MUCH ADO ABOUT TURKEY
By Tulin Daloglu
Washington Times, DC
Sept 20 2005
TODAY’S COLUMNIST
Last Thursday in the House International Relations Committee, Rep.
Dan Burton, Indiana Republican, opposed two resolutions dealing with
the alleged Armenian genocide. “This thing happened almost 100 years
ago, and we’re still beating on it 20 some years after I first got
involved in the debate on the floor of the House,” he said. “We ought
to get on with problems facing this country and the world today:
terrorism, Katrina, and other things, instead of rehashing this
thing over and over and over again at every anniversary of it.” Yet
both resolutions passed, and once again, Turkey’s present and past
“image problem” in the United States resurfaced.
In New York the next day, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
called the bills “completely political,” and Rep. Tom Lantos –
California Democrat, the ranking Democrat at the committee – admitted
as much. Mr. Lantos voted against a similar bill five years ago. This
time, although he explained in detail that what had happened to
the Armenian people is not technically genocide, he said he changed
his position because Turkey refused to open its northern front to
U.S. troops going into Iraq.
While committee Chairman Henry Hyde, Illinois Republican, said the
alleged genocide was the work of the Ottoman Empire, which was and is
distinct from the Republic of Turkey, Rep. Adam Schiff, Californian
Democrat, the sponsor of both measures, wrote, “The resolution urges
Turkey to go beyond recognition of genocide and reach a just resolution
with the Armenian people.”
The efforts on behalf of these congressional resolutions are not
solely about a duty to the past, but about demands from the present
and the future of Turkey. The question, then, is what exactly makes a
“just solution.” Armenian activists have over the years made their
three goals clear: recognition of the genocide, reparations for the
victims and return of the land.
If so, Gunay Evinch, a Turkish-American lawyer and Fulbright scholar,
compares the matter of compensation and return of property to the
Japanese-American relocations during World War II. In Korematsu
vs. United States, the Supreme Court held that treating all Japanese
Americans as a security threat and interning them was constitutional
for national security purposes. Fifty years later, however, the
Supreme Court reversed Korematsu (in Korematsu II), and held that
U.S. authorities did not have sufficient information to justify such a
relocation. But not only did the United States not return property to
the wrongfully relocated and dispossessed, it also did not compensate
them at the properties’ real value.
In the meantime, Mr. Schiff discussed the case of Turkey’s most popular
novelist in the West, Orhan Pamuk. Mr. Pamuk has been charged with
insulting Turkey’s national character and could be imprisoned for his
comments on Turkey’s killing of Armenians and Kurds. “Thirty thousand
Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody
but me dares to talk about it,” Mr. Pamuk was quoted as saying in an
interview with a Swiss newspaper in February. Yet, Mr.
Schiff forgot to mention that Mr. Pamuk is neither a historian nor
an expert on the matter.
But in June, a Swiss prosecutor started investigating comments made
by Yusuf Halacoglu, president of the Turkish Historical Society,
who in a speech in the Swiss city of Winterthur last year denied the
“genocide.” As denial of “Armenian genocide” is a crime according
to Swiss law, Mr. Halacoglu also faces possible imprisonment. Both
cases look equally disturbing and absurd.
Stanford Shaw, a lecturer at Ankara’s Bilkent University, called the
accusation against Mr. Halacoglu a “violation of academic freedom
and freedom of expression.” Mr. Shaw learned first-hand about the
consequences of denying the “Armenian genocide” when a bomb exploded
in front of his house in Los Angeles in 1977, and an Armenian terrorist
group called for his assassination.
Congress forgets in these bills that the Secret Army for the Liberation
of Armenia (ASALA) has killed more than 50 Turkish diplomats, and
makes no mention of the Muslims killed during the Armenian revolt.
Clearly, Mr. Lantos made a bad judgment call last Thursday if his
priority is the U.S. national interests. No one should forget the
challenge of history to the Turkish Republic in the region and its
geostrategic location in this very rough neighborhood. Iran is a
serious matter in terms of world peace, and no country would be happy
about a neighbor’s emerging nuclear power. The United States should
also realize that this is not the time to send the message that
Congress may allow Armenians to use the Diaspora to get what they want.
The people who believe that genocide occurred will believe it no
matter what. This is not about recognizing whether there was an
Armenian genocide; but this is about whether to seek compensation
and land from Turkey.
One should no wonder why every U.S. administration opposes similar
bills. But now, when the future of Iraq’s territorial integrity is
unprecedented, does Congress really want to send Turks the message
that it’s willing to divide up their country?
Tulin Daloglu is the Washington correspondent and columnist for
Turkey’s Star TV and newspaper. A former BBC reporter, she writes
occasionally for The Washington Times.