IT’S TIME TO TELL IT LIKE IT IS ABOUT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Roxanne Makasdjian
San Francisco Chronicle, CA
Nov 4 2007
The Armenian genocide resolution pending in Congress (HR106) has
prompted debate about whether it’s the right time for the United
States to officially recognize the systematic annihilation of the
Armenian population in Turkey, perpetrated by the government of the
Ottoman Empire in 1915. Against increasingly bold denials of history
and unjustifiable intimidation by Turkey, now is the best time for
our country to tell it like it is.
A wave of disinformation has been disseminated by the Turkish and
U.S. administrations since the resolution passed the House Committee on
Foreign Affairs on Oct. 10. Turkey’s threats have included cutting off
the use of our air base, thus restricting our military shipments, and
intervening in northern Iraq, destabilizing the only relatively quiet
part of that country. The rationale for those threats is deceptive,
the resolution being a convenient excuse to threaten to disrupt
U.S. military actions in Iraq to advance Turkey’s own interests.
The fact is that we needn’t become hostage to blackmail. In 2003,
without an Armenian genocide resolution up for a vote, Turkey refused
to allow us to use our base at Incirlik to invade Iraq. We carried
out the invasion successfully anyway. The United States has numerous
military bases in the area – in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan,
Bulgaria, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan – from which we
can operate.
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Turkish Daily News
have all quoted U.S. officials saying that if Turkey cut off our base
or supply lines, it would not greatly affect our military operations.
And, according to a recent article in Defense News, the Armenian
genocide resolution wouldn’t even "dent" U.S. arms sales to Turkey.
Several years ago, when France passed a similar resolution, arms
sales between France and Turkey were back to booming within months.
Turkey’s strategic interests are much more dependent on good
relations with the United States than vice versa. If we tolerate
Turkey’s blackmail, we actually weaken our position in the strategic
relationship and embolden others in the region to blackmail us.
Turkey’s threats against the Kurds in Iraq are also not new, nor a
result of the pending resolution. Successive Turkish governments have
had claims on the oil-rich, northern Iraqi region of Kirkuk and Mosul
from as early as the 1930s. Turkish governments have also treated
their 20 million Kurds worse than second-class citizens.
Anti-Americanism has reached new heights in Turkey not because of
the Armenian genocide resolution, but because of opposition to the
U.S. intervention in Iraq and the consequent formation of a Kurdish
autonomous government controlling the oil revenue in northern Iraq.
As Graham Fuller, former vice chairman of the CIA’s National
Intelligence Council, wrote recently, "Turkish-American relations have
been deteriorating for years, and the root explanation is simple and
harsh: Washington’s policies are broadly and fundamentally incompatible
with Turkish foreign policy interests in multiple arenas."
Despite all this, the United States has been enabling Turkey’s denial
of the genocide, damaging our reputation and giving a junior ally
the upper hand in a relationship in which we should be leading. Last
year, the U.S. government went as far as dismissing our ambassador to
Armenia, John Evans, for discussing the Armenian genocide. President
Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have recently gone
further, referring to the Armenian genocide as an open historical
question needing more study.
This position contradicts the vast majority of historians and Holocaust
and genocide studies that recognize this event as unambiguous genocide,
as well as the abundant documentation in our own national archives,
including the memoirs of the U.S. ambassador to Ottoman Turkey in
1915, Henry Morgenthau, who wrote of witnessing the "extermination
of a whole race."
Turkey has even reached into our educational system by lobbying
against inclusion of the Armenian genocide in our textbooks, and
against local remembrances of the genocide, as was the case when
Armenian Americans purchased San Francisco’s Mount Davidson Cross in
memory of their slain forefathers.
In Turkey today, discussion of the Armenian genocide is a crime
carrying as many as 10 years in prison. Scores of writers, professors
and community leaders are being prosecuted under this law, legitimizing
the undemocratic, nationalist fervor of the Turkish masses. In
this context, the government’s call for a commission of Turkish and
Armenian historians to study the "events of 1915" is simply a way to
bury the truth.
Contrary to opponents’ claims, House Resolution 106 does not condemn
present-day Turkey for the crimes of its predecessor, nor does it
demand that Turkey recognize the genocide. It simply reaffirms the
historical record, a necessary affirmation when faced with massive
denial. Congress has passed recent resolutions reaffirming the truth
of the Holocaust as well as the genocides in Cambodia, Ukraine,
Bosnia and Darfur.
Most recently, we watched Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi give the
Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama, despite China’s warnings
that such action would be detrimental to U.S.-China relations. Giving
in to similar warnings from Turkey would highlight the hypocrisy
in that action and signal to the world that we have a clear double
standard when it comes to human rights. The longer the United States
helps Turkey’s denial, the longer the denial will continue, and the
longer we’ll be hostage to it. Instead, we should help steer Turkey
toward democracy, for its own sake – and ours.
Roxanne Makasdjian is chair of the Bay Area Armenian National
Committee. Contact us at [email protected].
This article appeared on page E – 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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