Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 16 2007

Report: Armenian resolution damaging to US-Turkey ties

A leading publisher of economic and political intelligence on Eastern
Europe, the Middle East and Asia has reported that the Armenian
resolution pending in the US Congress is an extremely emotional issue
for Turkey and damaging to the US-Turkish relations.
Based in London, the Oxford Business Group (OBG), in a report titled
"Turkey: Tough Demands," highlights three issues concerning
Turkish-US relations: "…Turkey’s political heavyweights are doing
their rounds in Washington this month, lobbying and pressuring
members of the US elite over three particularly explosive issues —
the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) continued and undeterred
presence in Northern Iraq, a destabilising referendum in Iraq’s
oil-rich city of Kirkuk and the controversial Armenian resolution
that threatens to pass through the House of Representatives this
year."
Published Feb. 15, the OBG report indicates "the most emotive — if
not provocative — for the Turks" is the Armenian genocide resolution
pending in the US Congress.
"The Bush administration needs little convincing of how damaging a
resolution would be, with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
urging Congress to drop the issue, or risk poising [sic] relations
with an essential Muslim ally bordering Iraq, Iran and Syria. Yet,
the White House has only limited leverage over a Congress dominated
by Democrats and led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is adamant to
pursue the issue with the backing of the Armenian lobby in her
Congressional district. Pelosi’s unwillingness to meet [with Turkish
Foreign Minister Abdullah] Gul during his visit was duly noted by
Ankara."
The Armenian genocide resolution was introduced on Jan. 30 by Rep.
Adam Schiff along with Reps. George Radanovich, Frank Pallone, Joe
Knollenberg, Brad Sherman and Thaddeus McCotter and currently has 170
co-sponsors.
The resolution would urge the president to properly characterize the
Armenian sufferings during the World War I as genocide.
While US President George W. Bush commemorates the massacres each
year in a speech, his administration had stopped short of backing the
genocide bills.
Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000 Armenians
and at least as many Turks died in civil strife, when Armenians took
up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with Russian
troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire during World War I.
"Meanwhile, the continued presence of the PKK in Northern Iraq
remains an itching sore for the Turks, with Ankara determined that
the organisation be flushed out from its safe-haven across the
border," the report said. "But the Turks have long been nonplussed by
the US stance, with no concerted effort by the Americans to respond
to Turkish security concerns next door. … Yet, the US administration
has not sent any public signals to suggest that it would tolerate a
cross-border incursion by the Turkish military to eradicate the PKK."
The OBG report indicated that turbulence and instability in the
Middle East has made the US-Turkish relationship more important than
ever, and Turkey has been pressing Washington to demonstrate the
importance of the relationship more clearly, "if not, relations will
suffer."