TURKISH MILITARY CHIEF: PASSAGE OF U.S. BILL ON ARMENIANS TO WORSEN TURKEY-U.S. MILITARY TIES
Editor: Mu Xuequan

Xinhua

Oct 15 2007
China

ANKARA, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) — Turkey’s General Staff Chief has
warned that the passage of a U.S. bill, which recognized killing
of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I a genocide, will
damage the military relations between Turkey and the United States,
local Milliyet newspaper reported on Sunday.

In an interview with the Milliyet, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit said that "the
United States is an important ally of Turkey, but allied countries
do not treat each other like this."

Turkey’s new President Abdullah Gul (L) talks with Turkish Chief of
Staff General Yasar Buyukanit during a graduation ceremony for 965
cadets at the Air Force war academy in Istanbul August 31, 2007. He
has warned that the passage of a U.S. bill, which recognized killing
of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I a genocide, will
damage the military relations between Turkey and the United States.

The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee approved
last Wednesday a bill labeling the killings of Armenians between 1915
and 1917 a genocide by 27 votes to 21, the first step towards holding
a vote in the House.

Buyukanit further warned of possible deterioration of military ties
between the two countries, if the bill is passed by the House as well.

The passage of the bill by the committee has already drawn Turkish
government’s condemnation, though it would have no binding effect on
the U.S. foreign policy.

Although the U.S. leadership has warned against passage of the bill,
the committee gave its nod to the bill.

The U.S. President George W. Bush urged Congress not to pass the bill
lest it would do "great harm" to U.S. relations with Turkey, which
in Bush’s word "a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."

The U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary
Robert Gates had also denounced the move, claiming it would "be very
problematic for everything we are trying to do in the Middle East."

For now, some 70 percent of U.S. air cargo head for Iraq via Turkey,
so does about a third of the fuel used by the U.S. military in Iraq.

Armenians claim that more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a
systematic genocide in the hands of the Ottomans during World War I,
before modern Turkey was born in 1923. However, Turkey insists that the
Armenians were victims of widespread chaos and governmental breakdown
as the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire collapsed in the years before 1923.