ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: THE LOBBYING BEHIND THE CONGRESSIONAL RESOLUTION
Guy Taylor
World Politics Review
Oct 30 2007
WASHINGTON — Much of the controversy surrounding a congressional
committee’s approval of a resolution condemning as genocide the
massacre of Armenians during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire
has focused on the action’s geopolitical ramifications. But a key
question remains unanswered: How did the world’s most powerful body
of lawmakers come to feel compelled to register a position on an
event that happened almost a century ago?
By some accounts, the answer is simple: lobbying. Others, however,
contend that the power of the Armenian lobby in the United States has
been exaggerated and that the genocide resolution has gotten traction
in Congress on moral grounds alone.
While Armenian genocide resolutions have been considered at the
committee level in Congress for decades, the passage of the latest
one by a 27-21 vote Oct. 10 made international headlines when House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vowed to push it to a full House
vote. Congressional support for the measure appears to have waned
during the weeks since, however, as Turkey, angered by the resolution,
threatens to launch military operations in Northern Iraq against
Kurdish Workers Party militants.
Is the Armenian lobby in the United States so powerful that it
convinced a group of elected U.S. officials to embrace its policy
despite the immediately negative impact it could have on U.S. interests
in the Middle East?
Many astute Washington observers claim that, animated by the genocide
issue for decades, the Armenian lobby has developed into one of the
most formidable foreign lobbies in the United States. For example,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, in a
Foreign Affairs article about foreign lobbying of the U.S. government,
rated "the Israeli-American, Cuban-American, and Armenian-American
lobbies as the most effective in their assertiveness."
However, influential Armenian-Americans assert that Congress has
taken up the issue because of morality, not lobbying. "There’s a myth
that the Armenian lobby is so strong," says Michael O’Hurley-Pitts,
a prominent Armenian-American author who serves as the spokesman for
the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America. "If that were
true this resolution would have been passed decades ago."
"The resolution condemns the Ottoman Empire’s genocide of the
Armenians. It’s troubling for me to understand why modern Turkey
fights so hard to defend what should not be theirs to defend,"
he said. "If U.S. foreign policy efforts require us to abandon our
morals and values as a just nation, then we as Americans must review
the foundation upon which our foreign policy is built."
How Powerful is the Armenian Lobby?
Measured purely in dollars spent, the Armenian lobby is relatively
small in the grand scheme of foreign policy lobbying, says Massie
Ritsch, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, whose
Web site, , tracks the spending of lobbying groups
in Washington.
"It’s possible that every day a thousand Armenians show up on Capitol
Hill and knock on the doors of Congress," says Ritsch. "But it doesn’t
show up in the reports."
Over the past nine years, the Armenian Assembly of America, the group
leading the political charge for the genocide resolution, has spent
between $140,000 and $260,000 per year on lobbying, with $180,000
spent last year and $160,000 spent so far in 2007.
"It looks like they spent almost as much in the first six months
of 2007 as they spent in all of last year," Ritsch noted. However,
even with the jump in spending, the Armenian lobby does not measure
up to Washington’s largest influence players.
For instance, according to Open Secrets data, the American Israeli
Public Affairs Committee, "the country’s most powerful pro-Israel
political group . . . spend[s] more than $1 million annually on
lobbying." Open Secrets also indicates that money spent by pro-Armenian
political groups, such as Political Action Committees (PACs), is
less than that spent by pro-Turkey PACs, which would ostensibly be
fighting to block the passage of the genocide resolution.
How, then, have Armenian groups been successful in bringing the
resolution to the fore? Ritsch ventures that "the recognition of the
genocide is of far greater interest and concern to Armenians than not
having it recognized is to the average Turkish-American. I think it’s
one of these issues where one side is really motivated and the other
side really doesn’t care as much."
He surmises that "a whole lot of grassroots lobbying in the districts
of the members who’ve been pushing for this" is behind the genocide
resolution.
Armenian Churches vs. Turkish Mosques
Ritsch’s read on the issue dovetails with the perspective of
Turkish-American analysts and lobbyists, who say the Armenian-American
community is more organized and politically minded than their own.
"From an organizational perspective, there are about 500 Armenian
organizations and about 50 Turkish organizations," says Gunai
Evinch, a prominent Turkish-American Lawyer in Washington and vice
president of the leading Turkish lobby organization, the Assembly of
Turkish-American Associations. "The Turkish organizations are primarily
dedicated to cultural events, whereas the Armenian organizations do
not shy away at all from political activities."
The Armenian church," argues Evinch, "is a major point of congregation
for . . . Armenian life, both spiritual and political.
The church’s leaders are in a way the political leaders; there has
never been a distinction."
"In the Turkish-American community on the other hand, with a strong
tradition of secular democracy, we do not see politics played in
mosques," he said. "We don’t have a meeting place to go to every week
to congregate and to plan and strategize on a political issue. We
don’t have the force of God being used to bring us together to do
political work against a particular ethnic group."
Evinch claims that tax records of the revenue and donations of all
Armenian local and national organizations, including academic groups
and the Armenian Church in the United States, would show that "the
Armenian side has about a $40 million annual budget for advocating
Armenian-American interests . . . compared to the Turkish side,
which has about $400,000 dollars for all of the issues."
Over the years, he says, Congress has been "bombarded with resolutions
and gotten to know the thesis of the Armenian side and decided that
[passing the resolution] was a moral thing to do despite the affect
on U.S.-Turkey relations and interests in the region."
Furthermore, Evinch contends that the recent House Foreign Affairs
Committee vote was heavily influenced in particular by Armenian voters
and money in California, Massachusetts and New York. Of the estimated
385,488 people of Armenian ancestry the 2000 U.S. Census counted as
living in the United States, some 257,686 reside in those three states,
with 204,641 in California alone, according to Euroamericans.net,
a Web site that keeps such statistics.
"Of the 27 votes in favor of the resolution in the Foreign Affairs
Committee, 10 were from California and eight were from New York,"
said Evinch. "There is just no way that those congressmen or women
are going to be voting against this bill, particularly if they’re
going to be re-elected."
‘Truth On Our Side’
Asked about the role of the church as it relates to the genocide
resolution, O’Hurley-Pitts, of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian
Church of America, offered this response: "It’s absolutely against the
law for the church to raise money for political causes. The church does
raise money for religious, humanitarian and other efforts, but at no
time has the church ever raised money to support legislations before
the United States House of Representatives. I would take issue with
anybody who would suggest that the church is engaged in fundraising
for political activities."
O’Hurley-Pitts acknowledged that Catholicos Karekin II, the head of
the Armenian Apostolic Church — who is presently visiting the United
States — "has repeatedly supported the passage of an Armenian genocide
recognition throughout the world."
But "he does not support political activity," said O’Hurley-Pitts,
adding that "the reason he supports genocide recognition is because
without recognition there can be no condemnation, and without
condemnation there can be no prevention."
According to O’Hurley-Pitts, there are actually 1.5 million Armenians
in the United States, and "it doesn’t take an act of Congress for
Armenians to see the gaping holes in their family trees."
Bryan Ardouny, executive director of the Armenian Assembly of America,
describes the community as a "very close-knit, educated and passionate
constituency."
"In terms of organization, certainly you have various churches
throughout the United States," he says. "It’s not that the church
is by any means an arm of the Armenian lobby, but . . . part of the
consciousness of all Armenians."
Money for lobbying, says Ardouny, comes "from individual support,
from individuals who care obviously about what we’re doing, who care
about the U.S.-Armenian relationship, that want to see Armenia make
the strides it’s making in terms of its democratic reforms and its
independence."
He adds that "the ongoing denial campaign of the Turkish government"
helps to bring the Armenian community together.
The real reason for the genocide resolution’s passage by the Foreign
Affairs Committee, says Ardouny, is that "we have the truth on
our side."
There is no debate in Washington over the validity of the resolutions
claim, he argues. House members worried about supporting it "have
talked about a timing issue, but the Turkish denial position has no
defenders on Capitol Hill."
Another factor, he says, is the current recognition that genocide is
occurring in Darfur: "With genocide still unfolding in Darfur, the
consciousness in America has certainly been raised to that issue. If
you can’t affirm the Armenian genocide how are you going to address
future and current genocide?"
In July 2004, the House and Senate passed a resolution declaring that
the atrocities then unfolding in Sudan were genocide and urging the
Bush administration to refer to them as such.
Flip-Flopping Lawmakers
But American "consciousness" of genocide has certainly not reduced
the controversy surrounding the Armenian resolution, the intensity
of which is evidenced by the shifting positions of U.S. House members
on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
The most prominent example may be that of California Democrat Rep.
Jane Harman. Harman, who notes that her "own family was decimated
by the Holocaust," initially cosponsored the latest version of the
resolution.
In early October, however, as the resolution came up for a committee
vote, she suddenly flipped her position. In a subsequent Los Angeles
Times op-ed, she offered this explanation for her change of heart:
After a visit in February to Turkey, where I met with Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Armenian Orthodox patriarch and colleagues
of murdered Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, I became convinced
that passing this resolution again at this time would isolate and
embarrass a courageous and moderate Islamic government in perhaps
the most volatile region in the world.
While Harman’s actions drew media attention — not to mention the
attention of young Armenian activists, who reportedly confronted her
at an early October political rally in California with shouts of
"genocide denier, hypocrite and liar" — less attention has been
given to the actions of another, more influential House member,
who has long gone back and forth on the issue.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, also a California
Democrat, cosponsored and publicly supported one of the first
Armenian genocide resolutions back in 1984. But Lantos, who like
Harman is Jewish, and is the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to
U.S. Congress, changed his stance during the 1990s. When the issue
was brought to a vote again in 2000, he said he opposed it because
it would be "counterproductive" for Turkish-Armenian, Turkish-Greek,
and Turkish-U.S. relations.
When the resolution came up again in 2005, Lantos again changed his
position, and began supporting it. Then the Foreign Affairs Committee’s
ranking Democrat, he said he wanted to punish Turkey for refusing to
allow U.S. forces to invade Iraq through Turkey two years earlier. "Our
Turkish friends need to understand that support from the United States
for matters that are important to them is predicated upon their support
for things that are important to the United States," Lantos said at
the time, suggesting he saw the issue in terms of a quid pro quo.
Lantos remained in favor of the resolution this time around,
a development that "shocked and angered" Turkish diplomats in
Washington, according to the Turkish Daily News. A week after the vote,
the pro-Turkey, English-language publication ran with the headline,
"Turkey Loses Jewish Alliance," and asserted that Jewish-American
lawmakers such as Lantos had been "unimpressed" by Turkey’s efforts to
lobby against the resolution. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s
foreign policy adviser reportedly criticized Lantos’ vote, saying,
"we have seen that his understanding of history is changing with time."
Evinch, of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations, says the
quid-pro-quo reasoning behind Lantos’ support for the resolution
shows just how bluntly political the Armenia issue has become.
"When [Lantos] said that, I could see then that the level of debate
around this issue was rapidly descending to a sort of hard politics
that had nothing to do with the substance of the Armenian claim,"
said Evinch. "I look at Lantos as a wise person and not a person that
would stoop to those levels, who would support a resolution as a quid
pro quo to get back at Turkey."
The Role of Jewish and Pro-Israel Groups
Other analysts say Turkey’s foreign policy in recent years has
contributed to the unease among would-be Turkey supporters in the
U.S. government, including many in the Jewish community who had
previously supported Turkey as a beacon of Islamic moderation in the
Middle East. Most notable has been the Turkish government’s increased
diplomatic and economic relations with Middle East actors hostile to
the United States and Israel.
In February 2006, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal was received in Ankara by
members of Turkish President Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party,
putting Turkey alongside Russia as the world’s only non-Arab country
to open its doors to the Palestinian party. A Voice of America report
at the time noted that "Western diplomats said the visit would likely
harm Turkey’s strong ties with the Jewish state."
Turkey has also increased ties with Syria, whose president, Bashar
al-Assad, was in Ankara in mid-October voicing his support for the
Turkish Parliament’s passage of the measure to allow a Turkish military
incursion into northern Iraq.
Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow and the director of the Turkish
Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
says "the Hamas visit and other things such as the enhancement of
dialogue between Iran, Turkey and Syria, have worked together to trip
some people who have been watching with nervousness over Turkey’s
commitment to the West and how that commitment may be coming undone."
But, Cagaptay added: "I wouldn’t say that American Jews have lost
heart in Turkey, they still see it as an extremely valuable ally in
the region."
Evinch shares a similar view, taking issue with assertions, such as
the one made by the Turkish Daily News, that the Jewish community’s
support for Turkey is waning.
"In the Jewish-American community, there is a liberal part and a
conservative part," said Evinch. "The Liberal part has become more and
more sensitive to the Armenian perspective of World War I history,
while the conservative part, which is thinking more about what is
good for Israel, has been less receptive to the Armenian thesis."
Jewish-American advocacy groups in Washington and nationally appear
to be carefully managing their public stance on the resolution.
The Anti-Defamation League, a New York-based Jewish organization,
has publicly opposed any congressional resolution condemning the
Armenian genocide. While ADL leaders wrote in an August statement
that what Armenians went through at the end of World War I was
"indeed tantamount to genocide," they went on to say "we continue
to firmly believe that a Congressional resolution on such matters
is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation
between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish
community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey,
Israel and the United States."
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the American Israeli Public Affairs
Committee, the leading pro-Israel advocacy and lobbying group in
Washington, told World Politics Review that AIPAC has "not taken a
position" on the genocide resolution. Asked why, she said: "It’s not
within the issues we focus on. That particular issue is outside of
our purview."
Some Armenian-Americans have expressed frustration that Jewish groups
have not taken a more aggressive stance in favor of the Armenian
resolution. "It’s certainly been a frustration point in the Armenian
community here," said one prominent Armenian-American activist,
who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Other members of the Armenian community emphasize the support the
genocide resolution has received from an array of interest groups.
Ardouny, for instance, said the ADL took "a positive step forward"
in publicly acknowledging that Armenian suffering was tantamount
to genocide.
The Armenian Assembly of America has compiled a list of 53 "third-party
organizations in support" of the genocide resolution.
The list includes a variety of ethnic and national advocacy
organizations, such as the Arab American Institute and the
Belarusan-American Association.
However, even with such support, concerns about a genocide resolution’s
consequences for U.S.-Turkey relations seem to be, for the time being
at least, paramount in the minds of members of Congress. A number of
Democrats last week pulled their support of the resolution, and in
statements to the press Pelosi allowed for the possibility that the
resolution will not come to a full House vote.
Guy Taylor is World Politics Review senior editor.
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