Time Magazine
Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007

Honesty Is the Best Policy

By Samantha Power

Ninety-two years ago, the "young Turk" regime ordered the executions
of Armenian civic leaders and intellectuals, and Turkish soldiers and
militia forced the Armenian population to march into the desert, where
more than a million died by bayonet or starvation. That horror helped
galvanize Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew, to invent the word genocide,
which was defined not as the extermination of an entire group but
rather as a systematic effort to destroy a group. Lemkin wanted the
term–and the international legal convention that grew out of it–to
encompass ethnic cleansing and the murdering of a substantial part of
a group. Otherwise, he feared, the world would wait until an entire
group had been wiped out before taking any action.

But this month in Washington these historical truths–about events
carried out on another continent, in another century–are igniting
controversy among politicians as if the harms were unsubstantiated,
local and recent. At stake, of course, is the question of whether the
U.S. House of Representatives should offend Turkey by passing a
resolution condemning the "Armenian genocide" of 1915.

All actors in the debate are playing the roles they have played for
decades. Turkish General Yasar Buyukanit warned that if the House
proceeds with a vote, "our military ties with the U.S. will never be
the same again." Having recognized the genocide while campaigning for
the White House, President George W. Bush nevertheless followed in the
footsteps of his Oval Office predecessors, bemoaning the euphemistic
"tragic suffering" of Armenians and wheeling out men and women of
diplomatic and military rank to argue that the resolution would harm
the indispensable U.S.-Turkish relationship. In Congress,
Representatives in districts populated by Armenians generally support
the measure, while those well cudgeled or coddled by the President or
Pentagon don’t. Official pressure has led many sponsors of the
resolution to withdraw their support.

One feature of the decades-old script is new: the Turkish threats have
greater credibility today than in the past. Mainly this is because the
U.S. war in Iraq has dramatically increased Turkish leverage over
Washington. Some 70% of U.S. air cargo en route to Iraq passes through
Turkey, as does about one-third of the fuel used by the U.S. military
there. While Turkey may react negatively in the short term,
recognition of the genocide is warranted for four reasons. First, the
House resolution tells the truth, and the U.S. would be the 24th
country to officially acknowledge it. In arguing against the
resolution, Bush hasn’t dared dispute the facts. An Administration
that has shown little regard for the truth is openly urging Congress
to join it in avoiding honesty. It is inconceivable that even back in
the days when the U.S. prized West Germany as a bulwark against the
Soviet Union, Washington would have refrained from condemning the
Holocaust at Germany’s behest.

Second, the passage of time is only going to increase the size of the
thorn in the side of what is indeed a valuable relationship with
Turkey. Many a U.S. official (and even the occasional senior Turkish
official) admits in private to wishing the U.S. had recognized the
genocide years ago. Armenian survivors are passing away, but their
descendants have vowed to continue the struggle. The vehemence of the
Armenian diaspora is increasing, not diminishing. Third, America’s
leverage over Turkey is far greater than Turkey’s over the U.S. The
U.S. brought Turkey into nato, built up its military and backed its
membership in the European Union. Washington granted
most-favored-nation trading status to Turkey, resulting in some $7
billion in annual trade between the two countries and $2 billion in
U.S. investments there. Only Israel and Egypt outrank Turkey as
recipients of U.S. foreign assistance. And fourth, for all the help
Turkey has given the U.S. concerning Iraq, Ankara turned down
Washington’s request to use Turkish bases to launch the Iraq invasion,
and it ignored Washington’s protests by massing 60,000 troops at the
Iraq border this month as a prelude to a widely expected attack in
Iraqi Kurdistan. In other words, while Turkey may invoke the genocide
resolution as grounds for ignoring U.S. wishes, it has a longer
history of snubbing Washington when it wants to.

Back in 1915, when Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey,
protested the atrocities to the Turkish Minister of the Interior, the
Turk was puzzled. "Why are you so interested in the Armenians anyway?"
Mehmed Talaat asked. "We treat the Americans all right." While it is
essential to ensure that Turkey continues to "treat the Americans all
right," a stable, fruitful, 21st century relationship cannot be built
on a lie.

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