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Turkey urges US administration to work against resolution
In Ankara, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan highlighted on Tuesday that what is at stake if the resolution is approved is also the state of bilateral relations between Ankara and Washington.
“Turkish-US relations are experiencing their most successful period in history,” Erdoğan said. “I hope that they will not be damaged by such initiatives. I maintain trust in the leadership and common sense of President [Barack] Obama, who has been closely following efforts toward the normalization of ties with Armenia.”
In Washington, Murat Mercan, head of the Turkish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Commission, which is having talks with US officials ahead of the vote, and Şükrü Elekdağ, a lawmaker and former Turkish ambassador to the US, spoke to reporters at the Turkish Embassy in Washington on Monday.
“My impression is that the [Obama] administration is not fighting against it very effectively,” Elekdağ said, while emphasizing that Turkish cooperation with the United States was at risk if the measure passed.
Also in Washington, The Hill, a congressional newspaper that publishes daily when Congress is in session, reported on Tuesday that a trio of House lawmakers have been encouraging their colleagues to stop the genocide resolution before the key committee vote on Thursday. In a Feb. 22 letter to committee members, the three co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus on US-Turkey Relations asked their colleagues to reject the resolution, warning that it will “have significant negative consequences on current and future relations with Turkey.”
At a time when doubts have been raised over whether the Jewish lobby, which has extended a crucial hand in stopping past resolutions, would rush to Turkey’s aid this time, as Erdoğan angered many Jews when he accused Israel of “inhumane” treatment of Palestinians, the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) announced on Monday that the resolution “should be opposed and defeated.”
“The Congress of the United States is not the place to debate the history of other people in other times. It would be unacceptable for Brazil to pass a resolution condemning 19th century American slavery or Latvia to pass one on the War of 1812,” JINSA said in a statement posted on its Web site.
In İstanbul, the Turkish-Jewish community said: “If members of the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs accept the resolution about the events of 1915, they will damage Turkey-US relations. They are not making any contributions to Turkey-Armenia relations.”
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