TURKISH DEPUTY SENDS LETTER TO U.S. CONGRESSMEN CALLING FOR NOT ADOPTING RESOLUTION ON RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
Feb 27 2007
ANKARA, FEBRUARY 27, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. Vahit Erdem,
deputy of Justice and Development ruling Turkish party, Chairman of
Turkish delegation at NATO Parliamentary Assembly, sent a letter
to members of U.S. Congress House of Representatives, in which he
calls for counteracting to the resolution on recognition of Armenian
Genocide introduced in January. "If the Congress adopts the Armenian
resolution, the relations between the two allied countries will be
seriously damaged. The Congress will make a big mistake if instead
of giving a historical estimation it makes political reasoning as a
number of European parliaments have done."
Erdem gave the copies of the letter to participants of NATO PA sitting
convened last week in Belgium.
According to the New Anatolian Turkish newspaper, the Turkish deputy
said that the letter proposes that Congressmen "rather concentrate
on not giving political estimations, but on the necessity to conduct
historic studies."
Erdem declared that the number of Armenians killed during the Genocide
"is exaggerated." "According to reliable Ottoman sources, the total
number of Armenians in Turkey amounted to 1 mln 300 thousand people,"
the Turkish parliamentarian asserted.