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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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 Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 10:22 pm Post subject: U.S. panel backs Armenian genocide declaration |
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A U.S. congressional panel has approved a resolution declaring the Ottoman-era killing of Armenians genocide.
In Turkey, the government said it was recalling its ambassador from Washington in response.
The U.S. foreign affairs committee endorsed the resolution with a 23-22 vote Thursday, even though the Obama administration had urged Congress not to offend Turkey by approving it.
The resolution now goes to the full House, where prospects for passage are uncertain.
In April, Obama broke a campaign promise to brand the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks as genocide. Obama said that while he had not changed his personal views, he did not want to upset promising talks between Turkey and Armenia on improving relations and opening their border.
The Thursday vote by the congressional committee could alienate Turkey, which plays an important role for U.S. interests in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Mike Hammer, a National Security Council spokesman, said in a statement that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had spoken with foreign affairs committee chairman Howard Berman on Wednesday and indicated that "further congressional action could impede progress on normalization of relations" between Turkey and Armenia.
Hammer would not specify whether Clinton urged Berman to cancel Thursday's hearing or to vote against the resolution.
Still, Berman urged fellow members of the committee to approve the resolution. The committee appeared likely to endorse it, sending it to the full U.S. House of Representatives, where its prospects are uncertain.
"The Turks say passing this resolution could have terrible consequences for our bilateral relationship, and indeed perhaps there will be some consequences," Berman said. "But I believe that Turkey values its relations with the United States at least as much as we value our relations with Turkey."
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http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/04/turkey-armenia-usa.html |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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| I don't see why this needed to be voted on (especially since the overwhelming majority of states in the Union have all ready passed votes declaring it a genocide). Unless we're planning on actually taking some action as a result of such a declaration, there's no need to make the declaration at all, and it's a matter best left to academics. The only truly valuable governmental declaration regarding this topic would be one made by the Turkish people. The Armenians can accuse, the rest of the world can condemn, but only Turkey can issue a declaration which could result in any real progress on the issue. |
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NovaKart
Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Location: Iraq
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 8:47 am Post subject: |
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I agree that America really shouldn't get involved in this dispute over something that happened 100 years ago and didn't involve the USA.
I do wish that this issue could be freely discussed in Turkey but in a country where singing a song in Kurdish can land you in jail, I don't think that's possible.
Turkey has a lot of very vocal fascists who won't tolerate any perceived insult to Turks. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:20 am Post subject: |
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| I thought it was silly but then I read The Burning Tigris by Peter Balakian, and it made me realize that Congress SHOULD do that. Why? Because Turkey has done all it can to block such a resolution. It needs to accept what its former actions. Sure, the resolution won't make Turkey change its stance, but at least the US will finally call Turkey out for what it did. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:25 am Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| It needs to accept what its former actions. Sure, the resolution won't make Turkey change its stance, but at least the US will finally call Turkey out for what it did. |
Yeah, but wasn't quite a job done on the Native Americans? I know it's not perfectly analogous, but I think in this case the US would be opening itself up to charges of hypocrisy.
I guess what I'm saying is that when I try to look at this issue from the US perspective I'm unclear how this will provide much benefit. Maybe I'm wrong. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:34 am Post subject: |
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| caniff wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
| It needs to accept what its former actions. Sure, the resolution won't make Turkey change its stance, but at least the US will finally call Turkey out for what it did. |
Yeah, but wasn't quite a job done on the Native Americans? I know it's not perfectly analogous, but I think in this case the US would be opening itself up to charges of hypocrisy.
I guess what I'm saying is that when I try to look at this issue from the US perspective I'm unclear how this will provide much benefit. Maybe I'm wrong. |
Not perfectly analogous? That's a big understatement. The US did not systematically kill millions of Native Americans. And while there was one instance of the US gov't moving Native Americans a) it was one time b) considered illegal by the Supreme Court. It did not go into a large city with hundreds of thousands of people and move them all to the desert to just wither away. The US gov't did not sponsor its military to take Native Americans into the center of a huge lake, then throw them all in the water, and making sure none could swim back to shore. The US did not push hundreds of Native Americans off cliffs into some ravine or canyon. The US did not use Native Americans as cannon fodder in a war against its neighbors. The list goes on and on.
And since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic did whatever it could to prevent any Armenian state from being created.
The benefit for the US? Next time the US harps on another country about genocide (such as Sudan), that country can't say, "You're just singling us out!" or something to that effect.
That and the fact that it is the morally right thing to do. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 11:44 am Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
Not perfectly analogous? That's a big understatement. The US did not systematically kill millions of Native Americans. And while there was one instance of the US gov't moving Native Americans a) it was one time b) considered illegal by the Supreme Court. It did not go into a large city with hundreds of thousands of people and move them all to the desert to just wither away. The US gov't did not sponsor its military to take Native Americans into the center of a huge lake, then throw them all in the water, and making sure none could swim back to shore. The US did not push hundreds of Native Americans off cliffs into some ravine or canyon. The US did not use Native Americans as cannon fodder in a war against its neighbors. The list goes on and on. |
I think you are giving the US govt's treatment of Native Americans a bit of a pass here, but since I'm not an expert and I don't want to derail the thread, I'll bow out. |
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rocket_scientist
Joined: 23 Nov 2009
Location: Prague
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 12:13 pm Post subject: |
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| I think most of the Indians died from disease introduced ignorantly of the fact. US has a good out. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 12:16 pm Post subject: |
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| rocket_scientist wrote: |
| I think most of the Indians died from disease introduced ignorantly of the fact. US has a good out. |
I've heard/read about US soldiers handing out blankets they knew to be infected with smallpox, but I don't have a link for that. Maybe I'll check to see if I can find one.
edit: I forgot I'd said I'd back out of the thread. Oh well, changed my mind. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 3:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Here's a newspaper from 1897 I found the other day (I find them here) with a notice in the Did you know?-type section cheerfully mentioning how a famous pioneer has killed 100 Indians in the course of his life. Kind of reminds me of that 百人切り story always brought up to show the brutality of Japan during WWII in its callousness. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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| caniff wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
Not perfectly analogous? That's a big understatement. The US did not systematically kill millions of Native Americans. And while there was one instance of the US gov't moving Native Americans a) it was one time b) considered illegal by the Supreme Court. It did not go into a large city with hundreds of thousands of people and move them all to the desert to just wither away. The US gov't did not sponsor its military to take Native Americans into the center of a huge lake, then throw them all in the water, and making sure none could swim back to shore. The US did not push hundreds of Native Americans off cliffs into some ravine or canyon. The US did not use Native Americans as cannon fodder in a war against its neighbors. The list goes on and on. |
I think you are giving the US govt's treatment of Native Americans a bit of a pass here, but since I'm not an expert and I don't want to derail the thread, I'll bow out. |
Fine, let's say the US gov't purposely killed tons of Native Americans, just for arguments sake. Nevertheless:
1. There was widespread opposition to the gov'ts actions towards Native Americans.
2. The US gov't did not actively promote the killing of Native Americans. If you can find posters or other forms of media saying, "KILL INDIANS!" I would love to see it.
3. The US government did not encourage its citizens to steal and pillage Native American possessions (although admittedly in some cases I wouldn't doubt it encouraged to take N. Americans' land to some extent).
And I don't mean to sound like an apologist for my country's behavior in the 19th century. The US government (and its citizens) launched numerous wars against Native Americans, deceived them, and treated them inhumanely. I am just saying it was not systematic state-sponsored annihilation (iow, not genocide). |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 1:55 am Post subject: |
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| You know about Manifest Destiny, I'm sure. I'm not saying that there was a public governmental edict that explicitly said "Exterminate the natives", but I think if one were to read between the lines of the times, so to speak, it was clear what was really going down. |
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NovaKart
Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Location: Iraq
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| Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 2:15 am Post subject: |
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Another key difference here is that we can talk about genocide or whatever you want to call it against Native Americans freely in America. I don't think the government has formally acknowledged a genocide or made some sort of statement to the effect but most everyone would agree that what happened to them is terrible.
The situation in Turkey about the Armenian Genocide is completely different. Publish a book or make a public statement about it in Turkey and watch yourself be threatened by nationalists and possibly face charges.
That's not to say the issue can't be discussed there but if you call it a genocide or suggest that, then you could get in trouble. I've also seen several lengthy books in Turkey that go out of their way to deny it. They don't say that no one was killed but that it's not a genocide and the Armenians pretty much deserve it for betraying the Ottoman Empire. Same reason a lot of Turks don't like Arabs. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 3:50 am Post subject: |
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| NovaKart wrote: |
The situation in Turkey about the Armenian Genocide is completely different. Publish a book or make a public statement about it in Turkey and watch yourself be threatened by nationalists and possibly face charges.
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Are the Turkish people, in your view, in collective denial about what occurred, or is it just a case of everyone knows but they feel it is a dangerous topic to discuss? |
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NovaKart
Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Location: Iraq
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| Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 5:37 am Post subject: |
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I would say depends on the person. In my experience, the majority of Turkish people have a very different perspective of the events and while they don't deny the whole thing, they believe that the Ottoman government had valid reasons for killing the Armenians, that the numbers were not as high and that it definitely wasn't a genocide.
Turkish people who disagree with this don't often mention it, at least publicly but there have been some exceptions, like the Turks who started a website about it to test freedom of speech.
A lot of Turkish people I've met don't like Orhan Pamuk because he said what happened to the Armenians was a genocide and he actually went to trial for this. So I've heard many times, "he believes the lie the Armenians tell" or something to that effect. |
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