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BACKTRACKING ON 'ALLY' TURKEY DAMAGES CREDIBILITY
By Youssef Ibrahim
New York Sun, NY
http://www.nysun.com/article/64973
Oct 22 2007
Over the past three weeks Turkey has deployed 60,000 troops to its
border with Iraq, the Turkish parliament has voted overwhelmingly
to authorize an invasion of northern Iraq, and Turkish generals have
threatened to block almost 75% of supplies to American forces in Iraq,
which are transported through Turkey. Prime Minister Erdogan promised
further hostilities if Congress did not back away from a nonbinding
resolution labeling the Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenian
Christians in 1915 as "genocide." For good measure, the most recent
survey from the Pew Research Center shows that 80% of Turks profoundly
dislike America.
That is true friendship for you. These savage reactions and dire
threats come from a country that President Bush, along with five
American presidents before him, firmly embraced as one of our country's
closest allies. Turkey is a member of NATO and a nation of 71 million
that aspires to join the European Union - which is led by France and
Germany, two countries that passed much tougher measures condemning
the Ottoman Empire's butchery at the turn of the 20th century.
Congress is playing its own shameful part in this foreign policy farce,
backing down last week in the face of the Turkish onslaught.
Prompted with money and donations by a collection of hired lobbyists,
including a former speaker-designate of the House, who once promoted
similar resolutions before a fistful of dollars from Ankara swayed
his mind.
Led by such principled luminaries as the current House speaker,
Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. John Murtha, a former Marine who last week
was running around mumbling, "What genocide?" a majority of the
co-sponsors of the Armenian genocide act melted away.
For his part, Mr. Bush - who as a presidential candidate in 2000
spoke of Turkey's "genocidal campaign" against the Armenians - told
lawmakers last week they had better things to do than sort out the
history of the Ottoman Empire.
Is it any surprise that in opinion polls, an overwhelming majority of
the American public says it holds such representatives in low regard?
For Turkey, a secular democracy that has ruthlessly oppressed its
Kurdish minority for the past 30 years, a mea culpa is not even on
the charts.
By law, the mere mention of the Armenian genocide is an insult to
"Turkishness," so taboo that people have been shot to death over it
by nationalists or sent to jail by the government.
Perhaps typical of such a chauvinistic mind-set, Mr. Erdogan warned
that the entire edifice of American-Turkish relations - which he
amazingly described in an article in Friday's Wall Street Journal as
being "like a spider web" - could collapse.
"Spider web" could only come from the mind of the leader of the ruling
AKP Party, which millions of secular Turks accuse of conspiring to
envelop Turkey in Islamic veils and ideology.
Certainly, inveighing the powers of hell over a toothless commemoration
of a historical massacre 90 years ago suggests an absence of peaceful
intent.
Without a doubt, the dismantling of the resolution gives Turkey and
Muslim Arab countries in the region a pass on ethnic intolerance.
Armenians are neither the first nor the last. Nearly 50 million Middle
Eastern minorities, including 20 million Kurds and another 20 million
Arab Christians, along with the non-Muslim Sudanese, Druze, Yazidis,
and Bahais continue to be crushed under the sway of a Turkish or Arab
strain of chauvinistic Islam.
For all the grumbling about how the whole world hates America, much
of it still follows in American footsteps. There isn't a place on
earth that has not embraced versions of the American model, from the
Internet to cinema to free business enterprise and creativity. Sadly,
we have just given that world a very poor example by folding, and
damaged in the process America's credibility in speaking out against
brutality in Darfur and Burma.
But what takes the cake in this charade must be a statement by Rep.
Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California, who asserted to the New York
Times that the aborted resolution "split Jewish lawmakers." He argued
that some of them believed that failing to support Turkey might
"endanger Israel's security in the region."
Seriously, does the honorable representative think that it is
possible to find American Jews, Jews anywhere, who would be "split"
over condemning the genocide of a people because of their religion
or national origin?
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
By Youssef Ibrahim
New York Sun, NY
http://www.nysun.com/article/64973
Oct 22 2007
Over the past three weeks Turkey has deployed 60,000 troops to its
border with Iraq, the Turkish parliament has voted overwhelmingly
to authorize an invasion of northern Iraq, and Turkish generals have
threatened to block almost 75% of supplies to American forces in Iraq,
which are transported through Turkey. Prime Minister Erdogan promised
further hostilities if Congress did not back away from a nonbinding
resolution labeling the Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenian
Christians in 1915 as "genocide." For good measure, the most recent
survey from the Pew Research Center shows that 80% of Turks profoundly
dislike America.
That is true friendship for you. These savage reactions and dire
threats come from a country that President Bush, along with five
American presidents before him, firmly embraced as one of our country's
closest allies. Turkey is a member of NATO and a nation of 71 million
that aspires to join the European Union - which is led by France and
Germany, two countries that passed much tougher measures condemning
the Ottoman Empire's butchery at the turn of the 20th century.
Congress is playing its own shameful part in this foreign policy farce,
backing down last week in the face of the Turkish onslaught.
Prompted with money and donations by a collection of hired lobbyists,
including a former speaker-designate of the House, who once promoted
similar resolutions before a fistful of dollars from Ankara swayed
his mind.
Led by such principled luminaries as the current House speaker,
Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. John Murtha, a former Marine who last week
was running around mumbling, "What genocide?" a majority of the
co-sponsors of the Armenian genocide act melted away.
For his part, Mr. Bush - who as a presidential candidate in 2000
spoke of Turkey's "genocidal campaign" against the Armenians - told
lawmakers last week they had better things to do than sort out the
history of the Ottoman Empire.
Is it any surprise that in opinion polls, an overwhelming majority of
the American public says it holds such representatives in low regard?
For Turkey, a secular democracy that has ruthlessly oppressed its
Kurdish minority for the past 30 years, a mea culpa is not even on
the charts.
By law, the mere mention of the Armenian genocide is an insult to
"Turkishness," so taboo that people have been shot to death over it
by nationalists or sent to jail by the government.
Perhaps typical of such a chauvinistic mind-set, Mr. Erdogan warned
that the entire edifice of American-Turkish relations - which he
amazingly described in an article in Friday's Wall Street Journal as
being "like a spider web" - could collapse.
"Spider web" could only come from the mind of the leader of the ruling
AKP Party, which millions of secular Turks accuse of conspiring to
envelop Turkey in Islamic veils and ideology.
Certainly, inveighing the powers of hell over a toothless commemoration
of a historical massacre 90 years ago suggests an absence of peaceful
intent.
Without a doubt, the dismantling of the resolution gives Turkey and
Muslim Arab countries in the region a pass on ethnic intolerance.
Armenians are neither the first nor the last. Nearly 50 million Middle
Eastern minorities, including 20 million Kurds and another 20 million
Arab Christians, along with the non-Muslim Sudanese, Druze, Yazidis,
and Bahais continue to be crushed under the sway of a Turkish or Arab
strain of chauvinistic Islam.
For all the grumbling about how the whole world hates America, much
of it still follows in American footsteps. There isn't a place on
earth that has not embraced versions of the American model, from the
Internet to cinema to free business enterprise and creativity. Sadly,
we have just given that world a very poor example by folding, and
damaged in the process America's credibility in speaking out against
brutality in Darfur and Burma.
But what takes the cake in this charade must be a statement by Rep.
Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California, who asserted to the New York
Times that the aborted resolution "split Jewish lawmakers." He argued
that some of them believed that failing to support Turkey might
"endanger Israel's security in the region."
Seriously, does the honorable representative think that it is
possible to find American Jews, Jews anywhere, who would be "split"
over condemning the genocide of a people because of their religion
or national origin?
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress