The Forward
October 19, 2007

Turkish Jews Decry Armenian Genocide Bill

In its bare-knuckled lobbying to defeat a congressional resolution
recognizing the Armenian genocide, Turkey has gained a valuable ally:
its own Jews.

Last week an advertisement from the Jewish community of Turkey was
published in the conservative Washington Times and was quickly passed
around the capital by Turkey’s lobbyists. The ad warned that the
overwhelming majority of Turks view Congress’s intervention as
inappropriate, unjust, and gratuitously anti-Turkish.

The Turkish Jewish community’s ad appeared just before an October 10
vote in which the House’s Committee on Foreign Affairs adopted
Resolution 106, which characterizes the Ottoman massacre of Armenians
during World War I as genocide. The Democratic leadership is planning
to submit the bill to a full House vote by mid-November, and a
similar resolution has been introduced in the Senate with 32
co-sponsors.

We cannot help but note that the world recognizes the Holocaust
because of the overwhelming evidence, not because of the declarations
of parliaments, read the ad. However, we have a more immediate
concern, which is the viability of U.S.-Turkish bilateral relations.

The ad, as well as previous statements from the Turkish Jewish
community and a trip by its leaders to Washington this past spring,
is part of a strategy by Ankara to stress that the Armenian issue is
one that galvanizes Turkish society as a whole, and not just the
government. The patriarch of the Armenian Church of Turkey recently
came to the United States to convey a similar message, and several
civil society organizations have supported the government’s view.

Turkish Jewish officials, however, have insisted that the initiative
to weigh in on the issue has been theirs. Their leaders could not be
reached for further comment.

During the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy
conference in March, a delegation led by community leader Silvyo
Ovadya came to Washington to warn American Jewish groups that passage
of a congressional resolution would alter Turkey’s pro-Western
stance. The organized community also issued several statements in
recent months as the Armenian issue gained traction on Capitol Hill.

Last week’s ad took a direct stab at the Anti-Defamation League,
whose national director Abraham Foxman said in August that the
massacre of Armenians was tantamount to genocide and then
subsequently stated that a congressional resolution would be a
counterproductive diversion that may put at risk the Turkish Jewish
community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey,
Israel and the United States. In the ad, the Jewish community
stressed that it is deeply perturbed by the claim that their safety
and well-being in Turkey could be put at risk by the resolution.

The ad was not the community’s first pointed criticism of an American
Jewish group on the Armenian issue. In a private letter this summer,
reported here for the first time, to American Jewish Committee
executive director David Harris, Turkish Jewish leaders criticized
him for writing in a blog posting that not recognizing the Armenian
genocide could open the door to more Holocaust denial.

Earlier this year, Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and the
resolution’s main sponsor, criticized the AJCommittee, B’nai B’rith
International, the ADL and the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs for transmitting to House leaders another letter from the
Turkish Jewish community expressing concern over his congressional
bill. In a written complaint to Jewish groups, Schiff described the
action of the American Jewish organizations as tantamount to an
implicit and inappropriate endorsement of the position of the
letter’s authors.

Schiff could not be reached for further comment.

The Bush administration has expressed its firm opposition to the
non-binding resolution. Turkey’s lobbyists were also able to get all
living former secretaries of state, as well as a number of defense
secretaries, to send out letters stressing the need to preserve
diplomatic and military ties with Turkey. And critics have denounced
Schiff and fellow California Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker
of the House, for what they describe as catering to parochial
Armenian- American voters at the expense of a crucial ally.

In the wake of last week’s foreign affairs committee vote, Turkey
recalled its ambassador to the United States to Ankara for
consultations.

Turkey contends, not for the first time, that foreign parliaments
have no business weighing in on such an issue. When France
criminalized the denial of the Armenian genocide last year, Ankara
retaliated by cutting back military contracts with Paris. While no
clear threat has been issued to Washington, Turkey hosts a key
American military air base that is a major conduit for supplying
American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ankara could also make good on its recent vows to enter northern Iraq
in order to stop Kurdish rebel attacks against its troops. On
Wednesday, the Turkish parliament gave the government a one-year
authorization to conduct military operations inside Iraq against the
guerillas, who have killed some 30 soldiers in recent weeks.