TURKISH GOVERNMENT CONDEMNS US CONGRESSIONAL VOTE
11:00:14 – 05/03/2010
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The Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on
Thursday endorsed a resolution calling for Washington’s recognition of
World War I-era killings of Armenians during the last days of the
Ottoman Empire as genocide.
23 of the panel’s 46 members voted for the resolution and 22 voted
against it while one committee member declined to cast a vote.
The move may jeopardize Turkey’s ties with both the United States and Armenia.
Turkey condemned US congressional vote labeling the 1915 killings of
Armenians as genocide and recalled its ambassador to Washington for
consultations.
`We condemn this resolution accusing Turkey of a crime that it has not
committed,’ the Turkish Prime Ministry said in a written statement.
`Our Ambassador to Washington Namık Tan was recalled tonight to Ankara
for consultations after the development,’ said the statement, which
came immediately after the US panel passed the measure in a
closer-than-expected vote.
In Washington, Turkish lobbying deputies pushed against the resolution
until the very last moment. Speaking to Turkish television channel
NTV, opposition Republican People’s Party deputy Å?ükrü ElekdaÄ? said,
`The US administration has left Turkey alone.’
Suat KınıklıoÄ?lu of the ruling Justice and Development Party said the
supporters of the measure did not expect such a close vote, claiming
the outcome taught them a lesson.
The non-binding resolution now heads to a floor vote at the House of
Representatives, where its prospects for passage are uncertain. The
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat who supports the resolution,
will decide if or when it will come to a floor vote.
The resolution the committee endorsed calls on President Barack Obama
to ensure that U.S. policy formally refers to the killings as genocide
and to use that term when he delivers his annual message on the issue
in April ` something he avoided doing last year.
Gül’s call
Turkey has been warning that any House or Senate floor adoption of an
Armenian genocide resolution would lead to a major and lasting
deterioration in relations with the United States and sabotage a
planned reconciliation process with Yerevan.
Earlier, Turkish President Abdullah Gül urged Obama to use his
influence to block the resolution, warning that its adoption would
hurt ties between the two NATO allies. `Whatever the outcome is,
Turkey will not be the loser. Others will lose from a negative
outcome,’ said Turkish Parliament Foreign Affairs Commission head
Murat Mercan, one of a group of Turkish deputies who traveled to
Washington, D.C., to lobby against the resolution.
Similar genocide resolutions passed the same committee in 2000, 2005
and 2007, but none of them could reach a House floor vote because of
extensive pressure from former presidents Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush.
The Clinton and Bush administrations strongly opposed the previous
Armenian genocide resolutions, saying their congressional passage
would deeply hurt U.S. national-security interests. But the Obama
administration has thus far declined to play the national-security
card on this matter.
During his election campaign, Obama pledged to recognize the killings
as genocide, but refrained from using the term in his message last
year to commemorate the killings.
U.S. diplomats in recent weeks have been urging the Turkish government
to implement the reconciliation process with Armenia without any
preconditions, saying that in the absence of this action, genocide
resolutions in Congress may be unstoppable.
The Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed in October a set of
agreements under which Ankara and Yerevan would set up normal
diplomatic relations and reopen their land border. But the
normalization process is now faltering because of the Nagorno-Karabakh
dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s close friend and
ally.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were killed during World
War I as the Ottoman Empire fell apart. Turkey firmly rejects the
genocide label and argues that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at
least as many Turks died in what it says was civil strife.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
