NEW US CONGRESS TO POSE MORE TROUBLES FOR TURKEY

Turkish Daily News
Nov 9 2006

The Democratic Party’s landslide win in Tuesday’s U.S. congressional
polls will mean more headaches for Turkey, at least in the House of
Representatives, whose control now belongs to the election’s victors.

Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who is expected to become the
House’s first female speaker in the new Congress, already has pledged
to support efforts for recognition of the Armenian killings in the
last days of the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

The Democratic Party garnered a clear majority in the House, Congress’
lower chamber, and also may win control of the Senate after the fate
of at least two contested seats there becomes clear.

The election outcome is a clear defeat for Republican President George
W. Bush and his Iraq policies.

The repercussions of losing even one of the houses is enough to pose
grave consequences for Bush, whose "lame duck" presidency in his
remaining 26 months in office will likely worsen under increasing
attacks by a hostile Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

There will also likely be adverse implications of the Democratic
takeover of Congress for Turkey, although Turkey is never an actor in
U.S. domestic politics, Turkish diplomats fear. The likeliest fallout
will be on the Armenian genocide controversy.

"I have supported legislation … that would properly acknowledge the
Armenian genocide. It is imperative that the United States recognize
this atrocity and move to renew our commitment to eliminate genocide
whenever and wherever it exists. This effort enjoys strong bipartisan
support in the House, and I will continue to support these efforts in
the 110th Congress," Pelosi said in a recent message to a prominent
U.S. Armenian publisher.

In the outgoing House, there were also resolutions for genocide
recognition, but Dennis Hastert, current speaker and a close Bush ally,
had never brought them to a full floor vote.

As Pelosi points out, there is strong bipartisan backing for
genocide recognition in the House, and her speakership will be a
great encouragement for Armenian groups who emphatically will seek
a genocide resolution’s passage before April 24 of next year.

The new Congress will meet in January, and new genocide recognition
resolutions are expected shortly after.

A potential U.S. recognition of the Armenian genocide would be a top
prize for the Armenians, who subsequently would raise compensation
and land issues with Ankara, the Turkish diplomats fear.

And that is not all. There is also the Iraq quagmire, and the Democrats
want to shape U.S. policies in ways that could hurt Turkey’s interests
even more.

Turkey has suffered enough from the Republican invasion of Iraq,
but there is more to come from Democratic-inspired approaches,
the diplomats fear. Ankara supports continued U.S. commitment to a
unified Iraq because other options will present even worse outcomes.

Recently, prominent Democrats, including leading former diplomat
Richard Holbrooke, have called for a redeployment of U.S. troops in
Iraq to Kurdish-controlled northern areas.

At a time when Sen. Joseph Biden, a top foreign policy figure in
the Democratic Party, is calling for Iraq’s effective partitioning
through the creation of three statelets in a very loosely federated
Iraq, such proposals are likely to be increasingly embraced by the
Democrats as well as by some Republicans.

Biden will become chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee
if the Democratic Party wins the upper chamber’s control.

Such plans, including redeployment of U.S. forces in the north,
are seen by Ankara as moves that would finalize the formal creation
of a Kurdish state that could have huge repercussions on Turkey’s
Kurdish population.