CAN TURKISH AND ARMENIAN DIASPORAS OPEN THE CHANNELS OF DIALOGUE?

Hurriyet
March 8 2010
Turkey

The first round of the annual "genocide" resolution fight is over.

Though there are different interpretations for the close call and
controversially managed House Foreign Relations Committee voting,
both sides can claim victory following the result.

The Armenians announced that the victory was attained in spite of the
powerful lobbying forces of the Turkish government in Washington,
and the Turks argue that the close result was a testament to the
maturity of the Turkish diaspora in America which proved that it had
now learned the rules of the game.

I think even though the resolution passed at the committee last
Thursday and that this result declares the Armenians’ victory for now,
the same result also sent a chill to the powerful Armenian-American
diaspora, who always came to see this committee voting as a piece of
cake, until this year.

I have contacted many leaders in the Turkish-American community
after the committee vote to get a sense how they view the result. I
also tried to have the same conversations with leaders among the
Armenian-Americans, but I have failed to reach them so far.

One of the questions I asked to those Turkish leaders was whether the
Turkish and Armenian communities can ever reconcile, at least some of
their differences. Would it be possible to hold panels and discussions,
like the one just organized last week in Yerevan between Turkish and
Armenian thinkers?

Many of the executives and leaders of the different Turkish
associations said they have hopes for closer relationships with
the Armenian diaspora, nevertheless they stated that the pressure
that the Armenian diaspora utilizes at many levels, including the
stiff lobbying in states across America to append the events of the
1915 as a "genocide" in school textbooks, adds daily tension to the
relationships between the two communities.

"Being under constant attack was just one of the factors that pumped
up Turkish communities to fight harder this year," according to
Ali Cınar, one of the vice presidents of the Assembly of Turkish
American Associations, or ATAA. Cınar said, as the attacks on the
Turkish community increased, the grassroots of the Turkish community
also started to better organize.

Mr. Gunay Evinch, the president of ATAA, said to me in an interview:
"The ATAA led many different Turkish associations intellectually
and practically. They targeted those Foreign Affairs Committee
members across America that potentially can take stances against
the resolution."

Evinch said: "We worked systematically this year, did more aggressive
fundraising in many states and organize other events. We had meetings
at the State Department, with the staff of the National Security
Council and various Intelligent Communities to explain Turkey’s
position at the executive level."

And Evinch argued they were able to send clear messages to the Congress
arguing how this bill would damage the normalization process between
Turkey and Armenia, and how the Turks see this bill as humiliating.

The president of the Turkish forum, Mr. Kayaalp Buyukataman said in a
phone interview while he was in Turkey, "It took sometime to energize
the Turkish diaspora in the States, however it seems that the long
years of work have now born fruit."

According to Buyukataman, "Turkish-Americans are the most educated
and wealthy ethnic segment when one compares them with other people
that belong to the different backgrounds."

However, he said, "Until now, we have waited for the Turkish state
like a father to do everything for us, but Ankara also asked the
Turkish-American community to stay sedated when it comes to these
matters in the past. However the views have changed on both sides,
and the Turkish officials have come to appreciate our work."

Kaya Boztepe, president of the Federation of Turkish American
Associations, echoed the same sentiment in his email and announced
that Turkish-American organizations had stopped being on the defensive
with the latest 22-23 Thursday tally.

"Turkey’s increasing importance makes it more difficult for U.S.

administrations to let these resolutions be put on a vote in the
House floor," says Kemal Oksuz, president of the Turquoise Council of
Americans and Eurasians, one of the (Fethullah) Gulen organizations
that have been growing rapidly in recent years.

Oksuz was able to give the most detailed report on what happened
behind the scenes before and during the resolution debate at the House
Committee. Oksuz said, "The lobbying firms that have been paid loads
of money in Washington by Turkey actually worsen the image of Turkey
at the Congress, rather than helping. Instead, civil grassroots’
visits to the Congressional members, especially in their districts,
made the biggest differences run up to the Thursday voting."

All of the Turkish leaders in America I talked to past week, complained
about Howard Berman’s tendentious managing of the vote as head of the
committee. According to many firsthand accounts I have heard, Berman,
even chased a couple of the committee members to their offices to bring
them to vote and especially the junior ones faced the most pressure,
some who resisted to come to the voting room until the last minute.

Mahmut Yeter, the executive director of the Midatlantic Turkic American
Association, another Turkish-American association that has proximity to
the Gulen Movement, said: "Turkish constituencies maintain their close
relationships with their Congressional members and host them when it
is possible for dinners and award ceremonies, even if some of those
representatives were going to vote against to the Turkish position."

Yeter concluded: "With persistence, but while respectfully elaborating
their cause, those Turkish grassroots become more convincing and less
irrupting than the Armenians."

He also said, "[They is] more visible Turkish diplomacy in the
international arena, [their] work and arguing for Turkey’s position
to those Congressional members has also become easier."

These Turkish grassroots leaders expect to see more similar resolutions
appear, at least until 2015, when the hundredth years of the events
of 1915 will be remembered. However, if the resolution does not
pass this year amid heavily Democratic Party-dominated Congress and
ahead of an election year, with the supporters like Obama and other
key cabinet members who voted for similar resolutions in the past,
one wonders how will the similar resolutions will pass in the future.

One would think with the effectiveness that the Turkish grassroots
organizations have proved this year, the Armenians will have harder
times being successful in coming years.

None of the Turkish representatives that I talked to opposed to the
idea of having dialogue with the Armenian diaspora, accepting that the
both sides cannot settle all the problems. And I think nobody expects
from either side to give up on their causes, or change perceptions
about the past. However, maybe the time is for closer dialogue and
interactions should be near, at least for the newer generations of
both communities. This is maybe an early dream – but a dream that
will be realized sooner or later.

I will try more to get in touch with those leaders in the Armenian
community to reflect their views as well. I hope we can at least open
the channels of simple dialogue and the exchange of ideas for now.