Turkish ambassador recalled from US amid fury at genocide claims

Men standing besides the skulls and corpses of Armenian victims

A protester shouts slogans against the US during a demonstration today

How The Times reported the massacre in 1915
Suna Erdem in Istanbul
Turkey recalled its ambassador from Washington last night amid national outrage at a US resolution accusing Ottoman Turks of genocide against Armenians.
Ankara also raised the possibility of taking action against the United States, a Nato ally, including a review of America's right to use an airforce base in southeastern Turkey for operations in Iraq.
Condemning a decision by a US House of Representatives committee to label the 1915 killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians as genocide, the Turkish Government described the move as "irresponsible . . . at a greatly sensitive time".
"This is a decision taken by those who are unaware of Turkey's standing," Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, said. The resolution, approved by the Foreign Affairs Committee is expected to go to the House floor for a vote next month.
Ankara rejects the claim that ethnic Armenians suffered genocide in Ottoman Turkey in 1915, countering that many Muslim Turks as well as Christian Armenians perished in the confusion of a collapsing empire.
The Government said: "It is unacceptable that the Turkish nation has been accused of something that never happened in history. 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 Government statement was issued hours after Mr Erdogan confirmed that he would risk US disapproval and seek parliamentary authority for a Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq. The army wants to go in pursuit of separatist Turkish Kurd rebels who are using the only stable area in Iraq as a launchpad for deadly attacks into Turkey.
Ankara had given warning that military co-operation with the United States could be damaged if the "genocide resolution" is passed by Congress, despite opposition from President Bush. Much of the logistic supplies for Iraq go through the Incirlik airforce base and many workers in the area are Turkish. Yesterday Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, said that 70 per cent of US air cargo headed for Iraq goes through Turkey. "Access to airfields and to the roads in Turkey would be put at risk if this resolution passes," said Mr Gates in London.
Turkey is well versed in the procedure of stifling Armenian genocide resolutions that regularly make an appearance in US politics. But the murder of 13 Turkish conscripts by the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in an ambush last weekend has fuelled nationalist sentiment and put the Government under intense pressure to retaliate. The coincidence of the Armenian resolution and the death of the conscripts has created a link that could escalate what is usually a low-level row between frustrated Turkish authorities and prevaricating US politicians.
The PKK ambush inflamed public anger as the Turks believe that the US has done nothing to stop the violence.Cengiz Candar, a veteran Middle East observer and newspaper columnist, said: "Turkey may seek parliamentary authorisation for an incursion but then wait to see what happens with the Armenian Bill.
"These issues are not obviously connected and should be approached with great calm, but I am worried that events are developing in such a way that the momentum for a damaging operation is getting stronger."
Mindful of the military, diplomatic and domestic repercussions, Mr Erdogan has long resisted calls for a cross-border incursion. The Turkish military maintains that the PKK enjoys a safe haven in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and is able to obtain US weapons for attacks in Turkey.
But his newly re-elected Government is under strong public pressure to act, and it has been made to look feeble as repeated US promises to clamp down on the PKK in northern Iraq come to nothing.
Mr Erdogan said in an interview with CNN Türk that a body created with the US for joint action against terror in the area had failed. "This mechanism did not give the expected results. We have simply experienced a period of timewasting," he said, adding that Turkish patience had now run out.
Mr Erdogan sounded a cautious tone, however, recalling that none of 24 previous forays into northern Iraq by Turkish forces have produced any satisfactory results. He said that he expected to ask parliament for the right to order an incursion within the next year and recommended a thorough evaluation of its merits.
Extracts from The Times report of 1915At Marsovan, where there is an important American college, the authorities early in June ordered the Armenians to meet outside the town. They surrounded them there and the police and an armed mob killed, according to the Americans, 1,200 of the younger and more active Armenians whom the local Committee leaders and the gendarmerie most feared.
The richer Armenians were allowed to avoid death by conversion to Islam, for which doubtful privilege they paid heavily. The poorer in some cases begged to be allowed to deny their faith and thus save their families, but as they had no money they were killed, or exiled. The younger women were distributed among the rabble. The rest of the community were driven across country to Northern Mesopotamia.
At Bitlis and Mush a large number, according to some accounts 12,000 Armenians, many of them women, are reported to have been shot or drowned. At Sivas, Kaisari, and Diarbekr there were many executions, and several Armenian villages are reported completely wiped out. At Mosul the unhappy Armenians who were brought from the north in gangs were set upon by the mob. Many were killed and Turks and Kurds came from as far as the Persian border to buy the women.