TURKEY’S CONSUMERS’ UNION CALLS FOR BOYCOTT OF U.S.-MADE PRODUCTS
Editor: Yan Liang
Xinhua, China
Oct 11 2007
ANKARA, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) — Turkey’s Consumers’ Union Thursday called
on Turkish people to boycott U.S.-made products after the U.S. House
of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee approved a resolution
calling 1915 Armenian incident a genocide.
On behalf of the Consumers’ Union, Bulent Deniz said in a written
statement that "we decided not to use U.S.-made products to protest
the approval of the resolution by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs
Committee."
Meanwhile, a group of members of the Workers’ Party (IP) laid a
black wraith in front of the U.S. Embassy building in Ankara and
draw a crescent-and-star on its wall to protest the approval of
the resolution.
Earlier on Wednesday, U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs
Committee approved the resolution by 27 votes to 21. The bill declares
the killings of Armenians between 1915 and 1917 a genocide.
The resolution drew immediately Turkish government’s condemnation,
though it would have no binding effect on the U.S. foreign policy.
Armenians say more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a
systematic genocide under the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
But Turkey insists the Armenians were victims of widespread chaos
and governmental breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in
the years before 1923 when the modern Turkey was founded.
Although the U.S. leadership has warned against the pass of the
resolution, the U.S. lawmakers gave their nod to the bill.
U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday urged Congress not to pass
the bill, saying that it would do "great harm" to U.S. relations with
Turkey, which in Bush’s word as "a key ally in NATO and in the global
war on terror."
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert
Gates had also denounced the measure, saying "The passage of this
resolution at this time would be very problematic for everything we
are trying to do in the Middle East."
Some 70 percent of U.S. air cargo headed for Iraq goes through Turkey’s
airspace, as does about a third of the fuel used by the U.S. military
in Iraq, according to Gates.