FOR US, OTTOMAN HISTORY COMES DANGEROUSLY ALIVE
By Jitendra Joshi
Kuwait Times, Kuwait
Oct 17 2007
The fallout from a massacre in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire has
hit the United States, as ancient enmities fuse with modern political
theater to infuriate a crucial ally and imperil the Iraq war. Caught
between a hostile Congress and an implacable Turkey outraged at
being accused of "genocide," the White House is scrambling to head
off diplomatic fallout that could radiate far and wide. US Defense
Secretary Robert Gates said 70 percent of air cargo, 30 percent of
fuel shipments and 95 percent of ne w mine-resistant vehicles destined
for US forces in Iraq go through Turkey.
The Turks have been quite clear about some of the measures they would
have to take if this resolution passes," he said, citing the example
of Turkish military sanctions against France. But some observers said
Turkey could be overreacting to a non-binding resolution in the House
of Representatives, and US Democrats eager to give President George W
Bush a bloody nose. George Harris, a former State Department expert
on Turkey, said the country’s decision Thursday to recall its US
ambassador for consultations shows a certain amount of seriousness.
But the Middle East Institute analyst added: "There’s a lot of
politicking going on. They have tied their hands a little bit by
stirring up such a hornet’s nest in Turkish public opinion." Defying
an unprecedented level of lobbying from both the US and Turkish
governments, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted Wednesday to
label the World War I massacre of up to 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians
as "genocide.
This resolution was passed by the committee (in 2005) but it didn’t
go anywhere as the Republicans were in charge and they didn’t want
to embarrass President Bush," Harris said. "(House Speaker) Nancy
Pelosi has no such qualms about embarrassing the president," he
said. Pelosi and several Democratic members of the House committee
have sizeable communities of ethnic Armenians concentrated in their
California districts.
The question now exercising the US administration is whether Turkey
will carry through on veiled threats of reprisals, such as shutting
off or restricting access to the sprawling Incirlik airbase. "Those
who claim Turkey is bluffing should not mock Turkey on live TV,"
Egemen Bagis, vice chairman of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
AKP party, warned in Washington.
He noted that French military planes are no longer allowed to fly over
Turkish airspace, since France’s parliament last year declared the
Armenians’ post-1915 suffering to be a genocide. If Turkey withdraws
US access to Incirlik, "just imagine what this will do to the United
States," Bagis said. Those consequences must not be underestimated,
according to Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations in New
York, who believes the Turks are in deadly earnest.
I don’t think this is a diplomatic pas de deux. What the resolution
has done is inflame Turkish public opinion," he said. "The Turks
have been saying for a long time that there are going to be tangible
consequences of this." For Michael Rubin, a Turkey expert at the
American Enterprise Institute, the genocide dispute represents a
"perfect storm" coming as the Erdogan government agitates to go after
Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.
An anti-US firestorm in Turkey risks drowning out the Bush
administration’s vocal misgivings about a cross-border incursion
against rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). "We’re in
election season right now," Rubin added, reflecting on the White
House’s failure to head off the vote Wednesday. "Unfortunately,
many people in Congress are more concerned with posturing than
consequences."