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By MARC CHAMPION
ISTANBUL—A U.S. congressional vote on how to define the 1915 slaughter of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, expected Thursday, is turning into a game of brinksmanship between the White House and Ankara.
In previous years, Congress has attempted to pass a resolution to recognize the Armenian events as genocide. Such a resolution would inflame Turkey and has brought vows from past U.S. administrations that they would block the bill, a nod to Turkey's role as a key ally of Washington in the Middle East.
Click to see a video series on the standoff between Turkey and Armenia.
This year, in a shift of U.S. position, the Obama administration isn't lobbying publicly to block the resolution, say officials and lobbyists involved in the issue. That fact has triggered hopes among Armenians who have long lobbied foreign governments for recognition of the killings as genocide—and raised alarm in Turkey at the prospect that the country's ally might rule against it on a neuralgic issue of history and identity.
On Thursday, at least one Turkish national TV channel, NTV, plans to air the U.S. vote live; others are expected to do likewise. Two delegations of Turkish lawmakers have been in Washington this week, lobbying the committee to block the move.
"There would be consequences," if the vote passes, said Suat Kiniklioglu, a legislator and deputy chairman of external affairs for the ruling Justice and Development party. "Turks find it very offensive to be equated with Nazis."
"We are working well with the U.S. in a number of areas—in Iraq, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, on the Middle East peace process, Iran and Syria. In all these areas, if this passes through the Congress there would be an impact," said Mr. Kiniklioglu, speaking by phone from Washington. Turkey has the second-largest armed forces in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and is a key U.S. ally in the region.
The Obama administration has largely remained silent on the resolution, a break from previous administrations' actively lobbying against similar measures. Asked this week about how its passage would effect bilateral relations with Turkey, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, "We have a pretty good idea of how everyone feels on the issue."
Another State Department official said the administration continues to support efforts by Turkish and Armenian officials to come to a consensus on the incident as part of the two country's negotiations over re-establishing diplomatic ties.
Thursday's vote in the House Foreign Affairs Committee would come less than two months before President Barack Obama is due to make an annual White House statement on April 24 commemorating the killings. The committee vote wouldn't be binding, but it would open the floor to a vote on the floor of Congress, something Turkey is anxious to avoid.
Armenians in Lebanon held a candlelight vigil in October to protest Armenia-Turkey ties.
Up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians are estimated to have died through executions, mass deportations, starvation and other means in 1915. Armenians, and many historians, say the killings were an attempt to erase Armenians from Eastern Anatolia and were therefore genocide.
Turkey argues that the events, while tragic, can't be compared to the Jewish holocaust and don't amount to genocide. Turkish officials note that the killings took place during World War I, as the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating and under attack from all sides, including Russia. Armenians, traditional allies of Russia, were seen as a fifth column. Even the historical record, they say, was warped by the wartime propaganda needs.
"Turks feel the way these events happened is not well known abroad and only in a one-sided way," said Ilter Turan, a professor of political science at Bilgi University in Istanbul. He said a vote to recognize genocide would likely trigger anti-American demonstrations and retaliation by the government.
Last year, Mr. Obama avoided using the term genocide in his April 24 statement. He made it clear he was doing so because he didn't want to destroy efforts under way between Ankara and Yerevan to reopen their border and establish relations, and form a joint historical commission.
A year later, efforts have stalled to ratify the border-opening protocols that each government has signed. Turkey has made it clear it sees ratification as linked to progress in settling a territorial dispute between Armenia and its other Turkic neighbor, Azerbaijan, in the enclave of Nagorno Karabakh. Though Karabakh isn't mentioned in the protocols, Turkey wants Armenia to pull troops out of several buffer zones around the enclave, which is in Azerbaijan, before it will ratify them. So far, there is little sign of that happening.
Analysts say the U.S. administration's silence looks like an attempt to increase pressure on Turkey to ratify the reconciliation protocols. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's focused on promoting the protocols in testimony on Capitol Hill last month, rather than warning directly against a vote to recognize genocide.
The performance was welcomed by the Armenian National Committee of America, a lobby, which noted that "for the first time in a generation" a sitting secretary of state hadn't lobbied against the genocide classification. But just as the U.S. is likely to ignore Turkish threats, Ankara is unlikely to buckle to pressure on the protocols, analysts say.
"I don't think it will work," said Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank that hosted one of the Turkish delegations this week. "The movement on Capitol Hill doesn't seem to be making the Turks reconsider—instead we have the Turks saying we have a whole range of issues the U.S. needs us to cooperate on and well use these to respond. This has the potential to spin out of control," he said.
Write to Marc Champion at marc.champion@wsj.com
