ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION: PRESIDENT OBAMA AND THE PRICE OF MORAL COURAGE
Christian Science Monitor
n/2010/0308/Armenian-Genocide-Resolution-President -Obama-and-the-price-of-moral-courage
March 8 2010
The Armenian Genocide Resolution passed by a House committee last
week merely asks Obama to tell the truth. Given Turkey’s strategic
importance, that will be hard to do.
A resolution approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week,
in recognizing the Armenian Genocide, asks the Obama administration to
endorse history at the risk of insulting a needed ally. The passing
of House Resolution 252 introduces a new dynamic into the State
Department’s hopes for "normalization" of relations between Armenia
and Turkey.
The Armenian Genocide is marked as beginning April 24, 1915. On
the 94th anniversary last year, President Obama decried the "great
atrocities" – but defied his own campaign promise by following the
precedent of other modern presidents and stopping short of using the
word "genocide."
HR 252 calls on the president to use the annual April 24 message "to
accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation
of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud history
of United States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Genocide."
The fallout over the nonbinding resolution – Turkey withdrew its US
ambassador, and its prime minister called the resolution "a comedy" –
makes it most unlikely that it will either pass the full Congress or
nudge President Obama to call a historical fact by its proper name
next month. Indeed, the Obama administration urged the committee
not to pass the measure. The letdown will further erode the trust of
Armenians to whom he has become davatchan – a traitor.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has vowed to stop the resolution
where it stands. Mrs. Clinton was the chief diplomat behind a
three-country effort shared by Russia and Switzerland last October that
resulted in Turkey and Armenia agreeing to try to agree, and follow
a set of "protocols" intended to work out their deep differences.
The protocols meant to be a roadmap have led nowhere, as neither
country has ratified them. Armenia has even gone so far as to amend its
legislation on international treaties, allowing for "the suspension
or termination of agreements signed by Armenia before their entry
into force." Creating a pre-emptive exit strategy from cooperation
hardly portends kumbayah in the Caucasus.
Turkey (which closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in support of
Muslim cousin Azerbaijan in its war over the historically Armenian
enclave of Nagorno Karabakh) was the first to drag down the process,
by insisting that rapprochement cannot carry on unless Armenia returns
land it reclaimed from Azerbaijan. Turkey’s insistence on projecting
Karabakh into the discussion brings to question whether protocol
negotiators were literally on the same page.
The drafted, debated, signed-and-sent-to-parliaments document makes no
reference to the Karabakh issue. Armenians saw Turkey’s introduction
of this controversy into the protocol talks (after they were signed)
as unacceptable. Washington diplomats – mindful of the delicate and
protracted negotiations over Karabakh – encouraged Turkey to seek
harmony with Armenia "without preconditions" – or in this case,
"postconditions."
Nonetheless, members of Congress debating HR252 last Thursday and
indeed Clinton herself in subsequent statements, seemed either
uninformed or dismissive of the reality that "normalization" has
reverted to the unfortunate normal state of acrid dislike between
Armenia and Turkey.
Clinton’s claim that endorsing the resolution would damage the
protocol process plays perfectly into Turkey’s position as the
aggrieved nation. Neither she nor the Turks concede that the attempt
at reconciliation has been a blunder that not only hasn’t worked, but
has torn scabs off wounds that irritate the Turkey-Armenia healing
process. What was meant to be a document uniting nations has left
the republics divided. And while open borders were intended, closed
minds have prevailed.
The process has also split Armenia’s vast diaspora and has been a
source of division domestically – in a cantankerous country that needs
no encouragement to divide its diminished self. A large segment of the
Armenian diaspora rejected the protocols from the start. (Significantd
diaspora institutions endorsed the document, but their support was
muted compared to contrary outcry.)
Opponents contested a clause that calls for a "historical commission"
to explore what happened from 1915 to 1923 in the Ottoman Empire. They
reasoned that such a commission would cast doubt on (as candidate
Obama called it) the "overwhelming body of historical evidence" and
in doing so would betray lost souls to whom nearly every Armenian
can trace a link.
The diaspora is unhappy. The natives are uncertain. Turkey
is stonewalling. Azerbaijan is threatening war. Is this the
"normalization" the State Department envisioned?
The Obama administration won’t call genocide by its ugly but
scientifically-deserved name because Ankara effectively said to
Washington in March what it said to Yerevan last October: "Share
our blindness to history so that we all might squint our way to a
brighter future."
By passing this resolution, a congressional committee has hurt Turkey’s
feelings, and the resulting pout could harm American interests. Moral
courage carries a higher price than the US can afford.
This resolution – like similar ones before it – will be stopped from
going any further. Convenience will trump conscience because Turkey’s
importance to US strategic interests is too great. Armenia, landlocked,
crippled by Post-Soviet-Syndrome and a soaring national debt, offers
nothing – except a share in the just side of moral judgment. All
it takes is a word that, again, won’t be spoken by the world’s most
influential voice.
American journalist John Hughes is founder and Editor in Chief of
ArmeniaNow internet daily in Yerevan, Armenia.