TURKEY MAY CUT SUPPORT TO U.S. OVER ARMENIA BILL-MP

Reuters
Oct 8 2007

ANKARA – Turkey may cut logistic support to U.S. troops in Iraq if
the U.S. Congress backs a bill branding as genocide the 1915 massacres
of Armenians by Ottoman Turks, a senior ruling AK Party lawmaker was
quoted as saying on Monday.

Congress’s Foreign Affairs Committee is expected to approve on
Wednesday a bill on the genocide issue and speaker Nancy Pelosi,
a known supporter of the Armenian cause, could then decide to bring
it to the House floor for a vote.

Turkey, a NATO ally of Washington, strongly denies Armenian claims,
backed by many Western historians and a number of foreign parliaments,
that up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians suffered genocide at Turkish
hands during World War One.

It says many Muslim Turks as well as Christian Armenians died in
inter-ethnic conflict as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

‘Don’t accept this bill. If you do, we will be obliged to do many
things we do not want to do,’ the top-selling Hurriyet daily quoted
AK Party deputy leader Egemen Bagis as saying.

‘For example, the Americans depend on Turkey for a large part of
their logistical support in Iraq. We would be obliged to to cut this
support,’ he was quoted as saying.

Bagis was speaking in a personal capacity, but Turkey’s government
has many times urged foreign countries, including the United States,
not to pass such resolutions, saying historians, not politicians,
should judge historic events.

Last year, Turkey froze military and some commercial cooperation
with France after the French National Assembly backed a bill that
would make it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide, although the
bill never became law.

U.S. forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan get many of their supplies
via the Incirlik military base in southern Turkey.

Contacted by Reuters, Bagis declined to say what specific measures
Turkey might take but said: ‘This bill might please Armenian Americans
for a few days but it would definitely have a long-lasting negative
effect on the relationship between two strategic allies.’

Bagis noted in his comments to Hurriyet that Turkish public opinion has
already turned very anti-American due to the Iraq war and Washington’s
failure to crack down on Kurdish rebels who use northern Iraq as a
base from which to attack Turkey.

‘If the bill passes, pressure from public opinion (to take action
against U.S. interests) will be very strong,’ he said.

Bagis left for Washington with two other Turkish lawmakers on Monday
to lobby Congress to drop the bill.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan raised Turkey’s concerns with
U.S. President George W. Bush in a telephone conversation last
Friday. The Bush administration is opposed to the bill but Congress
is now dominated by its Democratic.