Author: Kalantarian Kevo

Commercialappeal.com , TN
Oct 14 2007

Bridging the Armenian-Turkish disconnect

By Zack McMillin
Sunday, October 14, 2007

When I read letters to the editor from those who are enraged that
Memphis in May has chosen Turkey as its honored country for 2008, I
think of Hrant Dink.

AP

On Oct. 1, protesters carrying a banner reading "We are all witness,
we want justice" massed near an Istanbul courthouse, as the trial of
suspects in the murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink
resumed.

When I hear that a group of Memphians wants to call U.S. Rep.
Steve Cohen a hypocrite for not supporting a House resolution that
would assert Turkey committed genocide against Armenians, I think of
a February afternoon in Istanbul.

On Halaskargazi, a broad boulevard on the European side of the
Bosporus, I stood with two dozen other journalists from around the
world outside an almost hidden entrance, one obscured by a security
door and squeezed between shops selling sunglasses and CDs.

We were waiting to enter the offices of Agos, the Armenian newspaper
where Hrant Dink had served as editor.

>From the CD shop drifted a melody from the Turkish song, "Sari Gelin
(Yellow and Bright)." This was Dink’s favorite song, and it came upon
us that Dink had died at the place where we were now standing, gunned
down because, many people believe, a group of Turkish nationalists
thought that killing an outspoken Armenian would divide and
demoralize Turkey.

That it did not serves as a testament to the Turkish people. The
response to the tragedy embodies the spirit I discovered in the Turks
who became my friends while I spent eight months in 2006 and 2007 as
a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan.

The scene outside Agos the night of Dink’s murder on Jan. 19
transformed from one of tragedy into one of hope. Thousands of Turks
descended upon the neighborhood and held a vigil to honor Dink, whose
brave stance on what Turks call the "Armenian question" provided an
example — for fellow Turks, fellow Armenians and fellow journalists.

Ozge Erkut, who worked at CNN Turk, lives in the neighborhood and
recalled the tears she saw from so many.

"Lots of Muslims and lots of Jews were there, not just Armenians,"
she said. "Many of the people who were crying did not know him."

There is no denying that, in Turkey, there are people and groups
devoted to fomenting hate and intolerance. But, in the aftermath of
Dink’s murder, the world saw what I had also discovered in my new
Turkish friends — people with huge hearts, open minds and a desire
to engage with the world.

Some estimated that as many as 200,000 people followed Dink’s family
and friends in the funeral procession through the streets and across
the bridges of the beautiful, ancient city. They held signs and
chanted, "We are all Hrant Dink."

In a memorial issue published by Agos, a cover mixed the image of a
smiling Hrant Dink with seabirds and the simple headline: "Umuda
uctu." To hope he flew.

Dink, 52, had drawn hate and death threats for challenging Turkey to
acknowledge that, whatever the complicated circumstances, there
remained little doubt that an Armenian genocide occurred during the
dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Dink had also been
prosecuted for writings that the government asserted "denigrated
Turkishness," violating a law that ought to offend citizens of any
nation committed to secular progress.

Yet it is important to remember that Dink had also challenged
Armenians from around the world to abandon their own hatred and
intolerance.

"Do away with your fixation on hostility against Turks," he once
wrote. "This is a poison."

What Dink sought most, according to his friends and colleagues, was
to create dialogue and to open minds. When lawmakers in France
introduced a bill that would make it a crime to deny that Turkey
committed genocide against Armenians, Dink vowed to travel to France
and be among the first to break the law.

Such a law, he said, "will be hurting not only the European Union,
but Armenians across the world. It will also damage the normalizing
of relations between Armenia and Turkey. What the peoples of these
two countries need is dialogue, and all these laws do is harm such
dialogue."

Those we met who knew and loved Hrant Dink stressed his devotion to,
above all, investigations of truth — not political declarations
exalting or condemning one side or the other of emotional,
complicated issues.

"We want discussion," one of his closest friends told us. "If you
push the importance of one word, genocide, it is no more discussion.
The important thing is the history, not the word."

It is shocking to learn from so many Turks that they were taught
nothing about the slaughter and dislocation of Armenians in World War
I. But it says much about the character of the many Turks I came to
know that they respond not with hate but with concern and a desire to
learn more.

Fatma Mge Gek, a native Turk and Michigan professor, wrote a eulogy
that emphasized her friend’s ability "to overcome that
ever-consuming, destructive, dangerous anger — and to fill himself
instead with so much love and hope for humanity."

As I think about politicians making resolutions about history, I
think of the conversation Gek had with Dink the year before a Turkish
nationalist succeeded in killing a man — but failed to assassinate
hope.

"Keep the dialogue between the Armenian and Turkish scholars going,"
Dink told her over coffee in Ann Arbor in the spring of 2006. "That
is the most significant endeavor we have for the solution of this
problem, and no matter what happens, do not let things get
politicized."

http://www.commercialappe al.com/news/2007/oct/14/bridging-the-armenian-turk ish-disconnect/

Russia & CIS Military Newswire
October 11, 2007 Thursday 3:31 PM MSK

Russia could mediate between Armenia, Turkey – Armenian expert

Russia could mediate in the normalization of Armenian-Turkish
relations, Ruben Safrastian, the director of the Oriental Studies
Institute at the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, said.

"Russia’s interest in Armenia, as a regional ally, as well as the
deep roots of Russian-Armenian relations create a favorable
atmosphere for Russian diplomats to more actively mediate in the
normalization and establishment of Armenian-Turkish relations,"
Safrastian told Interfax.

Direct dialogue between Armenia and Turkey is next to impossible, and
Russia could try to mediate a normalization in relations, the expert
said.

"Russia and Turkey approach each other primarily as economic partner,
and partially politically. The two countries, however, have remained
rivals from the geopolitical viewpoint," Safrastian said at a round
table entitled ‘Russia and Armenia: Influence of Domestic Policies on
Bilateral Relations in the Light of Regional Changes.’

Armenia and Turkey have yet to established diplomatic relations.

The 1915 events in the Ottoman Empire, which Armenia describes as
genocide, is still a thorn in relations. A number of countries have
characterized the slaughter of over 1.5 million Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire as genocide. Armenia wants Turkey to acknowledge this
as well.

PanARMENIAN.Net

Turkish FM: genocide is evil that international community shares
solemn responsibility to combat
13.10.2007 13:52 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ During his visit to Israel earlier this week,
Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan attended the Yad Vashem Holocaust
Museum in Jerusalem and made the following note in the guest book:

"This museum reminds us all the heart-breaking memories of the
Holocaust. We must learn lessons from the Holocaust; the way the evil
took hold, the insidious appeal of its ideology… Genocide, ethnic
cleansing, racism, anti-Semitism, Islam-phobia, Christian-phobia,
xenophobia, all historical yet contemporary evils that the
international community shares a solemn responsibility to combat. On
behalf of the Turkish people and the Turkish Government, I want to
express our reverence for the victims of the immeasurable
evil. Blessed be their memory," EJP reports.

World Tribune
Oct 12 2007

Turkey preparing for November invasion, longterm stay

ANKARA – Turkey has placed its military on the highest state of alert
in preparation for a major invasion of neighboring Iraq that could
take place by the end of November.

Officials said the Turkish military has deployed tens of thousands of
troops, backed by attack helicopters, main battle tanks, armored
personnel carriers and artillery, in forward positions along the
Iraqi border. They said the Turkish force could cross the Iraqi
border and attack the Kurdish Workers Party within hours of any
order.
"There is a very tense situation along the Iraqi border, and the
military is waiting for the green light," an official said.raq.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee passed a
resolution that deemed Turkey responsible for the killing of 1.5
million Armenians during World War I. Turkey has warned of a crisis
in U.S. relations if the resolution, which termed the Armenian deaths
a genocide, was passed by the full House.
Turkey has served as the route for 70 percent of U.S. air cargo
headed for Iraq. About one-third of U.S. military fuel as well as 95
percent of new vehicles designed to resist improvised explosive
devices in Iraq were said to pass through Turkey.

"Access to airfields and to the roads and so on in Turkey would very
much be put at risk if this resolution passes and Turkey reacts as
strongly as we believe they will," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert
Gates said.

Officials said the Turkish General Staff has relayed a series of
options to the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan for a
military invasion of Iraq. They said the most far-reaching proposal
called for a long-term Turkish military stay in northern Iraq near
the provincial capital of Kirkuk.

"There is no need to say something new," Turkish Deputy Prime
Minister Cemil Cicek said. "Everything will be done in a planned
way."

Officials said Erdogan would attempt to block any approval for a
Turkish invasion until the end of November. They said the prime
minister intends to meet U.S. President George Bush in Washington
during the second half of next month.

Over the last 15 years, Turkey has maintained a brigade just inside
Iraq under an agreement with Iraqi Kurds. But the brigade has been
deployed in northwestern Iraq, far from the PKK camps.

The military has been urging the government to exploit any Turkish
invasion to prevent the Kurdish takeover of Kirkuk. Kirkuk, regarded
as the oil capital of northern Iraq, contains a large Turkish
minority.

Officials said the military recommendations were being examined by
government and parliamentary leaders. They said they expected
parliament to approve a major military operation over the next few
days in wake of the House Foreign Relations Committee resolution on
the Armenian genocide.

Amid Ankara’s preparations, the PKK was said to have withdrawn its
units from Turkey and returned to camps in Iraq’s Kandil mountains,
about 65 kilometers south of the border. Officials said the PKK has
used the Garbar mountains as a supply route to Turkey.

On Wednesday, the Turkish daily Hurriyet reported that the military
shelled PKK camps in northern Iraq. Hurriyet said Turkish forces also
targeted PKK fighters in Garbar.

"A cross-border operation in the spring would undoubtedly have
affected PKK’s offensive capabilities during the subsequent
campaigning season." the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation said.
"However, an autumn operation, when the campaigning season is already
drawing to a close, is likely to have only a limited effect on the
PKK’s ability to return to the offensive once the winter snows begin
to melt in spring 2008.

Still, the Erdogan government has been under pressure to authorize
massive retaliation against the PKK in wake of the killing of 15
Turkish soldiers in a 24-hour period this week. Opposition parties
have urged the government to approve a military invasion despite U.S.
opposition.

"I suggest the prime minister hold a referendum on the cross-border
operation," Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli said.
"Turkey is not a small sized cantonal state. It can’t be governed
through instructions of other countries."

007/me_turkey_10_12.asp

NAGORNO KARABAKH: ELMAR MAMMADYAROV OFFERS A DEAL TO ARMENIA

PanARMENIAN.Net
10.10.2007 14:47 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Azerbaijani Foreign Minister, Elmar Mammadyarov,
announced readiness to "hold talks with the Armenian community of
Nagorno Karabakh in case Armenia recognizes Azerbaijan’s territorial
integrity."

"Azerbaijan initiates discussions of the Karabakh problem in various
international organizations. Many of them have already passed
resolutions on the matter," Mammadyarov said, Day.az reports

GAZPROM STILL POSITIVE ABOUT POSSIBILITY OF RUSSIA-ARMENIA-IRAN OIL REFINERY

The Messenger
Oct 10 2007
Georgia

Reports of a planned joint project between Russia, Iran and Armenia
to construct an oil refinery in Armenia first emerged in the Russian
press in January.Gazprom Neft-the oil arm of Russian energy company
Gazprom-is reportedly considering an investment of USD 1.7 billion
to build the refinery, which would process oil pumped from Tabriz in
northern Iran.

Gazprom officials say it will process 5-6 million tons of oil
annually. Some would be used by Armenia; most would be shipped back
to Iran.

Valery Golubev, head of Gazprom’s Investment and Construction
Department, commented that the project is still in the offing but an
appropriate 400 hectare site for the refinery has not yet been found.

Some Russian commentators suggest the project is motivated by political
rather than financial interests, as usually the most economically
productive location for an oil refinery is near a major pipeline
route or at a seaport.

However, Gazprom replies that with effective management, the refinery
could be economically profitable and may offer competition for
Azerbaijan, the main oil exporter in the South Caucasus.

However, Regnum reports Gobulev as saying, "Building an oil refinery
in Armenia is interesting for Gazprom from the geopolitical point
of view."

WHITE HOUSE AND TURKEY FIGHT BILL ON ARMENIA: GENOCIDE LABEL FOR WWI-ERA KILLINGS HAS HOUSE SUPPORT
by Glenn Kessler; Washington Post Staff Writer

The Washington Post
October 10, 2007 Wednesday
Met 2 Edition

A proposed House resolution that would label as "genocide" the deaths
of Armenians more than 90 years ago during the Ottoman Empire has
won the support of a majority of House members, unleashing a lobbying
blitz by the Bush administration and other opponents who say it would
greatly harm relations with Turkey, a key ally in the Iraq war.

All eight living former secretaries of state have signed a joint letter
to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warning that the nonbinding
resolution "would endanger our national security interests." Three
former defense secretaries, in their own letter, said Turkey probably
would cut off U.S. access to a critical air base. The government
of Turkey is spending more than $300,000 a month on communications
specialists and high-powered lobbyists, including former congressman
Bob Livingston, to defeat the initiative.

Pelosi, whose congressional district has a large Armenian population,
has brushed aside such concerns and said she supports bringing the
resolution, for the first time, to a full vote in the House, where
more than half of the members have signed on as co-sponsors. The House
Foreign Affairs Committee, which has passed such a resolution before,
is set to vote on it today.

House Resolution 106, officially the Affirmation of the United
States Record on the Armenian Genocide, has been pushed doggedly by
a congressman whose Southern California district contains the largest
concentration of Armenian Americans in the country. Rep. Adam B.

Schiff (D) won his seat in 2000 after his Republican predecessor was
sandbagged when then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert reneged on a
pledge and pulled the bill from the floor after a last-minute plea
from President Bill Clinton.

Schiff, who defeated Rep. James Rogan after Hastert killed the floor
vote, said the deaths so long ago still resonate with Armenians. "It
is an insight you get when you have lots of Armenian constituents," he
said, saying it reminded him of conversations he had while growing up
Jewish. "But imagine losing the entire family and having the successor
state say it never happened."

Few people deny that massacres killed hundreds of thousands of Armenian
men, women and children during and immediately after World War I.

But Turkish officials and some historians say that the deaths resulted
from forced relocations and widespread fighting when the 600-year-old
Ottoman Empire collapsed, not from a campaign of genocide — and that
hundreds of thousands of Turks also died in the same region during
that time.

"This is the greatest accusation of all against humanity," said Turkish
Ambassador Nabi Sensoy, referring to genocide. "You cannot expect
any nation to accept that kind of labeling." He said the reaction in
the Turkish parliament would be one of fury, noting that the Turkish
military cut contacts with the French military and terminated defense
contracts under negotiation after the French National Assembly voted
in 2006 to criminalize the denial of Armenian genocide.

Pelosi had long been a co-sponsor of the resolution. The Armenian
National Committee, one of the many Armenian organizations that have
sought passage of the measure for years, has given her an "A" grade
for her stance on Armenian issues.

Now as speaker, Pelosi will face a choice between her role as a
national leader and her previous campaign pledges as a member of
Congress. U.S.-Turkish relations are already under some strain because
Kurdish militant groups have attacked Turkish targets from bases in
Iraq, with Ankara suggesting it may launch its own attack.

Turkey plans to hold a "neighbors" conference on Iraq pushed by the
United States later this month, but a recent poll by the nonpartisan
group Terror Free Tomorrow found that 83 percent of Turks would oppose
assisting the United States on Iraq if the Armenia resolution passed.

It is a problem that has caused other politicians to flinch. As a
presidential candidate in 2000, George W. Bush pledged to ensure that
"our nation properly recognizes" what he called "a genocidal campaign
that defies comprehension." But, angering Armenian groups, Bush refused
to use the term in the annual presidential statement on the subject
made on April 24, generally considered the beginning of the killings
in 1915. President George H.W. Bush and Clinton also refused to refer
to genocide in their annual statements, for fear of offending Turkey.

Among other things, the resolution calls on the president to use
his annual message to "accurately characterize the systematic and
deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide."

In the Senate, where one-third of its members are co-sponsoring
the resolution, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) supports
the measure, as do the two leading candidates for the Democratic
presidential nomination: Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and
Barack Obama (Ill.).

The State Department, which collected the signatures of the former
secretaries of state, has lobbied against the resolution, with
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Undersecretary of State R.

Nicholas Burns, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried and U.S.

Ambassador Ross Wilson calling lawmakers yesterday to "urge them not
to vote for this," according to an interview Fried gave the Anatolia
news agency.

The Turkish Embassy is paying $100,000 a month to lobbying firm
DLA Piper and $105,000 a month to the Livingston Group, and it
recently added communications specialists Fleishman-Hillard for
nearly $114,000 a month, according to records filed with the Justice
Department. Turkish lawmakers were on Capitol Hill yesterday, warning
that passage would put military cooperation with Turkey at risk.

Meanwhile, leading the charge for the resolution are grass-roots
groups such as the Armenian Assembly of America, with 10,000 members,
a budget of $3.6 million last year and phone banks that are running
on overtime calling members of Congress. The organization has signed
up 53 non-Armenian ethnic groups, including a number of Jewish groups,
to support the resolution.

Some Jewish groups have found themselves in a bind because Turkey is
one of the few Muslim nations to have diplomatic relations with Israel.

TURKISH TV HOSTS DISCUSS POSSIBLE ANTI-TERROR MEASURES

NTV, Turkey
Oct 8 2007

The NTV Television Network in Turkish at 1700 gmt on 8 October airs
its Monday-Thursday show "Difference of Interpretation" in the usual
format of a point-counterpoint discussion of selected current topics
by programme hosts Emre Kongar and Mehmet Barlas.

Barlas opens the show by expressing grief over the loss of 15 soldiers
killed in two incidents in Southeast Anatolia on 7 October.

Kongar joins him in expressing condolences to the families of the
fallen soldiers.

Kongar notes that "terrorists" continue to take lives in "a country
where the death penalty has been abolished" and calls on "certain
circles" to condemn such acts. He also laments the coming referendum
on an "inconsistent constitutional amendment package" in the midst
of such violence. Addressing the audience, he appeals to the Turkish
people not to "fall into the trap of divisions between Sunnis and
Alevis, Turks and Kurds, and the religious and nonreligious."

Barlas notes that Turkey has had to cope with "PKK terrorism" since
the mid-1980’s and says that this is "not just Turkey’s problem."

Pointing out the PKK’s presence in European countries and in
"US-occupied Iraq," Barlas says that this is partly a "problem of
public security in the Southeast" and partly "a dangerous element of
international politics affecting Turkey." He says that politicians,
soldiers, and the media must see the "trap set for Turkey from
outside." He adds that "Turkey would lose its claim to the 21st
century if it gives up a single inch of land" and cites as examples
the consequences of Ottoman territorial losses in the 19th and early
20th centuries. Both hosts agree that territorial integrity is an
"existential issue" for a state.

Reiterating that the Turkish state and people must be determined
"not to give up a single inch of land," Barlas says that Turkey’s
politicians and public must be prepared for a "marathon run"
in generating solutions to the problem of "terrorism." He then
discusses the risks of any intervention in northern Iraq and says
that this may "not produce any results" and may have to turn into a
"permanent occupation." He says that a Turkish intervention may unite
Iraqi Kurds and that Turkish forces may sustain even bigger losses
in fighting the PKK allied with other Kurdish groups.

Kongar comments on the importance of "cutting off financial support"
to terrorist groups. He blames the EU and the United States for
allowing "money laundering" operations by terrorist groups and says
that Turkey must frame the PKK problem in the context of the global
war on terrorism and press for global measures against it. He charges
that the United States "continues to provide logistical support to
the PKK in northern Iraq" even as the US Congress prepares to pass an
"Armenian genocide resolution." Noting that this resolution may lead
to Armenian territorial demands from Turkey, he says that these actions
"are not consistent with any strategic partnership."

Barlas says that the recent escalation of terrorist acts in
Turkey may be attributable to "weaknesses in intelligence" in the
country’s security apparatus. Noting that Kurds are now represented
in parliament through the Democratic Society Party, Barlas says
that Turkish intelligence "needs to explain to the public why the
separatist wing of the Kurdish community has changed its strategy"
and resorted to increased violence. He adds that this would "make
the war against terrorism easier from a perspective of public opinion."

Kongar ends the show at 1720 gmt repeating an emphatic appeal to the
public "not to accept defeat by hatred and animosity."

GENOCIDE RESOLUTION TESTS TURKEY’S K STREET CLOUT
By Kevin Bogardus and Jim Snyder

The Hill, DC
solution-tests-turkeys-k-street-clout-2007-10-10.h tml
Oct 10 2007

Following visits to Ataturk’s Mausoleum and the Museum of Anatolian
Civilizations in the Turkish capital of Ankara, members of Congress
in May sat down for a series of meetings with top Turkish officials,
including the Speaker of the national assembly, the deputy chief of
the Turkish General Staff and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In every meeting, Rep. Steve Cohen said, U.S. lawmakers heard the same
message: Oppose a congressional resolution that defines the killing
of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in the early 1900s as genocide,
perpetrated by Ottoman Turks.

Government officials "were constantly saying to vote against the
resolution. Constantly," Cohen, a freshman Democrat from Tennessee,
said. "The Turkish government doesn’t want it passed."

Hosting American officials – three privately sponsored trips, two of
which were staff-only, have visited Turkey in the last six months –
is just one piece of a furious campaign the Turkish government and its
supporters have used to try to turn Congress against the resolution.

The measure is scheduled for a House Foreign Affairs Committee vote
Wednesday, the resolution’s first legislative test under the new
Democratic majority.

"This resolution enjoys strong bipartisan support and is consistent
with concerns long expressed by the American people on the suffering
of the Armenian people," Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said.

If the measure gains committee approval, Elshami said, the Speaker
is "supportive of bringing it to the floor." Another Democratic
congressional aide said that it was unclear whether the resolution
would pass the committee, although it has supported similar resolutions
in the past.

The measure calls upon President Bush to "accurately characterize
the systematic and deliberate annihilation of [1.5 million] Armenians
as genocide."

Lobbying on the issue intensified after the panel vote was scheduled.

Three members of the Turkish parliament traveled to Washington Tuesday
for a series of meetings with lawmakers and State Department officials
to discuss the ramifications of the vote. One delegation member said
the trip was his fourth this year.

Turkey has relied heavily on K Street to make its case. Former House
Democratic leader Dick Gephardt (Mo.) and ex-Appropriations Committee
Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.) are among the lobbyists who have
argued that the resolution would unnecessarily harm relations between
the two countries.

Livingston shot an eight-minute video that members can see on the
Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network. In it, Livingston says Congress
"ought not be going out and just gratuitously kicking [Turkey] in
the shins with issues that are unnecessary."

Livingston Group lobbyists have passed out polling data to members
that show that 83 percent of Turkish citizens would oppose assisting
the United States in Iraq if Congress approves the resolution.

American forces now use an airbase in Turkey to re-supply troops
in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Gephardt’s firm, DLA Piper, has distributed a small
booklet titled "An Appeal to Reason" that disputes Armenia’s claims
of genocide, published for meetings with House members in March,
according to public records.

Despite the intense lobbying, backers of the resolution are optimistic
the House panel will vote in favor of the resolution Wednesday, which
would represent a victory for the Armenian-American community that
has mounted an aggressive grassroots campaign for the better part of
two decades to push the measure through Congress.

"I feel pretty good about things, but they are certainly spending
a lot of money on this," Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is a main
sponsor of the resolution, said.

Schiff argues there is a "compelling moral and ethical reason" to call
the killings in eastern Turkey a genocide. Not doing so, he said,
would undermine the United States’ own aggressive posture with the
Sudanese government over the crisis in Darfur, which President Bush
has labeled a genocide.

However, the Bush administration, like the Clinton administration
before it, remains opposed to the Armenian genocide resolution,
fearing damage to the U.S.’s relationship with a key ally.

Turkey acknowledges the deaths of tens of thousands of Armenians in
clashes from 1915 to 1923, but it says the catastrophe was part of
a civil war sparked by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It says
atrocities occurred on both sides.

"No one claims those were not horrible days," said Egemen Bagis,
a Turkish member of parliament who is leading the Turkish delegation
this week.

Bagis said a request by the Turkish prime minister to set up an
international historical commission along with Armenia to study the
killings has not been answered by the Armenian government.

"I believe the job of the politician is to determine the future to
make the best world for our children, not to determine the past. That
is the job of the historian," the Turkish official said.

Armenian-American backers of the resolution say the evidence that
what happened is correctly labeled a genocide is overwhelming and
that calls for a commission amount to a delaying tactic.

Armenian genocide resolutions have been debated in previous
Congresses. In 2005, for example, what was then the House International
Relations Committee voted overwhelmingly to approve a similar
resolution. But the measure never reached the floor.

Twice before, the House has voted for a resolution calling the killing
of Armenians a genocide, but the measures never passed Congress.

Supporters say that with Democrats in charge of Congress this year,
the lobbying has intensified. Those efforts include a well-organized
grassroots campaign by the Armenian diaspora, which form significant
voting blocs in key states such as California.

The Armenian Assembly of America has sent an action alert to its
10,000 members and has been running phone banks targeted at Foreign
Affairs Committee members.

In a letter sent to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the assembly said the
resolution would be an important gesture to survivors of World War
I atrocities to "irrevocably and unequivocally reaffirm this fact
of history."

The assembly also has handed out a cable Henry Morgenthau, the
ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, sent to the State
Department in 1915. In it, Morgenthau wrote, "The great massacres and
persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to
the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915."

So far, 226 lawmakers have co-sponsored the resolution, enough to
pass the measure in a floor vote.

Still, Turkey’s lobbying campaign seems to have had some effect. Nine
members have dropped off as co-sponsors. At least three of those
members changed their minds after they or their staff members heard
from lobbyists from the Livingston Group, according to public records.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) was one of those. His spokesman, T. Q.

Houlton, said Tancredo dropped sponsorship after sitting through
a committee markup for a resolution that encouraged Japan to accept
responsibility for the sexual enslavement of so-called "comfort women"
during World War II. Tancredo voted against that resolution.

"After the hearing, he felt it would be equally unfair to imply that
the current Turkish government bears responsibility for the actions
of the now-defunct Ottoman government," Houlton said.

Houlton added that Tancredo’s "decision had nothing to do with pressure
from any foreign government in either case."

Cohen, the freshman Democrat who visited Turkey in May, said he, too,
likely would vote against the measure.

Cohen said he has always heard what happened to Armenians referred
to as genocide. "Whatever happened was awful," he said.

But he called Turkey the only democracy and "our strongest ally"
in the Middle East.

"It is important that we have good relations," he said. Cohen is
trying to convince the Congressional Study Group on Turkey to meet in
Memphis next year, which would draw a number of Turkish and American
officials to his district.

House Committee on Foreign Affairs
CommitteePRESS

October 10, 2007

Verbatim, as delivered

Opening Statement by Chairman Lantos at markup of
H. Res. 106

Today we are not considering whether the Armenian people were
persecuted and died in huge numbers at the hands of Ottoman troops in
the early 20th Century. There is unanimity in the Congress and across
the country that these atrocities took place. If the resolution before
us stated that fact alone, it would pass unanimously.

The controversy lies in whether to make it United States policy at
this moment in history to apply a single word genocide to encompass
this enormous blot on human history.

The United Nations Convention on Genocide defines the term as a number
of actions, and I quote, committed with intent to destroy, in whole or
in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. These actions
include killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of
the group, and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in
part.

Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the
time of the atrocities, wrote — and I am quoting — I am confident
that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible
episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem
almost insignificant when compared with the sufferings of the Armenian
race in 1915.

The leadership of the United States has been in universal agreement in
condemning the atrocities but has been divided about using the term
genocide.

On one occasion, President Ronald Reagan referred to, I quote, the
genocide of the Armenians.

But subsequent Presidents — George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush, have refrained from using the word out of
deference to Turkish sentiments on the matter.

In recognizing this tragedy, some in Congress have seen common themes
with the debate our committee held earlier this year on a resolution
about another historic injustice the tens of thousands of so-called
Comfort Women forced into sexual slavery by Imperial Japan. The
current Japanese government went to great length to attempt to prevent
debate on that matter, and dire predictions were made that passage of
such a resolution would harm U.S.-Japan relations. Those dire
consequences never materialized.

A key feature distinguishing todays debate from the one on the Comfort
Women resolution is that U.S. troops are currently engaged in wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Our troops depend on a major Turkish airbase for
access to the fighting fronts, and it serves as a critical part of the
supply lines to those fronts. A growing majority in Congress, and I am
among them, strongly oppose continued U.S. troop involvement in the
civil war in Iraq, but none of us wants to see those supply lines
threatened or abruptly cut.

All eight living former secretaries of state recently cautioned
Congress on this matter. And I quote, It is our view, write former
Secretaries Albright, Baker, Christopher, Eagleburger, Haig,
Kissinger, Powell and Shultz, that passage of this resolution could
endanger our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and damage efforts to
promote reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey.

Three former secretaries of defense Carlucci, Cohen and Perry this
week advised Congress that passage of this resolution, and I quote
again, would have a direct, detrimental effect on the operational
capabilities, safety and well being of our armed forces in Iraq and in
Afghanistan.

Members of this committee have a sobering choice to make. We have to
weigh the desire to express our solidarity with the Armenian people
and to condemn this historic nightmare through the use of the word
genocide against the risk that it could cause young men and women in
the uniform of the United States armed services to pay an even heavier
price than they are currently paying. This is a vote of conscience,
and the Committee will work its will.
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