AREA MAN WATCHING CONGRESSIONAL ACTION CLOSELY
By Wanda Freeman

Fort Smith Times Record, AR
Oct 22 2007

A Fort Smith man whose first language was his parents’ native Armenian
had strong English words for waning congressional support of a House
resolution declaring the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks
in 1915 a genocide.

"If (this resolution) doesn’t pass, I will have lost all respect for
the Senate and the House," said Leo Stepanian, 77. "Turkey is not
our ally. Turkey wants what Turkey can get from this country."

Stepanian is a first-generation Armenian American, born in Racine,
Wis., to parents who survived the World War I-era deaths of about
1.5 million Armenians. He grew up in Providence, R.I., joined the Air
Force and served in Japan and Korea, married in 1954 and moved from
Texas to Arkansas in 1988 after retiring as a crash-rescue firefighter
with the Defense Department.

Both of Stepanian’s parents were forced to march out into the Syrian
desert during a deportation campaign in 1915. His father, 16 at the
time, "took off running" and escaped the death march.

His mother, segregated into a group of girls age 12 to 16, was
passing through what is now eastern Turkey when she and one other
girl were grabbed and rescued by an American missionary. She became
a nanny to a consulate official in Alexandria, Egypt, before meeting
Stepanian’s father in Cuba, where the mayor of Havana presided over
their arranged marriage.

Stepanian said the antagonism between the Muslim Ottomans and
Christian Armenians began with aggressions by the Turkish sultan
in the 1890s and came to a head in 1915. While he and many others
view the massive killings as the first genocide of the 20th century,
Turkey today maintains the deaths resulted from the wartime fall of
the Ottoman Empire.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee this month approved the genocide
resolution – the latest of several that have come up over the past
two decades – paving the way for a House vote. But last week the vote
fell into question when eight backers, including Reps. Marion Berry,
D-Gillett, and Mike Ross, D-Prescott, co-sponsors of the resolution,
withdrew their support under growing pressure from the White House
and the Turkish government.

About 70 percent of supplies and equipment used by U.S. troops in Iraq
passes through Turkey, according to Ross, and the Bush administration
is concerned that Turkey might make good on its threats to restrict
U.S. access to its airspace and military bases if the resolution
passes.

"I feel bad that our government is kowtowing to the Turks," Stepanian
said. "Why do they listen to foreign nations like that?"

Rep. John Boozman, R-Rogers, voted against the resolution in committee;
he said he would support appointing a commission to study the issue.

"Mr. Boozman, our illustrious congressman, voted nay," Stepanian
said. "He’s just spouting Bush’s GOP party line; he’s not an
individual. I won’t vote for him again."

Although the fast-slipping support for the resolution appears to
be bipartisan, Stepanian insists that all of those backing away are
speaking the party line.

"I don’t care what they say. There’s no excuse to condone genocide,"
he said.

The resolution is meant to "inform the people of the world what a
horrible atrocity" occurred, Stepanian said.

He recalls family stories of specific atrocities: How his 94-year-old
aunt, now in a nursing home, was bashed in the face with the butt
of a Turkish soldier’s gun as a small child; how his mother used to
wake up screaming from nightmares, having seen her brothers hung by
the heels and used for bayonet practice.

"They threw babies in the air and let them come down on bayonets.

They cut open pregnant women, tore out their fetuses and bashed them
against the rocks," Stepanian said.

A fact sheet on the events produced by the Armenian Research Center
at the University of Michigan at Dearborn states that during the
forced march, prisoners were often denied food and water and many were
"brutalized and killed" by guards. Armenians near the Black Sea Coast
were loaded onto barges that were sunk out at sea, according to the
fact sheet.

Stepanian said Germany admitted the Holocaust happened, and Turkey
should do the same about the Armenian genocide.

"If they want to be known as a democratic country, then they should
say, ‘Yes, the Ottoman Turks did this.’ … What’s so hard about
admitting the Ottomans did this? It’s not them now. But it happened."

In 2001, Stepanian persuaded then-Gov. Mike Huckabee to issue
a proclamation recognizing April 24 as Armenian Martyrs Day in
commemoration of the day in 1915 when the Turkish government began
a deportation program with the arrests of hundreds of Armenian
intellectuals.

He said he did it for his parents and grandparents, family members
he will never know, and all Armenian Americans. And he wants the
genocide resolution to pass for the same reason.

"I just want my family and the Armenian people to be honored by this."

Stephens Washington Bureau reporter Aaron Sadler contributed to
this report.