Armenian Genocide Vote Irks Turkey

Going against the Obama administration, “a U.S. congressional committee approved a resolution condemning the 1915 slaughter of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Turkey’s foreign minister warned that such a vote would “damage ties with the Obama administration and set back reconciliation efforts between Turkey and Armenia,” The New York Times writes, and Turkey quickly recalled its ambassador to Washington. As stated in The New York Times article, “historians say that as many as 1.5 million Armenians died amid the chaos and unrest surrounding World War I and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey denies, however, that this was a planned genocide, and mounted a vigorous lobbying campaign against the resolution.” Though President Obama made a campaign pledge in January 2008 that “ ‘as president I will recognize the Armenian Genocide,’ ” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman before the vote and “ ‘indicated that further congressional action could impede progress on normalization of relations’ between Turkey and Armenia.” According to The New York Times, “the Obama administration had urged the committee to forgo a vote altogether,” for, as The BBC states, the Obama administration was well aware that “the non-binding resolution would harm talks between Turkey and Armenia,” and, as The Wall Street Journal writes, it could also “damage U.S. relations with Turkey, a vital ally in the Middle East and Central Asia.” The resolution was approved on a 23-22 vote.