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Turkey Says Genocide Vote Will Impair U.S. Ties
By SEBNEM ARSU and BRIAN KNOWLTON
Published: March 5, 2010
ISTANBUL – Turkey’s foreign minster said Friday that a vote by the House
Foreign Affairs Committee condemning as genocide the mass killing of
Armenians early in the last century by the Ottoman army would damage ties
with the Obama administration and set back reconciliation efforts between
Turkey and Armenia.
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House Panel Says Armenian Deaths Were Genocide (March 5, 2010)
"Each interference by a third party will make this normalization
impossible," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a televised press
conference. "If an adviser had whispered ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’ in the ear of
a member of the House of Representatives, the vote would have come out
differently. Can history be treated in such an unserious manner?"
Thursday’s vote on the nonbinding resolution, a perennial point of friction
addressing a dark, century-old chapter of Turkish history, was 23 to 22.
A similar resolution passed by a slightly wider margin in 2007, but the Bush
administration, fearful of losing Turkish cooperation over Iraq, lobbied
forcefully to keep it from reaching the House floor. Whether this resolution
will reach a floor vote remains unclear. The Obama administration had urged
the committee to forgo a vote altogether.
Turkey reacted sharply, recalling its ambassador to Washington, Namik
Tan, in a display of annoyance. Turkey is a critical United States
ally in NATO, but the question of Armenian genocide taps deep veins of
national pride.
Mr. Davutoglu criticized the Obama administration for failing to explain the
strength of cooperation between Turkey and the United States, and said that
in absence of more effective efforts from Washington, "the picture ahead
will not be a positive one."
Last October, Turkey and Armenia began the first diplomatic attempt to
normalize relations with a series of agreements, but Mr. Davutoglu said that
votes like Thursday’s were a blow to their efforts to build a peaceful
region for future generations.
Turkey’s newspapers headlined the news of the vote – and Turkey’s diplomatic
response – on their front pages.
"We called the ambassador back," proclaimed Hurriyet, Turkey’s largest
circulation newspaper. "A vote crisis with the United States," Milliyet,
another daily, said. "A vote like a comedy," read a headline in Sabah
newspaper.
Some Turkish analysts said Ankara might put up diplomatic obstacles for
Washington’s broader regional policies.
"On one side of the scale, there is the Congress under the influence of
ethnic lobby groups and on the other, there are the greater United States
interests in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Caucasus," said Sedat Ergin, a
foreign policy analyst of the Hurriyet newspaper. "It is up to the American
administration to come up with the best choice between the two."
Historians say that as many as 1.5 million Armenians died amid the
chaos and unrest surrounding World War I and the disintegration of the
Ottoman Empire. Turkey denies, however, that this was a planned
genocide, and mounted a vigorous lobbying campaign against the
resolution.
The Armenian issue has long been a taboo in Turkey and only recently has
there been some cautious, public debate partly as a result of reforms on
free speech prompted by Turkey’s desire to join the European Union.
While writers and intellectuals, including the Nobel laureate Orhan
Pamuk, have faced criminal charges for airing the debate, the number
of such cases has been dwindling over the years. Mr. Pamuk faced
criminal charges of "insulting Turkishness" after a 2005 magazine
interview in which he condemned the genocide and the killing of Kurds
by Turkey in the 1980s. The charges were dropped, but many
nationalists have not forgiven Mr. Pamuk.
Last October, Turkey and Armenia agreed to establish an impartial
international historical commission to study the available archives of the
period. In 2008, Turkey’s president paid the first visit by a Turkish leader
to Armenia in the two nations’ history.
Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul, and Brian Knowlton from Washington.