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TelAviv: Israel, Turkey & Armenian Dilemma

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  • TelAviv: Israel, Turkey & Armenian Dilemma

    IsraCast, Israel
    Dec 30 2011


    Israel, Turkey & Armenian Dilemma

    Friday, December 30, 2011

    Israel Ponders Recognition Of Armenian Massacre And Her Strategic Need
    To Improve Strained Relations With Turkey
    Issue Remains Open After Prime Minister Netanyahu & Foreign Minister
    Lieberman Appeal To Knesset Education Committee Not To Conduct Session

    IsraCast Assessment: Israel Must Seek Balance Between Avoiding Further
    Deterioration With Turkey While Not Dodging Her Moral Obligation


    Israel's government and her Parliament are at odds over whether the
    Jewish state should officially recognize Turkey's responsibility for
    the massacre of some one and a half million Armenians in 1915. In
    spite of appeals by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign
    Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the Knesset's Education Committee
    discussed the issue but stopped short of voting on recognition.
    IsraCast analyst David Essing is of the view that with the Iranian
    nuclear crisis coming to a head in 2012, it is crucial that Israel
    will not cause any further deterioration in the already strained
    relations with Turkey.

    Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin has clashed with Prime Minister
    Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Lieberman over a parliamentary
    discussion of the massacre of one and half million Armenians by the
    Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of modern Turkey. Netanyahu appealed to
    Rivlin: 'Don't do it!' The Speaker replied that the issue had arisen
    in the Knesset not because of the current tension between Jerusalem
    and Ankara. Nor was it an attempt by Israel's parliament to settle the
    score with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan who has jettisoned Turkey's
    long time alliance with Israel and who castigates the Jewish state at
    every opportunity. Rivlin went on to say that the State of Israel,
    after the Holocaust of six million Jews, was duty bound to discuss the
    question of what had befallen the Armenians, no matter how important
    the government's diplomatic needs. And he added: 'The Knesset
    discussion did not relate to the present government of Turkey or the
    current political situation'.

    However the problem is that the Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923,
    has catagorically rejected responsibility for the massacre of the
    Armenians. Today in Turkey it is illegal to contend that Ottoman
    Empire carried out a genocide of the Armenians. Twenty- one counries
    including Canada, Italy, Russia, and Sweden have officially recognized
    the Aremnian genocide. U.S. President Barack Obama has not referred to
    it as genocide preferring to use the Armenian term Meds Yeghern. He
    has described it as one of the worst atrocities of the twentieth
    century and in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. Britain and
    Australia have yet to officially recognize it. Recently, the lower
    house of the French parliament passed a bill making it a crime to deny
    the genocide of the Armenians punishable by a fine of 45,000 Euros and
    one year in jail. It must also be approved by the French Senate in
    order to become law.




    Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan reacted angrily by recalling his
    ambassador to Paris and warning of 'grave political and economic
    consequences'. Erdogan also accused France of carrying out a genocide
    of the Algerians during their war of liberation from 1954 to 1962.
    Paris has been pressing Ankara to recognize its historic past in the
    same manner that France has belatedly recognized that its own Vichy
    government collaborated with Nazi Germany in the deporting of French
    Jews to German concentration camps. But there are other international
    cases as well. At the end of the nineteenth century, not long before
    the Armenian massacre, King Leopold of Belgium carried out a
    monsterous genocide in the Congo that murdered tens of millions of
    Africans.

    As documented by Harvard historian Caroline Elkins in her book
    'Imperial Reckoning', the British reportedly massacred hundreds of
    thousands of Kikuyu men, women and children during the Mau Mau
    uprising in the fifties. Britain has refused to pay reparations
    contending that the British government is no longer responsible for
    what transpired during the colonial period. The point is should
    Israel, in its unique role as representing the Jewish Holocaust, now
    single out Turkey. Such an act could dash any hope of trying to repair
    the strained relations between the countries; it could turn all
    Turkish public opinion against the Jewish state and perhaps even make
    Turkey a mortal enemy at a time that the Arab Spring may be spawning
    even more dangerous threats.

    Even the almighty United States of America has refrained from
    officially recognizing the Armenian genocide due to its strategic
    interests in the Middle East. And it's not as if, the massacre was
    ongoing like the recent blood-bath in Darfur that murdered up to
    500,000, and where Israel did play a clandestine role in aiding the
    Republic of South Sudan in achieving independence. By officially
    joining the declarative campaign against Turkey, Israel would be
    burning all her bridges with the former ally. Without going into
    detail, it could even cost Israeli lives in the future. For example,
    the U.S. and NATO are now building a-state-of- the- art anti-ballistic
    missile system in Turkey. This missile defense is aimed at
    intercepting ballistic missiles launched by Iran. Does Israel not have
    a vital interest in doing everything possible to prevent any
    disruption to this major bastion against Iran's missile and nuclear
    weapon capability?


    David Essing
    http://www.isracast.com/article.aspx?ID=1327&t=Israel-Turkey-and-Armenian-Dilemma

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