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-- Bush opposes Armenian genocide measure
Bush opposes Armenian genocide measure
...fearing the response from Turkey. This is pretty interesting:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071010...rmenia_genocide
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WASHINGTON - President Bush urged Congress to reject legislation Wednesday that would say it was a genocide when thousand of Armenians were killed around the time of World War I. The House Foreign Affairs Committee prepared to vote on a measure that Turkey says could damage ties with the United States. Turkey is a NATO ally and a major staging area for U.S. military operations in Iraq and the Middle East. Passing the resolution, Bush said, "would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror." The committee chairman, Rep. Tom Lantos, cited the potential fallout if the proposal passed. Lantos, a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust, supported a similar resolution two years ago. "We have to weigh the desire to express our solidarity with the Armenian people ... 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," said Lantos, D-Calif. Turkey raised the possibility of impeding logistical and other U.S. military traffic now using Turkish airspace. Earlier, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates conveyed their concerns. Passing the measure "at this time would be very problematic for everything we are trying to do in the Middle East," Rice said told reporters at the White House. Gates said that 70 percent of U.S. air cargo headed for Iraq goes through Turkey, as does about one-third of the fuel used by the U.S. military in Iraq. "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," Gates said. He also said that 95 percent of new vehicles designed to better protect against mine attacks are being flown through Turkey to get to Iraq. Lawmakers from both parties who supported the proposal said the moral implications outweighed security concerns and friendship with Turkey. "The sad truth is that the modern government of Turkey refuses to come to terms with this genocide," said Rep. Chris Smith, R.-N.J. "For Armenians everywhere, the Turkish government's denial is a slap in the face." The vote comes at a tense time in the region. Turkey's government is seeking parliamentary approval for a military operation to chase separatist Kurdish rebels who operate from bases in northern Iraq. The move, opposed by the U.S., could open a new front in the most stable part of Iraq. "I have been trying to warn the (U.S.) lawmakers not to make a historic mistake," said Egemen Bagis, a close foreign policy adviser to Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Yet with the House's first order of business Wednesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi made clear that Turkey's position was a hard sell. She chose the Supreme Patriarch of all Armenians, Karekin II, to deliver the morning prayer � a daily ritual intended to be apolitical. "With the solemn burden of history, we remember the victims of the genocide of the Armenians," he said in the House. "Give peace and justice on their descendants." The U.S. Embassy in Ankara warned U.S. citizens in Turkey about "demonstrations and other manifestations of anti-Americanism" if the bill moved ahead. Protests were reported Wednesday outside the embassy and the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul. At issue is the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, says the toll has been inflated and insists that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest. Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., emerged unswayed after meeting with Turkey's ambassador, Nabi Sensoy. Hoyer told reporters he expects a full House vote before lawmakers adjourn for the year. Hoyer said he hoped that Turkey would realize it is not a condemnation of its current government but rather of "another government, at another time." |
Yea, was reading about this today as well.
Should be interesting to see what happens...
Huh, funny running across this little tidbit statement:
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| The twentieth century was marred by wars of unimaginable brutality, mass murder and genocide. History records that the Armenians were the first people of the last century to have endured these cruelties. The Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign that defies comprehension and commands all decent people to remember and acknowledge the facts and lessons of an awful crime in a century of bloody crimes against humanity. If elected President, I would ensure that our nation properly recognizes the tragic suffering of the Armenian people. |
I have figured out long ago that democracy, people's rights, justice and some other important things are not much considered by US administration on international scene, at least. Turkey's not the only US ally that has a brutal human rights record, there are many others (Saudi Arabia, anyone?) ... hail to the world democracy! Oil is more important than freedom and justice!
The thing that bugs me the most is why USA and its allies are not critical of Turkey, while Russia is the main target of freedom and human rights and justice violators??? Jesus Christ, seems like Turkey is much more democratic *cough* than Russia.
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium I have figured out long ago that democracy, people's rights, justice and some other important things are not much considered by US administration on international scene, at least. Turkey's not the only US ally that has a brutal human rights record, there are many others (Saudi Arabia, anyone?) ... hail to the world democracy! Oil is more important than freedom and justice! The thing that bugs me the most is why USA and its allies are not critical of Turkey, while Russia is the main target of freedom and human rights and justice violators??? Jesus Christ, seems like Turkey is much more democratic *cough* than Russia. |
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| Originally posted by ams.rld What are you an idiot? Not everything is about RUSSIA!. Listen Friend, politicians are simply out there to talk a majority of nothingness. |
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium I was merely describing the double standards, there's no easier country to compare Turkey with. What you said there doesnt make much sense. . |
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Huh, funny running across this little tidbit statement: |
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| Originally posted by ams.rld ANd this is coming from someone who can barely speak english |
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| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN magnetonium's command of the english language is more than impressive you fool. he writes better than most americans on TA. |
The Spectre That Haunts Turkey
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"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" said Adolf Hitler, before ordering storm troopers to kill men, women and children in Poland so Germany could have Lebensraum, or living space. Hitler was wrong about the killings of Armenians as about so many things. The death of hundreds of thousands of Armenians between 1915 and 1917 after the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the emergence of modern Turkey in 1923 has not been forgotten and now bedevils US-Turkey relations. Turkey has condemned a vote by the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee yesterday that recognises the massacres as genocide - the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, religious or national group. Turkish governments have consistently denied the accusation; they say the killings occurred at a time of civil unrest as the Ottoman empire fell apart and that the numbers are inflated. To say that claims of Armenian genocide touch a raw nerve in Turkey is an understatement. When the French parliament decreed last year that criminal charges be filed against anyone who denied genocide was committed against the Armenians, Turkey cut off military contacts with France and cancelled some contracts. In January, Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist, was shot dead outside his newspaper, Agos, after he called the killing of Armenians genocide. More than 100,000 people marched at his funeral procession, chanting: "We are all Armenians." Yet, although an outspoken critic of Turkey's denial that the events of 1915 amounted to genocide, Dink was equally opposed to international attempts to politicise the issue. When the French parliament made denying the Armenian genocide a crime, he vowed to travel there to deny it. Orhan Pamuk, the winner of last year's Nobel prize for literature, was hauled before an Istanbul court in 2005 for "belittling Turkishness" - a criminal offence - by raising the issue of genocide. Pamuk was taken to court after telling a Swiss newspaper that the massacres of more than one million Armenians and of more than 30,000 Kurds in Turkey [in the 1990s] were taboo topics in his country. The trial in Istanbul turned ugly, with a mob of baying nationalists scuffling with the writer's supporters as riot police looked on. Pamuk was acquitted on a technicality, but the case damaged Turkey's efforts to project itself as an increasingly liberal country seeking to join the EU. The notorious article of the penal code remains. Turkey's harsh reaction to those who dare to break political taboos by wanting to discuss the Armenian genocide comes despite the fact that 22 countries and organisations, such as the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, recognise it as such. The mass killings of Armenians, one of the largest minorities in the Ottoman empire, followed Turkey's disastrous military campaign against the Russians in the Caucasus in 1914 after Ankara sided with Germany. The Turks blamed the defeat on the Armenians living in the region siding with the Russians. In 1915 Armenian intellectuals were rounded up and laws were passed authorising the deportation of Armenians and the confiscation of their homes and property. Over the next two years the Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey was uprooted and expelled to the desert regions of Mesopotamia. In the process between 500,000 and a million Armenians were killed or died of exposure or disease. President Theodore Roosevelt would later call the episode "the greatest crime of the war". Turkey's official position is that deaths occurred during the "relocation" or "deportation" and cannot be called "genocide". |
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Imperial delusions die hard - and once again the US Congress is trying to legislate for the world. As most Turks see it, this week's committee vote in the House of Representatives accusing Turkey of genocide against the Armenians in 1915-17 is an insulting, gratuitous interference in their sovereign affairs. As the 27 Democrats and Republicans who backed the bill see it, it is a matter of putting the world to rights, according to America's lights. Congress has a long history of extraterritorial meddling. It regularly slaps unilateral sanctions on "rogue" governments, and orders foreign businesses and individuals to obey its strictures, regardless of nationality. Its attempts to direct US foreign policy are resisted by the executive branch to varying degrees. On Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and Israel, White House and legislature mostly agree. On Turkey, like Iraq, they are at noisy loggerheads. "We oppose the bill. We think it is a bad idea that will do nothing to improve Turkish-Armenian relations. It will not do anything to advance American interests," Daniel Fried, assistant secretary for Eurasian affairs, told Turkish television this week. President Bush, the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and defence secretary, Robert Gates, all chimed in. They even mobilised all former living US secretaries of state in joint opposition, but to no avail. It was a measure of the lame-duck president's chronic weakness. Sentimentality and righteousness are never far from the surface of American politics. "Despite President Bush twisting arms and making deals, justice prevailed," said Democrat Brad Sherman of California, playing to a gallery of elderly ethnic Armenians who attended the vote and the wider Armenian diaspora. "If we hope to stop future genocides, we need to admit to those horrific acts of the past." One problem for Mr Sherman and his fellow Californian Democrat, the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is that for the most part Turks admit nothing of the kind - and deeply resent such vicarious apologising. "Twenty-seven foolish Americans" said a headline in the Vatan newspaper. "It is blatantly obvious that [Congress] does not have a task or function to rewrite history," snarled the Ankara government. Another problem is that the Democrats' motives are up for scrutiny. Turkish media suggest the struggle is less about justice and more about votes and campaign contributions from the powerful Armenian-American lobby, concentrated in the key 2008 election battlefields of California, New Jersey and Michigan. More pertinently perhaps, Turkish officials ask why, when the US officially believes genocide is occurring right now in Sudan, it is digging up disputed events nearly a century ago. This week saw escalating killings in Darfur and warnings that a beefed-up UN force will not deploy for many months yet. Campaigners say that is partly because Congress has failed to honour US funding pledges. Having lost the committee vote, and conscious that the full House is expected to approve the bill before Thanksgiving, the Bush administration is now pursuing damage-limitation. Turkey is being reassured the Senate will not pass the bill into law and that in any case, nothing is really changed by such posturing. The hope is that Ankara will not "overreact". Hope is the correct word, for Mr Bush is now reduced to a fingers-crossed policy. In the next few days, an alienated Turkish parliament will almost certainly vote to authorise punitive military incursions into northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish separatists who find sanctuary there. Such action, going directly against US wishes, has great potential to destabilise the region further. And that may be just a beginning. As Mr Gates noted this week, Turkey could cut off US military supply lines to Iraq and disrupt air force operations. It could strengthen its de facto anti-Kurdish alliance with Iran and withdraw support for Washington's attempts to isolate Tehran. In the worst case, congressional grandstanding could cost the US its most powerful Muslim ally in the Middle East. Such catastrophic rupture is unlikely - the two sides need each other too much. But as the Turkish Daily News columnist Mehmet Ali Birand noted today: "In spite of the non-binding nature [of the bill], Turkey will still lose considerable prestige. Armenian allegations will gain credibility. It will make it easier for Armenians to pressurise European parliaments. Turkey will be hurt." The hurt is deep, born of a sense of a friend's betrayal. And given that a poll earlier this year found that 81% of Turks already disapproved of US policies, the multiplying, ramifying cost to American prestige and leverage is set to rise. Even after Iraq and uncounted "war on terror" disasters, imperial Washington still seems blind to the difference between power and wisdom. |
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