Ankara blames Obama over massacre vote
By Delphine Strauss in Ankara and Daniel Dombey in Costa Rica
FT
March 5 2010 18:05
Turkey on Friday warned of serious damage to its relations with the US
and blamed Barack Obama’s administration for failing to stop a
congressional panel approving a resolution that describes the
Ottoman-era massacres of Armenians as genocide.
The committee vote is a severe test of bilateral ties when Washington
is already struggling to persuade Ankara, a Nato member and key
regional ally, to back sanctions against Iran.
The Turkish government, which denies the genocide, recalled its
ambassador to Washington for consultations after the foreign affairs
committee approved the resolution by 23 votes to 22, and complained
that a last-minute plea by Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, to
stop the measure was not forceful enough.
`We expect a more effective policy from the administration,’ said
Ahmet Davutoglu, foreign minister, adding that Washington had
displayed `a lack of strategic vision’.
He also said the vote could harm Turkish and Armenian efforts at
reconciliation,, which had already stalled, as Turkey `never took
decisions under pressure’.
The Turkish cabinet would assess the situation on Monday after
consultations with Namik Tan, the country’s ambassador to the US who
was flying back from Washington, Mr Davutoglu said.
He said it was too early to talk of any retaliation. But US officials
expressed fears that the panel vote had hurt chances of winning an
already sceptical Turkey’s support for Iranian sanctions in the United
Nations Security Council, where it has a non-permanent seat.
`Getting Ankara on board for punitive actions against Tehran was
already going to be a challenge, but an Armenian genocide resolution
would make it nearly impossible,’ said Stephen A. Cook, a fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations.
Similar resolutions have passed a committee vote before without
reaching the floor of Congress, and the US administration is
signalling that the pattern may be repeated.
`We understand that there will be no decision in full Congress. We are
against any new Congress decision,’ Jim Jeffrey, US ambassador in
Ankara, told reporters after being summoned to the foreign ministry on
Friday.
`I do not think it is for any other country to determine how two
countries resolve matters between them,’ Mrs Clinton said on Thursday,
adding that the administration did not believe the full House `will or
should’ vote on the resolution.
Nationalist and anti-American feeling runs high in Turkey, and
Ankara’s tough reaction reflects its need not to alienate voters
shortly before a possible referendum on constitutional reform, and
with elections looming in 2011.
Turkey denies that the 1915 killings of some 1.5m Armenians
constituted genocide, saying many Turks also died in the chaos that
engulfed the disintegrating Ottoman empire and that historians, not
politicians, should interpret the events.
The Armenian National Committee of America hailed the vote, but said
the real test was a full House vote.