THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION IS A FARCE ALL AROUND
By Henri J. Barkey
Washington Post
article/2010/03/02/AR2010030202375.html?hpid=opini onsbox1
March 2 2010
The House of Representatives has decided to make a problem from the
past into a problem of the present. On Thursday, the House foreign
affairs committee is set to launch its fruitless annual effort
to declare that the 1915 massacre of over a million Armenians by
Ottoman Turks was genocide. As in the past, the resolution isn’t
likely to get very far. But this year, it portends great damage to
the Obama administration’s attempts to rescue a fragile Turkey-Armenia
reconciliation.
To be clear, the overwhelming historical evidence demonstrates that
what took place in 1915 was genocide. But while some U.S. lawmakers
feel strongly about the Armenian genocide resolution, most realize
that no moral good can come from a label applied almost a century
later. They support the resolution only to score points with the
highly organized Armenian-American lobby. And they know full well that
pressure from Turkey, which remains a critical U.S. ally, ultimately
will prevent passage on the House floor.
The cynicism of this effort is matched only by the cynicism of the
Armenians and the Turks.
For Armenians, the genocide issue is of paramount concern, and Armenian
populations in Europe have even supported laws punishing Armenian
genocide deniers. Yet in 2007, Yerevan State University awarded an
honorary degree to the No. 1 Holocaust denier in the world: Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. The Iranian president not only invited fellow deniers
to Tehran for a "conference," but he has systematically called for
the destruction a member state of the United Nations. This clearly
didn’t bother Armenian politicians who, in the interest of fostering
ongoing friendly ties with neighboring Iran, decided to honor him.
They must have been disappointed, though, when Ahmadinejad skipped
a trip to Yerevan’s Armenian Genocide Memorial, citing important
obligations in Tehran. Maybe he values his country’s relations with
the Turks, or maybe he doesn’t believe there was an Armenian genocide
any more than a Holocaust.
And what of the Turks? You’d think they’d be careful about throwing
around a word like genocide. On the contrary, in a country where a
Turkish citizen can be jailed for arguing that the Ottoman massacres
were genocide, Turks will hurl that accusation at almost anyone else.
The speaker of the Turkish parliament recently declared that the
killing of 400 Azeris by the Armenians during the 1992 Nagorno-Karabakh
war was genocide. Turkish politicians have on numerous occasions
accused Israel of genocide in the occupied territories. And last year,
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the Chinese of
committing genocide in Xinjiang, where interethnic riots killed 200
people. (He did, however, deny that the Sudanese government’s actions
in Darfur were genocidal, on the grounds that "Muslims do not commit
genocide.")
The Turks, Armenians and the United States all dilute the meaning of
the word genocide by playing politics with it. But the U.S. alone has
the power to help broker an agreement that would make a meaningful
difference in Armenians’ lives, by ending their economic isolation.
The Obama administration has been pushing for a deal that would
normalize Turkish-Armenian relations and open the borders between
them. Realizing the delicacy of the situation, Obama made a point
to avoid "genocide" in his April 2009 statement commemorating the
start of the massacres, instead using the Armenian expression "Great
Catastrophe." Unfortunately, Turkish leaders have shown signs of cold
feet. And further antagonism would undoubtedly set back the process
for years.
With that in mind, the U.S. Congress should drop its annual Armenian
genocide resolution. And lawmakers worried about responding to
Armenian-American constituents should focus their efforts on helping to
mediate a reconciliation that would benefit Armenians. It’d be better
if they used their power to end ongoing fights than to pick old ones.
The writer is a nonresident visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace and professor of international relations at
Lehigh University.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
