‘Get Tough With Turkey’
Wright’s article was a breath of fresh air in the ongoing debate over U.S.-Turkish relations.
She did leave out one important additional claim that this Administration is making to bolster Turkey’s present “image problem.” That is the claim that a government of Turkey never committed the crime of genocide against the Armenian people.
The fact that Turkey executed a genocidal program against the Armenians from 1915-1923 has been recognized as historical fact by every administration since Woodrow Wilson’s. This longstanding recognition, however, ended in 1982 under the Reagan Adminisration, when the State Department Bulletin asserted, under obvious pressure from the Turks, that it did not support the view that such a genocide ever took place.
As a direct response to this State Department Bulletin, Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced) submitted House Joint Resolution 247, which simply stated that April 24, 1984 be designated as a “National Day of Rememberance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man.”
The effect of this resolution was to authorize and request the President to issue a proclamation calling for such a day of remembrance “especially the million people of Armenian ancestry who were victims of the genocide perpetrated in Turkey between 1915 and 1923.”
Yet despite the seeming harmlessness of this resolution, our present Administration saw fit to oppose this resolution. Although H.J. Res. 247 was successfully passed in the House, it was blocked in the Senate, at the bequest of the State Department.
It has been introduced again this year.
LEON KIRKAKOSIAN
Los Angeles
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