime to deny that
genocide was committed in Armenia.

Kim Nossal, Professor and Head of Political Studies at Queen’s
University in Kingston, says Mr. Harper’s decision acknowledging
that genocide was committed against Armenians was likely made to
send a message that the Tory government is different from the former
minority government.

“[Mr. Harper] wanted to signal that his government is different from
the Liberal government, which actually talked a lot about human rights,
but did nothing,” says Mr. Nossal.

“It was a clear and conscious set of reasoning on this,” he says.

“All you have to do is think about the Liberals and Darfur and you
can ask ‘Where were you then?'”

brian@embassymag.ca

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