Reuters, UK
March 5 2010

Turkey says U.S. genocide vote endangers Caucasus peace

Zerin Elci
ANKARA
Fri Mar 5, 2010 12:31pm EST

(Reuters) – Turkey said on Friday chances of its parliament ratifying
peace protocols with Armenia were jeopardized by a U.S. congressional
panel vote that labeled as "genocide" the massacre of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks in 1915.

World | Turkey

Turkey and its fellow Muslim ally, Azerbaijan, saw the U.S. vote
undermining efforts to stabilize the South Caucasus, a volatile region
with pipelines taking oil and gas to the West.

"This decision will not bring peace to the Caucasus," Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference hours after Turkey recalled its
ambassador from Washington.

Turkish leaders reacted with fury after the House of Representatives
Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly passed a non-binding resolution
that tarred their grandfathers with the same crime as Nazi Germany.

President Barack Obama had made a last ditch attempt to get the House
panel to drop a resolution that would anger a valuable NATO ally,
whose support was important for U.S. interests in Iran, Afghanistan
and the Middle East.

Some European leaders have discouraged Turkey’s bid for EU membership.

Analysts said this new slap from the United States ran a risk of
further alienating Turkey, at a time when there were concerns that its
warmer ties with neighbors Iran and Syria, and Russia too, marked a
shift away from the West.

A U.S. envoy in Ankara distanced the administration from the panel’s
vote after being invited for talks by Turkish officials.

"We believe that Congress should not make a decision on the issue. We
are against new action," U.S. Ambassador James Jeffrey told reporters.

It was unclear whether the bill would be considered by the full House
or become enshrined in official U.S. policy.

Davutoglu said Turkey’s efforts to resolve disputes with Christian
Armenia, rooted in ethnic and religious enmity, would go on. But, he
went on to warn that ratification by parliament of peace protocols
signed last year to open the border was now in greater doubt due to
the U.S. lawmakers action.

"Yesterday’s decision has brought the risk of not delaying but halting
the process for the ratification of protocols," Davutoglu said.

FLASHPOINT

"This resolution pours petrol on the fire," said Hugh Pope, an analyst
for the International Crisis Group. "It hands the discussion back to
the nationalists on both sides."

For its part Armenia applauded the U.S. vote and indicated desire to
move forward in relations with Turkey.

"At the current time, there is no single political reason for official
Yerevan to change its position with regards the normalization of
relations with Turkey," said Galust Sahakyan, parliamentary leader of
the Republican Party of President Serzh Sarksyan.

But fallout from the vote reverberated around the fractious nations of
the South Causcasus.

The parliament in Azerbaijan, a friend of Turkey and foe of Armenia,
said the vote could destroy efforts to resolve the conflict over the
breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.

"The adoption of the resolution … could reduce to zero all previous
efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh problem," the Azeri parliament
said in a statement.

The vote, it added, "damages efforts to restore peace and stability in
the region."

Late last month Azerbaijan warned that a "great war" in the South
Caucasus was inevitable if Armenian forces did not withdraw.

Ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, backed by Armenia, threw off
Azeri rule in fighting that broke out as the Soviet Union headed
toward collapse in 1991. An estimated 30,000 people perished before a
ceasefire was agreed in 1994.

Turkey had also sought an Armenian withdrawal as one of the conditions
for ratifying the protocols.

DISTRACTION

Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman
Turks but denies that up to 1.5 million died and that it amounted to
genocide — a term employed by many Western historians and some
foreign parliaments.

The outcry could prove a distraction from political crises brewing at
home following the detention of dozens of military officers suspected
of planning a coup in 2003.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-leaning government is also at
odds with the judiciary, which alongside the military is a stronghold
of Turkey’s old guard of conservative, nationalist secularists.

(Additional reporting by Hasmik Lazarian in Yerevan and Afet
Mehtiyeva in Baku; writing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

STRE6241BN20100305