COMMITTEE VOTE MAY HAVE GIVEN TURKEY A LEG UP
By Tulin Daloglu
Daily Caller
-vote-may-have-given-turkey-a-leg-up/
March 10 2010
Has Congress considered any measure as often over the last four
decades as the "Armenian Genocide" resolution? Again and again the
bill has returned to Capitol Hill, only to fail each time. The House
Foreign Affairs Committee has debated the bill at least four times
since 2000, and it has become increasingly clear that each committee
member believes that what happened to the Armenians during World
War I was indeed a "genocide." Yet despite that seemingly unanimous
position, the resolution passed last week on a 23-22 vote. When it
was considered in 2007, the committee passed it by six votes. Given
how the gap has closed, the measure doesn’t stand a chance to get a
floor vote this time.
This is indeed a positive development for Turkey, even though Turks
are deeply offended that the vote took place at all. They’re sick
and tired of the House having this debate, and many would love to
see Congress promise never to discuss it again. Of course, that will
never happen. Surely, Armenians don’t relish this endless conversation
either, but clearly many feel morally obliged to carry on the fight
for their loved ones. While I feel strongly that it’s a mistake for
Congress to legislate this conflicted bit of history, I fully respect
the hard work of the Armenians to keep the issue alive.
That said, it is important for Turkey not to overplay its hand. Ankara
recalled its ambassador to Washington, Namik Tan, soon after the bill
passed the committee. I am not even sure as to whether that was the
right decision. But Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is adamant that
Ambassador Tan will not be returning to the U.S. until "there is a
clear development on this issue." It’s fair to speculate that Turkey
likes to get assurances from President Obama that he will not use the
term "Armenian Genocide" in this year’s April 24 statement. While
doing that, Erdogan rebuked Berman without fully understanding why
he gave extra time for the committee members to finish voting. On
Tuesday, he said, "you will call the U.S. an advanced democracy;
do every thing that a progressive democracy can not tolerate. This
is not the right thing. Yet this is what they do."
But for now at least, the resolution is dead. No one in Congress
wants to assume the economic and national security risks of a full
House vote. They wished Turkey to deal with this issue as plain
historical fact and get over with it long time ago. But it isn’t that
simple for Turkey, whose citizens remain convinced that accepting
the label of "genocide" will touch off a generation of reparations
claims. More importantly, many Turks believe that during World War I
the Ottomans criminally neglected their own population as well, and
that the Armenians were hardly the only ones to suffer. Because of
that widespread suffering, they reason, the atrocities that Armenians
faced could not be considered a "genocide." Refusing to acknowledge
a Turkish side of the story now only serves to add to the tragedy
rather than remedy it.
Both Turks and Armenians want to reconcile, but they seem to be in
it for the wrong reasons. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
and Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian signed two protocols
five months ago in an attempt to normalize their relationship, with
strong U.S. support. But House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman
(D-Calif.) was correct when he said last week that "[T]here is a
(strong) likelihood that these protocols will not be ratified (by the
respective parliaments) in the near future because the Turkish Prime
Minister said he won’t put those into effect until the Nagorno-Karabagh
issue is resolved."
Turkish leaders will not admit it, but they have begun the process
of de-linking the Nagorno-Karabagh issue from the Turkey-Armenia
normalization process. The Turkish government misjudged the situation,
and did not take into account the influence of Azerbaijan. For Turks,
"[m]aking a rapprochement was a play toward the U.S. and Congress (to
get rid of the genocide resolutions)," said Thomas Goltz, a political
science scholar at Montana State University. "What got sacrificed
was the special relationship with Azerbaijan. It was a huge blow."
However, Suat Kiniklioglu, the head of the U.S.-Turkey
inter-parliamentary friendship caucus, says that such an argument does
not hold up. "It writes openly in the protocols that the ‘regional
conflicts will be resolved by peaceful means,’" he said. "We’re not
talking about the Middle East. This evidently refers to the Karabagkh
issue." But the Armenians could argue that it means Azerbaijan should
not use military force against them, and they worry about what will
happen as they watch Azerbaijan increase its defense budget.
In fact, "Armenians are not trying to normalize their relationship
with Turkey for the sake of normalization," Kiniklioglu told me. They
are "trying to position themselves in a more advantageous place on
the Karabagh issue after opening the borders with Turkey." Turkey is
trying to gain sympathy within the international community and find
a new way to fight the genocide claims. Why shouldn’t the Armenians
do the same thing with their own issues? If not naïve, Turkish
leadership failed to understand why the Armenians were interested
in signing the protocols. Afterall, Turkey closed its border with
Armenia after a massive attack on Karabagh.
Berman was right. Turkey’s parliament will not pass the protocols
any time soon, and they will surely blame him and his colleagues in
Congress for that failure. In the end, the House Foreign Affairs
Committee’s vote gave Turkey a bigger victory than it could have
realized.
Based in Washington, D.C., Tulin Daloglu is a correspondent for
Turkey’s HABERTURK. In the 2002 general election, she ran for a
seat in Parliament as a member of the New Turkey Party. Her e-mail
is [email protected]