RESOLUTION OPENS OLD ETHNIC TENSION
By: Rebecca Putterman, Staff Writer
University of North Carolina The Daily Tar Heel, NC
/paper885/news/2007/10/15/City/Resolution.Opens.Ol d.Ethnic.Tension-3032344.shtml
Oct 15 2007
A century-old debate resurfaced in the U.S. Congress last week that
pits historical atrocities against the present realities of a delicate
American foreign policy.
The House Committee on Foreign Affairs passed a resolution condemning
the 1915 massacre of 1.5 million Armenians as a genocidal campaign
by Turkey.
Turkey, a key American ally in the war on terror, reacted to the
resolution by threatening to withdraw its support for the war in Iraq,
and Armenians and Turks throughout the states have responded to a
renewal of old tensions.
U.S. Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., who serves on the foreign affairs
committee, voted against the resolution for cultural reasons.
"I would love to think that we had the standing in the world to pass a
resolution like that and make another nation feel ashamed and examine
their history and feel that there’s something they need to do to make
amends," Miller said.
"We do not have that standing in the world, particularly in the
Muslim world, and I think that the Turkish citizens will feel insulted
and angry."
Yet 27 of the 48 committee members approved the resolution with the
Armenian victims in mind.
Ninety-five years later, there are still millions of Armenians who live
daily with the pain of what they see as an unacknowledged atrocity.
UNC junior Maria Bagdasarian is the great-granddaughter of survivors
who fled the massacre and arrived in Syria on foot to start over.
"This is a group of people that have been struggling for years to
get this recognized," Bagdasarian said.
But Armenians aren’t the only ones living with the past. Turkish
students are also being faced with the issue, as they try to understand
their nation’s history and how it affects them today.
Turkish student Pinar Gurel, a junior at UNC, said that the topic
is taboo among Turks because the massacres were committed under the
Ottoman Empire, not orchestrated by present-day Turkey.
"There’s no evidence that it was a genocide, that it was specifically
planned and plotted against Armenians," Gurel said.
She added that there isn’t sufficient evidence that it was a genocide,
as opposed to a lot of Armenians dying during World War I and Turkey’s
coinciding struggle to become a republic.
The Armenian Assembly of America, a key lobbying group in Washington,
D.C., argues otherwise.
"You have a mountain of evidence that it was a genocide, so we should
not shy away from calling it as such," said Bryan Ardouny, executive
director of the assembly.
He said that if people don’t recognize past genocides, they will
never learn to prevent them in the future.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged the mass murders but
warned Congress of the resolution’s repercussions for the war, as
access to a Turkish military base is pivotal for supplying U.S. troops.
"This is clearly a very sensitive subject for one of our closest
allies, and an ally that is incredibly important to the United States
in terms of our operations in Iraq," Gates stated in a press release.
Miller said that keeping Turkey as an ally will be beneficial for
foreign policy beyond the war in Iraq.
"I would rather use what limited credentials we have in the world
right now to urge other nations to join with us to stop the genocide
in Darfur, more than trying to sort through the history and moral
obligations of events in 1915."