Turkey threatens 'serious consequences' after US vote on Armenian genocide Turkey has threatened to downgrade its strategic relationship with the US amid nationalist anger over a vote in the US Congress that defined the mass killings of Armenians during the first world war as genocide. Barack Obama's administration, which regards Turkey as an important ally, was today desperately seeking to defuse the row. It expressed its frustration with the House of Representatives' foreign affairs committee, which voted 23-22 yesterday in favour of a resolution labelling the 1915 massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians a "genocide". A furious Turkey may now deny the US access to the Incirlik air base, a staging post for Iraq, as it did at the time of the 2003 invasion, or withdraw its sizeable troop contribution to the coalition forces in Afghanistan. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/05/turkey-us-vote-armenian-genocide ----------------------- Hope we are not going to war on truth?
This is an issue that's nearly a century old. Let it be dead and move on. The American-Turkish strategic partnership is a hell of a lot more important than obsessing about every point in history. Let scholars decide "the truth". Politicians unfortunately have to be concerned with issues dealing with today. ~String
I'm not really worried about "the furious Turkey." I wonder how many of them know that in our language, their country goes by the same name as one of the stupidest birds ever.
And the Chinese get all pissy whenever a US president meets with the Dalai Lama. Let them bitch---if they can't come to terms with their history, that's their own problem, right?
Would you feel that way if the Germans decided to start denying the Holocaust? and the issue is not a century old, it is current since they have never admitted it. In fact they occasionally put their own citizens on trial for daring to refer to the genocide. Futher the pattern is related to the way the Kurds are treated.
You can't generally get doner kebabs in the US, so that preference may well be uninformed. Most Americans have never heard of it until they visit Europe (I hadn't). Fortunately, an excellent doner kebab shop just opened near my house. As it happens, it's right next to an In'n'Out burger, so I am frequently confronted by just this choice... lately I've been tending towards the kebab, since it's typically a shorter line and they serve beer and really good baklava. As to the actual topic: this is all about domestic politics, on both sides. The Turks have been looking for an opportunity to strike a more independent, assertive posture, and this looks to be a good one (no serious interests are directly at stake, it's a hot-button issue with the Turkish public, etc.).
Turks have been more independent since the end of the Cold War, so that's not really the issue. And there are "serious" issues at stake. Being lumped in with the Germans in history is not exactly something any nation wants. Furthermore, the Turks realize that should the amendment pass, the Armenians will seek land and reparations. What's disgusting about this is that some jackoff Congressman in Congress who is doing the bidding of rich Armenian donors like the Kardashians just derailed the actual thawing of hostility between Turkey and Armenia. The two countries exchanged diplomats and were on the verge of opening their borders, until this meaningless amendment derailed that process. This Congressman either doesn't know that or doesn't care. Neither of which is excusable for a man in his position. The Holocaust is nothing like what happened in 1915. The Turks did not try to deport the Kurds because they were fellow Muslims. The Kurds, on the other hand, have been rebelling fairly steadily and fairly violently since 1925. The most latest iteration, the PKK, is one of the worst terrorist groups around. So the issue is slightly more complicated that you are allowing here.
1) I asked a question. 2) I was trying to understand how he would apply the 'things in the past' rule he was proposing. 3) there are similarities, massive killings of one group by another, both considered genocidal by most historians and experts. I said it was related. You have a dominant group in the country that has a strong history of not tolerating other groups. This includes the way armenians were related to and the way Kurds are related to. Hell, the latter's language was illegal until fairly recently. There is something racist built into the system of Turkey. They cannot deal with their own actions. The behavior of the PKK does not justify racist policies which the Turks have engaged in forever. Wanna create radical groups, treat some minority group in your country as shit and make their culture illegal, treat them differently from other citizens, abuse them, jail them and keep them from doing as well as other groups. Turkey on official levels cannot deal with at the very least certain groups on equal terms. And this is vastly more relevent to current Turkey than the Holocaust is to current Germany. Germany on the other hand does nothing to hide from its history on its more recent genocidal actions. Turkey is not ready to deal with something that happened longer ago. Why? Because it is relevent. Any nation unable to face itself in this way is more likely to act in similar ways.
Your question specifically linked the holocaust to events in 1915 that are completely different and occurred in a completely different context. This sort of clumsy lumping together is precisely why the Turks get so damn defensive about any attempt to talk about 1915 -- IE all attempts begin from a vantage, repeated by you, that Turks = Nazis. I think his point is that people fuck people over. The Indians got fucked over, but so did Blacks, Irishmen, Italians and so on and so forth. You can't undo what is done or make it less horrible and inhumane with post-de-facto apologies on sheets of paper written by people who were not the perpetrators for people who were not the victims. All massive killings are not genocide. But in terms of 1915, I am willing to look at that term, provided a definition is proposed, so long as the term is not immediately linked to the holocaust, as you have already done. 1915 was not the holocaust or anything like. And I think Jews would agree with me. I never said it did. However, I have no problem with Turkey legislating a national language, as many European countries do, but I too think it's ridiculous that people can't speak Kurdish. The issue of culture is much more complicated, though. Turkey was attempting to create a new national state and a new national identity. To do so, rightly or wrongly, it put secular nationalism at the forefront of that movement. The Kurds, from day one, resisted that. The rub is that Turkey's success in consolidation and its avoidance of the mire of the ME are all down to the advancement of secular nationalism and the Turkish identity. Turkey did not create radical Kurdish nationalism. The Kurds did. And they had help from outside powers like Bulgaria, Russia and Greece. As I already mentioned, the Sheik Said rebellion in 1925 began the moment Ataturk abolished the caliphate. It had nothing to do with rights and culture. It was about sheiks losing power to the state. The current Germany does not have an armed insurgency -- ignored by the West and aided from abroad -- operating within its borders that has killed more than 35,000 people. You might want to enter that into your calculations, because Turkey and its leaders certainly have to. I think the Turks are too closeminded on this issue, too. But much of the reason they are is that people like you lump them in with Nazis and expect them to accept this. They won't, and they shouldn't. People like you also conveniently ignore Armenian actions (from WW1 to ASALA to ethnic cleansing in Nagorno Karabh) and the REAL reasons for the push for the genocide declaration (politics and money). This further prevents an honest debate, as the Armenians are set up as the Victims (read good guys), the Turks the Perpetrators (read bad guys). The reality is much more complicated than that. Meanwhile, real and substantive policy, such as the thawing of animosity between the two countries, are torpedoed by what is essentially a political stunt by a biased congressman who is catering to his rich constituents' whims.
well except for the fact the holocaust was to get rid of some people so germans could move onto their lands and the armenian genocide was to remove armenians so turks could move there.
i don't get why the Turks are offended, i mean the finger pointed at them is still freshly dripping with blood.. they should get over their laziness and try to make a list of the genocides by the US, even though that may take for ever.. :wtf: i mean, hold a sec...wasn't the US friggin founded on a genocide of the red indians..fudging total annhialation, then building houses on their graves and calling them "home"??
True. Which is what the Chinese did. They pointed to Gitmo, Iraq and Afghanistan when the Americans pointed to Tibet. But Turkey doesn't have the US by the balls, as China does.
The Turks have been poking their fingers in western eyes (especially Israel of late), so they're just getting back as they give. I'm also curious as to when they plan to ultimately reverse the theft of Constantinople, the Bosphorus seaway, and the surrounding lands in continental Christian Europe. Perhaps their Albanian conquistador allies in Serbia should also be brought to task. In my personal opinion, Turkey, the US and Israel all deserve criticism to one degree or another, so rather than complain about each others' hypocrisy, they should just lay it all out on the table and be done with it. Turkey doesn't want US airbases? No problem, they won't get the cash for them either, there, done.
I think Turkey has realised that it has more to gain from its neighbors than the Europeans. The current [and rising] Islamophobia in Europe could work to Turkeys advantage. They have the advantage of being a neutral arbiter in the region [unlike Iran] and also the support of the Arab street on both sides of the Sunni Shia paradigm. The steps they took with Armenia suggest that they are good diplomats and if they can reach a similar agreement with the Kurds, they are all set to go. Its become popular to be anti-American in the Middle East and the only competition the Turks have is Iran.
I have no problem with anti-Americanism in the Middle East. My only question is why America trades with and enriches them. The west should give an ultimatum to Muslim countries that they're free to hate Americans and Europeans if they want, but citizens of countries with such sentiments should be banned from all travel, trade, education, immigration, investment, etc. etc. in/from the lands of the people they hate, and the rules should be tightened so they can't bypass these restrictions by going through neutral countries. They can go discover their own Spinning Jennies and choo choo trains, or learn how to make these things from their own folks educated in their own lands using money they made from selling oil to their own people.
That is probably how it will pan out in the next few decades. Turkey and Iran will collaborate [as they already are] for regional stability. Once the Americans are out of Iraq, which cannot be soon enough for everyone in the region, then Iraq-Iran-Turkey will combine to form the next power group in the region. There will be tremendous pressure on Arab dictators to make a choice. We live in interesting times indeed.
And as they seem to have forgotten, they depend on us for pretty much everything they have. We should have continued with the conservation measures, alternative energy sources and alternative oil supplies, as the West did in the 70's. The Arab oil embargo ended when they realized we were about to move on and leave them to rot in the desert, but it would have been better for us in the long term if they had continued to withhold this deceptive drug. America and Europe should end all support of corrupt Middle East regimes rather than propping them up and enraging their peoples. I'd rather we spent our efforts walling in a legitimately elected extremist government rather than opening our doors to the terrorist and terror sympathizers in their midst, pretending they're our "buddies". As far as Iran/Turkey goes, it doesn't sound like the Arabs want to be dominated by Iran or Turkey any more than they want to be dominated by the US and Europe. As long as the message is "get rid of foreign imperialists in your midst...", I'm sure there will be a large receptive audience, but as soon as the message becomes "... and replace those imperialists with a bunch of crazy medieval Iranian mullahs", then there will be problems. I don't see what all the hoo ha is really about anyway; in terms of equipment quality, training, logistics and scale, the Iranian army is as much of a joke now as it was 20 years ago. It's a good army for hiding in peoples' homes and shooting occupying troops in the back as they pass by while patrolling the neighbourhood, like in Iraq (where it seems America still won anyhow). It's also a good army for executing people deemed traitors and bombing more of their own citizens than even America did (again like in Iraq)... but it's not so useful in an all-out "shoot everything that moves" type of fight or a battle on someone else's lands. If Iran were to invade one of its neighbours in force, I could see them taking a good swift arse kicking to put them in their place, just like when the invincible Saddam invaded Kuwait.
