Morning Star
October 12, 2007 Friday

World – Turkey damns US vote on genocide

by Dave Williams

Turkish leaders voiced anger on Thursday after a US congressional
panel voted to approve a Bill describing the World War I-era killings
of Armenians as genocide.

Despite intense lobbying by Turkish officials and opposition by US
President George W Bush, the House of Representatives foreign affairs
committee passed the Bill by 27 votes to 21.

Mr Bush had warned that the Bill could "do great harm to our
relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."

US-Turkish ties are already tense as Ankara considers staging a
military offensive across the Iraqi border against Kurdish rebel
bases.

"Unfortunately, some politicians in the United States have, once
again, sacrificed important matters to petty domestic politics,
despite all calls to common sense," President Abdullah Gul said after
the US vote on the genocide Bill.

The Turkish government condemned the panel’s vote.

"It is not possible to accept such an accusation of a crime which was
never committed by the Turkish nation," a statement said.

Hundreds of Turks marched to the US embassy in Ankara and the
consulate in Istanbul to protest against the Bill before Wednesday’s
vote took place.

The embassy urged US citizens to be alert for possible violence after
the vote, amid fears of an increase in anti-US feeling in Turkey.

The vote was a triumph for well-organised Armenian-American interest
groups, which have lobbied Congress for decades on the issue.

Armenians say that up to 1.5 million of their people were killed in a
systematic genocide between 1915-17.

Turkey insists that the killings were the product of civil unrest as
the Ottoman empire disintegrated and that the numbers have been
inflated.

After France voted last year to make it a crime to deny that the
killings were genocide, the Turkish government severed its military
ties with Paris.

There are widespread concerns in the US that a public backlash in
Turkey could endanger crucial supply routes through Turkey to Iraq
and Afghanistan.

The closure of a key US air base at Incirlik is also feared.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said before the vote that 70 per
cent of US air cargo destined for Iraq goes through Turkey, as does
about one-third of the fuel used by the US military in Iraq.

"Access to airfields and to the roads and so on in Turkey would very
much be put at risk if this resolution passes," Mr Gates said.

However, Armenian President Robert Kocharian welcomed the US
congressional vote, saying: "We hope this process will lead to a full
recognition by the United States of America of the genocide."