The Democrat Majority US House of Representatives last week pressed ahead with its unilateral action — a vote by its Committee on Foreign Affairs on a draft House Resolution 106 which characterizes the relocation decision taken by the Ottoman Government in 1915 with regard to a portion of its Armenian subjects who were in collaboration with the invading Allied forces as “genocide”.
The Resolution was adopted by 27 votes for and 21 against, although it is nonbinding and was not supported by President George Bush. Not surprisingly, Turkish President Abdullah Gul in a midnight statement strongly denounced the resolution and vote.
“This unacceptable decision of the committee... has no validity and respectability for the Turkish people. Unfortunately, some politicians in the United States ignored appeals for common sense and once again moved to sacrifice big issues to petty games of domestic politics,” President Gul stressed.
The implications of the above vote are obvious for US and western foreign policy in Iraq; the wider Middle East region; and NATO, of which Turkey is one of the largest member countries. When the French Parliament went down the same route a few years ago, Ankara immediately retaliated by barring French companies from bidding for lucrative defense contracts.
It is not coincidental that France is the most vehement opponent of Turkish membership of the European Union. The reason often given is that Turkey is a Muslim country, and therefore by implication the EU is a Christian club.
France and the United States host the largest Armenian diaspora. As such, both the US House of Representatives Resolution 106 and the subsequent vote, smacks of the same gesture politics. The Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has admitted that many of her constituents in California are prominent Armenians, who no doubt have contributed to her campaign coffers.
As such, she is merely effecting policies which some of her constituents are demanding.
Others see the vote as a cynical ploy by the Democrats to force President Bush’s hand on withdrawing from Iraq. By driving a wedge between Turkey and the US using the Ottoman Armenian issue, may result in Ankara refusing to cooperate with the US in Iraq. Some 70 percent of the supplies to the US forces in Iraq come from Turkey or through Turkish airspace.
Both Turkish President Abdullah Gul (the former foreign minister) and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are wily politicians and unlikely to fall for this ploy. Turkish ambassador in London, Yigit Alpogan, has stressed that such a move is not on the cards and would indeed be an extreme measure.
More importantly, the US House of Representatives action sets a dangerous precedent which will further alienate the Muslim world, especially at a time of renewed efforts toward inter-faith dialogue and reconciliation.
Only the other day, over 130 Muslim scholars from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa sent a letter to Pope Benedict XVI, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other Christian leaders urging greater understanding between the two faiths and stressing that world peace could depend on improved relations between Muslims and Christians.
The missive identifies the principles of accepting only one God, insisting that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, and living in peace with one’s neighbors as common ground between the two religions.
Unfortunately, the move on Capitol Hill undermines Muslim-Christian rapprochement, and betrays the dark underbelly of chauvinism on both the political Left and Right.
It represents yet another manifestation of American UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Infamy) — of the same ilk which branded Islam together with fascism — hence the phrase ‘Islamo-fascism’ coined by the neoconservatives. True, you have extremists with coincidental nefarious agendas on both sides of the religious divides. But such resolutions merely serve to fuel the politics of hate and suspicion, sustaining the belief, rightly or wrongly, that the Christian West is out to get the Muslim world.
Perhaps what is so disconcerting is that the basis for yesterday’s infamous bill is intellectually flimsy and historically weak. The US House of Representatives refused to countenance an offer from the Turkish government to help set up an international commission comprising Turkish, Armenian and independent international experts to research the huge Ottoman Archives to establish the very nature of the situation regarding the Turkish population and the Armenian subjects during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. Is this perhaps the latest manifestation of the self-styled Neocon “truism” that you are guilty until proven innocent? This would not be the first time that the political right and left would cooperate in matters that serve their own ultimate interests.
To date, there is no document or evidence that the Ottoman Government intended or adopted a policy of genocide, a charge which the modern Turks, the successors to the Ottomans, stress lumps them together with the Nazis on history’s scrapheap.
Turkey strongly denies the killings were genocide. It argues that 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia during World War I and sided with Russian, British, French and Greek troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire. In many countries — both east and west — that would be regarded as treason.
The nature of the events of 1915 is still being debated. According to the Turkish government, contrary to Armenian claims, many internationally renowned historians consider the relocation decision in this period as a war-time security measure that was taken under the conditions of World War 1.
