Turkey fears claims
Turkey’s Ambassador to Washington Nabi Şensoy warned Thursday that the adoption of a “genocide” resolution by the House of Representatives could lead to easier propagation of similar resolutions in parliaments of European countries, and compensation and territorial demands will follow.
Şensoy was briefing members of the Turkish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. He was summoned back to Turkey for consultations immediately after a U.S. panel last week adopted a resolution depicting killings of Armenians in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire as “genocide.”
“We must take steps on this. Or else the Armenian diaspora will gain important triumphs. They may bring the issue before the United Nations and demand compensation and territory,” he said.
Sanctions needed but must be in tune
Turkey must regain the support of the Jewish lobby, Şensoy said, and added that Jews were very helpful to Turkey in the past. U.S. public opinion holds the view that “Turks speak for a few days and then forget,” said Şensoy stressing that this image must be erased. Some sanctions are absolutely needed before the resolution comes to the House, Şensoy said.
Gates warns about Turkey
Meanwhile U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that Turkey was not bluffing about its warnings to the U. S on major retaliation in the event of the passage of an Armenian “genocide” resolution pending in Congress, because it fears the consequences would eventually lead to Armenian demands for reparations and even territorial claims. The resolution “has the potential to do real harm to our troops in Iraq and would strain, perhaps beyond repair, our relationship with a key ally in a vital region,” he told a news conference at the Pentagon. “There’s a very real risk of perhaps them not shutting us down at İncirlik (airbase), but of placing restrictions on us that would have the same effect, or narrowing the flow of traffic across the border into Iraq,” Gates said.