The Australian (Australia)
October 12, 2007 Friday
All-round Country Edition
Democrat-led ‘genocide vote’ gets Turkey offside
WASHINGTON: US politicians defied strong warnings by President George
W.Bush and Turkey by voting to label the Ottoman Empire’s World War I
massacre of Armenians as ”genocide”.
The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted by 27
votes to 21 for the resolution that calls the killings of up to 1.5
million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire from 1915 a genocide.
Mr Bush and his top lieutenants were unusually blunt in attacking the
non-binding resolution, warning that it would trigger Turkish
reprisals and undermine US efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the
Middle East.
The vote ”may do grave harm to US-Turkish relations and to US
interests in Europe and the Middle East”, State Department spokesman
Sean McCormack said. ”Nor will it improve Turkish-Armenian relations
or advance reconciliation among Turks and Armenians over the terrible
events of 1915,” he said.
Assistant Secretary of State Nick Burns said the department was
communicating to Turkey its unhappiness with the vote and its desire
to keep working closely with Ankara.
The measure is likely to be sent on to a vote in the full
Democratic-led House, where a majority has signed the resolution. A
parallel measure is in the Senate pipeline. Bryan Ardouny, executive
director of the Armenian Assembly of America, lauded ”a historic
day” after the committee’s vote.
”It is long past time for the US Government to acknowledge and
affirm this horrible chapter of history — the first genocide of the
20th century, and a part of history that we must never forget,” he
said.
The text says the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians was a
”genocide” that should be acknowledged fully in US foreign policy
towards Turkey, along with ”the consequences of the failure to
realise a just resolution”.
While the American-Armenian community celebrated, Turkish President
Abdullah Gul denounced the vote as ”unacceptable”, and accused the
House of sacrificing US interests to ”petty games of domestic
politics”.
Turkey’s ambassador to Washington, Nabi Sensoy, said the vote was
”very disappointing”, and called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to
refrain from bringing it to a full vote.
Mr Sensoy, who has personally lobbied more than 100 House members
against the resolution, said ”those who said it won’t do any harm,
we will have to wait and see”.
Mr Bush said the resolution would do ”great harm” to ties with
Turkey, a Muslim-majority member of NATO whose territory is a crucial
transit point for US supplies bound for Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the Armenians, 1.5 million of their kinsmen were killed
from 1915 to 1923 under an Ottoman Empire campaign of deportation and
murder that later encouraged Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust
against the Jews.
Rejecting the genocide label, Turkey argues that 250,000 to 500,000
Armenians, and at least as many Turks, died in civil strife when
Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia during
the war.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert
Gates, also denounced the measure before the hearing, after veiled
threats from Ankara that US access to a sprawling air base in
southern Turkey could be denied.
Despite the warnings, the resolution’s backers warned the issue could
not be ignored as they drew parallels to the Holocaust and the
present-day bloodshed in the Sudanese region of Darfur.
”We’ve been told the timing is bad,” Democratic House member Gary
Ackerman said in an emotional hearing that lasted nearly four hours.
”But the timing was bad for the Armenian people in 1915.”