ABC Transcripts (Australia)
October 11, 2007 Thursday 8:16 AM AEST
SHOW: AM 8:16 AM AEST ABC
Rift between US and Turkey over Armenian massacre
Michael Rowland
TONY EASTLEY: A massacre more than 90 years ago is emerging as the
latest challenge to American efforts to win the war in Iraq.
The US Congress plans to pass a resolution declaring Turkey’s mass
killings of Armenians, between 1915 and 1917, was genocide.
That has incensed Turkey, an important strategic ally in the Iraq
war, and so now the Bush administration is furiously trying to get
the Democrat controlled Congress to drop the resolution.
Washington Correspondent Michael Rowland reports.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: What exactly happened during the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire, 90 years ago, has long been the subject of bitter
dispute.
Armenia claims that up to 1.5 million of its countrymen were murdered
as part of an organised campaign to force them out of what is now
eastern Turkey.
Turkey maintains there were no systematic killings and says many
Muslim Turks as well as Christian Armenians died in fierce sectarian
conflict.
Many Democrats in the US House of Representatives are siding with the
Armenians and are poised to pass a resolution calling the massacres
genocide.
Turkey is now making dark warnings to the US about the consequences
if the resolution goes through.
US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, says US commanders in Iraq are
getting very nervous for obvious reasons.
ROBERT GATES: About 70 per cent of all air cargo going into Iraq goes
through Turkey. About a third of the fuel that they consume goes
through Turkey, or comes from Turkey. They believe clearly that
access to airfields, and to the roads and so on, in Turkey would be
very much put at risk if this resolution passes, and the Turks react
as strongly as we believe they will.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: Turkish officials are in Washington, vigorously
lobbying law makers to drop the resolution but even Republicans, like
Congressman Chris Smith, are determined to push ahead.
CHRIS SMITH: The sad truth is that the modern government of Turkey
refuses to come to terms with this genocide. The Turkish Government
consistently and aggressively refuses to acknowledge the Armenian
genocide. For Armenians everywhere, the Turkish Government’s denial
is yet another slap in the face.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: Turkey itself is about to cause big headaches for
the US in Iraq, if it goes ahead with a planned incursion into
northern Iraq to pursue the Kurdish separatist group, PKK.
The PKK has been mounting increasingly deadly attacks in Turkey and
the Turkish Government appears determined to respond through a
cross-border raid, much to the horror of the US and its allies, such
as Australia.
Any such move would throw one of the few calm areas of Iraq into
turmoil.
VOX POP (translated): "We don’t want war", says this Kurd, "all the
people here are suffering because of that".
MICHAEL ROWLAND: Passage of the Armenian genocide resolution in
Washington is unlikely to make the Turks any more receptive to US
calls for restraint.
In Washington, this is Michael Rowland, reporting for AM.