Turkish and US officials have been pressing lawmakers to reject a measure next week that would label the World War I-era killings of Armenians as genocide.
On Friday, the issue reached the highest levels as US President George W. Bush and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan talked by telephone about their opposition to the legislation, which is to go before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
Armenian supporters of the measure, who seem to have enough votes to get approval by both the committee and the full House, have also been mustering a grass-roots campaign among the large diaspora community in the US to make sure that a successful committee vote leads to consideration by the full House.
One interest group, the Armenian National Committee of America, has engaged about 100,000 supporters to call lawmakers about the issue, according to Executive Director Aram Hamparian.
Similar measures have been debated in Congress for decades. But well-organized Armenian groups have repeatedly been thwarted by concerns about damaging relations with Turkey, an important NATO ally that has made its opposition clear.
Lawmakers say that this time, the belief that the resolution has a chance to pass a vote by the full House has both Turkey and Armenian groups pulling all stops to influence the members of the committee.
"The lobbying has been most intense that I have ever seen it," said the bill's sponsor, Representative Adam Schiff.
The dispute involves the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Armenian advocates, backed by many historians, contend the Armenians died in an organized genocide. The Turks say the Armenians were victims of widespread chaos and governmental breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in the years before Turkey was born in 1923.
Though the largely symbolic measure would have no binding effect on US foreign policy, it could nonetheless damage an already strained relationship with Turkey.
After France voted last year to make denial of Armenian genocide a crime, the Turkish government ended military ties.
Many in the US fear that a public backlash in Turkey could lead to restrictions on crucial supply routes through Turkey to Iraq and Afghanistan and the closure of Incirlik, a strategic air base in Turkey used by the US. Lawmakers have been hearing arguments from both sides about those concerns.
The Turkish government has been holding back from public threats while making clear that there will be consequences if the resolution is passed.
"There will be a backlash and no government can be indifferent to that," says the ambassador in Washington, Nabi Sensoy.
But Armenian groups charge that behind the scenes, Turkey has been much more clear.
"Turkey has been threatening every sort of doomsday scenario," says Hamparian. "We have been saying that Turkey would harm itself more than the United States, if it carries through with these threats."
Turkey argues that the US House of Representatives is the wrong institution to arbitrate a sensitive historical dispute. It has proposed that an international commission of experts examine Armenian and Turkish archives.
In the meantime, the Turkish embassy has been in close contact with lawmakers and is using prominent US lobbyists.
"I have redoubled my efforts," says Sensoy. Turkish lawmakers have also been calling congressional offices.
According to one congressional aide, Turkey's military chief, General Yasar Buyukanit, has been calling lawmakers to argue that a vote will boost support for Islamists in Turkey. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The Bush administration has been telling lawmakers that the resolution, if passed, would harm US security interests.
Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman said on Friday that Bush believes the Armenian episode ranks among the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, but the determination whether "the events constitute a genocide should be a matter for historical inquiry, not legislation."
White House staff have also spoken with aides to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with hope that she will stop the measure from coming to a vote.
"The administration has reached out to the speaker's office and made our position clear," he said. "We'll see what happens."
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS