Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Turkey Looking to Annoy U.S.
by HARMONIE TOROS - Associated Press
Posted: Thursday, October 12, 2000 03:05 am CST

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey is walking a thin line: It wants to show its anger at a U.S. resolution that would recognize the Turkish killings of Armenians as genocide, but doesn't want to harm relations with its closest ally.

The answer may lie in symbolic gestures like Turkey's announcement Wednesday of plans to pump more oil from Iraq -- a move likely to annoy Washington, which has been pressing for a strict enforcement of U.N. sanctions on Iraq.

Others fear public pressure may push Ankara into more concrete measures -- such as closing down an air base U.S. warplanes use to patrol and bomb Iraq -- and strain relations between the two NATO allies.

Turkish officials said Wednesday that a team of experts was in Iraq to study plans to increase the oil pumping into Turkey -- oil Iraq seems unable to export.

Gokhan Yardim, director of Turkey's state-run oil company BOTAS, said he hoped ''pumping will return to pre-sanction levels'' within a week or 10 days.

Turkey used to extract 1.6 million barrels of oil per day from the pipeline, some 600,000 barrels more than it does now, before the sanctions were imposed on Iraq following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

But Iraq is currently producing at maximum capacity of 3 million barrels a day, part of which it exports through its port of Mina Al Bakr in the Persian Gulf. Oil experts say it cannot pump more to shortages of spare parts and equipment, which are expected to arrive at the earliest in 2001.

Yardim also said Turkey hoped to import gas from Iraq -- but that would be in at least five years.

The situation began with the U.S. House of Representatives considering a nonbinding resolution that would place the government on record as saying the Ottoman Empire killed 1.5 million Armenians. The Clinton administration opposes the resolution.

Turkey says hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed during civil unrest, and Turks are extremely sensitive when the issue is raised. In 1998, public pressure pushed the government to threaten to ban French firms from multibillion dollar defense contracts if the French Senate approved a similar resolution. The bill never reached the floor.

''I cannot speculate on how much pressure there will be'' if the full House approves the resolution, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Dirioz.

Wednesday's announcement reflected the guidelines announced by the ministry on how Turkey would react to the U.S. move.

Turkey will try to stop the resolution from passing without ''damaging Turkey's national interests ... and taking into consideration the special fabric of Turkish-American relations,'' Dirioz said.

He insisted, however, that the possible increase in oil imports from Iraq was not linked to the Armenian resolution and added that Turkey would act in line with its U.N. obligations.

The U.S. State Department said it was checking how the pipeline fits under the U.N. oil-for-food program, which allows Iraq to sell unlimited amounts of oil if it uses the profits to buy humanitarian goods for its people.

Turkey is considering numerous retaliatory moves. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit has not ruled out a change in the status of Incirlik, the southern Turkish base used by U.S. planes to patrol and bomb Iraq. His government also plans to send an ambassador to Baghdad, and is thinking of opening a second border gate between Turkey and Iraq.

That may lead to the end of ''the honeymoon between Turkey and the United States, with the issues on which Turkey and the United States disagree on ... coming to the forefront,'' said Bulent Aliriza of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Aliriza and other analysts noted that most retaliatory moves considered by Ankara seem to concentrate on improving its relations with Iraq.

Turkey has long complained that it has lost at least $30 billion in trade with Iraq since the sanctions were imposed.

It also fears Washington's support for Iraqi Kurdish factions will lead to the creation of an independent Kurdish state and encourage Turkey's own Kurdish population.

Both Turkey and the United States would suffer from a strain in relations.

Washington sees Turkey as a key strategic ally, bordering foes like Iraq, Iran and Syria. It also wants the vast gas and oil resources of the Caspian Sea to transit through Turkey to world markets.

The United States is often seen as Ankara's only real ally in the West, and it pressed European countries to accept Turkey as a candidate to the European Union last year.

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