!âJĞ="justify">On Oct. 11 the Committee on Foreign Relations of the US House of Representatives decided by a vote of 27 to 21 to adopt a draft resolution that condemns the “Armenian genocide.”  A similar draft resolution was adopted by the committee in 2000, but then-President Clinton had succeeded in persuading the Republican speaker to withdraw the measure.

ïho is expected to take the resolution to the floor of the House before Nov. 22. The Senate is unlikely to pass a similar measure even if it is adopted by the House, and the resolution is non-binding. Still, it is worth asking what the House committee has achieved.

For history: During the World War I Armenian nationalists backed by Russia attempted to establish an independent Armenian state in Ottoman territory. They killed a large number of Turks and Muslims in this effort. The Ottoman rulers responded by ordering forced deportation of all Armenian subjects (with the exception mainly of those residing in Istanbul and Izmir) to the Syrian desert. According to objective sources nearly 650,000 Armenians perished on the way due to diseases, starvation and massacres by security forces and bandits. An equal number survived the deportation and migrated to the West, settling mainly in the US and France. Some were saved by converting to Islam. The committee decision does not prove that the Ottoman rulers ordered mass killing of Armenians. Some historians will still consider the event only as a great human tragedy caused by war, and others will still call it a genocide of the Armenians by the Turks.

 

For the US: The committee vote shows once more that lobbies play an important role in American politics, that the Armenian lobby is growing stronger and that G.W. Bush is a lame-duck president with dwindling influence over the Congress.

 

For Turkey: The committee vote indicates that Ankara’s efforts to stop the resolution are increasingly ineffective and that even the Americans who oppose it do so in fear of its potential to harm US interests. The Turkish public is now putting greater pressure on the government to take measures to retaliate against the US in response to the committee vote. Turks will now be less inclined to discuss and learn more about what really happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915. The anti-US sentiment in Turkey, the US’s closest ally in the Muslim world -- already strong due partly to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims in Iraq, and partly to the failure of the US to hinder the PKK from staging raids into Turkey from northern Iraq -- will continue to rise.

 

For Turkey-Armenia relations: Yerevan’s policy of trying to force Turkey to establish diplomatic relations and to open the borders with Armenia by supporting genocide resolutions in Western parliaments is clearly keeping Ankara from considering any such policy change.

 

Finally, a few words about how those who support Turkey’s further democratization and closer integration with the West should assess the House committee vote. There is no doubt that the House committee has opened the way for further deterioration of Turkish-American and Turkish-Armenian relations. The voices of those in Turkey who are against further democratization and closer integration with the West, those who demand military intervention in Iraq not only against the PKK but also against the Kurdish regional government, are now louder.

 

Against all odds, those who are for peace and democracy in Turkey have to continue to call on the Ankara to follow a course dictated by reason and not sentiment. Ankara should carefully weigh the costs and benefits of a cross-border operation into Iraq, of measures against the US and absolutely avoid steps that can hurt Turkey’s long-term national interests. Why not leave aside the debate as to whether it was genocide or not and try to seek better relations with Yerevan by establishing diplomatic relations and opening the borders with Armenia? This may not only open the way for a general Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, but also place Ankara in a better position to help overcome the problems between Azerbaijan and Armenia.