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THE ORPHANED RUG
Reason.com
March 2014
Matt Welch from the March 2014 issue
In 1925, a group of orphans who had lost their parents to Turkey's
genocide of Armenians presented this ceremonial rug to President Calvin
Coolidge. Despite the exertions of many activists and historians,
the rug has been kept away from public view since the mid-1990s.
Armenian Americans have long suspected that the rug was warehoused
because the government of NATO ally Turkey does not want to see
or read any official-sounding communication that even broaches the
g-word. So when the publishers of a slim new volume titled President
Calvin Coolidge and the Armenian Orphan Rug asked the White House to
release the Ghazir artifact for a private book party in December,
the terse response was, "We regret that it is not possible to loan
it out at this time."
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) responded by planning a historically
appropriate event that he hoped even the White House couldn't refuse.
But Schiff's initiative probably will end up in the same place as
the annual congressional drive to get the president to use the word
genocide on Armenian Remembrance Day (April 24): nowhere. As long
as Washington feels it has foreign policy needs that only Turkey can
supply, the orphan rug is likely to remain orphaned.
http://reason.com/archives/2014/02/28/the-orphaned-rug
Reason.com
March 2014
Matt Welch from the March 2014 issue
In 1925, a group of orphans who had lost their parents to Turkey's
genocide of Armenians presented this ceremonial rug to President Calvin
Coolidge. Despite the exertions of many activists and historians,
the rug has been kept away from public view since the mid-1990s.
Armenian Americans have long suspected that the rug was warehoused
because the government of NATO ally Turkey does not want to see
or read any official-sounding communication that even broaches the
g-word. So when the publishers of a slim new volume titled President
Calvin Coolidge and the Armenian Orphan Rug asked the White House to
release the Ghazir artifact for a private book party in December,
the terse response was, "We regret that it is not possible to loan
it out at this time."
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) responded by planning a historically
appropriate event that he hoped even the White House couldn't refuse.
But Schiff's initiative probably will end up in the same place as
the annual congressional drive to get the president to use the word
genocide on Armenian Remembrance Day (April 24): nowhere. As long
as Washington feels it has foreign policy needs that only Turkey can
supply, the orphan rug is likely to remain orphaned.
http://reason.com/archives/2014/02/28/the-orphaned-rug