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AK Party delegation in talks in US on Turkish foreign policy
Çelik and those accompanying him: Murat Mercan, the head of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee; Suat Kınıklıoğlu, also a member of the AK Party’s external affairs unit; Zeynep Dağı, head of the Turkish group at the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly (EMPA); and İbrahim Kalın, the chief foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, also attended a closed-door meeting on Turkish-American relations held at a leading think tank.
Çelik was the key speaker at the meeting held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which was also attended by around 30 experts on Turkey, Anatolia said. The title of the meeting was “Turkish-American Relations Following Recent Developments.” The title apparently refers to Turkey’s vote against a US-backed UN Security Council resolution for tougher sanctions on Iran, adopted on June 9, as well as to the deadly May 31 raid by Israeli naval forces that led to the deaths of nine people on an aid flotilla in the eastern Mediterranean.
On Capitol Hill, on Wednesday, the same day these meetings were held, a group of US lawmakers warned Turkey that its ties with Washington would suffer if it continued on what they considered an anti-Israel path.
“There will be a cost if Turkey stays on its present heading of growing closer to Iran and more antagonistic to the state of Israel,” said Rep. Mike Pence, the No. 3 Republican in the US House of Representatives.
At a news conference, Republicans and Democrats denounced NATO ally Turkey for supporting the convoy of aid ships that recently tried to run the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
The lawmakers also criticized Turkey’s opposition to the UN Security Council resolution extending punitive sanctions on Iran for its secretive nuclear program.
Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel called Turkey’s actions “disgraceful,” adding that although Ankara was a member of NATO, it had stopped looking Westward.
As for the cost Turkey might pay for its stance, Pence said he was ready to re-evaluate his past reluctance to support a congressional resolution denouncing as genocide the World War I-era killings of Anatolian Armenians by Ottoman forces. The largely symbolic resolution passed a House committee in March, but amid protests from Ankara, the House Democratic leadership never brought it to the chamber’s floor for a vote.
Meanwhile, a delegation from the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSİAD) led by its president, Ümit Boyner, was scheduled to have a meeting on Thursday with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, TÜSİAD announced on Wednesday. TÜSİAD’s visit, originally scheduled for March 16-17, was postponed after the House committee argued that it would be tainted by the tension between Ankara and Washington at that time.
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