TURKEY CHIDES SENATE PANEL OVER DINK RESOLUTION
ABC News
March 29 2007
Mar 29, 2007 – ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey chided a Senate panel on
Thursday for backing a resolution condemning the murder in January
of prominent Turkish Armenian editor Hrant Dink, saying the bill was
politically motivated.
The mainly symbolic resolution, which can now pass to the floor of
the Senate for a vote, has angered Ankara as it makes a reference
to the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 and mentions that Dink had
faced legal action for writing about them.
The resolution, backed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
took place as the U.S. Congress weighs whether to debate and back a
much more explosive bill that would recognize the Armenian massacres
by Ottoman Turks as genocide.
"It is clear that bringing this resolution (on Dink’s killing) to the
agenda of the Senate serves only to exploit the loathsome murder for
political aims by referring to the events of 1915," Turkey’s Foreign
Ministry said in a statement.
The ministry noted the government had strongly condemned Dink’s murder
and that large numbers of Turks had taken to the streets of Istanbul
at his funeral to show their revulsion.
Dink was shot dead outside his Istanbul office by a young Turkish
ultra-nationalist, who later said he had killed Dink for "insulting"
Turkey. Several other men have been arrested in connection with
the killing.
Before his death, Dink had been prosecuted under a controversial
law for his writings on the Armenian massacres, a highly sensitive
subject in Turkey.
Turkey denies Ottoman forces committed a systematic genocide against
Armenians during World War One. It says large numbers of both
Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks died in inter-ethnic fighting
as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has warned of serious damage to
U.S.-Turkish relations if Congress backed the genocide resolution
next month.
Many other parliaments around the world have passed similar resolutions
acknowledging the Armenian killings as genocide.