It was the first genocide of the 20th Century, and today’s assassination of the editor of Turkey’s Armenian weekly is only going to add momentum to the international movement to recognize the Armenian genocide. Still, this excellent New Yorker piece by Elizabeth Kolbert makes clear the obstacles to recognition still to be surmounted in the supposed land of the free and the lengths to which the Turkish government will go to suppress the truth:
On September 14, 2000, Representatives George Radanovich, Republican of California, and David Bonior, Democrat of Michigan, introduced House resolution—later to be known as H.R. 596—on the slaughter of the Armenians. The measure urged the President, in dealing with the matter, t demonstrate “appropriate understanding and sensitivity.” It further instructed him on how to phrase his annual message on the Armenian Day o Remembrance: the President should refer to the atrocities as “genocide.” The bill was sent to the International Relations Committee and immediatel came under attack. State Department officials reminded the committee that it was U.S. policy to “respect the Turkish government’s assertions that although many ethnic Armenians died during World War I, no genocide took place.” Expanding on this theme, Secretary of Defense William Cohen in a letter to Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, wrote that while he in no way wanted to “downplay the Armenian tragedy . . . passing judgmen on this history through legislation could have a negative impact on Turkish-Armenian relations and on our security interests in the region.” Afte committee members voted, on October 3rd, to send H.R. 596 to the floor, Turkish officials warned that negotiations with an American defens contractor, Bell Textron, over four and a half billion dollars’ worth of attack helicopters were in jeopardy. On October 5th, the leaders of all five partie in the Turkish parliament issued a joint statement threatening to deny the U.S. access to an airbase in Incirlik, which it was using to patrol northern Iraq Finally, on October 19th, just a few hours before H.R. 596 was scheduled to be debated in the House, Hastert pulled it from the agenda. He had, h said, been informed by President Clinton that passage of the resolution could “risk the lives of Americans.
