SCHIFF STANDS FIRM
By Fred Ortega, Staff Writer
Whittier Daily News, CA
Oct 18 2007
Democratic support wavered Wednesday for a resolution declaring as
genocide the World War I killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks.
Political leaders from both parties warned of strained relations with
modern Turkey – whose aid the U.S. needs in the Iraq War.
But the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, said there was
still support for the resolution despite defections.
"We have a very tough fight because we have the Turkish lobby and all
the money it has spent to persuade members against this resolution,"
said Schiff. His non-binding resolution would officially recognize
the mass killings of an estimated 1.6 million Armenians between 1915
and 1923 as an act of ethnic cleansing.
The bill passed a key House committee last week and Speaker Nancy
Pelosi had vowed to hold a vote on the issue within a month. But since
then, several Democratic co-sponsors have withdrawn their support,
citing Bush administration arguments that its passage would endanger
national security by alienating NATO ally Turkey.
After the bill’s passage through committee, Turkey threatened to deny
the U.S. military access to its Incirlik Air Base, a key resupply
point for U.S. troops in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
Pelosi showed signs of doubt about the measure’s prospects Wednesday,
telling reporters on Capitol Hill that whether or not the bill will
come up for a vote "remains to be seen."
Schiff said he is still gauging support for the measure in the House
following the defection of at least nine co-sponsors and criticism by
fellow Democrats including Reps. Alcee Hastings of Florida and John
Tanner of Tennessee, who urged Pelosi not to move forward with a vote.
The Turks argue that the deaths did not constitute ethnic cleansing,
but resulted from the forced relocation of Armenians, many of whom
sided with the invading Russian army during the war.
Schiff has been in close contact with Pelosi’s office about the
bill’s prospects, but he has not been contacted by President Bush,
Hastings or Tanner on the issue, the congressman’s office said.
Bush has called Pelosi’s office though, asking her to reconsider
bringing the measure to a vote.
"One thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical
record of the Ottoman Empire," Bush said during a news conference. He
called the resolution "counterproductive."
Schiff suggested the president’s presentation of the Congressional
Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama on Tuesday – in defiance of protests
from U.S. trading ally China – and his opposition to the Armenian
resolution together constituted a double-standard.
"We can’t be selective about when we speak out on human rights, or
when we speak out against genocide," said Schiff, who shepherded the
bill through the House International Relations Committee in 2005 only
to have it stalled under the then-Republican-led Congress.
The movement of Schiff’s bill could not have come at a worse time
for relations with Turkey. Unlike China, Turkey is a U.S. ally in
the administration’s war on terror, said Steven Cook, a fellow with
the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations.
"If you look at Turkey and draw lines out from Ankara (the capital),
you can see that Turkey sits at the center of certainly some of our
most important foreign policy concerns," said Cook, author of a book
on military and political developments in Turkey. "And relations with
Turkey have already been damaged by the war in Iraq."
Turkish restrictions on U.S. use of its air bases or airspace would
not compromise the supplying of U.S. troops, but would certainly
make it more difficult, Cook said. Pentagon officials have said they
are already making contingency plans for supplying U.S. troops via
alternate routes.
But Schiff’s resolution could have additional, less tangible
repercussions, Cook said.
"U.S. defense contractors could lose contracts with Turkey and
U.S. corporations would have a harder time doing business there,"
he said.
Turkey already suspended relations with France after that country’s
recognition of the Armenian killings as genocide.
Cook also said that the bill could cause a nationalist backlash in
Turkey against ongoing dialogue about the Armenian Holocaust, which
has been recognized by Turkish Nobel Prize winner and author Orhan
Pamuk. At the same time, it could make it more difficult for the U.S.
to persuade Turkey against further military incursions against Kurdish
rebels in northern Iraq, a move which the Turkish parliament approved
on Wednesday.
Despite the intense pressure from Turkey, the Bush administration
and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, Schiff’s bill is still
"in good shape," said Zanku Armenian, a board member of the Armenian
National Committee of America’s Western Region.
He accused Turkey of threatening to endanger U.S. troops while
trying to influence government policy and freedom of speech in the
United States.
"Are we going to speak our minds and the truth about a genocidal
crime, or are we going to give in to threats from a country that so
far has proven itself too immature to deal with its own history?,"
said Armenian, who noted that the U.S. invasion of Iraq took place
despite Turkey’s prohibition on the use of its airspace.
As to the timing of the resolution, Schiff said that argument has
been made before.
"We tried to advance this resolution before the war in Iraq, before
Afghanistan and before 9/11 and we were told it was not the right
time," Schiff said. "This is obviously a very inconvenient truth. But
as Martin Luther King Jr. said, `It is never the wrong time to do
the right thing."’
Before Schiff’s bill, the last time a local politician had stirred
up such an international furor was when former Pasadena Mayor Bill
Paparian visited Cuba in 1996, said Caltech politics professor
Michael Alvarez.
"And that was much more localized," said Alvarez, noting that
Schiff likely has more Armenian constituents than any other member
of Congress. "I certainly can’t think of anything else by a local
legislator that has had such broad implications."
What is the controversy?
Historians have estimated that more than 1.5 million Armenians died
at the hands of the Ottoman Turks between 1915 and 1923. Armenians
have long contended the mass killings amounted to genocide.
Turkish officials admit that hundreds of thousands of Armenians
died when the Ottoman Empire forced them to relocate from Eastern
Anatolia during World War I. But they deny the deaths amounted to
ethnic cleansing and insist the relocations were a necessity during
a time of war, when many of Turkey’s Armenian citizens sided with
the invading Russian army.
A nonbinding resolution by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, would
for the first time require the federal government to recognize
the Armenian Holocaust as a genocide. But the legislation is facing
defeat thanks to strong opposition from legislators from both parties
and the Bush administration, who argue the bill will result in the
U.S. military’s loss of access to important Turkish bases and will
make it difficult to persuade Turkey to stop military incursions into
Iraq’s Kurdish-controlled north.
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