Financial Times, UK
Oct 14 2007

Turkey-US military ties under threat

By Vincent Boland in Ankara and Daniel Dombey in Washington

Published: October 14 2007 18:49 | Last updated: October 14 2007
18:49

Turkey’s most senior general warned on Sunday that military ties with
the US would be severely damaged if the House of Representatives
adopted a resolution labelling the massacre of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire as genocide. The warning comes amid signs that
relations between Washington and Ankara are starting to unravel.

General Yashar Buyukanit told Milliyet newspaper that the US had
`shot itself in the foot’ in its handling of the Armenian resolution,
adopted by a House committee last week, and by failing to clamp down
on the PKK Kurdish separatist movement in northern Iraq, which Turkey
blames for the killings of at least 30 Turkish soldiers and civilians
in the past two weeks.

In comments broadcast on Sunday, Nancy Pelosi, US House speaker,
reaffirmed that she intended to take the measure to a vote in the
full House after its approval last week by the Foreign Affairs
Committee. However, she declined to say whether she would press ahead
if George W. Bush, the US president, told her that the issue
could endanger US troops.

`The president hasn’t called me on it, so that’s hypothetical,’ she
said.

The non-binding bill calls on Mr Bush to `accurately characterise the
systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1.5m Armenians as
– genocide’.

The US and Turkey, which have the two largest armies in Nato, have
been close military allies since the 1950s, and military co-operation
forms the basis of their diplomatic relations. Diplomats said any
weakening of the military dimension to the relationship would have
long-term repercussions for political and economic ties.

`If this resolution that was passed in the committee also passes in
the House, our military ties with the US can never be the same
again,’ Gen Buyukanit said in the interview, which was published
yesterday.

His comments were the first by Turkey’s influential military on the
furore sparked by the Armenian genocide resolution and by Ankara’s
threat to stage an incursion into northern Iraq to crush the PKK. The
Turkish parliament is expected this week to approve such an
operation, amid growing public and military pressure on the
government to address forcefully the terrorism issue.

At the weekend, Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, called on
Ankara to use restraint as it contemplated military intervention.

`I urged restraint; urged them to use the mechanisms that are
available,’ Ms Rice said on Saturday, referring to telephone
conversations the day before with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish prime
minister, Abdullah Gul, the country’s president, and Ali Babacan,
foreign minister.

Economic ties between Turkey and the US have already taken a direct
hit from the issue. The Turkish-US business council, which promotes
bilateral economic ties, has cancelled a conference on investing in
Turkey due to be held in New York this week, and the country’s trade
minister has pulled out of a US trip to coincide with the event.