Dallas Morning News, TX
March 9 2007

Jackson Diehl: A nonbinding resolution that matters

Why is the House ready to debate 1915 genocide?

06:47 AM CST on Friday, March 9, 2007

Can a nonbinding congressional resolution really matter? Most are
ignored by everyone except the special interests they are usually
directed at. Even the House’s recent resolution on Iraq was dismissed
by both President Bush and Democratic antiwar leader John Murtha.

Yet a vote expected next month on a nonbinding House resolution
describing a "genocide" in the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1915 has
the potential to explode U.S. relations with Turkey, sway the outcome
of upcoming Turkish elections, and spill over into several other
strategic American interests, including Iraq and Iran.

So, yes: The Armenian Genocide Resolution sponsored by Rep. Adam
Schiff does matter, logically or not. Turkish Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul spent several days in Washington last month lobbying
against it, though the Turkish-American agenda is chockablock with
seemingly more important issues. Friends of Turkey in Washington,
from American Jewish organizations to foreign policy satraps, are
working the Hill; so is the Bush team. On the other side is the
well-organized and affluent Armenian-American community, 1.4 million
strong, and some powerful friends – including the new House speaker,
Nancy Pelosi.

Here is a debate that could occur only in Washington – a bizarre mix
of frivolity and moral seriousness, of constituent pandering,
far-flung history and frontline foreign policy. And that’s just on
the American side; in Turkey there is the painful struggle of a
deeply nationalist society to come to terms with its past, and in the
process become more of the Western democracy it wants to be.

Start with the pandering: Mr. Schiff, a Los Angeles Democrat,
cheerfully concedes that there are 70,000 to 80,000 ethnic Armenians
in his district, for whom the slaughter of Armenians by the Young
Turk regime during World War I is "anything but ancient history."
Local politics also explains why a resolution that has failed
numerous times in the past 20 years is suddenly looking like a
juggernaut: Pelosi, of San Francisco, also has many Armenian
supporters.

If Ms. Pelosi allows the resolution to be brought up, as she has
reportedly pledged to do, it will probably pass. Its language is
almost comically heavy-handed: It begins by declaring that the House
"finds" a series of 30 paragraphs of facts about the genocide,
ranging from the number killed (1.5 million) to the assertion that
"the failure … to punish those responsible" helps explain
subsequent atrocities, including the Holocaust.

Imagine the 435 members of the House, many of whom still don’t know
the difference between Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis, solemnly weighing
whether Mr. Schiff’s version of events 92 years ago in northeastern
Turkey deserves congressional endorsement.

But the consequences of passage could be deadly serious: To begin
with, Turkey’s powerful military has been hinting that U.S. access to
the Incirlik air base, which plays a key role in the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, could be restricted. Mr. Gul warned that a nationalist
tidal wave could sweep Turkey and force the government to downgrade
its cooperation with the United States, which needs Turkey’s help
this year to stabilize Iraq and contain Iran. Candidates in upcoming
presidential and parliamentary elections could compete in their
anti-American reactions.

No wonder the Bush administration as well as even Democratic-leaning
foreign policy experts, such as Clinton-era ambassador Mark Parris,
are trying to stop the resolution. Yet theirs, too, is a contorted
campaign. After all, historians outside of Turkey are pretty much
unanimous in agreeing that atrocities against Armenians worthy of the
term genocide did occur.

Though Congress may look silly with its "findings," the continuing
inability of the Turkish political class to come to terms with
history, and temper its nationalism, may be the country’s single most
serious political problem. Prominent Turkish intellectuals, including
a Nobel Prize winner, have been prosecuted in recent years under laws
criminalizing "insults" to Turkey – such as accurate accounts of the
genocide. In January, a prominent ethnic Armenian journalist was
murdered by an ultranationalist teen-ager.

Maybe Congress has no business debating Turkish history; maybe it is
doing so for the wrong reasons. Yet if Turkey is to become the
stable, Western-oriented democracy that it aspires to be, its
politicians will have to learn, at least, to react the way everyone
else does to nonbinding House resolutions: with a shrug.

Jackson Diehl is a deputy editorial page editor for The Washington
Post. His e-mail address is diehlj@washpost.com.

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