Coalition partner MHP calls on Erdoğan to cancel visit to U.S. amid genocide vote

Duvar English 

Vice Chairman Feti Yıldız of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has called on President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to cancel his upcoming visit to the U.S. on Nov. 13. 

“Due to the unfair, illegal and immoral decisions made in the U.S. Congress regarding the [Armenian] genocide and the embargoes, and for its partnership with the separatist terrorist PKK/YPG, Mr. President needs to cancel his trip to the U.S.,” Yıldız wrote in a social media post. The MHP has been coalition partners with Erdoğan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)- in a form of election alliance - in the presidential election of 2018 and also local elections of March 31 this year.

Earlier this week, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a resolution officially recognizing the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 in Anatolia during the final years of the Ottoman empire as a genocide, which Turkey has long denied. 

Turkey recently launched its Operation Peace Spring to push back against the People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers to be the Syrian wing of the banned militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The U.S. military has provided assistance to the YPG in its struggle to cleanse ISIS from the area, but pulled their troops from the area in a surprise move, prompting Turkey's operation. 

Erdoğan blasted the resolution, calling it 'worthless'. In a statement, he also said that he had not yet decided whether or not to go on the trip.