GUL WARNS US CONGRESS AGAINST ‘GENOCIDE’ MOVE
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 7 2007
Turkey’s foreign minister has warned that strategic ties with the
United States would be poisoned if Congress passed a resolution
recognizing the 1915 massacres of Armenians as genocide.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets with Turkish Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gul at the State Department in Washington Abdullah
Gul, who met US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on
Tuesday, said that passage of the resolution would "spoil everything"
between the long-standing allies.
"The resolution submitted to Congress is a great threat which could
poison all our relations," he told reporters in Washington. He noted
that Turkey had "worked shoulder-to-shoulder" with the United States
in Iraq and Afghanistan and warned that the resolution was bad "as
much for Turkey as for the United States."
In a wide-ranging one-on-one meeting and working lunch, Rice and
Gul discussed the renewed moves in the US Congress to pass a law
recognizing the 1915 massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire
as genocide. US officials are reassuring Gul that they will try to
quash the proposed resolution in Congress. Before her meeting with
Gul, Rice called Turkey "a strategic ally, a global partner (that)
shares our values."
State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said, "We understand very
clearly that this is a sensitive issue not only for the Turkish people
but for the Armenian people." A number of legislatures around the
world have recognized the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians
in Turkey during World War I as genocide. But while US President
George W. Bush commemorates the massacres each year in a speech,
his administration had stopped short of backing the genocide bills.
Turkey illustrated how seriously it takes the issue in October when
it said it would suspend military operations with France after French
lawmakers voted in October to make it a crime to deny the killings
were genocide. Gul made no such threats against the United States.
Instead he highlighted the friendship between the two countries. "We
have strategic issues of our relations based on the values," he said.
US President Bush will have to persuade the now Democrat-controlled
congress which does not need presidential approval for such a
resolution. Members behind the proposed bill have said they expect
a push by the administration and lobbyists working for the Turkish
government to keep the resolution from a full vote by the House.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who will decide whether to offer the bill
for a full vote if, as expected, it is approved by the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, has expressed support. Gul said they do not plan
to meet with Pelosi because she is "too engaged" in the issue but
he will meet with his close aides and friends to make sure Turkey’s
views are heard. Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that
300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife
when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and
sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire during
World War I.
Meanwhile, a planned visit by a Turkish parliamentary delegation
to the US has been cancelled upon Gul’s request. A part of lobbying
efforts at the US Congress against a possible genocide resolution,
the Turkish Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Mehmet
Dulger said Gul had called him from the US to postpone the visit.
"We informed our counterparts about the postponement of our visit. I
think the Turkish mission in Washington D.C. would be overwhelmed by
the Turkish delegations’ visits one after another."
‘PKK problem needs to be resolved’ In meetings with Rice and other
officials, Gul also raised US cooperation on preventing Kurdish
separatists from using northern Iraq as a sanctuary and a base of
operations against Turkey. The Turkish government has expressed
frustration with the level of US help in rooting out terrorists of
the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), holed up in the Kurdish region of
northern Iraq.
Retired Gen. Joseph Ralston, a former NATO supreme allied commander,
has been coordinating US efforts for countering the PKK. Gul warned
against suggestions in some US political circles that Iraq could
be split into three autonomous regions, which Turkey fears would
create an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq and embolden PKK
separatists in southeastern Turkey. "A soft partition of Iraq is a
fantasy," he said. "Iraq does not have internal boundaries."
McCormack told reporters, "General Ralston is working to decrease
those tensions on both sides of the border between the Iraqis and the
Turks. We are engaging in diplomacy so that you don’t end up with an
armed confrontation in northern Iraq. I don’t think anybody really
wants to see that."
He also noted that the United States wants to try to resolve PKK
use of Kurdish territory in northern Iraq for attacks on Turkish
territory. "Innocent people have died as result of the PKK," McCormack
said, adding that Washington wants a settlement that is acceptable to
both Turkey and Iraq. He said Rice briefed Gul on Ralston’s activities.
During Tuesday’s lunch at the State Department Rice and Gul also
exchanged views on Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey’s relationship with the
European Union and Kosovo.