When Pope Francis acknowledged the Armenian genocide four years ago, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey was so furious he recalled the ambassador to the Vatican. When German lawmakers made the same acknowledgment a year later, he not only recalled his Berlin envoy but warned that their decision would “seriously affect” German-Turkish ties.
It is a measure of how low American-Turkish relations have already sunk in recent weeks that Mr. Erdogan’s reaction on Wednesday to the House’s decision to recognize the genocide was basically a contemptuous retort.
In a speech in Ankara, Mr. Erdogan said American lawmakers had “no right to give lessons to Turkey.” While the American ambassador to Turkey, David Satterfield, was summoned by the Turkish government to explain the House’s resolution, the Turkish ambassador to Washington was not recalled home. And Mr. Erdogan devoted most of his speech to the Turkish incursion in northern Syria.
“It was kind of muted in response,” said Sibel Oktay, an expert on Turkish politics at the University of Illinois at Springfield. “Erdogan seems to basically ignore it, or not take it seriously.”
For years, American lawmakers avoided officially describing as a genocide the 1915 killings of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, the precursor to the Republic of Turkey.
American politicians have historically been wary of angering Turkey, a NATO ally that has never acknowledged the full extent of the massacres — and has emphatically denied that what happened was genocide. Mr. Erdogan usually refers only to “deportations” and “events,” which he once said were “reasonable” for the period.
The House’s decision on Tuesday, by a 405-to-11 vote, to reverse its decades-old stance reflects how American-Turkish ties have spiraled down in recent years — as seen in Mr. Erdogan’s response.
Relations were already strained by Turkey’s decision to buy an antimissile system from Russia instead of the United States; the incarceration of an American pastor in Turkey; and the jailing of a Turkish banker in America.
The United States also has refused to deport Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania whom Mr. Erdogan has accused of plotting a coup attempt in 2016.
And then, earlier this month, came the Turkish offensive in northeast Syria, against Kurdish-led forces that had partnered with the United States military in fighting the Islamic State. When President Trump warned Mr. Erdogan in a letter that the United States would destroy the Turkish economy if Mr. Erdogan’s forces did not behave in “the right and humane way” in Syria, the Turkish leader discarded the letter — some Turkish news reports suggested he threw it in the trash — and said “we will not forget this lack of respect.”
Had the House’s recognition of the Armenian genocide occurred at a calmer time, “then it would have been a watershed moment,” said Ms. Oktay. “But given what else has been happening, you can just call it the cherry on top. In that sense, it’s not that big of a deal.”
American-Turkish relations have been further strained by the recent indictment in New York of a Turkish state-owned bank that American prosecutors accuse of helping Iran to circumvent United States sanctions. Mr. Erdogan is himself accused in the court documents of involvement in the scheme.
Responding to the House’s decision, Mr. Erdogan said: “We do not recognize this step, this decision you have taken.”
“The countries who have stains of genocide, slavery, colonialism in their history have no right to give lessons to Turkey,” Mr. Erdogan added.
Mr. Erdogan’s communications director, Fahrettin Altun, described a separate decision by the House to impose harsh sanctions on Turkey as a “direct contradiction to the spirit of a strategic alliance.”
While Mr. Erdogan regarded the House’s decision as an affront, it may have helped him politically, bolstering the Turkish leader’s strategy of presenting himself to voters as Turkey’s only effective bulwark against foreign attacks.
“He can use the specifically anti-American nationalist sentiment — on an issue that still unites many Turkish citizens — to rally support when it suits him,” said Lisel Hintz, a Turkey expert at Johns Hopkins University.
But he nevertheless stopped short of the kind of language he has used against hostile foreign leaders in the past, such as in 2017, when he described several European politicians as Nazis.
On Wednesday, Mr. Erdogan framed the House’s move as a political decision rather than the outcome of a sincerely held belief.
“In a sense, it was profiteering,” he said.
Mr. Erdogan’s reaction may partly reflect his newfound position of relative strength, Ms. Oktay said.
“He made a major move in Syria and he won — and he is still riding on that, quote unquote, victory,” Ms. Oktay added.
On Wednesday, the Turkish president also hinted that he was planning an operation targeting the leader of the Syrian Kurdish militia that had worked with the United States against the Islamic State, Mazlum Kobani.
“Some countries eliminate terrorists whom they consider as a threat to their national security, wherever they are,” Mr. Erdogan said. “Therefore this means those countries accept that Turkey has the same right. This includes the terrorists they shake hands with and praised.”
Since 2014, Mr. Erdogan has watched with loathing as Mr. Kobani’s militia harnessed the chaos of the Syrian conflict to carve out an autonomous area along the Turkish-Syrian border, under the protection of the United States.
Turkish officials consider the militia a terrorist organization because it is an offshoot of a guerrilla movement that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
The withdrawal of American troops from the border early this month gave Turkey the opportunity to invade Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria. That forced the Kurdish leadership to turn to the Syrian government and its Russian backers for support, and to retreat from the border.
After an agreement between Turkey and Russia, a buffer zone has since been established along the border, patrolled by Turkish, Russian and Syrian government troops.
Photo credit: Credit…Adem Altan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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