GENOCIDE BILL DIVIDES US AND TURKEY
Spiegel Online, Germany
March 22 2007
Ankara is deeply unhappy about an effort in the US Congress to pass
a bill declaring the 1917 massacre of Armenians by the Turks to be a
case of genocide. Turkey has warned it could sever military ties if
the law goes through.
An Air Force cargo plane lands at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. If US
Congress passes the Armenian genocide resolution, military relations
could suffer.
A push in the United States Congress to pass a bill condemning the
1915 Armenian massacre under the Ottoman Empire as a case of genocide
is threatening to put yet another strain on ties between Turkey and
the US, which are already strained.
Turkey has threatened to take dramatic steps against its NATO partner
if the bill passes, including a curtailing of military cooperation
between the two countries.
"The consequences of such a step would go beyond the imaginable and
would have a lasting effect," the Turkish Foreign Ministry in Ankara
warned last week. Mehmet Dulger, who chairs the Foreign Relations
Committee in the Turkish parliament as a member of the ruling AKP
party, warned that Turkey might even go so far as to restrict American
access to Incirlik Air Base.
The base is of major strategic importance to the US, which uses it
to supply its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ankara’s refusal in
2003 to permit US troops to cross into northern Iraq through Turkey
triggered the current tensions.
For its part, the Bush administration is seeking to stop Congress
from pushing through the resolution. In a March 7 letter, Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned
leading members of Congress about the potential fallout the bill could
have for US-Turkish relations. And on Wednesday, Rice cautioned that
the US should not get involved in the dispute over the mass-killings,
which resulted in the deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians.
In February, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and Yasar
Buyukanit, chief of the general staff for the Turkish Armed Forces,
began a political offensive against Washington, saying that Ankara
considers the massacre to be a tragic act of violence that happened
in the context of World War I but not genocide.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, made her view very
clear: She didn’t even receive Foreign Minister Gul.