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 WASHINGTON
(RFE/RL)–Turkey can no longer count on the backing of the
powerful Jewish lobby in the United States in its efforts to
block a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian
genocide, according to a Washington-based journalist.
Eli
Lake, a national security correspondent for “The Washington
Times,” believes that Ankara’s furious reaction to the deadly
Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound international aid flotilla will
help Armenian-American advocacy groups trying to push such a
resolution through the U.S. Congress.
On
June 8, the Washington Times published a revealing article by
Lake on the issue titled, “American Jewish community ends
support of Turkish interests on Hill.”
“In
2008, the major Jewish organizations decided they would no
longer quietly push Congress to block a resolution commemorating
the Armenian genocide,” Lake told RFE/RL’s Armenian service on
Monday. “This was a reflection in some way of deteriorating ties
between Israel and Turkey.”
“One
of the prizes of the Turks in their relationship with Israel was
support from the American Jewish community in Washington. After
the flotilla incident, I would say that that support for now has
dried up,” he said.
Last
March, a key committee of the U.S. House of Representatives
narrowly endorsed a draft resolution describing the 1915 mass
killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as
genocide and urging President Barack Obama to do the same.
Opposition from the White House prevented further progress of
the bill.
The
leading Armenian advocacy groups in Washington are expected to
again try to bring it to the House floor for a vote ahead of the
November mid-term elections in the United States.
“I
would say that they will certainly not be an obstacle to the
bill,” Lake said, referring to the more influential
Jewish-American groups. “It’s possible that some groups may end
up supporting it because there is a kinship, of course, between
what happened to the Armenian people in 1915 and what happened
to the Jewish people in the Holocaust in 1939-1945.”
Still, the journalist cautioned that this alone would not
guarantee the resolution’s passage. “You still have plenty of
other interests that are looking to make sure that such a
resolution would never be passed by the House and that is mainly
in the U.S. defense establishment, that still considers Turkey a
major NATO ally,” he said. “You probably would end up having an
executive branch that would say that this complicates our
relationship with an important ally in the Mediterranean.”
Lake
argued that despite its growing unease over Turkish policy
towards the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iran, the United States
still has “very deep ties” with Turkey. Washington could
reconsider them only if Ankara “orients itself towards Iran,” he
said.
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