HOUSE ERRS ON TURKEY

The Buffalo News, NY
Oct 18 2007

Right sentiment at the wrong time will hurt American interests in Iraq

After a generation of propping up shahs, strongmen, thugs and
theocrats just to keep their nations on our side in the Cold War,
the United States had reason to hope that the post-Soviet "peace
dividend" would include the ability to avoid, decry, even remove,
oppressive governments without fear that our thugs would be replaced
by their thugs. But there has been little peace, and thus no dividend.

Even a symbolic statement condemning an atrocity that happened 92
years ago in a country that doesn’t really exist anymore has proven
too risky to make, given that the successor to that nation is a needed
ally in the wars against terror and in Iraq.

In 1915, what was then known as the Ottoman Empire witnessed the
mass killings of ethnic Armenians. The modern state of Turkey has,
sadly, never come to grips with that history but, understandably,
resents all efforts by others to make it stare at this painful memory.

A resolution before the U.S. House of Representatives would label those
events a genocide. That resolution is at once the worst charge that
can be levied by one nation against another and an impolitic slap in
the face to an ally of increasing importance and an uncertain future.

As an aspirant to European Union membership, and the only NATO member
nation with a majority Muslim population, Turkey already stands
uncomfortably on the cusp of two worlds. As Turkey’s government
objects to the House genocide resolution, its parliament has voted
its prime minister the authority to send Turkish troops into nearby
Iraq to hunt down Kurdish separatists.

That’s the last thing Iraq needs now. Another war on another front
with another enemy, a conflict that would disrupt what is now the
most peaceful and most Americanfriendly region of Iraq, the Kurdish
territory. The House genocide resolution dispatches no troops and
threatens no borders. But the very discussion of it is making what is
already a bad state of affairs even more dangerous. It risks sparking
a new war and cutting off U.S. access to crucial transit routes for
the one we’re already fighting.

Some sponsors of the House resolution have withdrawn their
co-sponsorship, while others have, wisely, counseled a delay. It is
possible that some of the remaining drive for the resolution, beyond
reasonable sympathy for a now quite elderly Armenian population,
rises from a hope that losing Turkey as a logistical ally in the Iraq
campaign would force an early end to the war.

Those backing the resolution should remember, though, that while Turkey
is one physical path into Iraq, it is also one of the most important
ways out. We cannot risk doing anything that would close that door,
in either direction.

86614.html

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress