news.az, Azerbaijan
March 6 2010
US Azerbaijanis regret over US Congress decision
Sat 06 March 2010 | 06:33 GMT Text size:
US Congress Azerbaijani-American organizations express regret over the
US Congressional Committee’s attempt to legislate history.
On March 4, 2010, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of
Representatives voted to endorse the resolution H252, calling for the
recognition of the World War I killings in Eastern Anatolia as
"Armenian genocide". The resolution adopted in the committee by a
narrow margin vote of 23-22 attempts to legislate history and impose a
one-sided interpretation of it under the influence of ethnic special
interest groups.
The House Resolution H252 unfairly accuses Turkish nation of carrying
out a premeditated genocide against the Armenian population of Ottoman
Empire during the World War I. Article Two of the 1948 UN Convention
on Genocide, adopted some three decades after World War I and
non-retroactive in its application, describes genocide as carrying out
acts intended "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic,
racial or religious group". According to a prominent genocide scholar
Guenter Lewy, the Ottoman government’s decision to relocate Armenians
away from Eastern Anatolian front lines was due to the organized
warfare launched by Armenian forces fighting on Russian side against
Ottoman Empire, and did not constitute a premeditated program of
extermination. The alleged intent of Ottoman Turkish government to
eliminate Armenian population cannot be established due to
non-deportation of Armenian communities of major Ottoman cities like
Istanbul, Izmir and Aleppo. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of
Turks and Kurds, for whom no recognition was ever extended, also
perished in Eastern Anatolia at the hands of Russian army and Armenian
forces during the same period of time. Other experts on the regional
history, including Bernard Lewis, Stanford Shaw and Justin McCarthy,
also rejected the deliberate and one-sided labeling of these
historical events as "Armenian genocide".
The H. Res. 252 also derails the Turkish-Armenian rappochement as well
as the related Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process in the Caucasus
region. Since 1993, Armenia forcibly occupies 20% of the territory of
neighboring Azerbaijan and nearly 1 million Azeri Turks, displaced by
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, are unable to return to their homes.
Furthermore, Armenia refrains from recognizing the 1921 Kars Treaty
thus refusing to respect the territorial integrity of its neighbors,
Turkey and Azerbaijan. The historical revisionism embodied in H.Res.
252 under the pressure of ethnic-interest lobby is not only wasteful
at a time when numerous other challenges are facing our nation
requiring the attention of U.S. Congress. It also bring damage to the
U.S. foreign policy in the volatile Middle East and serves to reward
the counter productive and non-compromising position assumed by the
Republic of Armenia against a key U.S. ally, Turkey.
AAC and ASA join Azeri- and Turkic-Americans in thanking the 22 House
Representatives who voted against H. Res. 252 in the Foreign Affairs
Committee. We call upon all U.S. legislators and foreign policy
experts to help the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement by letting the two
sides resolve their historical woes without interference, and instead
focus their efforts on speedy and peaceful resolution of conflicts in
the Caucasus region.
News.Az
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress