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Bad Time To Place Strain On Relations: Analyst

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  • Bad Time To Place Strain On Relations: Analyst

    BAD TIME TO PLACE STRAIN ON RELATIONS: ANALYST
    BY: Peter O'Neil, Canwest News Service

    The Leader-Post (Regina, Saskatchewan)
    March 10, 2010 Wednesday
    Canada

    The U.S. was reminded again Tuesday why it doesn't have nearly the
    latitude enjoyed by countries like France, Germany and Canada to
    denounce the almost century-old atrocities committed by the old
    Ottoman Empire against Armenians.

    Turkey, which last week withdrew its ambassador to Washington to
    protest a congressional bid to declare the First World War-era
    persecution by Ottoman Turks of Armenians a genocide, issued a
    statement aimed at heightening the pressure on President Barack
    Obama's administration to block the move.

    "We will not send our ambassador back unless we get a clear sign on the
    outcome of the situation regarding the Armenian bill," Prime Minister
    Tayyip Erdogan said, according to the state news agency Anatolian.

    According to one of the top U.S. analysts of Turkey, the
    Washington-Ankara showdown couldn't come at a worse time due to
    growing anti-West sentiment in Turkey, for decades a crucial U.S.

    military and diplomatic ally in the Islamic world and a member of
    the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

    More than 90 per cent of Turks, already bruised by German and French
    opposition to their membership in the European Union, reject any
    suggestion their nation is guilty of genocide, said Soner Cagaptay
    of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

    "It will be seen as yet another slap in the face of the Turks by the
    West and, therefore, it will only help fuel the Turks' slide away
    from the West," Cagaptay told Canwest News Service.

    "Regardless of the merits of the case, if there was one really wrong
    time to pass such a resolution, this would be that time."

    Turkey's ambassador was withdrawn last week after a U.S. House
    panel last week narrowly approved a non-binding measure condemning
    the genocide.

    While Obama campaigned in favour of acknowledging the genocide, his
    officials now say that this "personal" position doesn't clash with
    his administration's view that Turkey and Armenia should resolve the
    matter bilaterally.

    It will be left to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and especially
    Defence Secretary Robert Gates, to lobby Congress to block the measure
    from advancing further, according to Cagaptay.

    Gates is particularly motivated because of demands by a nationalist
    opposition party, the MHP Party, that Parliament deny the U.S. access
    to the Incirlik air base on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

    Incirlik plays a vital logistical role for American soldiers stationed
    in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Cagaptay, who has written about Turkey's slide from the West in
    publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to the influential
    U.S. journal Foreign Affairs, said the controversy won't necessarily
    help Erdogan in his current battle with the Turkish military.

    "But it will help the government pacify any pro-western voices inside
    the country. In other words, if this resolution passed, friends of
    the U.S., and those who stand for a Turkey that's a member of the
    Euro-Atlantic community, would simply be told to shut up."

    Erdogan's Islamist-oriented government has taken a number of current
    and retired senior military officers to court, charging them with
    complicity in an alleged coup attempt after he became prime minister
    in 2003.

    The move is believed to be part of an attempt by the ruling Justice
    and Development Party (AKP), which has distanced itself from Israel
    and has started forming closer relations with anti-western countries
    like Iran and Sudan, to discredit the military, long the defender of
    Turkey's status as a secular, pro-western state.

    Several international organizations and about 20 governments, bowing
    to lobbying efforts by Armenian diaspora communities, have recognized
    the genocide of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians.

    In all cases Turkey has vehemently objected, though the geopolitical
    ramifications of Ankara's retaliatory measures have been marginal.
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