CONGRESS SHOULD NOT MORALIZE ABOUT PAST

Arizona Republic, AZ
Oct 17 2007

The proposed congressional resolution declaring the Ottoman Turks
guilty of genocide against Armenians during World War I is an exercise
in reckless arrogance.

Congress has not been made the official arbiter of genocide. Nor does
Congress have special historical or moral standing to render such
a judgment. Congress is a committee of politicians, not historians
or moralists.

If Congress declares what happened in Turkish territory during World
War I a genocide, that does not make it so. And if Congress fails to
make such a declaration, that does not mean that it wasn’t one.

What Congress is supposed to do is act in the best interests of
the people of the United States, and this resolution is a manifest
abdication of that responsibility.

Turkey, which takes great offense at the resolution, matters, and in
ways far more important than the tactical considerations being cited
regarding U.S. efforts in Iraq.

Turkey is important to the effort in Iraq, both in providing supply
routes and showing forbearance in taking the fight against Kurdish
separatists attacking Turkey into Kurdish Iraq.

However, in reality, the U.S. has a higher stake in the success of
Turkey than in the success of Iraq.

One of the Bush administration’s ambitions in Iraq was to demonstrate
the compatibility of Islam with democratic and secular governance. In
fact, it is Turkey that offers the best hope of demonstrating that
compatibility.

An Islamist party was elected there in 2003. It has improved the
country’s economic performance through market-oriented reforms. Under
the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the economy
grew at a 7 percent annual clip and both corporate and individual
income taxes were cut.

Earlier this year, it won a broader mandate, resolving a stand-off with
the military over appointing one of its own as president, traditionally
considered the symbol and defender of the country’s modern secularism.

Some suspect the party of biding time before striking against
secularism and instituting more religious rule. Erdogan and other
party leaders have made disturbing statements in the past about
democracy being a tool to gain power, not an enduring system of
governing the country.

However, party leaders today, and Erdogan quite emphatically,
profess to have abandoned that strategy and promise to respect
secular governance. So far, their actions have been in accord with
that profession.

Erdogan’s government must deal with manifold complications,
domestically and internationally. The military, which regards itself
as the protector of secular governance and has toppled four civilian
regimes since 1960, still views the Islamists warily.

Turkey would like to join the European Union, and the Erdogan
government has tried very hard to move that effort forward. However,
France is committed to blocking it, so Turkey’s ambitions to be more
integrated into the West appear thwarted.

Turkey lives in a difficult neighborhood. Historically, it has had
tense relations with Iran and Syria but lately has sought some degree
of rapprochement and constructive interactions. It recently signed
oil-exploration and natural-gas agreements with Iran.

President Bush believes that, for the United States to be free from
the threat of terrorism, the world needs to be remade through the
spread of democratic capitalism, particularly in Islamic and Arab
countries. Moreover, the United States should be a forceful agent of
such a transformation.

In reality, a U.S. policy of trying to force or expedite such a
transformation increases, rather than abates, the terrorist threat.

However, an organic movement toward democratic capitalism in the
Islamic world would be an extraordinarily important and welcome
development.

Turkey is where that movement is most advanced and most deeply
rooted. However, its durability is far from certain.

Perhaps today’s Turks shouldn’t care about what Congress opines about
events nearly a century ago. But they do, deeply. And it can cloud
the perception of Turkish self-interest, which today is moving in a
direction that might be highly beneficial to the United States and
the world.

Congress should stick to its job of legislating and leave the judging
of historical events in other lands to the historians and moralists.

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