Turkey temporarily recalled its ambassador to Washington yesterday in a standard diplomatic protest against a resolution adopted by a House committee this week that branded mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915 as genocide.
The measure, which the White House opposes, was approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said a floor vote will be called by mid-November.
Ambassador Nabi Sensoy was ordered back to Ankara for a week to 10 days, said Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Levent Bilman.
“We are not withdrawing our ambassador. We have asked him to come to Turkey for some consultations,” he said. “The ambassador was given instructions to return and will come at his earliest convenience.”
The State Department played down the significance of the move, with one official calling it a “fairly limited response” to the House resolution. “I would have been surprised if they hadn’t done it,” he said.
U.S. officials also indicated that they had no intention of recalling the American ambassador in Ankara, Ross Wilson. They said the Turkish government understood the Bush administration is working hard to make sure the vote in the full House fails.
Mr. Sensoy’s recall “certainly will not do anything to limit our efforts to continue to reach out to Turkish officials, to explain our views, to engage them on this issue and again to make clear that we intend to work on this with Congress,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.
The House measure, though nonbinding, came at a sensitive time for U.S.-Turkish relations. The Bush administration is worried about the intention of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to seek parliamentary approval to send troops across the border into Iraq to hunt down Kurdish rebels as soon as next week.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul yesterday denounced the House committee vote as “unacceptable,” and Mr. Erdogan warned of more severe consequences for Ankara’s relations with Washington if the resolution is passed by the full House.
About 70 percent of U.S. air cargo destined for Iraq and one-third of the fuel used by the U.S. military there goes through Turkey, a NATO ally. Turkish truckers crossing into northern Iraq also provide water and other supplies to the Americans in the U.S. bases there.
“Access to airfields and to the roads and so on in Turkey would very much be put at risk if this resolution passes and Turkey reacts as strongly as we believe they will,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday.
Armenian President Robert Kocharian welcomed the vote yesterday, saying: “We hope this process will lead to a full recognition by the United States of America … of the genocide.”
At least 1.5 million Armenians were killed from 1915 to 1923 under an Ottoman Empire campaign of deportation and killings, according to Armenians. Turkey strongly denies genocide was committed, though it acknowledges that as many as 500,000 Armenians and a similar number of Turks died in strife after Armenians took up arms for independence.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports
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