!á��ce="Verdana" size�ÿ¡ /A FUNERAL PRAYER FOR TURKISH-AMERICAN RELATIONS]

After the approval of the notorious “Armenian Genocide Resolution Bill” by the United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, a reader of mine from the U.S., Kevin R., sent me an apologetic message saying that this move had nearly left him speechless.

“ee all this energy being put into a bill which will accomplish nothing other than negative and counter-productive results.” He then kindly reminded me that they are “not ALL this dumb over [there].”  All that is happening between the U.S. and Turkey right now, as well as our Western friends' approach to the Armenian allegations, leave me speechless as well. I really cannot believe my eyes to see how ethics is being sacrificed to narrow politics and/or cunning populism. What “Iron Lady” Nancy Pelosi and her comrades-in-arms have managed to accomplish last week precisely exemplifies this phenomenon.

  The black comedy staged in the House

  Our Western allies, the U.S. included, have always presented parliamentary resolutions supporting the Armenian allegations as merely “symbolic gestures of delayed justice.” This is an assumption very efficiently exploited by Armenians worldwide. For instance, before the committee's session, the Armenian diaspora in the U.S. issued a list regarding the seven main reasons why one should support the resolution, at the top of which was “moral support.” By standing up for the truth presumably, “the Congress [would reaffirm] both U.S. leadership on human rights and the American people's fundamental belief in justice.” Noble considerations, aren't they? In such a milieu, one would normally expect that justice should not be exploited in a way leading to further injustices. Just the first episode of the black comedy subsequently staged in the House, however, proves how naive one could be in thinking that way. On the day the committee convened, Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced the Supreme Patriarch of all Armenians, Karekin II, to deliver the morning prayer in the House. Does something smell fishy to you as well? But that's not all! Actually, such speeches ought to be part of apolitical daily rituals. Yet, Karekin's was not such. “With the solemn burden of history, we remember the victims of the genocide of the Armenians,” said Karekin and then called on the House members to “give peace and justice on their descendants.” According to Pelosi's spokesperson, Nadeam Elshami, nevertheless, the timing of Karekin's visit was nothing more than a “coincidence.” Allegedly, the House's chaplain arranged the visit “based on Karekin's schedule” and was not “aware” of the committee's plans. What really disturbs us Turks most is being treated like fools.

  The Jewish lobby

To help you understand the conditions under which the bill was adopted I will present another repulsive example: You must have heard that the committee's chairman, Rep. Tom Lantos, a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust, voted in favor of the bill. In 2000, however, when the issue came before the same committee he had strongly objected to it. In those days, he was reported to have told his colleagues that as a person who had to live through the Holocaust, he was unconvinced that the massacres the Armenians endured technically constituted genocide. What might have changed since then? Could our Armenian friends have provided him with a clear-cut document proving the events were genocide implemented by the Ottoman Empire as state policy? If the answer is no, one wonders if the shift in Lantos' behavior could be related to the following statement made by him a couple of years ago in response to Turkey's “growing” closeness with Syria even in the wake of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination: “Turkey ignored our interests. Our allies must understand that if they expect the U.S. to support matters of great interest to them, we expect them to support the things that are important to the United States.” Could it also be the reason why other Jewish members of the committee, seven out of eight, voted in favor of the bill as well? I could have demonstrated to Pelosi, Lantos or their other comrades-in-arms that documents such as the Andonian telegrams allegedly proving the Armenian genocide are actually nothing more than forgeries and that even the British, who were trying to find evidence over a four-year period of occupation in Istanbul, refused to use them. I could have pointed out that the Armenian populations of Istanbul, Aleppo and ?zmir were excluded from the deportation as if, in the words of Guenther Lewy, the Jews of Berlin, Frankfurt and Vienna had been exempted from the Nazi genocide. I could have asked whether they even know the figure Armenian leader Boghos Nubar gave the French for Armenian losses for use in the post-war treaties was 700,000 and that the Ottomans themselves put on trial some 1,300 men for crimes committed during the Armenian deportation of 1915, and executed a governor. But do you think that they are really interested in such information? I do not believe that they are after the truth. Rather, they seem to be simply engaged in dirty politics. And I really wonder how they would react when it backfires. I have no doubts, Kevin, that not all over there are this dumb! But I am afraid to say that not all over here are as capable of the same level of composure in the face of such provocations as I am either.