American-Turkish relationship is always sensitive at the best of times and the refurbished controversy over a 90-year old wartime incident is threatening to destabilize the diplomatic ties that exist between them.
Turkey has been a neutral player in the ongoing war in Iraq so far but a new motion currently being circulated in the Turkish parliament could lead to troop deployment in northern Iraq very soon.
Turkey has been a critic of the US and Iraqi armed forces for failing to control the insurgency in the war-ravaged nation and now being unwillingly pulled into the war. Rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) attacked Turkish troops last week and then escaped to the north of Iraq. Now Turkey wants to chase them and bring to justice.
Turkey could then contribute to the war in Iraq, but the question remains whether they would be able to do so positively. Turkey hardly has any reason to unnecessarily meddle in a losing cause but when one focuses on the relationship it fosters with the US, the picture becomes slightly clearer.
However, unenviable relationship between Turkey and the US reached its nadir last week when the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee branded the mass killing of ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during the First World War as genocide, a term that Turkey views as a spit on its face.
Turkey has admitted that several Christian Armenians and Muslim Ottoman Turks did die during the war, but denied that the Armenians were deliberately killed.
US efforts are on to allay the situation and repair the rapidly damaging relationship with Turkey. The Bush administration has already expressed its opposition to the resolution passed in the US House of Representatives last week. But this has failed to impress the Turkish politicians who now perceive the US with more skepticism than ever before.
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Source: Timesonline, UK
