Spiegel Online, Germany
Oct 12 2007
ARMENIAN LOBBY’S TRIUMPH:
Genocide Resolution Risks Shattering Relations with Turkey
By Gregor Peter Schmitz in Washington
A small resolution with a big effect: A US Congressional committee
has voted to call the massacre of Armenians during World War I
genocide — a move that now threatens to shatter the Turkish-American
friendship. The history of the resolution is a lesson in the power of
lobbying.
AFP
Picture circa 1915 of Turkish soldiers standing next to the hanged
bodies of Armenians.
Stephen Walt is a down-to-earth man who doesn’t like long sentences.
He is a professor at Harvard and together with his colleague from
Chicago John Mearsheimer he caused quite a fuss earlier this year.
They published an article and then a book with the simple title "The
Israel Lobby." Their central thesis: A small group of very
influential friends of Israel have forced US foreign policy into an
unconditional backing of Israel, which is damaging Americans’
strategic interests.
When SPIEGEL ONLINE recently asked Walt if other interest groups had
a similar influence in Washington, the realist wouldn’t hear of it.
He said that the actions of Armenian-Americans or Cuban-Americans
would never have the same far-reaching effects on US foreign policy.
Really? Two days ago the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs
Committee approved a remarkable resolution. The mass murder of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire starting in 1915 was to be named
genocide.
The result was a medium-level political earthquake. US President
George W. Bush reacted with anger. Turkey temporarily recalled its
ambassador from Washington, and Turkish newspapers seethed with rage.
And all that even though the resolution is only symbolic in character
and won’t be presented to Congress for a vote until November. How
could it go so far?
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publication. Armenians say that more than 1.5 million people were
killed during the deportations and massacres during World War I,
while according to Turkish figures between 200,000 and 300,000
Armenians were killed. Turkey still refuses to accept the description
of the crimes as genocide and speaks instead of the "repression" of a
rebellious people who were allied with the Russians during World War
I.
The Triumph of the Armenian Lobby
Armenian-Americans have been fighting for years to have the massacre
of Armenians be officially named genocide in the United States.
Concerns over a lasting cooling of relations between Turkey and the
US had always prevented a genocide resolution being passed —
President Bush had failed to stick to his election promise to work
towards the recognition of the genocide. He regularly declined to use
the word genocide in his annual speech in April to mark the beginning
of the massacres. In 2000 a similar draft resolution was pulled when
US President Bill Clinton intervened at the last moment.
The fact that it has now been approved is a triumph for the "Armenian
Lobby," if you want to call them that. Around 1.2 million Americans
have Armenian forefathers and many of them grew up listening to the
tales of the suffering of their people.
Armenian-Americans are particularly active in California, New Jersey
and Michigan — which happens to be the constituency of Nancy Pelosi,
the Democratic Speaker of the House. Her Californian colleague Adam
Schiff, who promoted the resolution, has the issue to thank for his
own political career. His predecessor in the constituency lost his
seat when he failed to push through the resolution in 2000.
Armenian groups have been bombarding their representatives over the
past few years with an unusually massive PR drive. Their most
important umbrella group "Armenian Assembly of America" has 10,000
members and an annual budget of over $3.5 million. It employs four
different influential PR firms in Washington to keep the suffering of
the Armenians on the agenda in the US capital.
The Turkish government couldn’t do enough to counter them, even
though for years it has invested millions of dollars in presenting
its arguments. Ankara engaged prominent former representatives like
Republican Bob Livingston, who even produced his own video in which
he argued against unnecessarily damaging relations with Turkey. And
he said that Turkey was still an important symbol of how a Muslim
society can build democratic structures.
In the complicated intertwining of minority representation in the US,
many Americans with Armenian roots also say the approval of the
resolution as a sign that they have arrived in the center of American
society. They compare their lobby work with the success of the Jewish
lobby in the US, which has anchored the commemoration of the
Holocaust in Americans’ collective memory.
Washington is Worried
Admittedly they have a long way to go: the massive protests against
the resolution showed the effects of its passage a day later. Of
course, some representatives ruefully admitted that perhaps it was
not the best of the timing. According to the hearing, the
congressional representatives are already considering another
resolution — one that would stress how important relations with its
Turkish ally are to the US.
And President George W. Bush immediately expressed his concern,
saying the initiative undermines relations with a close ally in the
fight against terrorism. All eight living former US Secretaries of
State signed a letter of protest against the resolution. Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates sought to remind people that around 70 percent
of all air transports for the US troops heading to Iraq go through
Turkey. And US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs,
Nicholas Burns, tried for an entire day at the beginning of the week
to convince members of Congress to veto the resolution.
That’s an awful lot of attention paid to a vote about an historical
event about which very few Americans (or even Europeans) know the
details. But because the memory of the Armenian suffering is still a
delicate subject for modern Turkey, any attempt to deal with it risks
being a powder keg for the once-warm relationship between the US and
Turkey.
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The relationship has been approaching a crisis for some time —
recently more than ever because the Turks are agitated about the
attacks by militant Kurdish troops in Iraq and are even considering a
military attack. The US wants to avoid this at all costs. Turkey’s
logistical support for the US-led Iraq invasion is, in turn, still
highly controversial. A current poll reported that 83 percent of
Turks would wish to discontinue such support if the US Congress votes
to pass the Armenian resolution.
The Turks have proven in the past that such threats are not empty
promises: When the French parliament passed a resolution making
denial of the Armenian genocide a crime punishable by law in 2006,
the Turkish broke off their military relationship with France. But up
until now there has been no clear sign — aside from the short-term
departure of the ambassador to Washington — that they would go far
beyond symbolic gestures.
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