OBAMA BACKTRACKS ON ‘GENOCIDE’ PLEDGE
Jonathan Rugman

Channel 4 News
/obama-backtracks-on-genocide-pledge/
March 18 2009

I had dinner at the home of a London art dealer last week and my eyes
were on stalks.

I counted two David Hockneys and a Magritte in his sitting room, a
fabulous Lucian Freud drawing up the stairs, and two Walter Sickerts
beside his bed.

You might ask what I was doing in his bedroom; but like several of the
art dealer’s guests, I had grabbed my glass of champagne and headed
round the house, in awe of not just his art collection but also of
his Bohemian collection of friends.

I found myself sitting next to an interesting couple. She is
Turkish. He is Armenian. Not a combination you might expect, given
that upwards of a million Armenians are thought to have perished in
Turkey as the Ottoman Empire collapsed during the First World War.

It was not that long ago that Armenian assassins went around killing
Turkish diplomats by way of revenge. But the Armenian sitting next
to me was from a family which had stayed in Istanbul throughout the
Anatolian massacres of 1915, and so as a Turkish citizen who had
grown up in Turkey, it is hardly surprising that he fell in love with
a Turkish girl. Montague meets his Capulet, regardless of history’s
hatred.

Both of them observed that meeting Armenians in Turkey is a bit like
stepping back in time – that they seem to live in a vanished world,
divorced from modern times.

When I lived in Istanbul, I used to look out for Armenian faces,
scuttling through the city’s back streets amid the dilapidated mansions
of the old "European" quarter; or turning vast keys in the rusty locks
of high-walled Armenian churches. Turkey’s Armenians, some of them,
are still there.

I only point this out because we are about to go through a familiar
ritual. As the US Congress, under pressure from the Armenian lobby,
lobbies the new US President on declaring the 1915 killings of
Armenians in Turkey as "genocide".

President Obama pledged that he would do this during his election
campaign. Now his officials appear to be backtracking as strategic
pragmatism sets in: Turkey is an important US ally, a Muslim democracy
next to Syria, Iraq and Iran, and so not the sort of friend you want
to annoy by using the word "genocide" against it. Especially when Mr
Obama is due to visit Turkey on 5 April.

President Bush argued for delaying a Congressional "genocide"
resolution in 2007. Now there’s talk of delay all over again,
disappointing those Armenian Americans who would like the "g" word
uttered by Congress and the White House in time for 24 April, the
annual remembrance day for the killings.

But balance the political benefit of uttering the "g" word with
Washington’s need to find new supply routes for US forces in
Afghanistan, possibly via Turkey. Balance it too with Turkey’s desire
to act as a mediator with Syria and Iran on America’s behalf.

And the Turks and Armenians don’t need another row to stop them from
becoming friends. Last September, Turkey’s president visited Armenia,
the first Turkish head of state to do so. There’s talk of opening
the border, of opening embassies.

Not long after the Soviet Union collapsed, I flew on a US army
transport plane from Turkey to Armenia, delivering aid to the broken
republic. It was one of the first direct flights ever and only took
about an hour.

But this is 2009, and more direct contact between the two is way
overdue. The Iron Curtain may have come down across Europe, but Turkey
and Armenia have yet to tear down theirs.

This is not to say that Turkey doesn’t have to reckon with its past –
or rather with the actions of Ottoman officials before the Republic
of Turkey came into being.

"But Obama uttering the word ‘genocide’? How is that going to help?" I
asked myself, as I watched the Turk and the Armenian head home from
dinner, back to their 18-month-old child.

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