Griper Blade: Bush the Appeaser

There's a middle eastern nation threatening an invasion of Iraq, which it is currently shelling, and is pursuing nuclear technology, despite the fact that no one in the region thinks that's a very good idea. Nope, not Iran.

Turkey.

Our NATO ally in the middle east is turning out to be a lot less than helpful lately. According to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, "The Turkish military has stepped up attacks against what it says are Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, bases in northern Iraq. The shelling comes just ahead of a vote in the Turkish parliament on a bill authorizing a ground invasion against Kurdish fighters in Iraq. The military has reportedly amassed 60,000 troops along its border with Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Turkey to refrain from any major military operation, but Washington's influence over Turkey appears to be waning."

It's tempting to think that this is about the recent congressional resolution recognizing the 1915 killings of 1.5 million Armenians as a genocide. It's not. Or at least, if it does have anything to do with it, it's only marginally. Turkey's stance on this incident is bizarre -- it never happened. That not even Turkey believes this is beside the point. They have a sort of Bush-like attitude toward the Armenian genocide -- the more you say something, the truer it becomes.

Turkey tried to buy good PR in the US before the vote in the House of Representatives. Asia Times (via The Center for Media and Democracy) reported that Turkey was "spending more than US $300,000 a month on sophisticated public relations specialists and former Washington lawmakers to help defeat the measure [declaring the genocide]" and that "The Turkish Embassy is paying $100,000 a month to lobbying firm DLA Piper, which is associated with former Democratic House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, and $105,000 to the Livingston Group (connected to former Republican lawmaker Robert L. Livingston), and it recently paid public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard $114,000 ... a month." All to rewrite history.

Turkey is so touchy about the subject that turks face a three-year jail term for even saying the words "Armenian" and "genocide" in the same sentence. And the Bush administration has been so protective of Turkey's historical delusion that the US Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, was fired for referring to Turkey's crime as a genocide.

This would be weird enough, but the current Turkish state is not the Turkish state that committed the crime. That would've been the Ottomans -- who are gone. The Turkish government is entirely innocent of the crime it denies ever happened...

[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]