ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CRISIS TESTS TIGHT TIES BETWEEN TURKEY AND ISRAEL
Marc Perelman

Forward, NY

Aug 29 2007

ADL to Ankara: ‘Deep Regret’

Turkish, Israeli and American Jewish officials held frantic
consultations in the past week in an effort to defuse a diplomatic
crisis prompted by the Anti-Defamation League’s recent description of
the Ottoman massacre of Armenians during World War I as "tantamount
to genocide."

Senior Israeli and American Jewish officials went out of their way
to restate Jerusalem’s long-held view that the historical dispute
should be resolved between Turkey and Armenia, a position shared by
Washington as well as most major American Jewish organizations. The
ADL itself tried to calm tensions by issuing a statement opposing a
congressional resolution recognizing that a genocide took place and
by sending a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
expressing "deep regret" and the desire to "deepen our friendship."

And after initially warning Israeli diplomats and American Jewish
leaders that the ADL’s use of the word "genocide" could jeopardize
years of efforts to forge close ties between Jerusalem and Ankara,
the Turkish government also sounded a conciliatory note.

"Everybody wants a period of calm," Nabi Sensoy, Turkey’s ambassador
to the United States, told the Forward after holding talks with key
Jewish communal leaders. "We have to avoid at all costs the derailment
of good relations between Turks and Jews."

Both the extent of those good relations and their vulnerability to
disagreement over the massacre of Armenians were put on stark display
by the flare-up.

Israel and its supporters in the United States have been nurturing
ties with the Turkish government for years, maintaining close relations
even after Erdogan’s Islamist party took office in 2002.

Turkey, for its part, has cultivated Jewish support in Washington in
an effort to secure American diplomatic and military support and to
prevent Congress from involving itself in the Armenian issue.

The decades-long ties between Turkey and Israel’s supporters in
the United States strengthened considerably during the 1990s, when
Jerusalem and Ankara reached a number of business and military
agreements. In recent years former congressmen Richard Gephardt,
Bob Livingston and Steve Solarz joined the American Israel Political
Affairs Committee in lobbying Washington to give military aid to
Ankara and to fight off congressional efforts to pass a resolution
recognizing the Armenian genocide, according to several sources
familiar with the issue.

Most Jewish organizations are quick to underscore that Turkey became
the first Muslim country to recognize Israel, praising it as a rare
Muslim ally of Israel and the United States. Jewish communal officials
have hailed Ankara’s commitment to fighting antisemitism and terrorism,
its support for Magen David Adom’s candidacy for membership in the
International Committee of the Red Cross and its willingness to
mediate between Israel and both the Palestinians and the Syrians.

While tensions have surfaced over Ankara’s refusal to allow American
troops to use Turkish territory to invade Iraq in 2003 and over
meetings between Turkish officials and Hamas leaders, last week’s
flare-up was notable for revolving around an issue considered to be
tangential to Jewish and Israeli interests. As Ankara continued to
make clear this week, Turkish cooperation is dependent in no small
part on the understanding that the topic of Armenian genocide is not
one for public debate.

Sensoy told the Forward that Turkey was "very disappointed" by the
ADL’s statement "because it changed the premise of everything we had
achieved with the U.S. Jewish community."

The ADL described the massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as
"tantamount to genocide" last week, after declining for years to
take a position on the question. Two days later, the group issued a
second statement stating that a congressional resolution would be a
"counterproductive diversion" that may "put at risk the Turkish Jewish
community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey,
Israel and the United States."

Other major Jewish groups have been mostly mum on the issue. In
a blog post, the American Jewish Committee’s executive director,
David Harris, wrote that while he could not escape the conclusions
of credible experts that the 1915 events were in fact "genocide," he
argued, as Ankara does, that Turkish and Armenian historians should
review the record and seek common ground.

While several European countries have passed laws referring to the
massacres as genocide, both the Israeli and American governments
have refused to make such a determination, and efforts to have their
legislative branches adopt such language have so far failed. In March
the Knesset shelved a proposal for a parliamentary discussion on
the Armenian genocide, but on Capitol Hill a nonbinding resolution
recognizing that a genocide took place has picked up some support
since Democrats regained a majority in last year’s midterm elections.

Foxman told the Forward that he has had numerous conversations about
the issue in recent days and stressed that the ADL had not changed its
position on the congressional resolution. The ADL did, however, rehire
its New England regional director, Andrew Tarsy, after firing him
for publicly breaking with the national leadership and acknowledging
the Armenian genocide. Foxman said he had made the decision after a
series of conversations and that this effectively meant Tarsy agreed
with the ADL’s opposition to the passage of a congressional resolution.

"We want to make sure the Turkish government understands that the use
of the word ‘genocide’ doesn’t change our position on what Congress
needs to do," Foxman told the Forward. "Some people don’t understand
it. Some people understand it, and the Turkish prime minister is
among them."

Foxman was referring to remarks Erdogan made to reporters Sunday, in
which he said that "the wrong step that has been taken is corrected."

Prior to Erdogan’s response, Ankara had lashed out both to express
disappointment and to prevent other Jewish groups from following
suit. Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, complained bitterly to
Israel’s ambassador in Ankara, Pinhas Avivi, that Israel could have
done more to prevent the ADL’s shift during a tense meeting last
Thursday, Ha’aretz reported. Israeli President Shimon Peres spoke
last week with Erdogan to explain that Israel had no intention of
changing its neutral policy on the issue.

Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, made clear to The Jerusalem
Post on Sunday that Ankara expects at least as much from Israel,
demanding that Jerusalem "deliver" American Jewish organizations and
ensure that Congress does not pass the genocide resolution.

"Israel should not let the Jewish community change its position,"
Tan reportedly said. "This is our expectation, and this is highly
important, highly important."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress