Turkey condemns US Armenia vote

[Coexist]

Turkey has denounced a vote by a US congressional committee recognising as genocide the 1915-17 mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks. President Abdullah Gul said the decision was unacceptable and had no validity for Turkey, which has always denied any genocide took place.

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The BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Istanbul says it is very unusual to hear such high-level political reaction so late at night - a sign of how seriously it takes this.

<snip>
The controversy comes at a delicate time for relations between Turkey and the United States, our correspondent says.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has confirmed that the Turkish parliament will discuss a motion that would authorise cross border military incursions into northern Iraq to hunt down Kurdish PKK separatists.

the rest...

I recommend following the link to read the entire article. It is extremely interesting - especially since this passed committee. Check out the Dem/Rep. votes.

[shenmue]

1. Sorry, Turkey.

You killed a bunch of people, you have to say sorry.

[bdamomma]

2. that is why Turkey was even turned down by the EU.

come clean Turkey, we have the facts and the pictures.

http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/armenian_genocide.htm

fess up Turkey and acknowledge this genocide apparently the Germans acknowledged what they did to the Jewish people.

and if the Turks go into Northern Iraq, this just shows how arrogant they are to commit another crime.

[Rydz777]

3. The Armenian genocide was a fact - as has been the abusive

treatment of minorities throughout the history of the Turkish Republic -Greeks and Kurds being particular targets.

[BadgerLaw2010]

4. Where's Vlad Dracula when you need him?

[kdmorris]

5. This is also part of what I find troubling

"Tom Lantos, the committee's chairman, had opened the debate by admitting the resolution posed a "sobering" choice.

"We have to weigh the desire to express our solidarity with the Armenian people... against the risk that it could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States armed services to pay an even heavier price than they are currently paying," he said.

Mr Lantos, a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust, said he would introduce a resolution praising US-Turkish friendship next week, according to AFP news agency."

I don't really understand why this resolution was introduced now. It troubles me that we may possibly be escalating the war in the Middle East, while, at the same time, we SHOULD put pressure on Turkey to admit that it was, in fact, genocide. I think that there are definitely other things the Congress could be doing with their time. The Bush Administration says they object to this, but, truthfully, I don't think it's for the reasons they say. I think they would be happy to keep the war going and going and going. They just don't want to have to attack Turkey, which isn't fundamentalist like Iran. But I'm pretty sure they don't care about "hurting the war on terror", except in the small fact that no one else is going to help us attack Turkey. We already let them get away with bombing the Kurds.

So, what I'm really confused about is... why now? What possible gain do we get out of this that will outweigh the possible detriments we may get from approving this?

(And no, I'm not a Bush apologist, nor am I cruel, heartless, or revising history) It was a genocide. It was the worst genocide, next to the Holocaust, in history. But why now?

Edited to add Tom Lantos' entire statement: http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press_display.asp?id=430

[bdamomma]

6. it is unfortunate about the timing but Turkey needs to acknowledge that

this happened, apparently,this acknowledgment by the Turks was not made even to the EU, the EU turned them down. Plus the Turks keep on denying it. Our allies????? that is questionable, remember when they did not want us to use their air space for the invasion of Iraq, and apparently our approval rating before this measure was given taken up is at 16% in Turkey.

[kdmorris]

7. Oh, I agree that Turkey needs to acknowledge it

They've been saying it was a "mishap" or some other such nonsense forever. It was genocide. They tried to wipe out the Armenian people.

I'm just concerned that our men and women, or the Kurds, will suffer for it. Now, it may turn out that those fears are baseless, but I think that this was a very difficult vote for the people on that committee. I can understand both voting yes and voting no, depending on what part of the issue you are most concerned with.

I just found that Tom Lantos' statement was VERY indicative of how hard this vote must be.