Turkey outraged at proposed U.S. resolution on 1915 genocide

ANKARA, Turkey (Reuters) -- When a U.S. Congress body took a tentative step toward recognizing accusations that Ottoman Turks conducted genocide against Armenians in 1915, the vote went largely unnoticed in the U.S. media.

But few in the United States could have guessed the storm it would raise in Turkey.

RESOURCES Read the full text of H. Res. 398, The Armenian Genocide Resolution     ALSO Turkey pledges to root out rights abuses for EU membership

"Stab In The Back," screamed a Turkish newspaper. "Fury at America," ran a headline. The prime minister spoke of an "ugly" event in Turkish-U.S. ties, while others raised questions about cooperation over Iraq, or the future of lucrative arms deals.

"This is altogether very unfortunate," Kamran Inan, head of parliament's foreign relations committee, told Reuters. "Just when we thought relations with America were at their zenith, this comes up as an electoral issue."

The view from Ankara is simple: that the House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee voted to acknowledge a massacre of 1.5 million Armenians simply to curry ethnic Armenian favor in an election year.

The Armenian diaspora in the United States and elsewhere says Turks systematically killed the Armenians as the Ottoman empire collapsed. Turkey denies the charges and insists any killings were part of a widespread partisan war.

The Congress vote highlights Turkey's difficulties in mobilizing support in the face of influential Greek and Armenian lobbies in Congress. This has long been a bane to Ankara on issues from arms sales to diplomacy.

The Turks have no comparable lobby in Washington.

The weakness is seen also in Europe, where radical Kurdish pressure groups helped bring about the release of Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan after his arrest in Rome in 1998. Italian goods were burned in Turkey and there were threats of boycotts, but to no avail. He went on his way.

Ocalan was later detained in Kenya and returned to Turkey, where he was tried and sentenced to death for his part in a conflict that cost more than 30,000 lives.

Turkey faces strong criticism over its human rights record in the European Union, which has adopted it as a candidate, and especially in Germany.

Political opposition there, especially in the ruling Social Democratic and Greens parties, could block a major tank sale to Turkey that may be decided early next year.

Most Turkish newspapers imply that Turkey has few friends, especially in Washington.

Only a nationalist daily went to the other extreme, suggesting "USA in Panic" as Clinton and defense aides cautioned Congress against adoption of the non-binding resolution by the full committee before House and Senate ratification.

"Turkey has one very strong and very influential lobby in the United States," said a Western diplomat well versed in Washington affairs. "And it's called the Pentagon."

Turkey is a major purchaser of U.S. arms. It also occupies a very advantageous geostrategic position, bordering on northern Iraq, Iran and Syria, to say nothing of its shared border with landlocked Armenia and the Russian troops hosted there.

"The Pentagon sees the Turks as living in a rough neighborhood," the diplomat said. "It's a neighborhood where they like to think they have a pretty robust friend."

Turkey is weighing a number of responses to the Armenian resolution, according to leading dailies, include cancellation of U.S. rights to use the Incirlik air base for flights to enforce a "No-Fly" zone over northern Iraq.

"Such measures advocated would be counterproductive or self-destructive," Ilter Turkmen, a former foreign minister, told Reuters. "Stopping those flights, for instance, would impede Turkey's ability to go into northern Iraq."

"Moreover, can you really blame the president and the administration for a vote in the Congress?"

Turkey frequently sends troops into northern Iraq, outside Baghdad's control since the 1991 Gulf War, in pursuit of Kurdish separatists. U.S. warplanes flying out of Incirlik ensure control of the air space in the region and exclude Iraqi troops.

It would seem foolhardly and unlikely for Turkey to try to "punish" a superpower ally, but Armenia could suffer.

Turkey could stop flights into Armenia or tighten a frontier blockade, but it would have to consider the consequences of angering Russia, Yerevan's ally and protector.

Turkey's National Security Council is expected to discuss the U.S. vote and its implications this week.

Aides of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit say he will not act in haste. "His policy is 'wait and see'," an official said. "There's a long way before any resolution gets final approval."

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Office of the Turkish President (in Turkish)
Embassy of the Republic of Turkey
Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Armenian National Committee of America
U.S. Department of State, Human Rights Reports for 1999: Turkey
Amnesty International Report 2000, Turkey

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