OMER TASPINAR

Is there life after the Armenian resolution?

It’s a common joke in Washington. American foreign policy boils down
to essentially two noble endeavors: damage control and crisis
management. It looks like relations with Turkey will soon need both.
As if there was a shortage of problems in Turkish-American relations,
we are soon likely to witness a new crisis of unprecedented
proportions. Everyone I talk to in Congress unanimously agrees, "This
is the year for the Armenian genocide bill."

What people need to understand in Turkey is that this bill is purely
about American domestic politics. It has very little to do with the
deterioration in Turkish-American relations over the last few years.
Yes, Turkey’s traditional friends in Washington — not the most joyful
group, mind you: the pro-Israel lobby, the Pentagon and defense
companies — are disappointed with Turkey’s lack of support for the
Bush administration’s Middle East policy. But, Turkey is certainly not
alone in this camp. The whole world is angry with the Bush
administration.

The real problem is elsewhere. First, there is something that Ankara
and the Turkish Embassy in Washington are stubbornly refusing to
understand: Turkey has already lost the "genocide" battle. There is
simply no one — except people with a vested financial or political
interest — who believe Turkey’s side of the story. Whether "the
events of 1915" amount to "genocide" or not is not even debated in the
West. This is one of those situations where perception becomes
reality. Turkey can blame the nefarious Armenians and all kinds of
anti-Turkish lobbies for this situation, but the fact of the matter is
that suppressing free debate on this issue and accusing academics
organizing conferences does not help the slogan "leave history to
historians."

The second problem is that this year’s genocide resolution comes at a
time when American politics is extremely polarized. I’ve never seen
such hatred between Democrats and Republicans during my 10 years in
Washington. The Democratic Speaker of Congress Nancy Pelosi and
President Bush are barely on speaking terms. There is certainly no
mood to do favors or exchange quid pro quos. In the past, when things
got rolling on the genocide front, Ankara could always rely on the
president to give a call to the speaker of the house to bring some
"geostrategic" sense to the legislative branch. The war in Iraq and
the current climate of polarization in American politics has
drastically changed this picture. Civility is out the window and no
one is in the mood to compromise.

Add to this the fact the formidable Armenian lobby has the numbers to
pass the resolution, largely thanks to a multitude of congressmen who
would probably not be able to show Turkey’s place on the map.
Moreover, Pelosi represents a California constituency that has
regularly contributed to her campaign over the years. This is after
all a game of "legalized corruption" at which the Turkish-American
community needs to get much better.

All this amounts to the fact that the Armenian resolution is very
likely to pass this year, which brings us back to "damage control" and
"crisis management." There is no doubt the Bush administration will be
in an extremely difficult situation once the resolution passes. Yet,
there is a silver lining: in case Turkey manages to strike the right
tone in its response, relations between Ankara and Washington can
unexpectedly improve after the resolution. In my humble opinion,
Turkey needs to be measured in its reaction. The Armenian bill is
after all a non-binding resolution with no impact on American policy.

Yes, it will probably become politically impossible to avoid a partial
restriction of [air base] Ýncirlik’s use — ideally in a creative way,
because of "environmental" reasons having to do with EU harmonization
laws, for instance, but instead of mobilizing massive anti-American
demonstrations, Ankara should rapidly come back to the negotiating
table in order to test the limits of damage control in Washington.
After such a disastrous development in relations with Turkey, it may
become simply impossible for the Bush administration to postpone
concrete action against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). After all,
you sometimes need to hit rock bottom to bounce back. This could be
one of those instances, proving that there is life after death. Who
knows, it may even prove to be a good thing for Turkey to get the
resolution monkey off its back. We will have to wait and see.

03.09.2007
Columnists

Source: berno=121012

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress