GENOCIDE RESOLUTION TESTS TURKEY’S K STREET CLOUT
By Kevin Bogardus and Jim Snyder
The Hill, DC
solution-tests-turkeys-k-street-clout-2007-10-10.h tml
Oct 10 2007
Following visits to Ataturk’s Mausoleum and the Museum of Anatolian
Civilizations in the Turkish capital of Ankara, members of Congress
in May sat down for a series of meetings with top Turkish officials,
including the Speaker of the national assembly, the deputy chief of
the Turkish General Staff and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In every meeting, Rep. Steve Cohen said, U.S. lawmakers heard the same
message: Oppose a congressional resolution that defines the killing
of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in the early 1900s as genocide,
perpetrated by Ottoman Turks.
Government officials "were constantly saying to vote against the
resolution. Constantly," Cohen, a freshman Democrat from Tennessee,
said. "The Turkish government doesn’t want it passed."
Hosting American officials – three privately sponsored trips, two of
which were staff-only, have visited Turkey in the last six months –
is just one piece of a furious campaign the Turkish government and its
supporters have used to try to turn Congress against the resolution.
The measure is scheduled for a House Foreign Affairs Committee vote
Wednesday, the resolution’s first legislative test under the new
Democratic majority.
"This resolution enjoys strong bipartisan support and is consistent
with concerns long expressed by the American people on the suffering
of the Armenian people," Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said.
If the measure gains committee approval, Elshami said, the Speaker
is "supportive of bringing it to the floor." Another Democratic
congressional aide said that it was unclear whether the resolution
would pass the committee, although it has supported similar resolutions
in the past.
The measure calls upon President Bush to "accurately characterize
the systematic and deliberate annihilation of [1.5 million] Armenians
as genocide."
Lobbying on the issue intensified after the panel vote was scheduled.
Three members of the Turkish parliament traveled to Washington Tuesday
for a series of meetings with lawmakers and State Department officials
to discuss the ramifications of the vote. One delegation member said
the trip was his fourth this year.
Turkey has relied heavily on K Street to make its case. Former House
Democratic leader Dick Gephardt (Mo.) and ex-Appropriations Committee
Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.) are among the lobbyists who have
argued that the resolution would unnecessarily harm relations between
the two countries.
Livingston shot an eight-minute video that members can see on the
Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network. In it, Livingston says Congress
"ought not be going out and just gratuitously kicking [Turkey] in
the shins with issues that are unnecessary."
Livingston Group lobbyists have passed out polling data to members
that show that 83 percent of Turkish citizens would oppose assisting
the United States in Iraq if Congress approves the resolution.
American forces now use an airbase in Turkey to re-supply troops
in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Gephardt’s firm, DLA Piper, has distributed a small
booklet titled "An Appeal to Reason" that disputes Armenia’s claims
of genocide, published for meetings with House members in March,
according to public records.
Despite the intense lobbying, backers of the resolution are optimistic
the House panel will vote in favor of the resolution Wednesday, which
would represent a victory for the Armenian-American community that
has mounted an aggressive grassroots campaign for the better part of
two decades to push the measure through Congress.
"I feel pretty good about things, but they are certainly spending
a lot of money on this," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is a main
sponsor of the resolution, said.
Schiff argues there is a "compelling moral and ethical reason" to call
the killings in eastern Turkey a genocide. Not doing so, he said,
would undermine the United States’ own aggressive posture with the
Sudanese government over the crisis in Darfur, which President Bush
has labeled a genocide.
However, the Bush administration, like the Clinton administration
before it, remains opposed to the Armenian genocide resolution,
fearing damage to the U.S.’s relationship with a key ally.
Turkey acknowledges the deaths of tens of thousands of Armenians in
clashes from 1915 to 1923, but it says the catastrophe was part of
a civil war sparked by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It says
atrocities occurred on both sides.
"No one claims those were not horrible days," said Egemen Bagis,
a Turkish member of parliament who is leading the Turkish delegation
this week.
Bagis said a request by the Turkish prime minister to set up an
international historical commission along with Armenia to study the
killings has not been answered by the Armenian government.
"I believe the job of the politician is to determine the future to
make the best world for our children, not to determine the past. That
is the job of the historian," the Turkish official said.
Armenian-American backers of the resolution say the evidence that
what happened is correctly labeled a genocide is overwhelming and
that calls for a commission amount to a delaying tactic.
Armenian genocide resolutions have been debated in previous
Congresses. In 2005, for example, what was then the House International
Relations Committee voted overwhelmingly to approve a similar
resolution. But the measure never reached the floor.
Twice before, the House has voted for a resolution calling the killing
of Armenians a genocide, but the measures never passed Congress.
Supporters say that with Democrats in charge of Congress this year,
the lobbying has intensified. Those efforts include a well-organized
grassroots campaign by the Armenian diaspora, which form significant
voting blocs in key states such as California.
The Armenian Assembly of America has sent an action alert to its
10,000 members and has been running phone banks targeted at Foreign
Affairs Committee members.
In a letter sent to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the assembly said the
resolution would be an important gesture to survivors of World War
I atrocities to "irrevocably and unequivocally reaffirm this fact
of history."
The assembly also has handed out a cable Henry Morgenthau, the
ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, sent to the State
Department in 1915. In it, Morgenthau wrote, "The great massacres and
persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to
the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915."
So far, 226 lawmakers have co-sponsored the resolution, enough to
pass the measure in a floor vote.
Still, Turkey’s lobbying campaign seems to have had some effect. Nine
members have dropped off as co-sponsors. At least three of those
members changed their minds after they or their staff members heard
from lobbyists from the Livingston Group, according to public records.
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) was one of those. His spokesman, T. Q.
Houlton, said Tancredo dropped sponsorship after sitting through
a committee markup for a resolution that encouraged Japan to accept
responsibility for the sexual enslavement of so-called "comfort women"
during World War II. Tancredo voted against that resolution.
"After the hearing, he felt it would be equally unfair to imply that
the current Turkish government bears responsibility for the actions
of the now-defunct Ottoman government," Houlton said.
Houlton added that Tancredo’s "decision had nothing to do with pressure
from any foreign government in either case."
Cohen, the freshman Democrat who visited Turkey in May, said he, too,
likely would vote against the measure.
Cohen said he has always heard what happened to Armenians referred
to as genocide. "Whatever happened was awful," he said.
But he called Turkey the only democracy and "our strongest ally"
in the Middle East.
"It is important that we have good relations," he said. Cohen is
trying to convince the Congressional Study Group on Turkey to meet in
Memphis next year, which would draw a number of Turkish and American
officials to his district.