Posted on 10/08/2007 7:41:55 AM PDT by SJackson
(CNSNews.com) - Despite efforts by the Bush administration to kill it, a bill before a congressional committee this week is threatening to unsettle U.S. ties with an important ally. The ripple effect may impact Iraq and Israel.
The legislation calls on the administration to refer to the killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during the closing years of the Ottoman Empire as "genocide." It is the latest in a decades-long effort to change official U.S. policy.
Support for and opposition to the non-binding resolution, which goes before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, crosses party lines. Sponsors include Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. George Radanovich (R-Calif.), and the more than 220 co-sponsors include Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).
A related bill in the Senate was sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and has 32 co-sponsors, including Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Republican presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).
The White House opposes the move -- as did the Clinton White House, which intervened in Oct. 2000 to prevent a similar House initiative. Former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, a Republican who chairs the American-Turkish Council, has cautioned against the bill, and eight former secretaries of state, Republican and Democrat, have urged Pelosi to block it.
The government of Armenia, a predominantly orthodox Christian former Soviet republic, has made the issue a top priority. Islamic Turkey is strongly opposed, and in recent weeks its government has warned the U.S. in no uncertain terms about the implications of passing such a resolution.
A member of NATO and aspiring future member of the European Union, Turkey is strategically located between Southeast Europe and Asia, and borders Syria, Iraq and Iran. It has strong ties with Israel.
Despite the Turkish parliament's refusal in March 2003 to allow U.S. forces to use Turkish territory to invade Iraq, Turkey by nature of its location, regional clout and a long-running war against Kurdish separatists is considered a key player in future events there. The U.S. airbase at Incirlik is also critical for ongoing U.S. operations in Iraq.
Now, however, Turkish lawmakers are threatening to force an end to the U.S. right to use the base if the Armenian genocide bill in passed. Other possible responses being mulled include a withdrawal of support for International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operations in Afghanistan.
A multi-party delegation of Turkish lawmakers will visit Washington this week to discuss the matter with U.S. members of Congress, and Turkish media quoted parliamentary speaker Koksal Toptan as telling Pelosi in a letter that "it might take decades to heal negative effects of the bill if it passes."
'National security interests'
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone call Friday told President Bush that although the resolution is non-binding, it would harm bilateral relations. It would also harm Turkish-Armenian reconciliation efforts, he added.
(Relations between the two neighbors are not affected only by their history; Turkey cut diplomatic ties with Armenia over its 1993 occupation of Nagorno-Karabagh, an enclave inside Azerbaijan, a fellow Muslim ally of Turkey.)
After the conversation, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, "the president has described the events of 1915 as 'one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century,' but believes that the determination of whether or not the events constitute a genocide should be a matter for historical inquiry, not legislation."
Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, noted during a briefing Friday that former Secretaries of State Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Warren Christopher, Lawrence Eagleburger, James Baker, George Shultz, Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger had warned in a joint letter that the resolution could "endanger our national security interests in the region, including the safety of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Supporters of the bill dismiss the argument about angering Turkey.
"There is no question that Turkey is bitterly opposed to recognition and is threatening our military and commercial relationship, including access to the Incirlik air base, but Turkey has made similar threats to other nations in the past only to retreat from them," resolution sponsor Schiff said in a House speech last April.
He noted that the European Union's stance on the issue had not prevented Ankara from seeking E.U. membership.
'Jews could be targeted'
Turkish officials said Erdogan also has appealed to Israel's ceremonial President Shimon Peres to use his influence with Washington. Last week, Turkish foreign minister Ali Babacan told the Today's Zaman newspaper that the resolution, if passed, could stoke anger among Turks directed at Jews, as many Turks had a perception that Jews and Armenians were cooperating in the campaign.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish organization that counters anti-Semitism, last August announced that it had reviewed its position and now regarded the historical events - which it had previously described as "massacres and atrocities" - as "genocide."
At the same time, however, the ADL said it opposed the resolution. National director Abraham Foxman said it would not help Turk-Armenian reconciliation, could put the Turkish Jewish community at risk, and could jeopardize the important multilateral relationship between the U.S., Turkey and Israel.
Divisions over the resolution also were evident in a recent decision by Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat and foreign policy hawk, to withdraw her support for the bill.
In a letter to the House foreign affairs committee, Harman said while she viewed the events of 1915 as a "terrible crime ... against the Armenian people," she would vote against the resolution.
Harman, a former ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee who currently chairs the homeland security committee's intelligence subcommittee, said she believed that Turkey "plays a critically important role in moderating extremist forces" in the Middle East.
"Given the nature of the threat, I believe it is imperative to nurture that role -- however valid from the historical perspective, we should avoid taking steps that would embarrass or isolate the Turkish leadership."
Atrocities
According to the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan in Dearborn, more than half of the 2.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were killed in 1915-1916 and again around 1923.
On April 24, 1915 more than 5,000 Armenians were massacred in Constantinople, today's Istanbul. In other cases, people were first deported, then killed. Some starved to death in prison camps, and others were loaded onto barges, which were sunk in the Black Sea, it says.
Turkey says between 250,000 and 500,000 Armenians, and a larger number of Muslims, died amid chaos accompanying the collapse of the 600-year Ottoman Empire and World War I.
"Documents of the time list intercommunal violence, forced migration of all ethnic groups, disease, and starvation as causes of death. Others died as a result of the same war-induced causes that ravaged all peoples during the period," the Turkish government says in a document responding to the allegations.
Armenia is slightly larger than Maryland, and home to some 2.9 million people. Some seven million Armenians live abroad, including one million in the U.S.
this was another example of the
ROP
and business as usual.
Time to bring back the Crusades.
Making what to call the massacres a big political issue is stupid.
“during the closing years of the Ottoman Empire”
I am so glad our elected representatives are so busy working on current events.
What could possibly be the point in Congress wasting time on a non-binding resolution playing semantics with events perpetrated by a government of an empire that no longer exists, and happened nearly a century ago?
More pointless chin music from the ruling Democrat party.
I don’t see this as pointless at all. Armenia is a democratic, NATO friendly and largely Christian country who is asking for recognition of this event for over 30 years. Apparently, it’s very important to them.
Would it be that hard for Turkey to make some effort at acknowledgement/reconcilliation? They’d have everything to gain from closer relations with a neighbor.
Frankly, I think Islamic Turkey feels threatened by Armenia’s Christianity next door.
true
It's worse than stupid -- that's the problem. It's Democrats being emotional and irrational, as usual, and that sort of thing NEVER causes anything but problems for us.
Turkey has served notice that this bill will disrupt our relationship with them. Not that Turkey is a reliable partner, but they're still a hell of a lot better than nothing.
“Who now remembers the Armenians?” -Adolph Hitler
The fact that Congress has already brought this up means that we cannot now turn away from the resolution. Not bringing it up in the first place is one thing, but defeating it is quite another. To defeat it would mean that Congress has decided to deliberately turn a blind eye to genocide. Doing so would destroy their ability to condemn other genocides in the future. One does not get to pick and choose between evils; condemning this one and ignoring that one.
Furthermore, we do the Turkish people no favors by letting them pretend that their great grandfathers didn’t commit these crimes. It is in their best interests to come to grips with their own past. Certainly no Turk alive today wants their nation to commit genocide in the future, no matter what they think happened in 1915. But to prevent that from happening, they cannot ignore the past. Here in the US, we acknowledge our own attempts at genocide against the Indians. Because of that, we are far less likely to commit those same sins in the future. The only way the Turkish people can prevent a future stain upon their national honor is to admit that one already exists.
Though I don't like raising the issue, I have to admit you're right, were I in Congress and it came to the floor, I'd have to vote Yea.
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1301677/posts
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1817937/posts
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1824861/posts
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1826951/posts
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1866095/posts
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Posted on 10/11/2007 6:46:18 PM EDT by SJackson
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1909968/posts
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