ELIN SULEYMANOV: RESOLUTION OF US CONGRESS WILL CAUSE A LONG TERM NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES FOR THE WAR IN IRAQ AND FOR US POLICY IN THE REGION

Azeri Press Agency
Oct 16 2007
Azerbaijan

Azerbaijani Consul General to Los Angeles Elin Suleymanov gives
interview to APA’s US bureau

– The resolution of the Foreign Affairs Committee of House of
Representatives created emotional feeling among Turkish people and
their allies. But if we would look without emotion, what kind of
lessons we should make after mentioned step of FAC of HR in first
place?

– The decision by the House Committee was certainly a very unfortunate
move. Especially, as it comes during the Ramazan Eid in Turkey,
In fact, it is very detrimental to the American interests in the
greater Middle East region. Once again, in congressional politics,
special interest group with narrow agenda have been able to overcome
the American national interest. I am not sure that the resolution will
pass the full House vote, but it is already clear that some significant
negativism has been caused by the Committee’s decision. Importantly,
for the Azerbaijani side, this decision, just the unfortunate Section
907 of the Freedom Support Act earlier, raises certain questions
about how objective is the United States in its capacity of a mediator
between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The vote in the Committee clearly has
more to do with US domestic politics than with international relations,
a point, which is well-noted by many US commentators. Democratic
majority has adopted policy of confronting the Bush Administration on
many issues and, it seems, even if the Democratic leadership cannot
succeed in substantive issues like the Iraq war discussion, they move
to symbolic issues like revision of history of Ottoman Empire.

I am not sure who benefits from this, certainly, neither US, nor
Turkey. Actually, this doesn’t seem to help Armenia either. After
all, such a resolution would only further isolate Armenia in the
region. Only leaders of Armenian diaspora organizations benefit. In
fact, those Armenians, whose relatives died in the confrontation of
1915, should also be saddened by such a use of their family tragedy
for gaining political gains today. There are, of course, a number
of lessons that should be learned from these recent events: Working
with US public opinion and Congress is not a short-term, last-minute
campaign, but a long-term, continuous effort. Moreover, Armenians have
been successful in both having a lobby in Washington and grass-roots
community organization in different states. This combination is very
important. For both Azerbaijanis and Turks, it is important to have
such community groups in different states working actively with local
political institutions. Therefore, we are talking about a combination
of lobby in Washington and Diaspora throughout the United States. We
often think of these two as the same, but it is not always the case.

The above is important, because in promoting a cause one cannot rely
on third forces. For instance, even though friendly relations exist
between the Jewish and Turkish communities, the main responsibility
for grass-roots mobilization is with the greater Turkish community.

Overall, there may be as many Turkish-Americans as Armenian-Americans
in U.S. The challenge is organizing the community. This is should be a
lesson for Azerbaijani-Americans, who, along with our Turkish friends,
need to organize and become politically more active.

Moreover, it is fundamental that the community members focus their
effort on key priorities and do not allow political and other
differences undermine their unity.

– What was obvious in the speeches of many democrats, particularly Tom
Lantos that those people believe that so called Armenian genocide took
place but concern over national security issue is main impendent for
adopting mentioned resolution. Don’t you think that strategy of the
Turkish lobby must change now and more work need to be done to prove
that so called genocide issue never occurred instead of underlining
strategic importance of Turkey?

– More effort is needed to educate public on the situation in Anatolia
in 1915-16. Of course, this doesn’t mean that one should simply
dismiss that Armenians in Anatolia suffered. What is needed is a
balanced, objective analysis of history. Importantly, legislating
history according to political expediency is a dangerous trend,
which undermines the very basis of historic accuracy. Many members of
Congress argued against the resolution not because it was historically
incorrect but because of national security arguments.

The national security argument is valid, but what is more important
that this resolution has a questionable historic basis. Moreover,
the events of 1915 do not fall under the international definition of
‘genocide." Also, many members of Congress like to quote the supposed
quote by Hitler about the Armenians- a strong argument for the Jewish
community. Interestingly, there does not appear to be a direct
evidence of the quote attributed to Hitler to be genuine. Turkish
community should be more pro-active in explaining that rather than
rely on the governments to make a political-military argument. For
that more outreach should done to scholars and universities. Finally,
the members of the Turkish community should be comprehensively educated
on the issue to be able to present their case.

Turkey’s economic embargo and the absence of diplomatic relations
with Armenia have often been raised. Yet, the fact that these
happened as a result of Armenia’s occupation of Azerbaijan’s
internationally-recognized territory has not been widely discussed.

Armenia’s destructive role in the region, its gross violation of
human rights and aggressive policy should be made known. For this,
members of Azerbaijani and Turkish communities everywhere should
and can be more active in speaking out. Again, speaking out is not
a one-time event, but a continuous campaign.

One can see that, while the Turkish government has been successful
in convincing the US Administration, the communities need to be more
active and vocal outside Washington. This is an important lesson for
Azerbaijanis as well.

– Generally, as a person familiar with the American political system,
do you think what the most important priority is for the U.S.

Congress members? Is it national security issue or support of their
constituencies?

– This is an interesting question. In the case of the vote in the
House Committee, clearly courting one narrow, special interest group-
not the entire constituency, by the way- prevailed over the national
interest. Again, in the pre-election year, domestic political
consideration may seem more important to politicians in US than
either historic accuracy or national security. This is another lesson
for Azerbaijanis that argument of reality and even of US national
security may not be sufficient for members of Congress without a
strong presence of the Azerbaijani-American community organizations
in various electoral districts.

– The vote over the Resolution 106 ended up with 27-21 result. What
we witnessed during discussion of the resolution, that almost all
members of FAC from California passionately supported mentioned
resolution. Another fact is that the strongest supporter of Armenians
and co-sponsor of 106 Resolution is Adam Schiff from CA. Don’t
you think that this single fact requires more attention to be paid
this region?

– Certainly, the importance of the Western States, especially of
California, is rapidly increasing. This reflects, among other things,
the economic significance of the state. It is, therefore, important
that, as you said, ‘more attention," is paid to the region.

Azerbaijan’s leadership understands this and moved to open the
Consulate General in Los Angeles in 2006. At the same time, California
is home to a numerous Azerbaijani and Turkish communities.

I specially would like to mention the American Azerbaijan Council
with the head office in Irvine, South California and American North
Azerbaijanis Cultural Center with office in San Francisco. I hope to
see these two communities become more active and vocal. There seems
to be a great potential for growth here.

– One of the strong arguments of supporters of 106 resolution is that
after the France parliament adopted recent law criminalizing "Armenian
genocide " denouncement, turnover between two countries increased three
times. Why then the American congressmen should worry about adoption
of the same resolution? Is it right to compare those two situations?

– Well, of course, if the French resolution was flawed in terms of
historic evidence, then US shouldn’t follow the pattern simply because
of that. Yet, Turkey is a very important ally of the United States,
so the ramifications can be very different from the French case. For
instance, France is an EU member, so we are talking about already a
relationship with the entire Union, while the relationship with US
is more of a strategic nature, including major military cooperation
projects. By the way, if I am not mistaken, French military aircraft
have not been able to use Turkish airspace after that. More importantly
though, the Turkish leadership faces a complicated decision to balance
a very important strategic relationship with the United States with
massive public outcry among the Turkish public and the defamation
of Turkey’s image. Ankara has made some strong statements and it is
likely to follow through with them. Simply because if they don’t,
then the same argument that has been used in the French case would
be used much wider.

Interestingly, this problem comes just as the Turkish-American
relationship seems to be recovering from the damage of disagreements
at the outset of the Iraq war. Sadly, members of the Committee have
acted to alienate America’s strongest Muslim ally and to undermine
pro-American forces in the region. Regardless of the immediate
reaction of Ankara, this will cause, unfortunately, a long term
negative consequences for the war in Iraq and for US policy in the
region. Whoever comes to the White House on January 20, 2009 will
have to deal with these implications for some time.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress