Turkey said on Tuesday that Ankara is not ready to send its ambassador back to Washington after a US Congress panel branded the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide. "As long as the situation does not get any clearer we will not send back our ambassador to Washington," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told journalists in Riyadh.
"America should not let go of a strategic ally like Turkey over such an issue," he added, describing the US House Foreign Affairs Committee's decision as "a comedy stunt." An infuriated Turkey recalled its ambassador Namik Tan on Thursday, shortly after the panel narrowly approved the non-binding resolution, which now opens the door for a vote at the full House of Representatives.
Erdogan blamed the vote on a combination of "unbecoming" voting procedures in the US Congress and a change of attitude by the "Jewish lobby" to back the resolution. "The Jewish lobby in the US supported this resolution," he said, adding that it represented "an attitude change" by Israel's supporters from the past.
In a bid to limit the fallout of the committee's decision, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday the administration would "work very hard" to stop the resolution from going before the full house. The resolution calls on President Barack Obama to ensure that US foreign policy reflects an understanding of the "genocide" and to label the mass killings as such in his annual statement on the issue.