International Herald Tribune, France
Oct 19 2007
Pitfalls abound if U.S. labels slaughter of Armenians a genocide
The Associated PressPublished: October 19, 2007
It’s a dispute that goes back nearly a century – yet suddenly it’s
overshadowing everything from America’s engagement in Afghanistan and
Iraq to Turkey’s friendship with Israel and its drive to join the EU.
The World War I-era slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians by
Ottoman Turks has come back to haunt policy makers in Washington,
where the U.S. House of Representatives is wrestling with a
resolution that would condemn the killings as a genocide.
Its backers, who include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel,
insist there’s no statute of limitations on human cruelty. Idealism
must triumph over realpolitik, they contend, maintaining a failure to
do so would be tantamount to trivializing the Nazi Holocaust.
But skeptics tick off a long list of geopolitical reasons that they
contend make the resolution the wrong decision at the wrong time.
Analysts warn that alienating Turkey – a key NATO ally – could lead
the U.S. into "a moral blind alley" with serious repercussions for
years to come.
"It’s not a good idea right now. And beyond that, it’s never a good
idea to turn back the clock that far and try to rub something in that
you know is very sensitive," said Robert McGeehan, a specialist in
American policy at Chatham House, a London think tank.
Although congressional support for the resolution has eroded since
Turkey recalled its ambassador in protest after it cleared the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other
Democratic leaders fiercely defend it as a moral imperative.
"Such denial at the highest level of government would be unbelievable
and grotesque," the Hartford Courant said in an editorial this week.
But others say a backlash from Turkey would cut off American access
to the critical Incirlik Air Base, through which more than half of
U.S. fuel and other supplies for the campaigns in Iraq and
Afghanistan flows.
They say the resolution’s passage also would embolden Turkey to carry
out cross-border attacks on Kurdish rebel camps in northern Iraq.
President Bush has asked Pelosi to not call for a House vote, warning
that it could cripple U.S. relations with Turkey. On Thursday,
Defense Secretary Robert Gates agreed, saying it threatened to damage
ties "perhaps beyond repair."
Turkey denies the 1915-17 deaths constituted genocide. It says the
toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil
war and unrest in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire.
"Nobody has the right to judge Turkey like this," Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week, warning that any nation that
does "will pay the price."
His foreign policy adviser, Egemen Bagis, said Turkey should impose
sanctions on Armenia because it supports the resolution. That would
set back years of efforts at rapprochement between the two countries.
"Congressional action would make Turks more, not less, reluctant to
face the historical issue and move towards some form of meaningful
reconciliation," said Anthony H. Cordesman, former director of
intelligence assessment at the Pentagon and now an analyst with the
private Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The resolution also threatens to upset some delicate diplomacy in the
Middle East, where Turkey has been mediating between Syria and
Israel.
Israel considers mostly Muslim Turkey its best friend in the Islamic
world. Israel has lucrative weapons deals with Turkey, and Turkey is
the No. 1 tourist destination for Israelis.
But the Jewish state can’t afford to alienate Washington, by far its
most important ally, so it’s walking a tightrope – acknowledging the
Armenian suffering while stopping short of calling it genocide.
In the U.S., critics question Pelosi’s motives, noting she has a
large Armenian-American constituency. They say the resolution is
shortsighted and warn it could confront the next U.S. president with
a major foreign policy crisis.
"I believe the House of Representatives may have gotten itself into a
moral blind alley," Jason Lee Steorts wrote in a commentary for the
National Review.
The House isn’t the first to wrestle with the thorny question of the
Armenian slaughter.
Last year, the European Parliament drafted a resolution that
originally demanded that Turkey acknowledge the killings as a
genocide before it can join the EU.
But at the last moment, it amended the resolution to say it was
"indispensable" for Turkey to come to terms with its past.
Some countries or leaders have declared the mass killings a genocide
– most notably France, which last year made it a crime to deny the
slaughter was genocide. Turkey retaliated by cutting off military
ties.
When Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper publicly proclaimed the
slaughter a genocide in 2006, Turkey promptly pulled out of a
military exercise in Canada and briefly recalled its ambassador.