Turkey recalls ambassador to US over Armenia genocide dispute

ISTANBUL/WASHINGTON: Turkey has ordered its ambassador in Washington to return home in response to a US congressional resolution that condemned the World War I-era deaths of more than one million Armenians as 'genocide'.
 
The ambassador, Nabi Sensoy, was being brought back for consultations, Turkish media reports said on Thursday, following the vote on Wednesday by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on a non-binding resolution labelling the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923 as genocide. The Turkish embassy in Washington refused to comment on the reports.
 
US President George W. Bush strongly opposed the measure over worries it would sour relations with a NATO ally whose friendship is vital to American foreign policy in the Middle East and the war in Iraq.
 
Turkey has warned the resolution's passage would disrupt relations, and US diplomats were scrambling to contain the fallout. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice planned phone calls to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, the State Department said.
 
"I expect the secretary to convey in her calls to Turkish authorities the regret that the administration has over the passage of this resolution," spokesman Tom Casey said.
 
Casey said the recall of Sensoy would not affect the ability of US officials to convey the Bush administration's views on the resolution but that the decision made by Ankara did not come as a surprise.
 
"The Turkish government has telegraphed for some time, been very vocal and very public about its concerns about this and has said that they did intend to react in a fairly forceful way," he said.
 
Turkey lobbied unsuccessfully against the bill that passed the committee with a 27 to 21 tally and will now go to the full House for a final vote, although no date has been scheduled. Bush urged Congress to abandon the measure hours before it was approved.
 
Gul said in a statement posted on the embassy's website that Congress was using the measure to score political points with constituents at the cost of good relations with Turkey.
 
"It's a pity that some politicians in the United States closed their ears to calls of common sense," he said.
 
Rice and other top US officials will continue meeting members of Congress to urge them to 'defeat this resolution' in the final vote, Casey said.
 
"We're going to do everything we can to ensure that it does not receive approval by the full House," he said. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the president does not want to see the measure even come up for a final vote.
 
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has warned that the genocide resolution could prompt Turkey to limit its use as a transit point for US military equipment and supplies into Iraq.
 
Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House who intends bring the measure up for the full vote, rejected the administration's argument that the US cannot afford to offend Turkey.
 
"The US and Turkey have a very strong relationship. It is based on mutual interest," she said. "This isn't about the Erdogan government. This is about the Ottoman Empire."
 
Bush called the killings one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century but said it was up to historical scholarship to determine whether genocide is the appropriate term, echoing Turkey's official position.
 
Turkey denies that a systematic slaughter of Armenians took place, saying Armenians and Turks alike were killed in ethnic clashes after Armenian groups sided with Russia in World War I.
 
Towards the end of the 19th century, 2.5 million Armenians lived within the Ottoman Empire. During the forced expulsions in 1915 and 1916 alone, 1.5 million Armenians died, according to the Wiesbaden, Germany-based Centre against forced Expulsions.
 
Turkey on Friday said only 200,000 Armenians were killed. Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated in January for writing that the mass killings amounted to genocide. Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has encountered legal problems for doing the same.
 
Several backers of the congressional resolution this week evoked a poignant historical connection: Adolf Hitler's reported 1939 remark as Nazi Germany geared up to wipe out European Jews, 'Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?'