SHEENA De WALL | arts & culture editor
courtesy | ASSOCIATED PRESS
Turkish protestor sign reads, "Genocide is a lie and it's an american game."

WITH AP SOURCES

President Bush continues America's historical denial of the Armenia "genocide" declaration.

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives is in the midst of political upheaval after the passage of a resolution that would accept the events of the 1915 Armenian massacre as a “genocide” with 27 votes for and 21 votes against.

“This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings,” President George Bush said just before the House of Foreign Affairs Committee began debating the resolution.

The resolution is nonbinding, but after years of bitter lobbying, it’s the closest the U.S. government has yet to come to acknowledging the genocide. “This unacceptable decision of the committee, like similar ones in the past, have no validity and is not worthy of the respect of the Turkish people,” recently elected Turkish President Abdullah Gul said.

In 1915, around the time of World War I, the ruling political party under the Turkish Ottoman regime ordered the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians, which many genocide scholars consider the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, contending the toll has been inflated and that just as many Turks died as did Armenians.

The Turkish government also claims that the Armenians were simply unfortunate victims of a chaotic civil war and that they brought this fate on themselves by collaborating with the Russians.

“We’re convinced that the House of Representatives will make the right decision and will not abandon the democratic values that the United States was founded on,’’ regional director of the Armenian Assembly of America Arpi Vartanian said.

The Armenian National Institute has a speech made by Adolf Hitler in preparation for his massacre of the Polish population. Not only does Hitler order the merciless deaths of men, women and children of Polish derivation and language he explains this massacre will be forgotten through a rhetorical question: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

“I’m not against Mr. Bush, but I think that he made the wrong decision on this one,” Armenian professor of biblical studies Bruce Baloian said. “It seems that American politics are more important than recognizing the truth.”

One day after Wednesday’s vote in Washington lawmakers in Armenia’s parliament greeted the committee’s approval of the resolution with a standing ovation.

Turkey’s top general warned that military ties between Turkey and the United States could be seriously damaged if the genocide resolution is approved in the U.S. Congress.

“Having worked this issue in the last Bush administration, I don’t think the Turks are bluffing. I think it is that meaningful to them,’’ Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. “It has potential to do real harm to our troops in Iraq and would strain, perhaps beyond repair, our relationship with a key ally in a vital region and in the wider war on terror.”

The timing of this committee vote has been called into question the vote is taking place against the background of war talk from the Turkish Gul administration. The administration is under heavy domestic pressure to attack the Kurdish PKK militant group along the border areas of Iraq and Turkey in northern Iraqi territory. A Turkish invasion of northern Iraq could seriously destabilize the only calm part of the country.

“It’s not a good idea right now. And beyond that, it’s never a good idea to turn back the clock that far and try to rub something in that you know is very sensitive,” American policy specialist Robert McGeehan said.

Also at stake is Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey near Syria. This base is a major re-supply center for U.S. operations in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

“About 70 percent of all air cargo going into Iraq goes through Turkey and about a third of the fuel they consume goes through Turkey or comes from Turkey” Gates said.

Twenty-three nations including Argentina, Canada and France have already formally recognized that what transpired in 1915 was “genocide.”

However, at the President’s urging, the Democratic-controlled Congress pulled back on an Armenian genocide measure Thursday Oct. 18. The House of Representatives upheld his veto with 13 votes to spare.

“It’s the veto, and the veto alone, that is the last line of defense for a president whose administration’s life is waning away,’’ Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist said. “An embattled president facing a closely divided Congress almost always can win a veto fight because the two-thirds majority needed for an override is a high bar.”