ANKARA, 12 October 2007 — Turkey yesterday recalled its ambassador to Washington in anger at a resolution passed by a US Congress committee which says the Armenians were victims of genocide by the Ottoman Turks, Anatolia news agency said. The ambassador, Nabi Sensoy, was recalled for consultations on the text which could now go before the full House of Representatives, said the news agency.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that his government would do everything possible to stop the adoption of the resolution by the full House and was studying possible action if the motion is passed. At least 1.5 million Armenians were killed from 1915 to 1923 under an Ottoman Empire campaign of deportation and murder, according to Armenians.
Turkey strongly rejects the genocide label, but acknowledges that 250,000-500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in strife after Armenians took up arms for independence. The resolution was adopted by the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday and President George W. Bush’s administration said it would lobby the full Democratic-led chamber against taking it further.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Levent Bilman said the ambassador would stay in Turkey a week or 10 days for discussions regarding the vote, which came despite warnings by Turkish officials and Bush’s administration that the bill could harm US-Turkish relations. “We are not withdrawing our ambassador. We have asked him to come to Turkey for some consultations,” Bilman said.
“The ambassador was given instructions to return and will come at his earliest convenience.” Private NTV television said Turkey’s naval commander had canceled a planned trip to the United States over the bill.
Meanwhile, the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq warned Turkey yesterday against carrying through with its threat to mount an armed cross-border incursion against Kurdish rebels. “Recourse to military action is not going to help resolve the question of security on our borders,” the regional government’s spokesman Jamal Abdullah told AFP. “There must be other ways to settle this problem because it’s our problem too.”
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to submit a bill to Parliament on Monday seeking authorization for the army to launch an incursion into northern Iraq to flush out suspected bases of the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). “Turkish threats are not new for this region,” said Saman Shali, head of the Kurdish National Congress of North America, an organization that represents Kurds in the United States.
“We believe that the Turkish threats are not aiming at PKK only, but it has ambitions in the south of Kurdistan, that is to say northern Iraq,” Shali told AFP during a visit to Iraq’s Kurdish north.
