Obama backtracks on 'genocide' pledge

I had dinner at the home of a London art dealer last week and my eyes were on stalks.

I counted two David Hockneys and a Magritte in his sitting room, a fabulous Lucian Freud drawing up the stairs, and two Walter Sickerts beside his bed.

You might ask what I was doing in his bedroom; but like several of the art dealer’s guests, I had grabbed my glass of champagne and headed round the house, in awe of not just his art collection but also of his Bohemian collection of friends.

I found myself sitting next to an interesting couple. She is Turkish. He is Armenian. Not a combination you might expect, given that upwards of a million Armenians are thought to have perished in Turkey as the Ottoman Empire collapsed during the First World War.

It was not that long ago that Armenian assassins went around killing Turkish diplomats by way of revenge. But the Armenian sitting next to me was from a family which had stayed in Istanbul throughout the Anatolian massacres of 1915, and so as a Turkish citizen who had grown up in Turkey, it is hardly surprising that he fell in love with a Turkish girl. Montague meets his Capulet, regardless of history’s hatred.

Both of them observed that meeting Armenians in Turkey is a bit like stepping back in time – that they seem to live in a vanished world, divorced from modern times.

When I lived in Istanbul, I used to look out for Armenian faces, scuttling through the city’s back streets amid the dilapidated mansions of the old “European” quarter; or turning vast keys in the rusty locks of high-walled Armenian churches. Turkey’s Armenians, some of them, are still there.

I only point this out because we are about to go through a familiar ritual. As the US Congress, under pressure from the Armenian lobby, lobbies the new US President on declaring the 1915 killings of Armenians in Turkey as “genocide”.

President Obama pledged that he would do this during his election campaign. Now his officials appear to be backtracking as strategic pragmatism sets in: Turkey is an important US ally, a Muslim democracy next to Syria, Iraq and Iran, and so not the sort of friend you want to annoy by using the word “genocide” against it. Especially when Mr Obama is due to visit Turkey on 5 April.

President Bush argued for delaying a Congressional “genocide” resolution in 2007. Now there’s talk of delay all over again, disappointing those Armenian Americans who would like the “g” word uttered by Congress and the White House in time for 24 April, the annual remembrance day for the killings.

But balance the political benefit of uttering the “g” word with Washington’s need to find new supply routes for US forces in Afghanistan, possibly via Turkey. Balance it too with Turkey’s desire to act as a mediator with Syria and Iran on America’s behalf.

And the Turks and Armenians don’t need another row to stop them from becoming friends. Last September, Turkey’s president visited Armenia, the first Turkish head of state to do so. There’s talk of opening the border, of opening embassies.

Not long after the Soviet Union collapsed, I flew on a US army transport plane from Turkey to Armenia, delivering aid to the broken republic. It was one of the first direct flights ever and only took about an hour.

But this is 2009, and more direct contact between the two is way overdue. The Iron Curtain may have come down across Europe, but Turkey and Armenia have yet to tear down theirs.

This is not to say that Turkey doesn’t have to reckon with its past – or rather with the actions of Ottoman officials before the Republic of Turkey came into being.

“But Obama uttering the word ‘genocide’? How is that going to help?” I asked myself, as I watched the Turk and the Armenian head home from dinner, back to their 18-month-old child.

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