THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION’S REAL-WORLD IMPACT
Emil Sanamyan
World Politics Review
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April 8 2009
Recurring efforts by Armenian-Americans to secure official
U.S. condemnation of the Armenian genocide have often been portrayed
by opponents as "counterproductive" to U.S.-Turkey, as well as
Turkey-Armenia, relations. But the campaign to pass a non-binding
congressional resolution has actually helped focus these relations
by catalyzing Armenian-Turkish dialogue, advancing democratic debate
inside Turkey and, perhaps most counterintuitively, helping navigate
the U.S.-Turkish partnership through a troubled stretch.
An Ancient Relationship
Separated by religion and language, for almost a thousand years
Armenians and Turks shared one homeland — a large area known
alternately as Eastern Turkey and Western Armenia. It was never a
harmonious arrangement. Rather, Ottoman Turks, as overlords, merely
tolerated Armenians as a lower caste, so long as they did not threaten
the prevailing order.
When Armenians began to demand more equal rights, Ottomans responded
with increasingly bloody crackdowns. In 1915, that process culminated
in a complete removal of Armenians from their homeland and more than
a million deaths.
It is that legacy that lies at the core of today’s acrimony.
Armenians seek condemnation of how their ancestors were treated. Many
Turks view any such remorse as a concession that could lead to demands
of financial and even territorial restitution.
But lobbying campaigns in the U.S. and elsewhere are merely one aspect
of this tug-of-war. The other is Turkey’s policy towards present-day
Armenia: For the past two decades, Turkey has refused to establish
diplomatic ties or to open the land border with Armenia.
That policy, born out of efforts to support Azerbaijan in its
territorial dispute with Armenia over the breakaway province of
Karabakh, has long become a liability for Ankara. Not only has the
embargo failed to achieve Armenian compromises, it has emerged as an
irritant in relations with the European Union and U.S. Still, owing
more to policy inertia more than anything else, it remains in place.
Enter the Armenian genocide resolution.
Every time that recognition efforts in U.S. have intensified, Turkey
has launched a fresh round of diplomacy with Armenia. This was the
case in 2000 and again in 2004. Most strikingly, it has been the case
since the election of U.S. President Barack Obama, who has been more
vocal on the Armenian genocide than any of his predecessors.
While Turkey’s diplomatic initiatives are intended primarily to stall
the embarrassing resolution by painting it as "counterproductive to
fruitful negotiations," they also have a secondary effect of rekindling
Armenian-Turkish dialogue. That helps smooth tensions and should help
to eventually normalize relations.
A Rekindled Debate
The proposed resolutions have had an even more striking impact inside
Turkey itself.
A Turkish parliamentarian told a Washington audience in 2007 that,
if adopted, a genocide resolution would be headline news for every
Turk throughout the country, including shepherds in the remotest
mountain pastures.
To understand how a non-binding congressional resolution might have
such an exaggerated importance, look no further than the Turkish
government. For decades, Ankara has made the issue a foreign policy
fetish. The determination to oppose the resolution at any cost has
helped publicize what otherwise might have remained an obscure chapter
of history, both abroad and in Turkey.
Until relatively recently, many Turks were simply unaware of the
Armenian massacres. The issue was left out of school books and
largely forgotten.
Enter the Armenian genocide resolution.
The battle over the non-binding resolution brought history back to life
in a contemporary Turkey torn between its nationalist, fundamentalist
and progressive urges.
Over the last decade, the issue of the Armenian genocide has become
a focal point of public debate. Clumsy attempts by the nationalist
establishment to ban public discussion of the Armenian genocide have
led to a series of lawsuits against journalists and writers, leading
to even more publicity.
When a Turkish-Armenian editor who spoke openly about the genocide was
killed by nationalists, the outpouring of outrage — tens of thousands
of Turks chanting in the funeral procession, "We are all Armenians"
— was unprecedented and revealed a strong, if often invisible,
desire for change.
These days, Turkish television programs regularly host intellectuals
arguing about details of 90-year-old history: how many Armenians died,
and why, and what should be done about it today.
The genocide resolutions and Turkish government’s determination to
fight them has rescued this history from obscurity.
A Flailing Alliance
Following Turkey’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003,
the U.S.-Turkish alliance had become dysfunctional, with the two
NATO allies’ forces coming close to a direct confrontation in Iraqi
Kurdistan.
Among the issues exacerbating relations was Turkey’s ongoing battle
against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) based in Northern
Iraq. While the U.S. had designated the PKK a terrorist group,
it had done little to support Turkey in its campaign against the
guerilla movement.
Enter the Armenian genocide resolution.
In 2007, the Bush administration worked closely with Turkey and
associated interest groups to prevent the genocide resolution from
being voted on in the House of Representatives, with President George
W. Bush going so far as to personally lobby members of Congress.
The "war on the non-binding resolution" restored a level of trust
between Washington and Ankara in ways that the "war on terror"
could not.
The Turks began to coordinate their operations in northern Iraq
with the U.S., which furnished actionable intelligence on PKK camps
in Iraqi Kurdistan. And the Turkish military resumed its orders of
U.S.-made weaponry.
History with a Future
On his visit to Turkey this week, President Obama did not use the
term genocide. But with a non-binding resolution on Armenian genocide
just re-introduced in the House of Representatives, he also confronted
the question of Turkish-Armenian relations head on.
At a press conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gul,
he implicitly leveraged his position on genocide, which "has not
changed," to a positive outcome of Armenia-Turkey talks, "very quickly,
very soon."
Significantly, in the same speech to the Turkish parliament in which
he outlined a broad blueprint for future U.S.-Turkish engagement,
Obama spoke of the need for "each nation to work through its past"
and for Turkey to address its Armenian legacy.
Emil Sanamyan is Washington editor and bureau chief for the Armenian
Reporter.
Photo: Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Armenian President Serzh
Sargsyan, Yerevan, Armenia, September 2008 (Martin Shahbazyan).
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