Realer than Real
I don’t think Matt can be quite correct when he writes
The people arguing that passing a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide right at this moment doesn’t seem like a particularly sound method of advancing the national interest are, of course, correct. At the same time, though, one ought to recognize that on a realist account these gloom-and-doom predictions of US-Turkish relations in the wake of the resolution are false. Turkey is going to formulate its policy vis-Ã -vis the United States of America in light of Turkey’s interests and not actually radically restructure things in the wake of a symbolic resolution. Things like the strategic partnership with Israel and membership in NATO (and the base-hosting it entails) stand or fall on their own merits and Turkish-US partnership in Iraq is going to be determined by the ability of Turkish and American officials to forge a compromise position on the Kurds that both sides prefer to no compromise at all.
Sure the Turkish government has interests, and so does the US one. But Turkey needs to figure out where the US fits into the picture of its interests, and something like the Armenian genocide resolution can play a crucial signaling role. On the view of the Turkish government, Turkish Kurdistan is part of Turkey, and Turkey is under assault from the territory of a US protectorate. The genocide resolution says, to Turkey, we care more about what your predecessor government did 90 years ago than what others do to you now. It also says, our instincts are to support your ethnic minorities in any conflict. This strikes me as information, and information that Turkish rulers would figure has to be reckoned in any account of how relations with the US affect their interests.
Absent a terrorist assault on Turkish territory from within an American protectorate, the resolution would be merely galling. Barely 20 years before the 1915-17 ethnic cleansing of Turkey’s Armenians, the US was still wrapping up its own comprehensive forced march of its indigenous enemies. The spectacular arrogance of the Armenian genocide resolution would probably be a transitory offense, one more in a long example of America’s “do as we say, not as we do” pedagogy to the world. The bizarre notion that the American government has to render judgment on every historical event would still count as a warning, to pretty much everyone, but not necessarily a pressing one.
In the context of “the PKK Terrorists’ War on Us,” though, Turkey has to treat the push for the resolution as a clue.
Comment by LarryM —
October 18, 2007 @ 7:56 am
I view the resolution as a purely good thing. I agree entirely with your post, but I think that anything that alienates the United States from its allies is a (very) good thing. The only hope for the world is a grand coalition against the hegemonic power, which will hopefully lead to its complete downfall.
Comment by the talking dog —
October 18, 2007 @ 7:59 am
Remarkable that with the political fall-out from S-CHIP, not to mention Iraq continuing, and the right-wing-noise-machine’s simultaneous collapse of Malkin (attacking a 12-year old kid), O’Reilly (shocked… SHOCKED… that Black people could actually run a successful reestaurant), Coulter (”the JEWWWWWZZZZZ) and Rush “Phony Soldiers” Limbaugh, you have to admire Pelosi for her ability to STILL pull one out for the team… the GOP team, that is.
You nailed it in one: Turkey has interests, we have interests, and the resolution, standing alone, serves neither. And remarkably, it shouldn’t be controversial… the events described happened! NOW… getting Turkey to tacitly own up and admit its role in them, in exchange for something it wants (EU membership, assistance in controlling the PKK, whatever…)… THAT might be something…
But the insane arrogant incompetence of Bush coupled with the not-very-bright and total fecklessness of the Democratic Party… not a good combination, eh?
Comment by daveadams —
October 18, 2007 @ 8:18 am
I think what Matt overlooks is that the government of Turkey is not made up of one person. Sure Turkey has interests, but just like in our government, not everyone agrees on what those interests are. There are folks in Turkey who want to stay close to the US and there are others who are looking for reasons to break the ties we have.
To the extent that such a resolution gives the Turkish people the impression that the US government is not on their side, it will give the latter group of politicians more strength to push their agenda (assuming the people of Turkey actually care about this one way or the other).
Comment by mds —
October 18, 2007 @ 8:25 am
Indeed, the US must tiptoe around countries with unpleasant policies whose goodwill we require to avoid offending them unduly. Which is why I’m glad the President took time to further condemn this resolution on the way to his meeting with the Dalai Lama.
Yes, but in present-day America, people can’t (yet) be sent to jail for publicly condemning our treatment of our indigenous “enemies.” The current government of Turkey isn’t saying, “What does that terrible genocide have to do with us?” They’re saying, “What genocide?” and arresting people for bringing it up. (Though we don’t want to get too uptight about this, since I’m not too keen on the US invading Turkey to “establish democracy.”)
Rant aside, I must agree with the talking dog that an actually relevant and effective forum for these issues is EU accession talks.
Comment by Joshua Holmes —
October 18, 2007 @ 8:49 am
I’m not sure why the Turkish government is so upset. The Armenian genocide predates the creation of the modern Turkish state. President Gul can say, “The way the Empire treated the Armenians was disgusting and deplorable. Our father Ataturk fought those tyrants to create a new state: democratic and free.” If anything, I think this would be welcome by the Turkish government.
Comment by Invigilator —
October 18, 2007 @ 9:08 am
If the Turks had a sense of irony, they would respond with a resolution condemning the United States — and perhaps the European colonial powers and all their successor regimes — for the genocide of the indigenous inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere over the course of several centuries. How would we like them apples?
Comment by Dave Woycechowsky —
October 18, 2007 @ 9:10 am
Barely 20 years before the 1915-17 ethnic cleansing of Turkey’s Armenians, the US was still wrapping up its own comprehensive forced march of its indigenous enemies. The spectacular arrogance of the Armenian genocide resolution would probably be a transitory offense, one more in a long example of America’s “do as we say, not as we do†pedagogy to the world.
I am too much of an isolationist to support the resolution (although hearing Bush speak against it last night made me want to support it).
However, Native Americans are getting reparations. If Turkey were giving reparations to the Armenians then they weould be doing as the US is doing. I don’t know if they are giving reparations of not, but my guess is: (i) noy way, hosay; and (ii) if they were then there would be no US resolution.
Democrats were trying to set themselves up to continue the Iraq War in 2009 based on excuse number eleventy-two: we can’t have a genocide. Why don’t they just say it is the oil and be done with the lies?
Comment by Xanthippas —
October 18, 2007 @ 9:37 am
Only when you’re preoccupied with concealing the truth from the world, which the Turks are.
Sorry, not the same. As a Native American I can tell you that I hardly regard what America did to the Natives as the same as what the Turks did to the Armenians because…well, its not. And just because America was busy at the time of the genocide trying to send Natives to boarding schools and get them to farm, doesn’t really mean that we weren’t then and now in a position to comment on the Armenian genocide.
Secondly, as to this issue of the PKK…it’s amazing to me how people who want to defend Turkey’s behavior leave out the fact that Turkey at present oppresses and discriminates against the Kurds in Turkey. It’s quite plausible to believe that the Turks are so extremely sensitive about the Kurds and minorities in general because they know they treat them so poorly, and they know that the Kurds have every right to act in their own defense. No outrage is more passionate than the feigned outrage that results when you are rightly called out on your bad behavior.
Yes, Turkey has a right to defend itself from external attacks. But Turkey’s problem with the Kurds has nothing to do with Kurdish aggressiveness, and everything to do with the fact that the mere existence of an autonomous Kurdish territory will give their restless Kurds more reason or ability to make trouble.
Lastly, I am not at all interested in being muscled out of calling a spade a spade by Turkish threats to retaliate against our interests in Iraq. The Turks are not interested in the truth; they are only interested in protecting their own national pride, which is incredibly dismissive of bad acts of the past. Our interests in Iraq are considerable, but quite frankly I am more comfortable allying with the Kurds than I am with the Turks and if Turkey wishes to assist us in making that choice, than so be it.
Comment by borehole —
October 18, 2007 @ 9:38 am
I’m with Larry. Too much work to try to reclaim our honor, plus I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Complete downfall, huh? I like it. We can achieve that goal by doing just what we’ve been doing all along–bitching impotently while allowing our country to become irredeemably monstrous.
I just gotta remember to throw the word “hegemon” around, so’s to give my shameful inaction some intellectual heft.
Comment by Thoreau —
October 18, 2007 @ 10:05 am
I have no firm opinion on this resolution, because I see a lot of arguments on both sides.
Maybe the biggest problem with this resolution is that it’s a distraction from the much more immediate issue of Turkey getting ready to go into northern Iraq. I don’t believe that the US hegemon should be running Iraq, but I also don’t think it would be so bad if we persuaded an ostensible ally to not emulate our mistake and further agitate an unstable part of the world. So while I don’t have a firm opinion on what (if anything) we should do in regard to Turkey and northern Iraq, I do believe that THIS should be the issue concentrating minds in DC right now, not the Armenian genocide resolution.
Comment by Nell —
October 18, 2007 @ 10:33 am
something like the Armenian genocide resolution can play a crucial signaling role
Yes, but. If, as I fully expect, it dies in the Senate or is vetoed, that sends a somewhat different signal. The great likelihood of this is what gave Nancy Pelosi the chance to do something that makes it look as if she were defying Bush without anything serious coming of it.
The issue of what happens in Kurdestan is so much more important to the US-Turkey relationship than this resolution that it makes me a little suspicious of those who want to focus on it rather than the situation at the border.
Comment by Hesiod —
October 18, 2007 @ 10:44 am
OT: Libertarians might want to encourage Senator Dodd to put one of them “holds” on any FISA bill that contains retroactive telecom immunity.
I think you were lamenting the failure of Democrats to use this procedure to throw up roadblocks to civil liberties erosion.
Now is your chance to put your money where your mouths are, so to speak.
Comment by Hesiod —
October 18, 2007 @ 10:47 am
Regarding the topic of this post, can you imagine the wingnut reaction to a resolution by, say, the French Parliament or the Russian Duma comndemning the United States for its institutionalized and brutal system of legalized slavery for its first 100 years of existence?
Comment by matthew hogan —
October 18, 2007 @ 11:17 am
I’m not sure why the Turkish government is so upset. The Armenian genocide predates the creation of the modern Turkish state. President Gul can say, “The way the Empire treated the Armenians was disgusting and deplorable. Our father Ataturk fought those tyrants to create a new state: democratic and free.†If anything, I think this would be welcome by the Turkish government.
Actually Ataturk tried to finish the job.
Comment by The Mechanical Eye —
October 18, 2007 @ 11:17 am
“The way the Empire treated the Armenians was disgusting and deplorable. Our father Ataturk fought those tyrants to create a new state: democratic and free.”
Part of the problem is that a lot of the nationalist/secular types that created Turkey took a blind eye to precisely this sort of genocide — the same genocide that is, apparently in the interest of the Terrorists’ War on Us, we have to deny.
Spengler has a great link on the seamier underbelly of Turkish nationalism:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ16Ak02.html
I’m seriously going to give the Democrats the benefit of the doubt on this one. It’s rich to see people on talk radio acting like the President cares about what other countries think of us.
DU
Comment by Michigander —
October 18, 2007 @ 11:42 am
“Barely 20 years before the 1915-17 ethnic cleansing of Turkey’s Armenians, the US was still wrapping up its own comprehensive forced march of its indigenous enemies.”
Are you kidding? Do you really think the Armenian genocide consisted of nothing more than forced marches and BIA-ish schools? Not that the US treated native Americans well, but the Turks clearly committed a genocide against the Anatolian Armenians, and they should be held accountable. This resolution is a start.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
October 18, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
Forced marches include people dropping dead along the way, unless they’ve all been in training. So the difference between a forced march of an entire population and genocide isn’t very great.
It’s why people tend to think of ethnic cleansing as just one short step below genocide.
As for what happened to the Native Americans and whether it was genocide, it sorta depends on the time and place. In some cases, if memory serves, genocide would be the right description. I mean, you don’t put a bounty on people’s heads unless you think of them as vermin, and IIRC I the state of California did that at one point.
Comment by Joshua Holmes —
October 18, 2007 @ 12:44 pm
Actually Ataturk tried to finish the job.
Well, that’ll do it, then.
Comment by Athlon —
October 18, 2007 @ 3:35 pm
Excellent post. Just a note for some commenters upthread: contrary to what some people may believe, EU accession is not a US carrot available in the present situation – it’s a European carrot.
There needs to be some sort of pact here – the US promises not hint to Turkey that EU accession may be a reward for being playing nice with the US, and EU will promise not to hint to Mexico that becoming the 51st state of the US will be a reward for playing nice with the EU. How about it?
Comment by Glaivester —
October 18, 2007 @ 6:19 pm
The only reason why the Armenian genocide is sitll an issue 90 years later is that Turkey denies it.
The U.S. has acknowledged the immorality of slavery and of the depredations against the Native Americans. In Turkey, on the other hand, it is illegal to call the treatment of the Armenians “genocide.”
From a practical standpoint, I do not see this resolution as a good idea, but those who argue against such a resolution also need to stop carping on how evil Ahmedinejad’s Holocaust skepticism is. (Not that Ahmedinejad’s skjepticism is at all justified, but we can hardly take a principled position against him disingenuously questioning a genocide committed by another country if we do not take a position against Turkey for outright enying a genocide that they themselves committed).
Comment by Laertes —
October 18, 2007 @ 6:53 pm
President Gul can say, “The way the Empire treated the Armenians was disgusting and deplorable…â€
He could, but he doesn’t. This remains a live issue purely because Turkey continues to deny it. In Germany it’s a crime to deny the Holocaust. In Turkey it’s a crime to acknowledge the Armenian genocide.
That Turkey throws a national hissy-fit every time they’re confronted with unpleasant truths is nobody’s fault but their own. It does, however, explain why the modern American Right appears to sympathize so readily.
Comment by mds —
October 18, 2007 @ 8:48 pm
No! Really?
I for one (and I suspect the talking dog as well) was simply pointing out that a better venue for addressing Turkey’s continued denial of the Armenian genocide would be the EU membership process, where one would expect it would come up. (In fact, I would hope that an acknowledgment would be a necessary precondition for accession.) This is rather different from suggesting that the US can dangle EU membership as an incentive for Turkey to support “our interests.” I think most of us know, and probably even give thanks, that the US doesn’t dictate EU policy.
Comment by the talking dog —
October 18, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
What MDS said.
Comment by Thomas Nephew —
October 19, 2007 @ 12:14 am
The genocide resolution says, to Turkey, we care more about what your predecessor government did 90 years ago than what others do to you now.
I realize you mean this is how Turkey sees it. But since I wonder whether that’s also how you see it: that is not what it says. It simply says, we care about a genocide in a country, without regard to what else is happening in that country. We care especially because (1) the descendants of that genocide care, and they are our neighbors, friends, and family, and (2) a country that *denies* a genocide is a very bad actor, to that extent. That is what Turkey is doing — they’re not saying “hey it wasn’t us, it was grandpa”, they’re saying “what genocide?”
It also says, our instincts are to support your ethnic minorities in any conflict.
Again, no. It says, our instincts are to support ethnic minorities in our *own* country as they remember their forebears getting wiped out by your forebears in a genocide you continue to deny absolutely.
That point is crucial. People make much of the supposed break between the Young Turk regime and today’s Turkey. But the unbroken thread is the denial, and that’s the real issue — the real “signal,” since we’re getting all signaly-noisy here. A nation that makes the centerpiece of its foreign policy the denial of a genocide, is a nation that really can’t be trusted all that much by anyone, including us. (Predictable changes of topic referred to Xanthippas, #8)
But worse yet, it’s a nation that’s now succeeding in making our own nation complicit in that denial. Ie, they’re not just saying “what genocide?”, they’re saying “don’t you dare say it was a genocide even if it’s as plain as this open, festering sore on our ass.” And while I expect nothing at all of a Tom Tancredo or George Bush, I’m dismayed that better people seem willing to join them in saying, “OK, not a peep.” The resolution is not pedagogy, it’s bearing witness, and that is both a right and a duty.
What “realists” are “really” doing here is counseling us to sell out our own freedom to speak the truth. To make it yet more pathetic, people like Murtha (another disappointment) and Bush are selling us out for the low, low price of an airbase. One that isn’t even essential to us, except to (1) keep the cost of the war in Iraq $160M/yr lower, and (2) (IMO) to keep an alternative emergency supply line open, if (IMO) the Gulf gets dicey for some reason cough Cheney bombs Iran cough.
Comment by Wulf —
October 19, 2007 @ 8:39 am
Mr. Henley, this is ridiculous. You imply a hypocrisy that simply does not exist. Several commenters have chipped away at this faulty point of yours – comments #7 and 20 for example – but the heart of it needs to be exposed. You would be correct only if America continued to deny the immorality of slavery and the treatment of American Indian tribes (and other policies) by the US government in the past. But the American government does not deny the immorality of these things, and has very openly reversed these policies. Our culture finds them shameful and we study this shame in our schools and our popular culture. This is not a matter of “as we doâ€. There is a big difference between saying “do as we say, not as we do†and saying “do better than you are doingâ€. America’s pedagogy to the world is better attributed to the latter.
It can be argued that the resolution in question does more political harm than good. It can be argued that it is beyond the proper function of our government, I suppose. And the message it sends is, as you note, dangerously ambiguous. But your post would have been better without the inclusion of that particular line.
Comment by dsquared —
October 19, 2007 @ 11:37 am
That is what Turkey is doing — they’re not saying “hey it wasn’t us, it was grandpaâ€, they’re saying “what genocide?â€
Well no. In general, I do wish that people would bother to learn a little bit about Turkey and Armenia before shooting their mouths off with these little autopilot sermons.
The Turks have never denied that lots and lots of Armenians were massacred (there is a bit of dispute about numbers, but not about orders of magnitude). The Armenians, for their part, have only sporadically denied that they also massacred lots of Turks in and around the same historical period.
More Armenians got massacred than Turks, in absolute numbers and proportionately. In my view there was a genocide of the Armenians. But it certainly wasn’t the one-sided World War 2 kind of episode.
The Turks’ attitude to the Armenian genocide is less like the US attitude to the Native American genocide (more or less historical erasure) than it is like the winning WW2 allies’ view of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – they look on it as being a massacre of lots of enemy civilians, probably basically morally unforgivable, but dammit, we were forced into it because if we hadn’t done it, then it would have been considerably more difficult for us to win a war that we wanted to win.
The real tangible cost in terms of international relations is that it was an obvious and predictable consequence that the Turkish Republic withdrew their ambassador, just at the time when a Turkish ambassador was beginning to seem like a useful chap to have around.
Comment by Thomas Nephew —
October 19, 2007 @ 11:57 am
It’s not an autopilot sermon, I’m not shooting my mouth off, I’ve been following the issue for years.
Comment by Thomas Nephew —
October 19, 2007 @ 11:59 am
To say it was justified in any way shape or form is to say “what genocide?” I wasn’t claiming that Turkey said no Armenians died. I’m claiming they say it wasn’t a genocide. They do. Yet it was.
Comment by dsquared —
October 19, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
To say it was justified in any way shape or form is to say “what genocide?â€
of course it isn’t. I mean sorry for the incivility and all that but this, the main plank of your argument, is just palpably not true. They’re two clearly distinct concepts.
Comment by Thomas Nephew —
October 19, 2007 @ 12:52 pm
What are two clearly distinct concepts? Massacre and genocide? If so, agreed. You say “in my view, there was a genocide,” — well thanks for that — but also that “the one-sided World War 2 kind of episode.”. Yes there were some Armenian deserters and criminals and thugs who massacred some villages and turned on Turkish troops. But there wasn’t a “kill them all” directive from on high in any Armenian political framework.
The issue of motive — save Turkey, save its eastern provinces, whatever — is irrelevant to whether a genocide occurred. Even crazy, evil people have motives. No one argues that Hitler just said “dum de dum, think I’ll kill 6M Jews”. No; he had a bunch of crazy “reasons” for doing so. But even if any of his reasons had made even a little bit of sense, it would still have been genocide: the deaths of millions of civilians, including women and children for no reason other than their ethnicity.
Similarly, hundreds of thousands — 1.5M — died in Armenia, including women and children death marched into the desert and raped along the way, and with Turkish directives saying any Turk who harbored an Armenian was to be hung and his house destroyed.
So to set the massacres that happened against a years long, systematic killing of 1.5M Armenians who died in a genocide is shameful, David Irving-level obfuscation, both on the part of the Turkish government, and on your part.
I mean sorry for the incivility and all that.
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 19, 2007 @ 1:14 pm
“The Turks’ attitude to the Armenian genocide is less like the US attitude to the Native American genocide (more or less historical erasure)”
Huh? Why did I learn about it in elementary school in the 1960s, then?
There’s no lack of museums and accounts of massacres of Indians these days. No lack of books in the bookstores about it. No lack of college courses. No lack of popular awareness (okay, some lack in some pockets of society, surely, but that’s true of many topics). No lack of it showing up in popular novels and movies.
If you had written this comment in 1950, you would have a point. But in 2007?
Or are you saying simply that the U.S. was largely in denial about its treatment of Native Americans for a couple of centuries, and that’s the “erasure” you’re referring to? If it’s that, I wouldn’t particularly disagree.
But the “erasure” wasn’t that effective, if it’s erasure of knowledge of genocide you mean; if it’s “erasure” of most of the actual people and culture, again I wouldn’t argue.
Otherwise, as I said on ObWi, I’d be thrilled if every country on earth condemned all its own crimes and, if it committed any, any genocides, but also all other ethnic and mass crimes in its history, and if each country passed resolutions detailing everyone else’s crimes, as well.
Truth is a good thing. So is moral self-examination, and so is, up to a point, pushing others to engage in moral self-examination.
And it’s always an inconvenient time.