The New Zealand Herald
October 12, 2007 Friday
Bush tiptoes on tightrope over Turkish past and present
WASHINGTON – The Bush Administration urged Turkey not to take any
"concrete" action after a United States congressional committee
angered Ankara by passing a resolution calling 1915 massacres of
Armenians genocide.
The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee approved the
resolution and it will now go to the House floor for passage, a move
Nato ally Turkey says will damage ties with Washington.
There, 226 members, more than a majority, have already signed up as
co-sponsors.
US Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said the Administration
was "deeply disappointed" by the vote but hoped Turkey, "one of our
most valued and important allies worldwide," would not retaliate.
"We hope very much that the disappointment can be limited to
statements and not extend to anything concrete that would interfere
with the very good way that we have been working with the Turks for
many years," he told reporters.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul called the committee’s approval of the
resolution "unacceptable".
"Unfortunately some politicians in the United States of America have
closed their ears to calls to be reasonable and once again sought to
sacrifice big problems for small domestic political games," Gul was
quoted as saying by the state news agency Anatolian.
Turkey is of strategic importance to the US, particularly in Iraq.
The bulk of supplies for troops in Iraq pass through Turkey’s
Incirlik air base.
"We need to continue to be able to work together effectively," said
Burns, adding that Turkey had not made any specific threats before
the vote over Incirlik or other areas of co-operation between the two
countries.
Top officials in the US Government, from the President down, tried to
convince legislators not to pass the resolution while at the same
time trying to soothe Turkish fears by making clear if it went
through this was not US Government policy.
"The Administration continues strongly to oppose this resolution,
passage of which may do grave harm to US-Turkish relations," said
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
Eight former Secretaries of State wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
opposing the non-binding resolution and warning it would endanger US
national security interests.
"This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass
killings," President George W. Bush told reporters, hours before the
vote.
The showdown, in one sense, is a replay of an issue that has
periodically endangered ties between Washington and Ankara. But as
the joint letters from all eight living former Secretaries of State
and three former Defence Secretaries testify, rarely have the
diplomatic stakes been higher, and never have the prospects of
passage been greater.
The fight between the White House and Congress comes as the
Government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is close to authorising
an incursion into northern Iraq to strike at Kurdish rebels, after 15
Turkish soldiers were killed in recent fighting.
Parliament, where Erdogan’s ruling centre-right AK Party has a big
majority, would have to grant permission for troops to cross the
border into Iraq. Passing the measure would not automatically mean
Turkish troops would go into northern Iraq.
A Turkish minister said intervention was not likely right away.
"We do not want to go into Iraq … What happens in northern Iraq is
not of interest right away. We are fighting against militants within
Turkey," Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay said.
Last week, Erdogan telephoned Bush to complain about the Armenian
resolution, and warn that, if it is passed, Turkey would retaliate.
Reprisals could bring a slowdown or even halt to crucial supplies to
US forces in Iraq shipped through the Incirlik airbase in eastern
Turkey, and possibly see the withdrawal of Turkish workers and
support staff in Iraq.
For its part, the US is pleading with Erdogan not to send troops into
northern Iraq, and risk destabilising the country’s most peaceful
region.
Passage of the resolution would inflict "great harm to our relations
with a key ally in Nato and in the global war on terror," Bush
stressed.
Ankara has spared no effort either. A high-level delegation from its
Parliament has been on Capitol Hill this week, warning that military
co-operation would be jeopardised if the resolution was not dropped.
The Turkish Embassy is paying more than US$300,000 ($393,730) a month
to lobbying firms to achieve that end.
The key language in the resolution calls on Bush, in his traditional
annual presidential message delivered every April 24 on the events of
90 years ago, to "accurately characterise the systematic and
deliberate annihilation of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide".
The Turks reject such a description, claiming that although hundreds
of thousands of Armenians may have perished, the deaths resulted from
forced movements of population and fighting as the Ottoman Empire
collapsed during World War I. Vast numbers of Turks also died, they
maintain.
Genocide, says Nabi Sensoy, Turkey’s Ambassador to the US, "is the
greatest accusation of all against humanity. You cannot expect any
nation to accept that kind of label."
Polls moreover suggest more than 80 per cent of Turks would favour an
end to Ankara’s support of the US over Iraq, if the resolution is
passed.
The sensitivity of the genocide issue has already forced Bush to eat
past words. On the campaign trail in 2000, he referred to "a
genocidal campaign that defies comprehension".
But once confronted in office with the realities of power, he has
refused to use those words in the annual message – following the
example of his father and Bill Clinton before him.