Armenian ‘genocide’ bill to test US-Turkish ties again
Monday, February 8, 2010Ã`mit ENGÄ°NSOY
ANKARA – Hürriyet Daily News
A fresh Armenian `genocide’ resolution to be taken up by a
U.S. congressional panel early next monthcould once again put Turkey’s
relationship with the United States into jeopardy.
Howard Berman, the powerful Democratic chairman of the House of
Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, said Feb. 5 that he
intends to call a committee vote on the resolution March 4.
The resolution would call on President Barack Obama to ensure that
U.S. policy formally refers to the World War I-era killings of
Armenians during the last days of the Ottoman Empire as `genocide’ and
to use that term when he delivers his annual message on the issue in
April ` something Obama avoided doing last year.
If the resolution is endorsed by the committee, it will next head
toward a House floor vote. The same panel passed similar bills in
2000, 2005 and 2007, but the measures never came to a floor vote. In
all three cases, the administrations of former presidents Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush strongly lobbied against the resolutions.
Although such congressional bills are non-binding, Turkey has been
warning that any formal U.S. `genocide’ recognition, either by
Congress or the administration, would cause a major and lasting
deterioration of relations with the United States. Turkish diplomats
are now emphasizing that this policy remains in place.
Armenians welcome vote move
Armenian-American groups hailed Berman’s decision to hold a vote. `We
want to thank chairman Berman for his vision and strength in taking
this bold step to send the clear message to Turkey that the United
States Congress will not be complicit in their immoral efforts to deny
truth and justice for the Armenian genocide,’ said Ken Hachikian,
chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America.
`On behalf of the entire Armenian-American community, we welcome
chairman Berman’s announcement. We appreciate the chairman
n,’ said Bryan Ardouny, executive director of the Armenian Assembly of
America.
The `genocide’ recognition bill, H.R. 252, currently has more than 130
cosponsors in the 435-member House of Representatives. Obama views
Turkey as a key ally whose help is needed to solve confrontations from
Iran to Afghanistan.
Obama, who as a candidate referred to the killings as genocide, last
April used the Armenian term for `atrocity’ in his first presidential
address on the issue, angering U.S. Armenians.
Faltering reconciliation process
The U.S. president instead fully supported a Turkey-Armenia
reconciliation process, saying that he would refrain from moves
jeopardizing this process.
In October, Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed a set of
agreements under which Ankara and Yerevan would set up normal
diplomatic relations and reopen their land border. But the
normalization process is now faltering.
The Turkey-Armenia accord needs to be ratified by the parliaments of
the two neighboring countries before implementation, and there is no
indication of when either nation might bring the deal to its
parliaments.
One root of the problem is the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh dispute
between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s close friend and ally.
Turkey first wants to see progress toward a solution to the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict before opening its border with Armenia. And
the Armenians are hinting at no sign of this.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly Armenian-populated enclave inside
Azerbaijan, and parts of Azerbaijan proper have been under Armenian
occupation since a war in the early 1990s. As a result of this war,
Turkey has refused to set up normal diplomatic relations with Yerevan
and has been keeping its land border with Armenia closed since 1993.
Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide
Resolution (Introduced in House)
HRES 252 IH
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity c
nd genocide documented in the United States record relating to the
Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.
March 17, 2009
Mr. SCHIFF (for himself, Mr. RADANOVICH, Mr. PALLONE, Mr. KIRK,
Mr. BERMAN, Mr. CANTOR, Mr. MCCOTTER, Mr. ACKERMAN, Mr. ROYCE,
Mr. WAXMAN, Mr. SMITH of New Jersey, Ms. WATSON, Mr. BILIRAKIS,
Mr. CROWLEY, Mr. SENSENBRENNER, Mr. PAYNE, Mr. SHERMAN, Mr. WU,
Mr. SIRES, Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California, Mr. BARRETT of South
Carolina, Ms. ESHOO, Mr. CAPUANO, Mr. WEINER, Mr. HONDA, Mrs. MALONEY,
Mr. LANGEVIN, Mr. WALZ, Mr. PETERS, Ms. SUTTON, Mr. COSTA,
Mr. LOBIONDO, Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts, Mr. SOUDER, Mr. GARRETT of
New Jersey, Mr. WOLF, Mr. MARKEY of Massachusetts, Mr. NEAL of
Massachusetts, Mr. CARDOZA, Mr. LIPINSKI, Mr. ABERCROMBIE, Mrs. CAPPS,
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Mr. LEVIN, Mr. HIMES, Mr. BACA, Ms. HIRONO,
Mr. ROTHMAN of New Jersey, Mr. MCGOVERN, Ms. MCCOLLUM, Mr. FATTAH,
Mrs. NAPOLITANO, Mr. SPACE, Ms. DELAURO, Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin,
Mr. CALVERT, Mr. POLIS of Colorado, Mr. LANCE, Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of
California, Mr. OLVER, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. DAVIS of
Illinois, Mr. GONZALEZ, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. SARBANES, Mr. VAN HOLLEN,
Ms. TITUS, Mr. STARK, Mr. JACKSON of Illinois, Mr. KENNEDY,
Ms. TSONGAS, Mrs. TAUSCHER, Ms. WOOLSEY, Mr. DREIER, Mr. NUNES,
Mr. TONKO, and Mr. TIERNEY) submitted the following resolution; which
was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
________________________________
Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity
concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and
genocide documented in the United States record relating to the
Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.
Resolved,
SHORT TITLE
Sec. 1.
This resolution may be cited as the `Affirmation of the United States
Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution’.
FINDINGS
Sec. 2.
The House of Representatives finds the following:
(1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman
Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly
2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were
killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which
succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of
Armenians in their historic homeland.
(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, England, France, and Russia,
jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever
another government of committing `a crime against humanity’.
(3) This joint statement stated `the Allied Governments announce
publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally
responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as
well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres’.
(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders
involved in the `organization and execution’ of the Armenian Genocide
and in the `massacre and destruction of the Armenians’.
(5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young Turk Regime
were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing and executing
massacres
an people.
(6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister of War
Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal
were all condemned to death for their crimes, however, the verdicts of
the courts were not enforced.
(7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures are
documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of
Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States,
the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence
attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences.
(8) The United States National Archives and Record Administration
holds extensive and thorough documentation on the Armenian Genocide,
especially in its holdings under Record Group 59 of the United States
Department of State, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and
widely available to the public and interested institutions.
(9) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, organized and led protests by
officials of many countries, among them the allies of the Ottoman
Empire, against the Armenian Genocide.
(10) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the United States
Department of State the policy of the Government of the Ottoman Empire
as `a campaign of race extermination,’ and was instructed on July 16,
1915, by United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the
`Department approves your procedure . . . to stop Armenian
persecution’.
(11) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 of February 9, 1916, resolved
that `the President of the United States be respectfully asked to
designate a day on which the citizens of this country may give
expression to their sympathy by contributing funds now being raised
for the relief of the Armenians’, who at the time were enduring
`starvation, disease, and untold suffering’.
(12) President Woodrow Wilson concurred and also encouraged the
formation of the organization known as Near East Relief, chartered by
an Act of Congress, which contribu
0 to aid Armenian Genocide survivors, including 132,000 orphans who
became foster children of the American people.
(13) Senate Resolution 359, dated May 11, 1920, stated in part, `the
testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the sub-committee of
the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established the
truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which the
Armenian people have suffered’.
(14) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920, report to the Senate
of the American Military Mission to Armenia led by General James
Harbord, that stated `[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have
left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys,
and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of
this most colossal crime of all the ages’.
(15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland
without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying `[w]ho,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ and
thus set the stage for the Holocaust.
(16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term `genocide’ in 1944, and who
was the earliest proponent of the United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case as a
definitive example of genocide in the 20th century.
(17) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the United Nations at
Lemkin’s urging, the December 11, 1946, United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 96(1) and the United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of Genocide itself recognized the Armenian
Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent
and punish by codifying existing standards.
(18) In 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission invoked the
Armenian Genocide `precisely . . . one of the types of acts which the
modern term `crimes against humanity’ is intended to cover’ as a
precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.
(19) The Commission stated that `[t]he provisions
Sevres were obviously intended to cover, in conformity with the Allied
note of 1915 . . ., offenses which had been committed on Turkish
territory against persons of Turkish citizenship, though of Armenian
or Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a precedent for
Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, and offers an
example of one of the categories of `crimes against humanity’ as
understood by these enactments’.
(20) House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975, resolved:
`[t]hat April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as `National Day of
Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President of the
United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation
calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a
day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially those
of Armenian ancestry . . .’.
(21) President Ronald Reagan in proclamation number 4838, dated April
22, 1981, stated in part `like the genocide of the Armenians before
it, and the genocide of the Cambodians, which followed it–and like
too many other persecutions of too many other people–the lessons of
the Holocaust must never be forgotten’.
(22) House Joint Resolution 247, adopted on September 10, 1984,
resolved: `[t]hat April 24, 1985, is hereby designated as `National
Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President of
the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation
calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a
day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially the one
and one-half million people of Armenian ancestry . . .’.
(23) In August 1985, after extensive study and deliberation, the
United Nations SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and
Protection of Minorities voted 14 to 1 to accept a report entitled
`Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide,’ which stated `[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately
not been the only case of genocide in the 20th century. Am
lifying are . . . the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916′.
(24) This report also explained that `[a]t least 1,000,000, and
possibly well over half of the Armenian population, are reliably
estimated to have been killed or death marched by independent
authorities and eye-witnesses. This is corroborated by reports in
United States, German and British archives and of contemporary
diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally
Germany.’.
(25) The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an independent
Federal agency, unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would include the Armenian
Genocide in the Museum and has since done so.
(26) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression (later retracted) by the
United States Department of State asserting that the facts of the
Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous, the United States Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia in 1993, after a review of documents
pertaining to the policy record of the United States, noted that the
assertion on ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian
Genocide `contradicted longstanding United States policy and was
eventually retracted’.
(27) On June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives adopted an
amendment to House Bill 3540 (the Foreign Operations, Export
Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997) to reduce
aid to Turkey by $3,000,000 (an estimate of its payment of lobbying
fees in the United States) until the Turkish Government acknowledged
the Armenian Genocide and took steps to honor the memory of its
victims.
(28) President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 1998, stated:
`This year, as in the past, we join with Armenian-Americans throughout
the nation in commemorating one of the saddest chapters in the history
of this century, the deportations and massacres of a million and a
half Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the years 1915-1923.’.
(29) President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated: `On this
day, we pause in remembrance of one of
century, the annihilation of as many as 1,500,000 Armenians through
forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire.’.
(30) Despite the international recognition and affirmation of the
Armenian Genocide, the failure of the domestic and international
authorities to punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a
reason why similar genocides have recurred and may recur in the
future, and that a just resolution will help prevent future genocides.
DECLARATION OF POLICY
Sec. 3.
The House of Representatives–
(1) calls upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity
concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and
genocide documented in the United States record relating to the
Armenian Genocide and the consequences of the failure to realize a
just resolution; and
(2) calls upon the President in the President’s annual message
commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about April 24, to
accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of
1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud history of
United States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Genocide.
RESOLUTION
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
H. RES. 252