FALLOUT FROM THE US "GENOCIDE" VOTE – ANALYTICS

APA
March 10 2010
Azerbaijan

By Alexander Jackson, Caucasian Review of International Affairs
exclusively for APA

The tangled relationship between history and politics was underlined
last week when the US House Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly voted
to label the 1915 massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as
‘genocide’ (BBC, March 5). In principle the resolution now moves to
the floor of the House for a full vote.

In practice, this is unlikely to happen. The Obama Administration
stayed oddly quiet in the run-up to the committee vote, until,
at the last minute, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acted. She
called on committee chairman Howard Berman to acknowledge that a vote
would damage US-Turkish ties and undermine efforts at reconciliation
between Turkey and Armenia. The US government is now moving to block
the resolution coming before the full House (RFE/RL, March 5).

However, its opposition has been weak, and certainly less vociferous
than that of George Bush in 2007, when a similar resolution was
passed. The current Administration’s last-minute scramble looks like
a foreign-policy miscalculation rather than a deliberate omission,
although the reaction in Turkey is nonetheless furious.

If the resolution stays out of the House, then Turkey is likely to
limit its immediate response to angry protests and denunciations.

However, the longer term implications are harder to gauge, and
potentially serious. Suat Kiniklioglu, a representative of Turkey’s
ruling AKP, made it clear that the implications of a full vote would
be serious: "Everything from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Iraq to the
Middle East process would be affected. There would be major disruption
to the relationship between Turkey and the US" (Guardian, March 5).

The most commonly voiced danger is that Ankara would deny the US
access to the Incirlik air base, a vital logistical hub for supplying
Afghanistan and an essential part of any plan to withdraw from Iraq.

Turkey might also withdraw its forces from Afghanistan. Either of these
may be too harsh and too obvious a measure, but both will become more
viable options if the relationship deteriorates further. The main
danger is more subtle. Turkish cooperation on vital issues would be
much harder to come by. In particular, securing Ankara’s assistance to
pressure Iran over its nuclear programme would be extremely difficult.

The damage may already have been done. The perception that Washington
does not value Turkey’s strategic leverage has been underlined by
the vote, even if the White House now fights to stop it going to
the House. In a politically charged atmosphere such as Turkey, the
actions of the US legislature are likely to be conflated with the
opinions of the executive.

In this respect the remarks of committee chairman Berman come across
as flippant and dismissive. He stated that Turkey is "a vital and,
in most respects, a loyal ally of the United States", which could
easily be construed as a patronising chastisement (House Foreign
Affairs Committee, March 4). More significantly, he brushed aside
Turkish criticism by arguing that "Turkey values its relations with
the United States at least as much as we value our relations with
Turkey." In other words, you need us too much to respond to this.

Such attitudes will hardly reduce the existing strains on the
Turkish-American alliance. Recent events will intensify Ankara’s
strategic shift towards Russia (notwithstanding the fact that
Russia’s State Duma too has officially recognised 1915 events as
genocide). Any policies or geopolitical shifts which seem to oppose
‘American imperialism’ will be loudly welcomed on the Turkish streets,
a fact which will not be lost on the populist AKP.

In fact, although the Turkish government asserts otherwise, this
growing tide of nationalist anger could do serious damage to the
protocols which would formalise the rapprochement with Armenia. The AKP
holds the parliamentary majority necessary to ratify the protocols,
but was unwilling to push the matter too hard even before the US
committee vote. In the aftermath of the resolution, nationalist anger
will only intensify, forcing the AKP to expend even more political
capital on ratification.

It may be unwilling to do so, and prefer to view the current clamour as
a justification to block ratification, blaming the issue on Armenia and
its powerful diaspora in the US. Reassuringly, it seems the AKP, hoping
that a full House vote on the resolution will be blocked, is unlikely
to resort to such measures at the moment, although the rapprochement
has certainly been damaged by the vote – as Turkish Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu observed bluntly, "Further intervention by third
parties will render this normalization impossible" (Sundays Zaman,
March 7). Turkey undertook the rapprochement out of its own national
interest, not to please Washington, but the vote looks like a clumsy
attempt to lean on Ankara.

That is the crux of the matter. Mr Berman insists that the resolution
is simply historical. But Washington must understand that this vote
is construed – in Ankara and across Turkey – as undue, poorly-timed
pressure on the normalisation process between Turkey and Armenia.

After all, Turks may reasonably ask, why now?

The Obama Administration is likely to salvage the matter for now by
keeping the vote out of the House. But its lacklustre response to
the issue will not win America many friends in Turkey, which has been
decidedly underwhelmed by the US in recent years. Simply assuming that
Turkey needs America, or taking it for granted, is short-sighted. The
consequences of the current crisis may not be visible for some time,
but they could be serious.