IF U.S.-TURKEY RELATIONS WORSEN, RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE WILL BE JUST A PRETEXT
PanARMENIAN.Net
25.04.2007 17:26 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The resolution that would recognize the Armenian
Genocide should be passed, congressman Adam Schiff stated on the
House Floor in connection with the 92nd anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide. As Schiff’s Press Secretary Sean Oblack told PanARMENIAN.Net,
congressman’s statement reads as follows, "Tomorrow marks the 92nd
Anniversary of the start of the Armenian Genocide. In January, I
introduced a resolution in the House that would recognize the Armenian
Genocide. It should be passed. Ghazaros Kademian is one reason why.
Ghazaros Kademian was just 6 years old when his family was forced into
exile by Ottoman Turks bent on annihilating the Armenian people. His
father was murdered by Turk gendarmes and the rest of the family was
forced to flee on foot to Kirkuk, where his mother died from cold
and hunger. He was separated from his siblings and orphaned.
Mr. Kademian’s story is terrible, but not remarkable. Over a million
and a half Armenians were murdered in the first genocide of the last
century as the Ottoman Empire used the cloak of war to wipe out a
people it considered alien and disloyal. This mammoth crime was well
known at the time; newspapers of the day were filled with stories about
the murder of Armenians. "Appeal to Turkey to Stop Massacres" headlined
the New York Times on April 28, 1915, just as the killing began. By
October 7 of that year, the Times reported that 800,000 Armenians
had been slain in cold blood in Asia Minor. In mid-December of 1915,
the Times spoke of a million Armenians killed or in exile. Thousands
of pages of evidence documenting the atrocities rest in our own
National Archives.
Prominent citizens of the day, including America’s Ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, and Britain’s Lord Bryce reported on
the massacres in great detail. Morgenthau was appalled at what he would
later call the sadistic orgies of rape, torture, and murder. "When
the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they
were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood
this well, and … made no particular attempt to conceal the fact."
Even those who have most ardently advocated sweeping the murder of
a million and a half people under the rug of history have conceded
that the vast majority of historians accept the Armenian Genocide as
historical fact. And how could they not – for it was the Government
of Turkey that, in early 1919, held a number of well-publicized
trials of some of the Young Turk leaders and executed Keimal Bey,
the governor of Diarbekir, specifically for his role as one of the
Ottoman Empire’s most savage persecutors of the Armenian people. The
trials, by the way, were as widely covered in the American press as
was the genocide itself.
So if the facts are not in dispute, why are so many nations complicit
in modern Turkey’s strenuous efforts to deny the genocide ever
took place?
First, opponents argue that recognizing the unpleasant fact of mass
murder risks alienating our important alliance with Turkey. There
is no question that Turkey is bitterly opposed to recognition and
is threatening our military and commercial relationship, including
access to the Incirlik air base. But Turkey has made similar threats to
other nations in the past only to retreat from them, and the European
Union’s insistence that Ankara recognize the crimes of its Ottoman
forebears before Turkey is admitted to the EU has not dimmed Turkish
enthusiasm for joining the EU.
If Turkish relations with the U.S. do suffer, it is far more
likely that the genocide recognition will be a pretext; the Bush
Administration has done such a poor job managing our relations with
Turkey over the last six years, that we have already seen the limits
of the U.S. Turkish alliance tested and found lacking. During the
run-up to the war in Iraq, Turkey denied us permission to bring in
ground forces from its soil, allowing the Saddam Fedeyeen to melt
away and form the basis of a now persistent insurgency.
Oddly enough, critics of recognition decry it as pandering to the
victims, but are only too happy to pander to the sensibilities of an
inconstant ally, and one that has shown no qualms about accusing the
U.S. of genocide in Iraq.
Second, opponents take issue with the timing of the resolution and
argue that Turkey is making progress with recognizing the dark chapters
of its history. This claim lost all credibility when Orhan Pamuk,
Turkey’s Nobel Prize winning author was brought up on charges for
"insulting Turkishness" for alluding to the genocide, and Turkish
Armenian publisher Hrant Dink was gunned down outside his office in
Istanbul earlier this year. Yet some opponents go even further, such
as a former Ambassador to Turkey who argued that the time may never be
right for America to comment "on another’s history or morality." Such
a ludicrous policy would condemn Congress to silence on a host of
human rights abuses around the world. After more than ninety years
and with only a few survivors left, if the time is not right now to
recognize the Armenian Genocide, when will it be?
But the most pernicious argument against recognition is the claim
that speaking the truth would harm relations with Turkey "for no
good reason."
How can we claim the moral authority to decry the genocide in Darfur,
as we must, if we are unwilling to deplore other genocides when it
would inconvenience an ally? Elie Wiesel has described the denial
of genocide as the final stage of genocide–a double killing. If you
don’t think he’s right, talk to Ghazaros Kademian."