THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION IS A FARCE ALL AROUND
Henri Barkey
Hurriyet
March 3 2010
Turkey
The United States 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 the 1915 massacre of over a million Armenians
by Ottoman Turks as "genocide." As in the past, the resolution is
not likely to get very far. But this year, it portends great damage
to the Barack Obama administration’s attempts to rescue a fragile
Turkey-Armenia reconciliation.
To be clear, the overwhelming historical evidence demonstrates what
took place in 1915 was genocide. But while some U.S. lawmakers feel
strongly about the Armenian genocide resolution, most realize 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 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 did not 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 does not believe there was an Armenian genocide any more
than a Holocaust.
And what of the Turks? You would think they would 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 the killing of 400 Azeris by the Armenians during the 1992
Nagorno-Karabakh war as 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 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 to make a meaningful difference
in Armenians’ lives by ending their economic isolation.
The Obama administration has been pushing for a deal to 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 would
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. This piece was first published by
the Washington Post.