October 14, 2007	Sunday	Shawwal 1, 1428

WASHINGTON: A massacre in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire has returned to haunt the United States, as ancient enmities fuse with modern political theatre to infuriate a crucial ally and imperil the Iraq war.

Caught between a hostile Congress and an implacable Turkey outraged at being accused of ‘genocide’, the White House is scrambling to head off diplomatic fallout that could radiate far and wide.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said that 70 per cent of air cargo, 30 per cent of fuel shipments and 95 per cent of new mine-resistant vehicles destined for US forces in Iraq go through Turkey.

“The Turks have been quite clear about some of the measures they would have to take if this resolution passes,” he said in London, citing the example of Turkish military sanctions against France.

But some observe an element of posturing to the row, with Turkey over-reacting to a non-binding resolution in the House of Representatives, and US Democrats eager to give President George Bush a bloody nose.

George Harris, a former State Department expert on Turkey, said the country’s decision on Thursday to recall its US ambassador for consultations “shows a certain amount of seriousness”. But the Middle East Institute analyst added: “There’s a lot of politicking going on. They have tied their hands a little bit by stirring up such a hornet’s nest in Turkish public opinion.” Defying an unprecedented level of lobbying from both the US and Turkish governments, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted on Wednesday to label the World War I massacre of up to 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians as ‘genocide’. This resolution was passed by the committee (in 2005) but it didn’t go anywhere as the Republicans were in charge and they didn’t want to embarrass President Bush,” Harris said.

“(House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi has no such qualms about embarrassing the president,”

he said.

Pelosi and several Democratic members of the House committee have sizeable communities of ethnic Armenians concentrated in their California districts.

The question now exercising the US administration is whether Turkey will carry through on veiled threats of reprisals, such as shutting off or restricting access to the sprawling Incirlik airbase.

“Those who claim Turkey is bluffing should not mock Turkey on live TV,” Egemen Bagis, vice-chairman of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party, warned in Washington.

He noted that French military planes are no longer allowed to fly over Turkish airspace, since France’s parliament last year declared the Armenians’ post-1915 suffering to be a genocide.

If Turkey withdraws US access to Incirlik, “just imagine what this will do to the United States”, Bagis said.

Those consequences must not be underestimated, according to Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, who believes the Turks are in deadly earnest.

“I don’t think this is a diplomatic pas de deux. What the resolution has done is inflame Turkish public opinion,” he said.

“The Turks have been saying for a long time that there are going to be tangible consequences of this.” For Michael Rubin, a Turkey expert at the American Enterprise Institute, the genocide dispute represents a ‘perfect storm’ coming as the Erdogan government agitates to go after Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

An anti-US firestorm in Turkey risks drowning out the Bush administration’s vocal misgivings about a cross-border incursion against rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).“We’re in election season right now,” Rubin added, reflecting on the White House’s failure to head off the vote Wednesday.

“Unfortunately, many people in Congress are more concerned with posturing than consequences.”—AFP