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US MOVE SHARPENS 'GENOCIDE' ISSUE
The Irish Times
October 10, 2007 Wednesday
TURKEY: The decision by the US House of Representatives to discuss the
Armenian genocide of 1915 has cast a shadow over Turkish-US relations,
writes Lara Marlowe
The US House of Representatives will today debate resolution 106,
which would recognise as genocide the killing of hundreds of thousands
of Armenians by Turkish forces 92 years ago.
Other countries have already recognised the massacres as genocide,
but the likelihood that the US Congress will pass the resolution has
created panic among Turkish authorities.
Though they recognise that a "tragedy" occurred in the dying days
of the Ottoman Empire, they refuse to be singled out as a country
that committed genocide. And they fear the resolution will be used
to justify Armenian demands for financial and territorial reparations.
Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan telephoned President George Bush,
former president Bill Clinton (who has influence over Democratic
congressmen) and the Israeli president Shimon Peres at the weekend
to express his dismay.
An aura of menace permeates the issue. Turkish-US relations will be
seriously damaged if the Bill passes, Erdogan threatened.
"If approved, it would be difficult to control the dynamics that would
be triggered by the reaction of the Turkish public opinion," Koksal
Toptan, the speaker of parliament wrote to his US counterpart, Nancy
Pelosi. The 70,000-strong Armenian-Turkish community are traumatised
by the murder last January 19th of the brilliant and charismatic
newspaper editor Hrant Dink.
Agos, the paper Dink co-founded, began receiving telephone and e-mail
threats a week ago.
"We killed one of you. We'll kill a lot more if you speak out,"
one caller said. "Tell the [Armenian] diaspora to stop it."
Turkish Jews are also at risk, since the US Jewish Anti-Defamation
League sided with the Armenians on the grounds that as a people who
suffered, they can no longer ignore what happened to the Armenians.
"The Jewish population will inevitably be the target of public anger
in Turkey," foreign minister Ali Babacan warned.
With 225 of 435 US representatives supporting the resolution,
it is likely to pass. Before he left for Washington as part of
a high-level delegation that is lobbying US congressmen, Egemen
Bagis, the vice-chairman of the ruling AK Party in charge of foreign
relations, told The Irish Times about his negotiating strategy: "we'll
remind them that 75 per cent of the goods used by US forces in Iraq go
through Turkey. 3,000 lorries cross our border into northern Iraq every
day. US troops overnight in Turkey when they're going to or from Iraq."
Though Turkey refused to allow US ground troops to cross its border
in the 2003 invasion, Ankara let the US use Nato bases and airspace
in Turkey.
Another argument used by Turkish officials is that when the US
eventually withdraws from Iraq, it will need Turkey as an escape route.
"Turkey and the US fought together in Korea, Kosovo, Somalia, Bosnia
and Afghanistan," Bagis continued.
"150 Turkish lorry drivers and construction workers have lost their
lives trying to rebuild Iraq." The US needs Turkey, Bagis said, because
it is the only country on good terms with everyone in the Middle East,
and because it is a unique example of democracy in the region.
Meanwhile, anxiety also grows in Turkey's Armenian community. Though
the border has been shut since 1993, tens of thousands of illegal
immigrants from impoverished Armenia work illegally in Turkey as maids,
nannies and care-givers for the elderly.
Turks say their willingness to hire Armenians is a sign of
friendship. Armenians see it as humiliation.
On Saturday, police rounded up about 100 illegal Armenian immigrants.
Their expulsion is seen as retaliation for the US genocide resolution.
"The community is against any resolution or decision or law that would
impede dialogue between Turks and Armenians," said Luiz Bakar, the
spokeswoman for the Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II. "We're not on the
same wavelength as the diaspora," she explained. "Recognition of the
genocide is their raison d'etre; we're more concerned about preserving
our language, culture and religion." When he was Ireland's foreign
minister, Brian Cowen said, in another context, "you will never get
people to agree what happened in the past; just try to get it right in
the future." That is the philosophy of Turks and Armenians alike here.
The bitterness surfaces as soon as one starts delving into the events
of 1915-1916.
"My grandparents were deported and died on the road," said an ageing
Armenian woman who did not want to be quoted by name.
"My mother returned. Saying it was a genocide will not bring back
our dead."
The same woman told how 2,400 Armenian intellectuals were rounded up
in Istanbul on April 24th, 1915, never to be seen again. That date
is commemorated by Armenians as genocide day.
The weekly newspaper Agos ("The Furrow") was founded by Dink in 1996
as a gesture of opening towards other Turks.
By making it a bilingual, Armenian and Turkish publication, he hoped
to prove to Turks that Armenians are not a secretive "fifth column".
In 2001 Dink wrote an eight-part series on Turkish-Armenian
relations. One sentence, in which he referred to "poisonous" Turkish
blood, was taken out of context, reprinted by Turkish newspapers,
used as a pretext for trying him under article 301 of the penal code,
and as justification by the teenage gunman who murdered him.
Dink's colleagues at Agos explain that he actually said that hostility
to Turkey in the Armenian diaspora was poisonous.
Nine months after his murder, Dink's portrait hangs in every room
at Agos.
Aris Nalci was hired by Dink 11 years ago, when he was 17. Today he
edits the Armenian community pages.
"Hrant was like a brother or father to me. He encouraged me to go to
university," Nalci recalled.
For more than a decade following the 1980 military coup, Dink was
not allowed to travel outside Turkey.
After his passport was restored at the insistence of the European
Union, he travelled much of the time, giving lectures. "He's still
travelling, somewhere in the world, while we are working here,"
Nalci said sadly.
"He used to phone every Wednesday to ask, 'what are our headlines?'
and he'd say, 'okay, that's great'. He's still there; he just doesn't
phone anymore."
The Irish Times
October 10, 2007 Wednesday
TURKEY: The decision by the US House of Representatives to discuss the
Armenian genocide of 1915 has cast a shadow over Turkish-US relations,
writes Lara Marlowe
The US House of Representatives will today debate resolution 106,
which would recognise as genocide the killing of hundreds of thousands
of Armenians by Turkish forces 92 years ago.
Other countries have already recognised the massacres as genocide,
but the likelihood that the US Congress will pass the resolution has
created panic among Turkish authorities.
Though they recognise that a "tragedy" occurred in the dying days
of the Ottoman Empire, they refuse to be singled out as a country
that committed genocide. And they fear the resolution will be used
to justify Armenian demands for financial and territorial reparations.
Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan telephoned President George Bush,
former president Bill Clinton (who has influence over Democratic
congressmen) and the Israeli president Shimon Peres at the weekend
to express his dismay.
An aura of menace permeates the issue. Turkish-US relations will be
seriously damaged if the Bill passes, Erdogan threatened.
"If approved, it would be difficult to control the dynamics that would
be triggered by the reaction of the Turkish public opinion," Koksal
Toptan, the speaker of parliament wrote to his US counterpart, Nancy
Pelosi. The 70,000-strong Armenian-Turkish community are traumatised
by the murder last January 19th of the brilliant and charismatic
newspaper editor Hrant Dink.
Agos, the paper Dink co-founded, began receiving telephone and e-mail
threats a week ago.
"We killed one of you. We'll kill a lot more if you speak out,"
one caller said. "Tell the [Armenian] diaspora to stop it."
Turkish Jews are also at risk, since the US Jewish Anti-Defamation
League sided with the Armenians on the grounds that as a people who
suffered, they can no longer ignore what happened to the Armenians.
"The Jewish population will inevitably be the target of public anger
in Turkey," foreign minister Ali Babacan warned.
With 225 of 435 US representatives supporting the resolution,
it is likely to pass. Before he left for Washington as part of
a high-level delegation that is lobbying US congressmen, Egemen
Bagis, the vice-chairman of the ruling AK Party in charge of foreign
relations, told The Irish Times about his negotiating strategy: "we'll
remind them that 75 per cent of the goods used by US forces in Iraq go
through Turkey. 3,000 lorries cross our border into northern Iraq every
day. US troops overnight in Turkey when they're going to or from Iraq."
Though Turkey refused to allow US ground troops to cross its border
in the 2003 invasion, Ankara let the US use Nato bases and airspace
in Turkey.
Another argument used by Turkish officials is that when the US
eventually withdraws from Iraq, it will need Turkey as an escape route.
"Turkey and the US fought together in Korea, Kosovo, Somalia, Bosnia
and Afghanistan," Bagis continued.
"150 Turkish lorry drivers and construction workers have lost their
lives trying to rebuild Iraq." The US needs Turkey, Bagis said, because
it is the only country on good terms with everyone in the Middle East,
and because it is a unique example of democracy in the region.
Meanwhile, anxiety also grows in Turkey's Armenian community. Though
the border has been shut since 1993, tens of thousands of illegal
immigrants from impoverished Armenia work illegally in Turkey as maids,
nannies and care-givers for the elderly.
Turks say their willingness to hire Armenians is a sign of
friendship. Armenians see it as humiliation.
On Saturday, police rounded up about 100 illegal Armenian immigrants.
Their expulsion is seen as retaliation for the US genocide resolution.
"The community is against any resolution or decision or law that would
impede dialogue between Turks and Armenians," said Luiz Bakar, the
spokeswoman for the Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II. "We're not on the
same wavelength as the diaspora," she explained. "Recognition of the
genocide is their raison d'etre; we're more concerned about preserving
our language, culture and religion." When he was Ireland's foreign
minister, Brian Cowen said, in another context, "you will never get
people to agree what happened in the past; just try to get it right in
the future." That is the philosophy of Turks and Armenians alike here.
The bitterness surfaces as soon as one starts delving into the events
of 1915-1916.
"My grandparents were deported and died on the road," said an ageing
Armenian woman who did not want to be quoted by name.
"My mother returned. Saying it was a genocide will not bring back
our dead."
The same woman told how 2,400 Armenian intellectuals were rounded up
in Istanbul on April 24th, 1915, never to be seen again. That date
is commemorated by Armenians as genocide day.
The weekly newspaper Agos ("The Furrow") was founded by Dink in 1996
as a gesture of opening towards other Turks.
By making it a bilingual, Armenian and Turkish publication, he hoped
to prove to Turks that Armenians are not a secretive "fifth column".
In 2001 Dink wrote an eight-part series on Turkish-Armenian
relations. One sentence, in which he referred to "poisonous" Turkish
blood, was taken out of context, reprinted by Turkish newspapers,
used as a pretext for trying him under article 301 of the penal code,
and as justification by the teenage gunman who murdered him.
Dink's colleagues at Agos explain that he actually said that hostility
to Turkey in the Armenian diaspora was poisonous.
Nine months after his murder, Dink's portrait hangs in every room
at Agos.
Aris Nalci was hired by Dink 11 years ago, when he was 17. Today he
edits the Armenian community pages.
"Hrant was like a brother or father to me. He encouraged me to go to
university," Nalci recalled.
For more than a decade following the 1980 military coup, Dink was
not allowed to travel outside Turkey.
After his passport was restored at the insistence of the European
Union, he travelled much of the time, giving lectures. "He's still
travelling, somewhere in the world, while we are working here,"
Nalci said sadly.
"He used to phone every Wednesday to ask, 'what are our headlines?'
and he'd say, 'okay, that's great'. He's still there; he just doesn't
phone anymore."