It is not like it is the first time the United States has let its loyal Nato ally in the Muslim world down. But that is how indignant the Turkish response to the decision by the American House of Representatives’ foreign affairs committee was.
On Thursday, the committee passed a resolution condemning the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 as “genocide”. Immediately, the Turkish ambassador in Washington was ordered to return. Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the resolution in the harshest terms: “We are being accused of a crime we did not commit”. And analysts were quick to point out Turkish-American relations could suffer at a time the Americans need Turkey’s help the most, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran.
Live broadcast
For hours on end, Turkish TV offered a live broadcast of the House committee as it counted votes. It was reported with the same vigour as an important football match would, only here history was at stake. For a long time, the vote seemed to be turning out “in our favour”, as Turkish TV hosts, viewers calling in, and parliamentarians put it. But finally, the resolution [link] stating “the Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923,” passed with a narrow 23 to 22 majority. Pressure from the Obama administration to reject the resolution proved in vain.
The foreign affairs committee has passed similar resolutions on to the House seven times before. The last time was in 2007, when it was shelved under pressure from the Bush administration.
“Have we forgotten people have been at this game since 1975?” the former Turkish foreign affairs minister Ilter Türkmen wondered out loud as he was following the voting on Turkish TV on Thursday night. “Apparently the Armenian lobby feels it is necessary to refresh our memory repeatedly.”
But the Armenians could yet become the resolution’s biggest victims, Turkish minister of foreign affairs Ahmet Davutoglu warned on Friday. In October, Davutoglu signed a protocol promising to establish diplomatic ties, open the border dividing the two nations, and instate an historical commission composed of experts from both countries to study the events of 1915. “It not fair to blame Turkey for the fact these protocols haven’t been ratified yet,” Davutoglu said. Resistance has been coming from the Armenian side as well, including the Armenian-American lobby that was so successful in pushing for the House resolution in recent weeks.
In the past, the pro-Israel lobby US opposed similar resolutions, but it has been loath to come to Turkey’s defence since its criticism of Israel attack on the Gaza strip last winter. Turkish minister of foreign affairs said, adding that foreign pressure could only serve to damage the peace process between his country and its Christian neighbour.
Turkey against the world
On the Turkish streets, far removed from international diplomacy, one message was heard loud and clear: the world is against us, and it has been since the Ottoman Empire fell. “An old friend will never become an enemy, an old enemy never a friend,” shoemaker Ismet Cahmak mumbled on Friday morning. “This vote proves the Christian community is unified in its struggle against us Muslims.”
Genocide denial strikes at the heart and soul of the Turkish Republic, as it was formed at the beginning of the last century. The Turks do not deny that Armenians were killed en masse in 1915, even if their official estimates (300,000) are far lower than most historians’ (1 to 1.5 million). The Turks argue that the Armenians were fighting with the Russians when the Ottoman Empire was torn apart by the West on one side and Russia on the other, in this particularly bloody episode of the First World War.
“The truth is, the Armenians revolted against us,” said former minister Türkmen. “This is a matter of pride and an affront to the true nature of history. It is also an attack on the integrity of our borders. In a recent ruling, an Armenian court upheld the country’s claim to West-Armenia [eastern Turkey],” he added.
Admitting to genocide would be paramount to denying the Turkish Republic’s right to exist. The modern republic was founded on the smouldering remains of the Ottoman Empire. According to historian Taner Akcam, the Turkish national identity is defined by the humiliation of the empire’s downfall. This has endowed Turks with a strong sense that it is them against the world, he said.
In his book From Empire to Republic, Akcam described how Turkish writers and journalists in the 1920s dedicated themselves to writing exclusively positive stories about their compatriots, responding to the inferiority complex the loss of an empire had caused. Listening to Turkish reporters’ “us against them” narrative broadcast from Washington DC on Thursday night, one might think little had changed.
On Friday, Istanbul’s Armenian neighbourhoods also proved wary of the American resolution. “The people who took this decision didn’t do so because they care for Armenians and their fate,” refrigerator repairman Anton Sasmaz said. “It is all about their own interests. The world will come to see Turkey in an even more negative light. Our membership of the European Union will be further away than ever. What good does that do us?”
