Friday, October 19, 2007
The Turkish Two-Step Knuckle Under
Follow up to the recent post: Under pressure from both TeamBush and fellow Congressional Democrats, it appears Nancy Pelosi will not bring to the floor a resolution condemning the 1915 Ottoman Turk slaughter of ethnic Armenians as a genocide. The motion, for years brought up in every Congress by Armenian activists, was approved by a House Foreign Affairs Committee headed for the first time by Tom Lantos (D-CA), the only member of Congress who is also a holocaust survivor (Hint! Hint! He might actually know it when he sees it!!).
As noted previously, it is both a complicated and simple issue. The Turks have been a mostly quite stand-up ally to the US for years; their potential (on the bubble?) EU membership may well ride on the line of this vote to incur into Iraq, even more so if shooting starts inside Kurdish-held northern Iraq. So they're well aware of what's on the line. Mostly, to them, it's the notion of modern Turkish national identity.
Think of it. . . how would Americans feel if they knew that on the verge of their independence our founding fathers had been complicit in the slaughter of an innocent civilian populace, one who had the unfortunate distinction of being foreign to the colonial majority and thus potential allies to military adversaries?!
Oh. . . right. . .
See? It doesn't feel so bad to admit it.
C'mon modern Turks, step up. Just fess that it happened and we can all move on. I know that you're worried about potential reparations (another thing in common with the US-- as we waited for 50 years to acknowledge the whole Japanese internment camp thing until most of the internees had gone to that big Shinto temple in the sky), but reparations are realistically a matter for your parliament in about 30-40 years (Trust us, we know).
Your main complaint, as far as I can tell, is that Armenians were Russian sympathisers; an imperial dynasty which was already in its death throes internally, by revolution, and externally, by the Kaiser's army, by 1915; though truth to tell, so was the Ottoman Empire. But note, a main argument espoused by German Nazis was that Jews were not loyal to the nation; a commonly accepted belief that led to the rise of Hitler, the approval of the Nuremberg Laws, and the so-called Final Solution.
That's a pretty slippery slope.
Still, it looks like upstanding morals (ask the GOP if that's important?!) have been trumped once again by the necessity of kowtowing to the strategic importance of a foreign country.
Not that that might not, in fact, be the best policy choice of the US at this very moment. But it's sad that the choice of starting an unnecessary, and potentially disastrous, war has had the effect of denying an obvious truth. Once again.
Follow up to the recent post: Under pressure from both TeamBush and fellow Congressional Democrats, it appears Nancy Pelosi will not bring to the floor a resolution condemning the 1915 Ottoman Turk slaughter of ethnic Armenians as a genocide. The motion, for years brought up in every Congress by Armenian activists, was approved by a House Foreign Affairs Committee headed for the first time by Tom Lantos (D-CA), the only member of Congress who is also a holocaust survivor (Hint! Hint! He might actually know it when he sees it!!).
As noted previously, it is both a complicated and simple issue. The Turks have been a mostly quite stand-up ally to the US for years; their potential (on the bubble?) EU membership may well ride on the line of this vote to incur into Iraq, even more so if shooting starts inside Kurdish-held northern Iraq. So they're well aware of what's on the line. Mostly, to them, it's the notion of modern Turkish national identity.
Think of it. . . how would Americans feel if they knew that on the verge of their independence our founding fathers had been complicit in the slaughter of an innocent civilian populace, one who had the unfortunate distinction of being foreign to the colonial majority and thus potential allies to military adversaries?!
Oh. . . right. . .
See? It doesn't feel so bad to admit it.
C'mon modern Turks, step up. Just fess that it happened and we can all move on. I know that you're worried about potential reparations (another thing in common with the US-- as we waited for 50 years to acknowledge the whole Japanese internment camp thing until most of the internees had gone to that big Shinto temple in the sky), but reparations are realistically a matter for your parliament in about 30-40 years (Trust us, we know).
Your main complaint, as far as I can tell, is that Armenians were Russian sympathisers; an imperial dynasty which was already in its death throes internally, by revolution, and externally, by the Kaiser's army, by 1915; though truth to tell, so was the Ottoman Empire. But note, a main argument espoused by German Nazis was that Jews were not loyal to the nation; a commonly accepted belief that led to the rise of Hitler, the approval of the Nuremberg Laws, and the so-called Final Solution.
That's a pretty slippery slope.
Still, it looks like upstanding morals (ask the GOP if that's important?!) have been trumped once again by the necessity of kowtowing to the strategic importance of a foreign country.
Not that that might not, in fact, be the best policy choice of the US at this very moment. But it's sad that the choice of starting an unnecessary, and potentially disastrous, war has had the effect of denying an obvious truth. Once again.
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