Wall Street Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Politics and Genocide
October 4, 2007; Page A18
Most Members of Congress don’t know enough about U.S. history, much
less anyone else’s. But that isn’t stopping the House of
Representatives from trying to weigh in on a painful chapter of
Ottoman history — and hurting U.S. interests in the bargain.
A pending resolution, co-sponsored by 226 Members, calls on President
Bush to ensure that U.S. foreign policy "reflects appropriate
understanding and sensitivity concerning . . . the Armenian Genocide"
in 1915, when Turks carried out "the systematic and deliberate
annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians." The resolution isn’t binding,
but Turkey can be forgiven for seeing an absence of "understanding and
sensitivity" in that broadside.
As a general rule, legislatures in far-off countries ought to think
carefully before judging another people’s history. It’s a fair bet
that points are being scored with domestic lobbies, and playing with
history often complicates current foreign policy. In this case, all of
the above apply. The sponsor is Adam Schiff, a California Democrat
whose district has a lot of Armenian-American voters. His adoption of
the genocide cause helped him get elected in 2000 and made his "name
in foreign affairs," as the Los Angeles Times put it in 2005.
This Congressional free-lancing would put a strain on U.S. ties with a
key Muslim ally in a tough neighborhood. If the resolution passes, the
backlash in Turkey will be more than symbolic. In urging Speaker Nancy
Pelosi to stop the resolution from reaching the floor for a vote,
eight former U.S. Secretaries of State wrote last week that it "could
endanger our national security interests in the region, including our
troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and damage efforts to promote
reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey."
Horrible massacres certainly took place during World War I in the
Ottoman Empire, and the Turkish government has never been eager to
discuss the Armenian question in good faith. But this history is more
complex than either the genocide crusaders or official Turkish deniers
are willing to concede.
To briefly recap: On April 24, 1915, the nationalist Young Turk
government ordered the Armenians of eastern Anatolia deported en masse
to Syria and Iraq. The Turks feared the Armenians were in cahoots with
their enemy, Czarist Russia, and fighting to carve their own state out
of a collapsing Ottoman Empire. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians
died on their trek, murdered by Turkish or Kurdish fighters and
marauders, or falling to disease, hunger and cold. The Ottoman War
Crimes Tribunal, set up by the victorious allies after the war,
estimated that 800,000 Armenians perished. Armenians put the toll at
1.5 million, which was about the entire Armenian population of
Anatolia at the time.
In October 1984, when Congress considered a similar resolution, we
wrote: "There can be little doubt that the Armenian repression was a
terrible chapter in history and perhaps the Turks have been too
insistent on denying guilt. But it was only one part of a global
tragedy that claimed nearly 15 million lives. Dredging it up now in
Congress, some 70 years after the event, may be a generous gesture
toward Americans of Armenian descent but is hardly an appropriate
signal to U.S. enemies." Or to our Turkish friends.
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