WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A US congressional panel voted yesterday to label as “genocide” the World War One-era massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces, prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador from Washington.
The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted 23-22 to approve the nonbinding resolution, which calls on President Barack Obama to ensure US policy formally refers to the killings as genocide.
The panel acted despite a last-minute appeal by the Obama administration against the measure. The vote opened the way for the measure possibly to be considered by the full House, although it was unclear whether it would come to a vote there, and if so whether it could pass, given the closer-than-expected count yesterday.
The Turkish government had also pressed lawmakers to drop the matter.
The vote triggered an immediate condemnation from Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who recalled Turkey’s ambassador to Washington for consultations. Erdogan said he worried the measure would harm Turkish-US ties and efforts by Muslim Turkey and Christian Armenia to end a century of hostility.
Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said the vote was a boost for human rights.
The controversy put Obama in a tight spot between NATO ally Turkey and the demands of Armenian-Americans, traditionally a constituency of his Democratic Party in key states like California and New Jersey, before pivotal US congressional elections in November.
In a telephone call with Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Wednesday, Obama emphasized his administration had urged lawmakers to consider the potential damage to efforts to normalize Armenian-Turkish ties, a senior administration official said.
At a news conference in Costa Rica yesterday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she and Obama, who both supported proposed Armenia genocide resolutions as presidential candidates, had changed their minds because they believed the drive to normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia was bearing fruit. Turkey, a Muslim secular democracy that plays a vital role for US interests from Iraq to Iran and in Afghanistan and the Middle East, accepts that many Armenians were killed by Ottoman forces but denies that up to 1.5 million died and that it amounted to genocide — a term employed by many Western historians and some foreign parliaments.
Turkey regards such accusations as an affront to its national honour.
The outlook for the measure passing the full House is as “tight” as it was in committee, the panel’s chairman, Howard Berman, said after the vote.
Similar resolutions have been introduced in past sessions of Congress but never passed both houses. Ronald Reagan was the only president to publicly call the killings genocide.
Clinton called Berman on Wednesday saying the measure could harm efforts to improve Turkish-Armenian relations. She warned yesterday against a vote by the full House.
“I do not think it is for any other country to determine how two countries resolve matters between them,” she said in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Berman brushed aside Clinton’s entreaties. While Turkey was a “vital” ally, “nothing justifies Turkey’s turning a blind eye to the reality of the Armenian genocide,” he said.
The price on Turkey’s 2030 benchmark Global Bond did not change after the vote. It remained down 0.44 points in price to 160, yielding 6.465 percent.
