Washington Times, DC
April 21 2007

Embassy Row

Who’s losing Turkey?

By James Morrison
April 20, 2007

With Iranian nukes, Iraqi chaos, Kurdish separatism, vast pipeline
projects, a stalled European Union application, Cyprus and the
global rise of militant Islam, Turkish officials should have plenty
to talk about.

But a delegation of top Turkish lawmakers in Washington this week
devoted an hourlong interview with our correspondent David R. Sands to
an entirely separate topic: a pending U.S. congressional resolution
condemning the treatment of Armenians nearly a century ago by the
Ottoman Empire as "genocide."

"It is already a difficult time, but I can safely predict there
would be very serious effects [to U.S.-Turkish relations] if this
resolution passes," warned Mehmet Dulger, a member of the ruling
Justice and Development Party and chairman of the Grand National
Assembly’s foreign affairs committee.

Onur Oymen, a former top Foreign Ministry official now serving as an
opposition lawmaker, noted that favorable attitudes in Turkey toward
the United States have plummeted to single digits since the start of
the Iraq war in 2003.

"The political situation for good relations with the United States is
really close to untenable," he said. "If there is another blow, such
as this resolution, it will be so much more difficult to recuperate."

In a long-running, bitter diplomatic war, Armenians have pressed
countries to condemn as genocide the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
Armenians in the former Ottoman-Turkish Empire in 1915. Rival studies
put the death toll at anywhere from 200,000 to 1.8 million, and basic
events and documents from the time are still bitterly contested.

The Democratic takeover of the U.S. Congress has given hopes to
Armenian-American groups that a new, nonbinding genocide resolution
could pass this session, despite sharp opposition from the Bush
administration.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, is on record in
support of the motion.

Erol Aslan Cebeci, a lawmaker with the governing Justice and
Development Party, noted that Turkey faces a presidential vote
next month and new parliamentary elections in November. He said
Turkish politicians will be forced by voter outrage to respond
"disproportionately" to a U.S. resolution, even if the reaction harms
both countries’ long-term interests.

"Let’s be frank: If Senegal or Bolivia were doing this, we could live
with it," Mr. Cebeci said. "But this is supposedly our best and most
important ally. If, God forbid, this passes, the next big debate you
will be having in Washington is, ‘Who lost Turkey?’ "