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Turkey slams U.S. passing of “genocide” bill

— PHOTO: AP

NATIONALIST FERVOUR: Protesters wave Turkish flags as they raise slogans against the U.S. and its passing of a bill describing World War I-era killings of Armenians as genocide, in Istanbul on Thursday.

ANKARA: Turkey criticised the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday for adopting a resolution describing the killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as an act of genocide.

“Our government regrets and condemns this decision. It is unacceptable that the Turkish nation has been accused of something that never happened in the past,” the Turkish government said in a statement released by the Foreign Ministry. “The committee’s approval of this resolution was an irresponsible move, which at a greatly sensitive time will make relations with a friend and ally, and a strategic partnership nurtured over generations, more difficult,” the Turkish authorities said in the statement.

Earlier on Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs approved the resolution in a 27-21 voting. The bill declares the killings of Armenians between 1915 and 1917 a genocide, though it would have no binding effect on the U.S. foreign policy. Armenians say more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a systematic genocide in the hands of the Ottomans during World War I, before modern Turkey was born in 1923. But Turkey insists the Armenians were victims of widespread chaos and governmental breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in the years before 1923.

The bill was passed by U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs despite prior warnings from both Turkish and U.S. leadership.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Gul wrote to Bush and warned that the bill would harm ties between the two allies. — Xinhua

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