SOME THOUGHTS ON TURKEY / ARMENIAN GENOCIDE VOTE

If you want to see bi-partisanship in Washington, D.C. look no further than how the House Committee on Foreign Affairs voted on the issue of whether the Ottoman Turkish Empire perpetrated genocide against the Armenians during WWI. The resolution passed by a vote of 23-22, with one abstention - Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston.

The vote stirred quite a bit of under-reported controversy. The Times Online reported:

The vote went ahead despite last-minute pleas from the White House and State Department and triggered a furious reaction from Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister.

“We condemn this resolution, which accuses the Turkish nation of a crime it did not commit,” he said. As Armenian observers applauded the vote on Capitol Hill, the Turkish Ambassador to Washington was recalled.

Regardless of where you might come down on this issue, it appears that it's another example of a broken Barack Obama promise.

Mr Obama promised as a candidate to break with longstanding US practice and start calling the First World War era killings genocide if elected to the White House. He broke the promise last year, refusing to use the word on a visit to Ankara, where he praised Turkey as a model Muslim democracy.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also opposed taking a vote on the issue. The two sides of this debate seem to be the ethical obligation to publicly acknowledge holocaust-like atrocities vs. the pragmatic matter of keeping Turkey as a strategic partner abroad.

Where things get a bit more difficult to explain is how the Committee members voted. Keith Ellison, the only committee member who is Muslim, voted "YES" on the matter while conservative Republicans Mike Pence, Ted Poe, Michael T. McCaul, and Joe Wilson voted "NO". However, conservative Republicans Dana Rohrabacher and Christopher H. Smith voted with Ellison. There are other head-scratching votes in terms of reconciling along partisan lines as well. Diane Watson, Democrat who said some jaw-droppingly sympathetic things about Fidel Castro several months ago, voted "YES" as did Barabara Lee, a staunch supporter of Van Jones, who apparently still has the ear of the White House since joining the Center for American Progress after resigning as Green Jobs czar. When one considers the narrow vote result on this matter (one vote), voting against the president's wishes had to have necessarily reflected an adamant view, especially with this administration's record on arm-twisting.

The reason these votes are important is because Turkey has historically been a secular / Islamic ally of the west, serving as a strategic partner and bridge between the west and the middle east. However, it is becoming increasingly non-secular and more politically Islamic. The only real powerful entity that has remained a strong check against the Turkish government becoming a full-fledged Islamic nation has been its military, which has remained secular. Recently, several of its leaders were arrested in connection with an alleged coup attempt.

This from an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

Since coming to power in 2002, the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ultra-conservative Fethullah Gulen Movement have gained significant leverage over the police and media. Emulating Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the AKP has made selective use of the legal code to effectively silence the country's two largest independent media groups.

Or how about this, further in...

Until recently, the judiciary and the military were able to keep government excesses in check. That apparent equilibrium between Islamists and secularists was shattered a few weeks ago, when Gulenist papers published a 5,000-page memo allegedly written by military officers planning a coup.

Interestingly, Cagaptay speculates on what the military might do.

For the past two years, the Turkish military has been the target of illegal wiretaps and accusations that it is plotting against the government. The question is whether the military will tolerate the assault or strike back, as it has done in the past when it thought the secular nature of the state was threatened.

There are some who say that once the Turkish military falls into Islamist hands, the transformation of power from a secular government to an Islamist one will be complete, which would pit Turkey nearly 100% against the west.

Speaking of the Fethullah Gulen Movement, Gulen is a Turkish Imam and Guy Rodgers published quotes in an article appearing on ACT! For America's website in 2009. These quotes are reportedly from Gulen during a sermon in 1999:

You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere........You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside.

Regardless of where you come down on the House Foreign Affairs vote, this reality should be factored into your final opinion.

Here is more on the history of the Armenians in 1915.