ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION IN THE HOUSE DRAWS IRE FROM TURKEY
By Matt Palazzolo

The Heights, Boston College
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March 11 2010
MA

The U.S. House of Representatives resurrected a nearly 100-year-old
genocide controversy with a vote on Thursday.

The House Foreign Affairs committee passed, by a narrow 23-22 vote,
a non-binding resolution recognizing the mass killings of Armenians
by Turkish forces during World War I as genocide. By passing the
resolution, the committee is calling upon Congress to formally
recognize the genocide by passing its own binding law.

The Turkish government harshly condemned the committee’s actions.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed the resolution will
"damage bilateral relations between countries, their interests, and
their visions for the future." The Turkish government also recalled
its ambassador to the United States for consultations soon after the
House committee passed the resolution.

The Obama administration also denounced the resolution. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton stated that the administration "strongly
opposes the resolution … and will work very hard to make sure it
does not go to the House floor." Interestingly, President Obama,
Vice President Biden, and Clinton, all during their terms as senator,
urged the Bush administration to recognize the genocide.

The administration’s opposition to the bill is linked to American
foreign policy interests. The military has a base in Incirlik, Turkey,
which it has operated since the 1950s. The airbase has been used
as a launch point for reconnaissance flights when Saddam Hussein
ruled Iraq, as well as current military actions in Afghanistan and
the Middle East. Turkey is also a strategic partner with the United
States in the War on Terror and the present conflicts in Iraq and
Afghanistan. President Obama has recently prodded Turkey and Armenia
into signing an agreement to establish diplomatic relations and open
their respective borders to each other. Ironically, the day before the
House committee passed the resolution in question, Obama called the
Turkish prime minister and praised his efforts to normalize relations
with Armenia.

The disputed genocide occurred during World War I and in its aftermath,
when the Ottoman Empire was still in existence and Armenia was not yet
a sovereign state. The Ottomans entered the war in 1915, joining the
Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and began attacking
Russia. Armenians living in Turkey sympathized with Russia, due to
their shared Eastern Orthodox religion and Slavic culture.

Several volunteer Armenian army battalions actually fought alongside
Russian soldiers during a counter-offensive against the Ottomans in
the Caucasus region. In response, the Ottoman government arrested
Armenian political and intellectual leaders, and in May 1915, it
ordered the military to forcibly deport all Armenian citizens from
the country. More than one million Armenians were uprooted from their
homes and marched into the Arabian desert. The Armenians were treated
inhumanely by their Turkish escorts, often being denied food, shelter,
and rest. Soldiers would periodically massacre groups of Armenians
and leave their bodies behind to rot in the desert. The deportation
ended with the Central Powers’ defeat in World War I and the subsequent
collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey, the modern successor state to the Ottoman Empire, has
continuously denied that the Armenian genocide ever occurred.

According to the Turkish government, Armenian casualties can be linked
to sectarian violence between Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians,
unintentional deaths during the forced deportation process, and a
famine that occurred in Turkey during the war. The government disputes
the benchmark number of 1.5 million Armenian deaths, claiming that
roughly 500,000 Armenians reached their destination in Damascus
and the Euphrates River valley. Under current Turkish law, citizens
can be arrested and tried for "insulting Turkey" if they recognize
the genocide.

The formal definition for genocide, according to a 1948 U.N.

convention, is "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or
in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group." Turkey
alleges that the Ottoman government only intended to deport the
Armenians, while its detractors claim that their actions were actually
extermination disguised as deportation. Twenty countries, as well as
42 U.S. states, have recognized the Armenian genocide. In the academic
world, denial of the genocide is the minority view, with few historians
outside of Turkey refusing to recognize the time of absolute terror. In
politics, many countries, such as the United States and the United
Kingdom, acknowledge that atrocities took place but refuse to label
them as genocide for fear of reprisals from their Turkish allies.

The recent House committee resolution puts the Obama administration
in the awkward position of choosing between moral obligations and
political interests. As a presidential candidate, Obama stated that,
"America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian
genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides."

However, now Obama is confronted with an enraged Turkish government
on which the United States relies heavily for support in the War on
Terror. Obama’s idealism has been tested, and he has passed on the
opportunity to change the Bush administration’s official denial of
the genocide. It seems that in the world of politics, whether one is
Republican or Democrat, national interest still trumps morality.