Immaturity In Foreign Affairs or “Am I Going To Have To Separate You Two?”

Volume 1. Turkey v. House Foreign Relations Committee
Justin Vossler

Let me start this out with the most painfully obvious statement I can. Turkey, I love you, but your Ottoman Grandfathers really did kill 1.5million ethnic Armenians. That is genocide. I mean lets call a spade a spade, we’re all slightly resembling grown-ups here. Turkey has long had a special law on the books that says if you contradict popular Turkish opinion on cultural and historical heritage (read, whatever the governmentsays is right, is right), you go to jail. Maybe, they’ll kill you. It depends. No “Ataturk, Ata-Jerk” slogans for fundamental Muslims, for two reasons. You really can’t rip off the classic Ayatollah Ass-a-hola,” and two, if you mess with the Turkish George Washington, you're toast.
Turkey has adopted a rather strange opinion on the Armenian genocide, which President Bush calls a historic mass killing. Turkey says that first of all, that was an Ottoman party, and “we aren’t them.” Secondly, ask any Turkish official and they will very matter-of-factly inform you that the startlingly simultaneous death of 1.5 million Armenians was a “massacre, but not a genocide.” So to the officials of Turkey chilling out in Ankara, I say this: Grow Up. You killed one eighth of what theNazis killed in concentration camps roughly 30 years later, and they were all of the same ethnicity: Armenian. That was not a plague, not a nmassacre, not an ethnicity wide suicide pact, that was your grandfathers and great-grandfathers, picking up rifles and pistols and scimitars and whatever was handy, and they hacked and stabbed and shot people because they were not Turkish. You need, absolutely need, to stand up, stepforward, and say “Yes, 90 years ago our people slaughtered 1.5 million others, in the midst of a World War, because they were not Turks. We have offered many explanations, saying they were buddy-buddy with Russia, and they were guerilla insurrectionists. But we killed them. And we formally apologize.” Then, give the relatives your most heartfelt apologies, maybe money if they want it, construct a memorial, repeal the law, and let your nation heal. You were deeply divided after the Empire collapsed, and still are. This will help bring two groups together. But why is this suddenly such a hot-button issue? Well, Americans stuck their nose into something at the wrong time, as we so frequently want to do. I smell politics afoot.
Turkey has been America’s best Muslim ally. The Jordanians are good people, and the Kuwaitis, the Qataris, the Pakistanis, and the Bahrainians. The Saudis are also very close with us, but because we have money, they have oil, we want oil, we give them guns and money, the latter of which has an odd tendency to show up in the coffers of terrorists. Not all of it, not even the majority of it, but it does. This is not, however an indictment of the Saudi royal family. The Turks are probably our best and main Muslim ally in the war on terror, as previously stated. We have an airbase there, we ship equipment through and over it, they provided a staging area in the beginning. These folks have stuck their neck out for Americans before. And now, we express our gratitude with condemnation? Well, not all of us. The House Committee on Foreign Relations. Why? Well, permit me to share my theory. The Democratic Congress is a paper tiger. All bark, and no bite(not thattigers bark). After a series of triumphant, non-binding resolutions on ending the war in Iraq and bringing the troops home, they figured out a clever way to put some hurt on the American military. They saw that Turkish-American relations have one issue dividing them. Kurds. Kurdistan, a make-believe country that the world’s largest ethnic group without a homeland desperately wishes to create. Lately, the Kurds of Northern Iraq have been mounting obnoxious little raids into Turkey to aid the separatist movement there. Turkey is not a big fan. America protects the Kurds, trying to ignore it. Anyway, by telling Turkey “Shame on you,” the HCFR is trying to chastise the Turks, turning on an international ally. Turkey is not amused. They have threatened to stop letting the military use Incirlik Air Base, a huge cog in the aerial resupply machine. Nancy Pelosi has convinced the HCFR to bring up this issue to separate America and Turkey, put a resupply crunch on the forces in Iraq, and by disrupting the logistics cause America to pull out. Very devious, Madame Speaker.
But issues arise. If we don’t have the Turkish airbases, we would be attempting to extract 130,000 or so troops via less facilities, making it a big transportation snafu. Plus, Sec. Def. Gates says that resupply without using Turkey can be done. So you have just done something you yourself have condemned the President for: Destroying relations with a sovereign country for no reason. Secondly, its like Turkey passing legislation saying Little Big Horn was genocide, that the Indian Wars were genocide, to which you would say ok, thanks, next topic. In conclusion, Turkey needs to grow up, and the HCFR needs to focus on the problems of the present, and not meddle in events of the past it cannot change, for political value or otherwise.

PS: Nice try, Pelosi.

*Contributing author Justin Vossler is a 2007 graduate of Wellsville SHS in Wellsville, NY. He is currently pursuing his Bachelor's Degree in History at SUNY Geneseo. He hopes to one day pursue his Doctorate and teach.