Outside the Beltway, VA
April 27 2005

Schwarzenegger and Bush Embroiled in Armenian Genocide Debate

by Robert Tagorda at 13:41

One angered the Turks and the other the Armenians. Here’s the
Governor:

Turkish Group Protests Schwarzenegger over Armenian Genocide
Statement (AP)

A Turkish group uniting hundreds of businesses and organizations
demanded Tuesday that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movies be banned from
Turkish television to protest the California governor’s use of the
term genocide to describe the massacre of Armenians by Turks during
World War I.

Schwarzenegger, a former actor best known for his role in “The
Terminator,” declared April 24 a “Day of Remembrance of the Armenian
Genocide.” California has one of the largest populations of diaspora
Armenians.

An umbrella organization grouping some 300 Ankara-based associations,
unions and businesses and led by the Ankara Chamber of Commerce said
it launched a petition to have the governor’s films banned in Turkey.

“We condemn and protest movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who
declared April 24 a day to commemorate the Armenian genocide and
accused Turks of genocide by acting under the influence of the
Armenian lobby, and without researching historical truths,” read a
statement from Sinan Aygun, head of Ankara Chamber of Commerce.

Meanwhile, President Bush offended the other side by avoiding the
politically sensitive word:

Bush Remembers Armenian “Great Calamity” (Armenia Liberty)

[The Armenian National Committee of America] was quick to deplore
Bush’s statement. `Unfortunately, this statement is a fresh attempt
to help the government of Turkey continue its shameful policy of
denying the crime against humanity,’ said the ANCA executive
director, Aram Hamparian.

Actually, Bush finessed the issue much more than this group
acknowledged. Note the following section of the article:

President George W. Bush again stopped short of calling the mass
killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire a
genocide on Sunday, using instead an Armenian equivalent of the
politically sensitive term resented by modern-day Turkey. He also
effectively endorsed an independent study that concluded that the
massacres which began 90 years ago did constitute a genocide.

`On Armenian Remembrance Day, we remember the forced exile and mass
killings of as many as 1.5 million Armenians during the last days of
the Ottoman Empire,’ Bush said in his annual April 24 message to
Americans of Armenian descent. `This terrible event is what many
Armenian people have come to call the `Great Calamity’.

`I join my fellow Americans and Armenian people around the world in
expressing my deepest condolences for this horrible loss of life.
Today, as we commemorate the 90th anniversary of this human tragedy
and reflect on the suffering of the Armenian people, we also look
toward a promising future for an independent Armenian state.’

The `Great Calamity’ was translated as `Mets Yeghern’ in the
Armenian-language version of the message released by the U.S. embassy
in Yerevan. The Armenians use this term only with regard to the
1915-1918 slaughter of their kinsmen.

Bush thus followed the example of the late Pope John Paul II who
appealed to God to heed `the call of the dead from the depths of the
Mets Yeghern’ during a historic visit to Armenia in September 2001.
The delicate wording was aimed at placating Turkey. But the pontiff
set the record straight the next day by describing the mass killings
as a genocide in a joint statement with the head of the Armenian
Apostolic Church.

Bush avoided using the term despite persistent calls by the
influential Armenian-American community backed by more than 200
members of the U.S. Congress. But he did mention a study conducted by
a New York-based human rights organization at the request of the
U.S.-backed Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC) two
years ago.

See also the full text of his statement.

We should remember that Bush has a different audience than
Schwarzenegger. While the president must deal with Turkey on the
international stage, the governor has the luxury of catering to an
influential subgroup (Glendale, a suburb in Los Angeles County, has
the largest Armenian population outside of Armenia). And, given that
Bush is generally forcible about highlighting “the Great Calamity,”
his verbal sidestep does not, from where I stand, rise to the level
of being outrageous.

Substantively, though, I’m much closer to Schwarzenegger — and, as
history buffs might recall, Ronald Reagan:

In a 1981 proclamation designating April 26 through May 3 annual Day
of Remembrance, President Reagan was quoted, “Like the genocide of
the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which
followed it and like too many other such persecutions of too many
other peoples the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”