"THE ARMENIAN RESOLUTION": WHO HAS WON?

Voltaire's well-known dictum that history is a lie agreed by historians provides a classic illustration of what is currently happening with regard to the myth of the "genocide of the Armenians". Any unbiased historian, even following the most cursory study of the "documents" which are passed off as "evidence" of the notorious "genocide", and primarily the letters of Andonyan, can be left in no doubt: the myth of the genocide is entirely based on forgeries, obligingly provided to a political "order".

The point is, however, that the poison secreted by dead matter is the most dangerous, and any attempt to reanimate the geopolitical provocations of nearly a century ago could lead to unpredictable consequences. And the episode of the US Congress's Resolution 106 is a classic example of the fact that the reanimation of grievances from the past carries the danger of unforeseen consequences in the present.

Experts will tell you that resolutions which insinuate the idea of a "genocide of the Armenians" in one form or another are submitted to Congress if not every year then at least every convocation. As a rule they originate from congressmen from the Californian constituency of Glendale, where it is impossible to win without the Armenian vote. But as a rule they do not get as far as the final vote.

This time everything was developing according to the classic scenario. Resolution 106 was submitted by Adam Schiff, a congressmen from that same Glendale constituency. It proved relatively easy to garner a solid number of supporters, in spite of Turkey's opposition. And on 12 October a resolution recognizing the fact of the "genocide of the Armenians" (here and below quotation marks are ours - ed.) in 1915 was approved by the US Congress House of Representatives Commitee on Foreign Affairs. It was supported by 27 members of the committee, with 21 voting against.

As experts can explain, the resolution in question is recommendatory, and even if the House of Representatives as a whole votes in favour of it, it will have no legal force and will not become binding on the president of the USA. But whatever the nature of the resolution, Turkey reacted immediately. Following the vote in the key committee, President Abdullah Gul described the decision to pass the resolution as unacceptable. "Unfortunately, certain US politicians failed to respond to appeals to show a sense of responsibility," Gul added. The reaction of the US executive was also very clear. A statement circulated by the White House says that "the administration continues to object strongly to this resolution, the passing of which will inflict huge damage on American-Turkish relations and also US interests in Europe and the Middle East." In fact the White House had expressed its negative attitude to the resolution from the very outset. Speaking three hours prior to the committee session, Bush had urged the congressmen to vote against. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates had sent letters to Congress the previous day in which they underlined that passing the genocide resolution "would expose the interests of US security to a considerable threat".

As the Washington Post warned, quoting Turkish politicians, it cannot be ruled out that in the event of a positive vote on the resolution Turkey might deprive the USA of access to the Turkish air base at Incirlik, which plays a key role in American air force operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it recalled, as US Defence Secretary Robert Gates explained, that up to 70 per cent of all military cargo and up to 30 per cent of fuel destined for the US armed forces in Iraq pass through bases in Turkey. Also, the Turkish parliament could in response lift all restrictions and allow the Turkish armed forces to invade the north of Iraq in order to strike at the Kurdish separatists. We would remind you that it was just prior to the vote in the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee that the Turkish government approached parliament for permission to carry out a large-scale military operation in northern Iraq, which, as we know, the USA opposes. And now, following the vote on Capitol Hill, the USA's options for dissuading Turkey from such a step are substantially narrowed. Not to mention the fact that the continuing activity of the Kurdish militants, to describe them for what they are, does not leave Turkey much of a choice.

During the first few days there was real euphoria in Armenian circles. "The foreign affairs committee has approved the 'genocide vote', which is a substantial step forwards for the restoration of our right as Americans to speak openly and honestly about the first genocide of the 20th century and about freedom from Turkish pressure on the elected representatives," said Aram Ambaryan, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

But it very soon became clear: the "Armenian resolution" had created far more problems for the USA than for Turkey. In any event, the chief of the Turkish general staff, Yasar Buyukanit, issued a stark warning in a conversation with a correspondent from Milliyet: if the resolution is voted through in the lower house, then military cooperation between the USA and Turkey will no longer be the same. In the general's view, by passing the resolution "the USA has shot itself in the foot". "The USA has damaged itself by passing Resolution 106 in the foreign affairs committee last week, and by showing weakness on the question of the PKK separatists who have killed 30 Turkish soldiers over the past two weeks," he said.

And, as was to be expected, Tur-key showed its readiness to act in Iraq, without taking Washington's views very much into account: the Turkish government drafted a bill allowing an invasion of northern Iraq by the Turkish army with the aim of neutralizing the PKK militants there, and parliament immediately passed the bill.

Ankara categorically denies that parliament's decision to allow the government to begin an operation in northern Iraq was a response to the "Armenian resolution". The fight against PKK terror cannot be used as a bargaining chip in Turkey. But it is clear that the ill-starred resolution has made things seriously difficult for the USA. And nor can it be doubted that there was a serious calculation to undermine relations between the USA and Turkey. Also, the explosions in Turkish towns and the thunderous speeches on Capitol Hill about the "genocide of the Armenians" appeared to coincide too closely. And it is difficult to rule out that it was not in the Kandil mountains or in offices in Yerevan that the plans were drawn up for such a "double blow" to destroy the alliance between Ankara and Washington, after which Turkey would become an easy prey for Moscow, which has been trying for centuries to establish itself on the Bosphorus and which has considerable influence among both the Kurds and the Armenians. The PKK itself now has limited options: its bases and camps, that is, its support infrastructure, will be destroyed either by the Turkish or by the Iraqi army. But the irony of the situation lies in the fact that it is precisely a certain degree of success on the part of the Armenian lobby in the US Congress that has led to a situation that is now developing at whirlwind speed.

And, even before it has begun, the Turkish military operation is already changing the correlation of forces in Iraqi Kurdish circles. In any event, the head of the foreign affairs department in the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq, Falah Mustafa Bakir, wrote in the Washington Post: the Kurdish zone in Iraq is the most secure and most stable one, but it could pay a very high price for the actions of the PKK in Turkey and also for the vote on Resolution 106 on the "Armenian genocide" in the foreign affairs committee of the US House of Representatives. "None of these issues has anything to do with the Kurds of Iraq or the government of the province. We are not looking for a conflict with Turkey, on the contrary, we regard friendly relations with Ankara as our main priority. Investments and trade relations with Turkey are promoting the economic growth of the province. We have an interest in closer ties and direct dialogue with Ankara. Any problems have to be resolved by diplomacy and negotiation, and not by military threats," he said. He added that the Kurds condemn the killing of innocent people and do not believe that violence has ever solved any problems.

"The Armenians are gaining, and we are paying the price," people are currently complaining in Erbil and Zakho, and even in Yerevan they cannot fail to realize that Reso-lution 106 could undermine not Tur-kish-American relations but Arme-nian-Kurdish relations.

And the PKK is a long-standing ally of the Armenian nationalists, who by all accounts had clearly not calculated that the political outcome of the vote in Congress would damage their own allies. Moreover, the statements issued by the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department prior to the vote in the foreign affairs committee of the House of Representatives, and the letter written by former secretaries of state, also offered those same Armenian leaders considerable food for thought: as it turns out, for many very influential personages in the world's only superpower Armenian whining about "genocide" is not the imperative at all. Finally, it is no longer possible to ignore the views of those who believe that those same Armenian lobbyists would do much better to concern themselves with the situation in modern-day Armenia than to stir up events that happened nearly a century ago. The document that was passed proved to be far from what they had been hoping for in Armenia. The newspaper Golos Armenii writes peevishly: Officials in Ankara are now saying more and more often that the adopted resolution does not present any danger to Ankara because it is "only" recommendatory.

It is legitimate to ask: why did Ankara raise such a din over a resolution that is only recommendatory? Whether Ankara is bluffing, or whether, believing the resolution will definitely be passed, Ankara was trying to exploit the situation to its advantage - as a major pretext for a major grievance against Washington, with the aim of getting some kind of trade-off - it is becoming clear that Armenia has obtained not at all what it had been hoping for. And considering the events beyond Capitol Hill, they do not give a very confident reply to the question, who finally won and who lost.

Whether the congressmen have realized that they have found themselves drawn into a scenario with terrorists, or whether they have merely realized that the consequences of Resolution 106 have been much greater and far more painful for the USA than for Turkey, many of those who previously spoke in support of the "Armenian resolution" are now changing their attitude to it, including because of fears of a "Turkish response on Iraqi soil". The chairman of the commission on security and cooperation in Europe, Alcee Hastings, and the head of the House of Representatives delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, John Tanner, have called on the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, to block the vote. "Turkey is the only country in the Muslim world that has been our ally for a long time, and I want it to remain so," said republican Lincoln Davies, who first supported the resolution and then refused to vote for it. The same stance was taken by Jane Harman, who sent a letter to Pelosi warning her not to put the resolution to the vote. Many are working out compromise wordings. "I am against genocide, but this issue could harm our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," said democratic congressman Sanford Bishop, who also withdrew his signature. According to Mike Ross, now is not the time "to throw genocide in Turkey's face", the Congressional Quarterly writes. Against this background, representatives of the Armenian nationalist circles are finding it ever harder to put a good face on the way things have turned out. Thus, the ARF Dashnaktsutiun Bureau's Hay Dat and Political Affairs Office Director, Kiro Manoyan, seriously told his listeners that Turkey's frantic efforts against any possible vote in favour of the resolution by the House of Representatives were proving counterproductive. And the director of the institute for oriental studies at the Armenian Academy of Sciences, Prof Ruben Safrastyan, tried to instil some optimism into his fellow citizens by saying that the congressmen who withdrew their signatures from the notorious resolution had been subjected to very strong pressure by the Bush administration.

"At the same time, I don't think Pelosi will cancel the vote. Pelosi is a congresswoman from California, from San Francisco, her electorate is the Armenian community, and she won't risk her political career. She is quite a clever politician and will carefully calculate the timing of the vote," Safrastyan said. But hardly anyone in Armenia now recalls that a few weeks ago that same Safrastyan, commenting on the growth in the number of supporters for the "Armenian resolution", had warned: it will most likely not get through because of the opposition of the White House.

And as events have shown, he has proved to be right: according to reports from Washington, the US Congress has postponed the debate on the "Armenian resolution", already endorsed by a key committee of the House of Representatives.

Earlier, European deputies had also declined to "push through" recognition of the "genocide". A resolution passed by a session of the European Parliament on 24 October contains only an appeal to the Turks and the Armenians to begin a "process of reconciliation".

Another thing is also clear. The Berliner Zeitung writes for example that Turkey is no longer the same country that joined NATO in 1952 on the USA's insistence. "Turkey's economic potential has now risen considerably, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union an area of its historical foreign policy interests has opened up again for Ankara in the Turkic-speaking republics of the former USSR. The new Turkish elite no longer see their country as an outpost of NATO, but as a regional force with its own economic and political interests, which extend to neighbouring states," it writes. And it is hard not to realize that such a change in the correlation of forces will make the USA give greater consideration to the interests and aims of Turkey in the region.

And here the Armenian lobby is becoming little more than an annoying obstacle, with all the ensuing consequences.