TAN: ISRAEL MUST GET US JEWS BACK DOWN

The New Anatolian, Turkey
Aug 27 2007

Turkey expects Israel to get Jewish lobby in the U.S. to back
down, said Turkish Ambassador to Turkey Namik Tan, regarding the
Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) reversal of position last week on the
Armenian allegations.

ADL President Abraham Foxman said in a statement posted on the group’s
web-site that his organization had come to share the view that the
incidents of 1915 "were indeed tantamount to genocide."

In an exclusive interview with Israel’s prominent English daily
Jerusalem Post, Tan said he understood that Israel’s position had
not changed and that Israel should not let the U.S. Jewish community
change its position regarding the incidents of 1915.

"This is our expectation and this is highly important," said Turkish
Ambassador. "If you want to touch and hurt the hearts of people in
Turkey, this is the issue," Tan said. "This is the #1 issue. You can
not easily explain to them any change in this."

Tan stated that Turkey expects Israel to deliver American Jewish
organizations and ensure that the U.S. Congress does not pass a
resolution qualifying as "genocide" the incidents of 1915 during
World War I.

Tan said he understood that the American Jewish organizations were
just that American Jewish organizations. But "we all know how they
work in coordinating their efforts (with Israel)," he added.

"In the eyes of the Turkish people, Turkey’s strategic relationship
with Israel was not with Israel alone, but with the whole Jewish
world," Tan said. "Turkish people can not make that differentiation."

"Turkish people are waiting for this effort on the part of Israel to
straighten out, to put this issue in perspective," he continued and
said that he does not accept the arguments that Israel has no control
over the American Jewish organizations.

"On some issues there is no such thing as ‘Israel can not deliver’.

This was one of those issues," he said.

Upon a question about what would happen if the U.S. Congress passes
a resolution on the matter, Tan remembered that Turkey –since the
establishment of a close strategic relationship with Israel in the
1990s– had never "played with the basics of this relationship,
or with the basic fundamentals of it."

"It would be tantamount to playing with one of the fundamentals of
this strategic relationship," he said.

Tan also noted that congressional resolutions on this issue would
have no real "teeth," however, he said the psychological importance
would be enormous.