A Problem from Hell
- 10.11.2007 - 12:28 PMThe Turkish government is furious about a vote in the House International Relations Committee condemning as “genocide” the killing of some 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks in 1915.
The issue is an old and vexing one, and I confess to not being entirely in sympathy with either side. The Turks, for a start, are absurdly worked up about a mere piece of paper condemning actions taken not by the current government of Turkey or by its immediate predecessors but by another entity entirely—the Ottoman Empire, which ceased to exist in 1922 when it was replaced by a new Turkish state headed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The massacres of 1915 (which were indeed an attempted genocide—see Samantha Power’s powerful book, A Problem from Hell) were carried out by the Young Turks. Therefore, the current government in Ankara could very easily say: Yes, there were terrible acts committed by the Ottoman Empire in its waning days and we regret and disavow them. Now we want to work cooperatively with Armenians living in Armenia itself and in the Diaspora, and as a humanitarian gesture make some restitution where appropriate.
That would cost Turkey little and gain it much international support. But it does not seem emotionally possible given how high feelings run in Turkey over this issue. Instead, should this resolution go through, the Erdogan government is again threatening all sorts of dire consequences for the Turkish-American alliance. Since we need Turkish cooperation in all sorts of areas, especially in Iraq, we must tread lightly. My own view is that Congress should avoid passing a symbolic resolution that will do little or nothing to help Armenian victims or their descendants, but that will hurt vital American interests.
That’s not, of course, the way Armenians see it, and they form a powerful lobbying group that donates a lot of money to politicians especially in states like New Jersey, Michigan, and California. (It is no coincidence that legislators from those states are leading the push for the Armenian genocide resolution.)
While I disagree with them on the merits of this legislation, I sympathize with their grievances and respect their right to seek redress in Washington. That’s the way our political system works. It’s common, and completely innocuous, for various ethnic groups to get involved in lobbying. It’s only a scandal, it seems, when the lobbyists in question are Jewish. In that case, their activities are denounced in odious anti-Semitic tracts, most of them published by groups like the John Birch Society, the Lyndon Larouchites, and the Ku Klux Klan, but some of which appear bearing the imprimatur of supposedly prestigious institutions like Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
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October 11th, 2007 at 2:57 PM
The TURKS ARE COMING!…The TURKS ARE COMING…
{PRESIDENT BUSH - ‘GENOCIDE’ is history not spin
no matter how good an ally TURKEY is to the U.S.}
The Turks are coming! Run for your lives - we yelled.
Disrupting the pink-and-blue restful summer’s twilight
of those rocking gently on the wooden porch of
the ‘ARMENIAN HOME FOR THE AGED’.
Seven high-school boys packed tight into a Volkswagen “Beetle’.
High on six-packs of cheap beer that fueled teenaged frenzy, booming our boyhood bigotries. Trumpeting and screaming wildly as if we were mad ‘Kazakhs’ from the steppes of suburbia.
Disrupting the peaceful sunset thoughts of those survivors.
Their dark eyes and eagle-like faces reminders of images
tinted in sepiamemory of a people fading to another time,
another time of religious slaughter by the faithful.
When Abdulhanid’s Muslim moon-shaped knives,
whetted with blood of innocents, laughed in oriental scabbards
expressing cruelty and unfelt pity as we laughed and shouted with glee
mocking the hundreds of thousands that fell at Sasum.
Our cries and hoots of cutting ridicule, reminding
them of sunflowers spotted with blood from children whose naked violated bodies
were buried under a thin veil of the world’s
supposedly more important moments of tragedy.
In our perverted sense of boyhood humeurs;
we were as painful as an old scab ripped from a festering ugly wound,
never realizing in that pink-and-blue twilight time;
we were also shameless young Turks to be hated.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:17 PM
It is unfortunate that you reiterate the falsehood that the resolution will “hurt vital American interests.” Turkey threatened France before the resolution there and afterwards nothing came of it…the fact is trade increased between France & Turkey after the vote that properly termed the Armenian Genocide a genocide. Turkey has shown no goodwill to America and held our nation hostage to their nationalistic and irrational whims (remember when they did not allow us to enter Iraq via their border)?
I think it is equally disgraceful that organizations like the ADL allow Turkish Jews to be used as pawns by the Turkish government, citing the fact that their safety could be in jeopardy. Friends don’t threatens their citizens when others do not comply when their bigoted hatred.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:57 PM
What is the point of “voting” on a historical dispute to figure out which side is right? Totally pointless, will the history change based on what we vote? We should have left it to historians to decide, how did this committee get into this mess?
Turkey is a key ally in the war against terrorism, and alienating a key ally for some cheap political gesture at California or Michigan is not worth it. We’ve got young men and women serving in Iraq, and we need to keep sending them materials over Turkey. Risking the supply lines of our heroes is not worth satisfying some armenian lobbyist getting paid for speaking bs in Washington. Furthermore we should remember that Turkey is the only modern democracy in the middle east. Think long-term guys, think long-term…
October 11th, 2007 at 4:09 PM
It is not the job of the parliaments to make history, and particularly one that so grossly overlooks the suffering of Turks and Muslims during World War I. Millions of Muslims and Turks were also exiled, forced to flee their homes and died.
Between 1900-1924, millions of Muslims had to leave the Balkans, forced to do so by allegedly “Christian” states and many perished. It is the same attitude that led to the massacres in Bosnia and Albania in the 90s. I guess Muslims are hold to a different standards - how dare they live in “Christian lands” - how dare they commit such a sin!!
What a bunch of hypocrisy. An ex-minister of Armenia himself said last year that the foreign politicians were using this tragedy for their own political advantage, referring to France.
There is no “hatred” - Turks do not think that there was a state-organized effort to eradicate a whole race. That is a legitimate point of view - no matter what demagogues might say. Particularly considering that this one-sided analysis of history overlooks the immense suffering of Turks and Muslims during World War I, but only concentrates on the immense suffering of Armenians. Nationalism goes both ways, and there seems to be enough to get around apparently.
October 11th, 2007 at 4:52 PM
hv, turkey does not need to provide any unconditional support to americans just because americans think that it is good for their national interests. if it does not make sense for turkish national interests, turkish government has all the rights to act against it - hence one should interpret rejection of a bill to allow US soldiers using turkish bases to invade iraq from that perspective. usa does the same think by not allowing turkish military to act against kurdish terrorists who claim hundreds of lives just this year. in international politics there is no place for emotions, it is driven by national interests.
coming back to armenian claims, it is turkish governments’ fault not explain turkish claims better with the international community. no one denies that hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost in armenian side, but during these conflicting years armenian militia committed atrocities at the same scale - hundreds of thousands of turks and kurds had been killed by them. one of my old relatives in her late 90s, who was a child during the atrocities, still warns us about armenians who wants to kill/annihilate turks. the memories are not good in turkish side as well. the main objection of turkish public is towards unfairness; all this work is politically motivated with no one is actually caring about armenians. the people who suffer most from this debate is armenians in armenia, who are isolated from their crucial trading partners via turkich boycott.
be fair, and look back into your dark history while blaming turks. same turks have allowed jews to settle in ottoman land during dark inquisition times of europe when catholic kings of europe were conducting “genocide” against jews in iberia. you can’t blame a nation of deliberately killing a nation while it was fighting for its own survival. equating these events with genocide against jewish people of europe during the second world war is at best ignorance, if not a deliberate attempt to insult turks.
regards.
October 11th, 2007 at 5:14 PM
So the Hard Left has found their left-handed way of “ending the war”! This will cause even more hardships for Bush. But he’s been hogtied every step of the way, and will still find a way to win the “Battle of Iraq”. Strange that the Socialist Democrats took nearly 100 years to mount their high horse.
October 11th, 2007 at 5:47 PM
What happened to those Ottoman subjects at the end of year 1922, when Ataturk declared a new Turkish Republic. Did they wanished? Did their sons and daughters denounce their parents a generation later when they learned about the attrocities they committed?
No, they are the same flesh and blood decending untill today. There is no difference between Turks and Ottomans period. Read the history books taught in Turkish schools today. They do not denounce Ottomans, on the contrary they mention them with great pride.
You have to give the Turks or the continuation of Ottomans contineousely. It’s in their blood. They are there to take only, never give.
October 12th, 2007 at 9:32 AM
Max,
You lose all credibility when you link the John Birch Society with the anti-Semitic activities of the KKK and its ilk. Its Jewish members and its Black members would find your pathetic link upsetting and inflammatory. Why even bring it up when the rest of the article has got nothing to do with it?
October 14th, 2007 at 11:27 AM
As long as Senators and Congresspersons are bound and determined to create bad feelings by stirring old animosities, what about the Huguenots? Surely the French are worthy of a little sanctimonious scolding. And then there were the Arcadians. You know, the one’s the Brits tore from their peaceful Canadian villages and shipped directly into the path of Katrina… must be something they can do to voice solidarity with those long departed.
Perhaps the solution would be a blanket resolution along the lines of, “We the duly elected representatives of these United States do hereby humbly beseech and entreat all those persons, living or dead who have suffered mistreatment, displacement, discrimination, economic deprivation or hurt feelings to accept our abject apology. We condemn all historical aggressors of whatever stripe and grovel before the sons and daughters of the oppressed in full knowledge that no amount of foreign aid, welfare payments, grants or subsidies can ever fully recompense for the indignity your thrice removed ancestors may have suffered, assuming said ancestor happened to be in the neighborhood at the time.
October 14th, 2007 at 5:05 PM
Historians already have decided that the Armenian genocide did in fact happen. What is left is for the world to forcefully condemn it and to demand that Turkey provide reparations for the victims and their families.