Posted on 10/14/2007 8:52:33 AM PDT by saganite
ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkey's top general warned that ties with the U.S., already strained by attacks from rebels hiding in Iraq, will be irreversibly damaged if Congress passes a resolution that labels the World War I-era killings of Armenians a genocide.
Turkey, which is a major cargo hub for U.S. and allied military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, has recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations and warned that there might be a cut in the logistical support to the U.S. over the issue.
Gen. Yasar Buyukanit told daily Milliyet newspaper that a congressional committee's approval of the measure had already harmed ties between the two countries.
"If this resolution passed in the committee passes the House as well, our military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again," Buyukanit was quoted as saying by Milliyet.
"I'm the military chief, I deal with security issues. I'm not a politician," Buyukanit was quoted as saying by Milliyet. "In this regard, the U.S. shot its own foot."
President Bush has said the resolution is the wrong response to the Armenian deaths, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the measure's timing was important "because many of the survivors are very old."
"It is a statement made by 23 other countries. We would be the 24th country to make this statement. Genocide still exists, and we saw it in Rwanda; we see it now in Darfur," she told ABC's "This Week" in an interview broadcast Sunday.
But Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the measure was "irresponsible."
"Listen, there's no question that the suffering of the Armenian people some 90 years ago was extreme. But what happened 90 years ago ought to be a subject for historians to sort out, not politicians here in Washington," he told "Fox News Sunday."
About 70 percent of U.S. air cargo headed for Iraq goes through Turkey as does about one-third of the fuel used by the U.S. military there. U.S. bases also get water and other supplies carried in overland by Turkish truckers who cross into Iraq's northern Kurdish region.
In addition, C-17 cargo planes fly military supplies to U.S. soldiers in remote areas of Iraq from Incirlik, avoiding the use of Iraqi roads vulnerable to bomb attacks. U.S. officials say the arrangement helps reduce American casualties.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has "urged restraint" from Turkey and sent two high-ranking officials to Ankara in an apparent attempt to ease fury over the measure which could be voted on by the House by the end of the year.
Buyukanit's remarks were published a day after a visit by Dan Fried, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, and Eric Edelman, who is the undersecretary of defense for policy.
"Secretary of State Rice Condoleezza Rice asked us before we came here to express that the Bush administration is opposed to this resolution," Edelman said Saturday.
At issue in the resolution is the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks. Many international historians contend the World War I-era deaths amounted to genocide, but Turkey says the mass killings and deportations were not systematic and that many Turkish Muslims died in the chaos of war.
The congressional resolution comes as the Turkish parliament debates authorizing a military campaign into northern Iraq to root out rebels who seek a unified, independent nation for Kurds in the region.
U.S. officials have urged Turkey not to send troops and appealed for a diplomatic solution with Iraq. The Kurdish self-rule region in northern Iraq is one of the country's few relatively stable areas and the Kurds here are also a longtime U.S. ally.
A Kurdish rebel commander on Saturday said Turkey would face a long and bloody conflict if it launched a large-scale offensive in northern Iraq.
Speaking to The Associated Press deep in the Qandil mountains straddling the Iraq-Turkish border, some 94 miles from the northern Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, Murat Karayilan, head of the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, warned that an eventual Turkish incursion would "make Turkey experience a Vietnam war."
The PKK has been fighting for autonomy in southeast Turkey since 1984. The conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Turkey says the rebels use Iraqi Kurdish territory as a safe haven. Iraqi and Kurdish authorities reject the claim.
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The Turkish lobby spent $300,000.00 a month to get this thing squashed.
That's a lot of money when you add up they've been fighting this resolution for years for something they deny they ever did.
In fact some of them went on to key positions in Hitler's criminal government.
Do you have an opinion about Germany vis-a-vis the Armenian genocide?
The most convincing material is in Vahakn N. Dadrian's book, 'German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity'.
You must be part of Ron Paul’s faction or a faction that does not care if we lose the war in Iraq. I am part of the faction that something that happened over 90 years ago does not be need to be condemned while we are trying to win a war in Iraq and have troops on the ground there doing operations. This condemnation has made life harder to win the war and for our troops to succeed. YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT THAT DO YOU?
I will also add, most of our resupply lines run through Turkey. These valuable supplies our troops need to protect themselves, secure Iraq and defeat al Qaeda. Pelosi knows this and that is why they are trying to bring this condemnation now, so they can sour our relationship with Turkey and have Turkey cut off our supply route, thus hampering our war effort. YOU CAN NOT FIGURE THAT OUT? It appears to me, you do not care about our troops or winning the war in Iraq. This puts you in the same camp as Pelosi and Reid. Nice threesome you are.
You must be part of Ron Paul’s faction
NO! I am part of the Duncan Hunter faction that cares deeply about America’s becoming the moral bastion of the world.
FYI—the moral coward Ron Paul did not vote.
http://www.anca.org/press_releases/press_releases.php?prid=1125
Crazy like a weasel is how I’d describe the pelosious one.
Turks were on the side of Germany in WWI.
Turk government concluded a nonaggression treaty with Nazi Germany on June 18, 1941.
Turks officially neutral in WWI but provided substantial help to the Axis.
Hitler: “Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
This quote is located in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and comes from HItler’s speech by Adolf Hitler to Wehrmacht commanders at his Obersalzberg home on August 22, 1939, a week before the German invasion of Poland.
Thanks for the reference to the DADRIAN BOOK-—my opinion is limited because I do not have facts. However I have seen but not read this as of yet:
Mikrasianou, G. “Pos He Germania Katestrepse ton Hellenismon tes Tourkias” (How Germany Destroyed the Greeks of Turkey). Athens: P. A. Petrakou, 1916.
61 p.
Examines Germany’s role and influence in the Young Turk movement, Turkish ultranationalism, and Ottoman depredations against the Greek populations of Asia Minor and Thrace.
A difference made by a word, genocide, will not make the horrors any worse besides..
Resolution 106 or not, the goal is honestly stated above.
If Turkey had seized the land I'd be for giving it back as minimal compensation. I believe that history states that the borders were dictated by Europeans; besides, the Kurds have dibs on eastern Turkey. Now what?
Other reasons for making our Nation a boxing ring are stated in the refreshingly honest article linked here.
If Duncan Hunter votes for this then he’s an idiot.
My statement in no way means that I do not recognize the horror of what the Armenians went through. The author of the book I mentioned argues that had more attention been paid the Jewish people may not have gone through a similar fate.
I thought they already voted on it and Pelosi got it passed. She is so horrible.
Aristotleman what Hubris! If the Congress of the US were to devote itself to condemning the holocausts undertaken somewhere in the world just in the time frame since the American Revolution. it would not have any time to do anything else! Wait a minute Aristotleman, you are a GENIUS!
D. Hunter is lots smarter and more sympathetic to moral issues thann you.
Our Officials are looking at plans to reroute those deliveries around Turkey if needed.
Turkey is NO friend AND never has been. In the past it has used its position vis a vis the Soviet Union to blackmail the west.
Shakedown artist extraordinaire: Turkey demanded a $30 billion!!!!! in exchange for its support of the war and use of its airfields.
The jig is up for the parasitic parstate of turkey. The chickens are coming home to roost. The sooner the better.
Yea, "Big Turkey" just like "Big Oil" and "Big Tobacco", right?
Turkey is not our friend bump!
Addition: The Dems know the Turks will be oversensitive (because Muslims always are whenever someone criticizes them) so they are taking advantage of that and using this bill as a way to get them mad at us and stop allowing us to have military bases in Turkey.
Screw Turkey!
I find the opinion here remarkably split on this resolution despite the fact this will do damage to our military in Iraq. Some I guess would rather spit in the face of the Turks one more time to salve their consciences than accept that defeating Islamic terrorists is our most important and pressing current problem. The resolution will serve to salve the consciences of some and serve as vindication for an ethnic minority who were surely subjected to genocide——90 years ago. Perhaps they won’t be too concerned about the potential deaths in Iraq which would be a result of our defeat there. After all, they will have gotten their worthless resolution to prove they were right.
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