SENATE PANEL APPROVES RICCIARDONE IN DIVIDED VOTE
asbarez
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
Senator Menendez opposed Ricciardone’s nomination
Senators Menendez, Boxer, Risch vote against confirmation; Coons
and Shaheen voice reservations US Ambassador to Armenia Nominee John
Heffern approved unanimously by voice vote WASHINGTON-The nomination
of President Obama’s controversial choice to serve as U.S. Ambassador
to Turkey, Francis Ricciardone, was approved in a devided vote within
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee over whether he should serve
as America’s top envoy to Ankara, reported the Armenian National
Committee of America.
By contrast, U.S. Ambassador to Armenia nominee John Heffern was
approved unanimously by the Committee by voice vote.
Voting against the Ricciardone nomination were Senators Robert Menendez
(D-NJ), Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Jim Risch (R-ID).
“We would like to thank Senator Menendez for his principled leadership
in calling attention to Amb. Ricciardone’s offensive and unacceptable
responses to questions dealing with the plight of Christians in
Turkey,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “Sen. Menendez
along with Senators Boxer and Risch sent a powerful message to
Ricciardone and State Department officials that the American people
deserve a U.S. envoy who will fight hard for U.S. values and interests
and not succumb to Turkey’s propaganda machine.”
Senator Menendez, who spoke forcefully prior to voting against the
nominee, noted Ambassador Ricciardone’s incorrect response to his
written question concerning the state of Christian churches in Turkey
today. Amb. Ricciardone’s initial response that “most of the Christian
churches functioning prior to 1915 are still operating as churches” was
“so wrong as to be offensive,” stated Senator Menendez. He continued,
“What concerns me more, however, is that his response indicates
that he either did not carefully review the responses that were
submitted in his name or worse or that he truly was unaware of the
history of the Christian church in Turkey and the difficulties that
Christian churches continue to face in that country. His response
indicates a lack of focus or interest in issue affecting the Armenian
community . . . We need an Ambassador in Ankara that can support,
defend and advocate on behalf of all of the United States’ interests
vis-a-vis Turkey. Unfortunately, I’ve lost confidence in the ability of
Mr. Ricciardone to undertake that task and will not be able to support
his nomination.” Senator Menendez’s full statement is provided below.
Both Senators Menendez and Boxer submitted written questions
to Ambassador Ricciardone and have, over the course of many years,
ensured careful scrutiny of both Administration policy and nominations
for ambassadorial posts in the region.
These legislators were joined by Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), who,
while voting for Amb. Ricciardone, raised reservations regarding the
nomination and broader issues related to U.S. genocide policy and
religious freedom issues. He noted that he had heard from his Armenian
and Greek American constituents on their “historic and profound
grievances,” which have gone on for “far too long” and stressed that
they deserved “higher diplomatic priority.” Senator Jeanne Shaheen
(D-NH), Chair of the European Affairs Subcommittee added that the
Committee’s discussion on Amb. Ricciardone’s responses concerning
religious freedom sent a strong signal to Ambassador Ricciardone and
Turkey about U.S. commitment to religious freedom.
While sharply criticizing Ambassador Ricciardone’s initial
misrepresentations about the destruction of Armenian and other
Christian churches as “unacceptable, incorrect, and inappropriate,”
the panel’s Chairman, John Kerry (D-MA), praised the nominee’s “depth
of knowledge,” and ultimately voted for his confirmation.
“Amb. Ricciardone has, sadly, embraced Ankara’s genocide denial
narrative, above and beyond even the level of the President and the
rest of his Administration – compounding our government’s complicity
in the Turkish government’s lies with outright and easily verifiable
falsehoods about the state of the few surviving Armenian and other
Christian churches that remain today within the borders of present-day
Turkey,” explained Hamparian. “At this critical juncture in U.S.-Turkey
relations, we simply cannot afford a policy of appeasement.”
In recent weeks, in response to a wave of grassroots outrage and
growing Congressional concern, Ambassador Ricciardone had backed away
from his responses to inquiries during his Senate confirmation process
that included highly offensive misrepresentations about Turkey’s
destruction of Christian churches. Following broad-based concerns
expressed by Armenian American community and religious leaders, U.S.
Ambassador Ricciardone amended his response to Foreign Relations
Committee member Robert Menendez (D-NJ), in which he had argued,
without any basis in fact, that a majority of Christian churches
operating in the territory of present-day Turkey prior to 1915 were
still functioning today. His testimony and written answers, however,
continued to be characterized by errors of fact, the use of strained
euphemisms to appease Ankara, and a pronounced bias toward the genocide
denial narrative advanced by the government of Turkey.
Last month, in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian demanded a retraction, correction,
and apology for Ambassador Ricciardone’s statement covering-up
Ottoman and Republican Turkey’s systematic destruction of thousands
of Christian churches. “We have been troubled by his eagerness to
embrace the government of Turkey’s false and hateful genocide denial
narrative, at lengths beyond even the Administration’s longstanding
and shameful complicity in Turkey’s denials of the Armenian Genocide,”
stated Hachikian in his August 15th letter. “His verbal and written
responses to questions during his Senate confirmation process,
regarding the Armenian Genocide and other issues, ranged from evasive
to deeply offensive.”
The ANCA encouraged concerned citizens to contact Secretary Clinton
on this matter, and urged members of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee to oppose the Ricciardone nomination.
His Eminences Archbishop Oshagan Choloyan and Archbishop Moushegh
Mardirossian, Prelates of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America
Eastern and Western United States, respectively, and Archbishop
Khajag Barsamian, Primate of the Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic
Church – Eastern United States each issued powerfully worded spiritual
messages in response to the Ambassador’s statement. In an August 15th
statement, from which Senator Menendez quoted, Archbishop Choloyan
stressed that the Ambassador’s assertion was “so blatantly false
that it cannot remain unchallenged.” Setting the record straight,
he noted that: “The facts are quite clear. From the massacres
of Armenians in 1895-96 and the Armenian Genocide in 1915, to the
decades following the establishment of the Turkish republic, Christian
houses of worship were systematically destroyed or confiscated. My
own church’s hierarchal see, the Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia,
was a victim of this process, and today is exiled in Lebanon. The
archives of the Catholicosate contain hundreds of original deeds
and other documentation of churches and church owned property that
were confiscated.”
Archbishop Mardirossian concurred, stating, “The presence of an
Ambassador in Ankara who is unaware of or uninterested in the truth
and the consequences of the Ottoman and Republican Turkish government’s
genocide of Armenians, Assyrians, Syriacs, Greeks and other Christians
materially undermines U.S. interests, compromises American values,
and weakens international efforts to defend religious freedom for
peoples of all faiths. Sadly, but unmistakably, with this hateful and
hurtful statement, Ambassador Ricciardone has demonstrated that he
is not the right candidate to effectively and responsibly represent
the United States in Turkey.”
On August 19th, Archbishop Barsamian noted that Amb. Ricciardone’s
response had “deeply offended Armenian-Americans”, explaining that
“the loss of these many hundreds of churches, their neglect and
outright destruction, and the conversion of many of our sanctuaries
into mosques, is a matter of intense pain to Armenians: an ongoing
reminder of the loss of life and the destruction that we suffered as a
result of the 1915 Genocide… In all charity, perhaps the Ambassador
is simply unaware of certain facts. But mastery of the history of a
country, its dark as well as bright chapters, is essential to serving
the United States effectively and diplomatically in this important
and complex region.”
Reservations about the Ambassador’s readiness to placate his
foreign host’s interests at face value were expressed last fall by
then Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), who, during the last session of
Congress, placed a hold on Ambassador Ricciardone’s nomination to
serve as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey. In an August 16, 2010, letter to
Secretary Clinton, Sen. Brownback voiced disapproval of Ricciardone’s
tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, noting, among other things,
that “he quickly adopted the positions and arguments of his Egyptian
diplomatic counterparts.”
In the wake of Senator Brownback’s hold, President Obama circumvented
Senate objections by issuing a “recess appointment” of Amb.
Ricciardone. The Senate must approve his nomination in the upcoming
months, if Ambassador Ricciardone is to continue to serve in Turkey
for more than one year, of the usual three-year ambassadorial term.
During Ambassador Ricciardone’s July confirmation hearing, in response
to Delaware Senator Chris Coons’ question as to what steps he had taken
to promote religious freedom in Turkey, he offered an evasive answer:
“… very interestingly, they [the Turkish Government] follow our
debates about personal freedom and religious freedom and they say
‘Here is how you can understand this, American Ambassador. In your
country, you have in recent years made a distinction between freedom
of religion and the concept of freedom from religion. For too long in
our modern republic we focused on preventing the intrusion of religion
in our national life and political life. We are quite comfortable to
be observant Muslims, please don’t call us Islamists, by the way,’
they tell us, ‘but to the extent someone is praying as a Christian
or a Jew, it really doesn’t bother us at all – why should it? It’s
no threat to the state, on the contrary, we are rather proud of our
diversity and we happy to have them do it. As to their property issues,
let us take a fresh look at this and make sure they get justice.'”
This assessment is sharply at odds with reports by the U.S. Commission
on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which raised the
following alarm in its 2011 report: “The Turkish government continues
to impose serious limitations on freedom of religion or belief,
thereby threatening the continued vitality and survival of minority
religious communities in Turkey.”
The nominations are now set to go to the full Senate for confirmation.
Remarks by Senator Menendez on the Nomination of Francis Ricciardone
to be Ambassador to Turkey
Mr. Chairman – I have comments that I would like to make about the
nomination of Ambassador Ricciardone.
In June, I had a meeting with Ambassador Ricciardone in my office. I
appreciated the time he took to meet with me and I believe that his
efforts on behalf of the majority of U.S. interests are well-focused in
Ankara. I was prepared to support his nomination until I received the
responses to the Questions for the Record that I submitted following
his nomination hearing before this committee.
I asked the nominee, who has now served as the U.S. Ambassador to
Turkey since January of this year, about the number of Christian
churches still functioning in present-day Turkey. His initial and
incorrect response was that “most of the Christian churches functioning
prior to 1915 are still operating as churches.” This response was so
wrong as to be offensive.
The Archbishop of the Eastern Prelacy of Armenian Apostolic Church
of America, His Eminence Choloyan, issued a statement to rectify the
facts, stating that the Ambassador’s statement was “so blatantly
false that it cannot remain unchallenged.” He noted that: “The
facts are quite clear. From the massacres of Armenians in 1895-96
and the Armenian Genocide in 1915, to the decades following the
establishment of the Turkish republic, Christian houses of worship
were systematically destroyed or confiscated. The archives of
the Catholicosate contain hundreds of original deeds and other
documentation of churches and church owned property that were
confiscated.”
After several inquiries, Ambassador Ricciardone submitted a revised
response stating that “Christian community contacts in Turkey report
that a total of 200-250 churches that date to 1915 and before offer
Christian worship services at least once a year. ” I understand this
number to also be an overestimation.
What concerns me more, however, is that his response indicates that
he either did not carefully review the responses that were submitted
in his name or worse or that he truly was unaware of the history of
the Christian church in Turkey and the difficulties that Christian
churches continue to face in that country. His response indicates a
lack of focus or interest in issue affecting the Armenian community
and sends a message to Turkey that the Armenia issue is not an
“A-list” issue. We need an Ambassador in Ankara that can support,
defend and advocate on behalf of all of the United States’ interests
vis-a-vis Turkey. Unfortunately, I’ve lost confidence in the ability
of Mr. Ricciardone to undertake that task and will not be able to
support his nomination.