MPS VOICE OPPOSITION TO GENOCIDE RESOLUTION
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 27 2007
A six-person Turkish parliamentary delegation is in Washington to
meet with their US counterparts to prevent the passage of the Armenian
genocide resolution pending in Congress.
The delegation, which consists of four members of the ruling Justice
and Development Party (AK Party) and two deputies from the opposition
Republican People’s Party (CHP), will have meetings with US senators
and representatives.
The Armenian genocide resolution was introduced on Jan. 30 at the US
Congress, and currently has 170 co-sponsors.
Two more visits are expected to Washington by different Turkish
parliamentary delegations in March.
Meanwhile, the Turkish head of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly has
said that he submitted a letter to members of the US Congress at
a NATO meeting in Brussels last week about Turkey’s point of view
regarding the Armenian genocide allegations.
Vahit Erdem, AK Party parliamentarian and Turkish delegation chief
of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, told reporters in Ankara that
the US Congress members were impressed by the content of the letter,
which urged the them not to approve the resolution.
Erdem said the letter indicated: "If passed, the resolution would
harm Turkish-American relations and damage efforts to improve ties
between Armenia and Turkey. Parliaments should not have such duties as
making judgments on historical issues, it said. "If the US Congress
passes judgment on the issue, it would repeat the mistakes made
by some European parliaments. Genocide is a serious, international
crime that can only be judged by independent international courts,
not individual parliaments of the countries."
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.