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Robert Fisk: Will Obama honour pledge on genocide of Armenians?
The Independent & The Independent on Sunday
World Focus
Monday, 6 April 2009
It's all supposed to be about campaign promises. Didn't Barack Obama
promise to deliver an address from a "Muslim capital" in his first 100
days? It's got to be in a safe, moderate country, of course, but where
better than Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's secular/Islamist nation of Turkey,
whose rulers talk to Syria as well as Israel, Iran as well as Iraq?
But when the Obama cavalcade turned up in the heart of the old Ottoman
Empire last night, he and all his panjandrums were praying that he did
not have to use the "G" word.
The "G" word? Well, if it doesn't trip him up in Turkey today, Mr
Obama is going to have to walk into a far worse minefield on 24 April
when he has to honour another campaign promise: to call the 1915
massacre of 1,500,000 Armenian Christians by Ottoman Turkey a
"genocide". Presidents Clinton and Bush jnr made the same pledge in
return for Armenian votes, then broke their solemn promise when
Turkish generals threatened to cut access to their airbases and major
US-Turkish business deals after they were in office.
This is no mere academic backwater into which Mr Obama must step but a
dangerous confrontation with the truth of history, an explosive swamp
of bones and old photographs - along with a few still-living survivors
- through which he must either walk with dignity or retreat with
shame; and the entire Middle East will be watching the results. For
the Palestinians - most of whom, ironically, are Sunni Muslims, the
same religion as the Ottoman Turkish murderers - it is a crucial
issue. For if Mr Obama cannot risk offending America's Turkish allies
about a 94-year-old persecution, what chance is there that he will
risk offending America's even more powerful ally, Israel, by
condemning the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the
ever-growing illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank and the
constant destruction by Israel of Palestinian homes that prevent the
creation of a Palestinian state?
Starting on 24 April 1915, Enver Pasha's Turkish army and militias
rounded up almost the entire Armenian community, massacred hundreds of
thousands of men and sent vast death marches of women and children
into the deserts of Anatolia and what is now northern Syria. Expert
historians, including Israel's own top genocide academic, insist that
the shooting-pits, the organised throat-cutting, the mass rapes and
kidnappings - even the use of primitive suffocation chambers - all
constituted a systematic genocide.
And it is important to record exactly what Mr Obama said on his
campaign website in January 2008. "The Armenian genocide is not an
allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a
widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical
evidence. America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the
Armenian genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend
to be that president." Which pretty much locks up any attempt to
wriggle out of the promise. Or so you would think.
But already the administration's soft shoes have been trying to
finesse away the pledge. "At this moment," Mike Hammer, a White House
National Security Council spokesman, said last month, "our focus is on
how, moving forward, the US can help Turkey and Armenia work together
to come to terms with the past". That Mr Obama should allow such a
statement to be made, along with the usual weasel clichés about
"moving forward" and "coming to terms", speaks volumes.
Neither the Palestinians nor the Arabs in general have tried to - or
should - compare the 1915 slaughter with Israel's treatment of the
Palestinians, but there are some faint historical mirrors which
rightly worry them. The Turks allege that they began killing Armenians
in the city of Van because Armenian insurgents, backed by a regional
superpower, in this case, Tsarist Russia, attacked the Turks of
eastern Anatolia. Israel claims it bombarded Gaza last December and
January because Palestinian "terrorists", backed by a regional
superpower - Iran - fired rockets at Israelis.
The political parallels are not exact, of course, but Israel can in
any case scarcely debate them when it officially refuses to
acknowledge the Armenian genocide in the first place.
But for Mr Obama, there are more pressing points. US and Turkish
officials are already discussing how Ankara can help in a US military
withdrawal from Iraq, and Mr Obama desperately wants Turkey to help
open up the Muslim world to his government to staunch the massive
wounds the Bush administration inflicted.
Robert Fisk: Will Obama honour pledge on genocide of Armenians?
The Independent & The Independent on Sunday
World Focus
Monday, 6 April 2009
It's all supposed to be about campaign promises. Didn't Barack Obama
promise to deliver an address from a "Muslim capital" in his first 100
days? It's got to be in a safe, moderate country, of course, but where
better than Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's secular/Islamist nation of Turkey,
whose rulers talk to Syria as well as Israel, Iran as well as Iraq?
But when the Obama cavalcade turned up in the heart of the old Ottoman
Empire last night, he and all his panjandrums were praying that he did
not have to use the "G" word.
The "G" word? Well, if it doesn't trip him up in Turkey today, Mr
Obama is going to have to walk into a far worse minefield on 24 April
when he has to honour another campaign promise: to call the 1915
massacre of 1,500,000 Armenian Christians by Ottoman Turkey a
"genocide". Presidents Clinton and Bush jnr made the same pledge in
return for Armenian votes, then broke their solemn promise when
Turkish generals threatened to cut access to their airbases and major
US-Turkish business deals after they were in office.
This is no mere academic backwater into which Mr Obama must step but a
dangerous confrontation with the truth of history, an explosive swamp
of bones and old photographs - along with a few still-living survivors
- through which he must either walk with dignity or retreat with
shame; and the entire Middle East will be watching the results. For
the Palestinians - most of whom, ironically, are Sunni Muslims, the
same religion as the Ottoman Turkish murderers - it is a crucial
issue. For if Mr Obama cannot risk offending America's Turkish allies
about a 94-year-old persecution, what chance is there that he will
risk offending America's even more powerful ally, Israel, by
condemning the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the
ever-growing illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank and the
constant destruction by Israel of Palestinian homes that prevent the
creation of a Palestinian state?
Starting on 24 April 1915, Enver Pasha's Turkish army and militias
rounded up almost the entire Armenian community, massacred hundreds of
thousands of men and sent vast death marches of women and children
into the deserts of Anatolia and what is now northern Syria. Expert
historians, including Israel's own top genocide academic, insist that
the shooting-pits, the organised throat-cutting, the mass rapes and
kidnappings - even the use of primitive suffocation chambers - all
constituted a systematic genocide.
And it is important to record exactly what Mr Obama said on his
campaign website in January 2008. "The Armenian genocide is not an
allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a
widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical
evidence. America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the
Armenian genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend
to be that president." Which pretty much locks up any attempt to
wriggle out of the promise. Or so you would think.
But already the administration's soft shoes have been trying to
finesse away the pledge. "At this moment," Mike Hammer, a White House
National Security Council spokesman, said last month, "our focus is on
how, moving forward, the US can help Turkey and Armenia work together
to come to terms with the past". That Mr Obama should allow such a
statement to be made, along with the usual weasel clichés about
"moving forward" and "coming to terms", speaks volumes.
Neither the Palestinians nor the Arabs in general have tried to - or
should - compare the 1915 slaughter with Israel's treatment of the
Palestinians, but there are some faint historical mirrors which
rightly worry them. The Turks allege that they began killing Armenians
in the city of Van because Armenian insurgents, backed by a regional
superpower, in this case, Tsarist Russia, attacked the Turks of
eastern Anatolia. Israel claims it bombarded Gaza last December and
January because Palestinian "terrorists", backed by a regional
superpower - Iran - fired rockets at Israelis.
The political parallels are not exact, of course, but Israel can in
any case scarcely debate them when it officially refuses to
acknowledge the Armenian genocide in the first place.
But for Mr Obama, there are more pressing points. US and Turkish
officials are already discussing how Ankara can help in a US military
withdrawal from Iraq, and Mr Obama desperately wants Turkey to help
open up the Muslim world to his government to staunch the massive
wounds the Bush administration inflicted.