Turkey attacks genocide label

Turkey’s head of state has protested a US congressional panel decision to approve a bill calling the First World War-era killings of Armenians a genocide, saying the decision came as a result of “petty domestic politics”.

Despite earlier protests yesterday in Turkey and opposition by US President George Bush, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the bill by a 27-21 vote.

Bush had warned that the bill could harm US-Turkish relations.

“Unfortunately, some politicians in the United States have once again sacrificed important matters to petty domestic politics despite all calls to commonsense,” President Abdullah Gul was quoted as saying by the state-run news agency Anatolia.

“This unacceptable decision by the committee, like its predecessors, has no validity or respectability for the Turkish nation.”

Egemen Bagis, a foreign policy adviser to Turkey’s prime minister, told Turkish private NTV television early today that he was disappointed by the vote.

“This is a result that Turkey does not deserve. From now on, our effort will be to stop this measure from coming to the house floor, or even if it does, (our effort will be to) stop this from passing there,” Bagis said.

Bush had urged Congress to reject legislation, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates also conveyed their concerns.

Passing the measure “at this time would be very problematic for everything we are trying to do in the Middle East”, Rice told reporters at the White House hours before the vote

Yesterday, hundreds of Turks marched to the US Embassy in Ankara and the consulate in Istanbul to protest the bill.

The US Embassy, meanwhile, urged its citizens to be alert for possible violence after the vote, amid fears of an increase in anti-American feeling in Turkey.

Members of Turkey’s left-wing Workers’ Party chanted anti-American slogans in front of the US Embassy, an embassy official said.

They left books on the sidewalk in front of the embassy, saying they were written by Armenian historians and politicians who also believed a genocide did not happen.

The state-run Anatolia news agency quoted party official Nusret Senem as saying the “genocide claim was an international, imperialist and a historical lie”.

A group of about 200 people staged a similar protest in front of the US Consulate in Istanbul, also leaving similar books on the pavement, private NTV television said.

The Turkish anger over the bill has long prevented a thorough domestic discussion of what happened to a once sizable Armenian population under Ottoman rule.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a systematic genocide between 1915-17, before modern Turkey was born in 1923.

Turkey says the killings occurred at a time of civil unrest as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, and that the numbers are inflated.

Turkey’s political leadership and the head of state have told both Bush and US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that passing the bill could strain US-Turkey ties, already stretched by Washington’s unwillingness to help Ankara crack down on Kurdish rebels holed up in Iraq.

“If a country passes a bill that harms Turkey, then we should make a move that will counter it,” said Onur Oymen, deputy chairman of the main opposition party in Turkey. “More than 70% of logistical support to US operations in Iraq is done through Turkey.”

After France voted last year to make it a crime to deny the killings were genocide, the Turkish government ended its military ties with that country.

When Washington started an arms embargo against Turkey in 1975, due to a dispute over Cyprus, Turkey ended all its logistical support to the US troops and intelligence until the embargo was lifted, Oymen said.

Many in the United States also fear that a public backlash in Turkey – a key Nato ally – could lead to restrictions on crucial supply routes through Turkey to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the closure of Incirlik, a strategic air base in Turkey used by the US Air Force.