Experts tell Haaretz how the Armenian push for U.S. recognition dates back to the days of President Reagan, but the increasingly authoritarian actions of Erdogan proved the tipping point for the Biden administration
Ben Samuels
WASHINGTON – After Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to formally recognize the 1915 mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Turkey as genocide, many are wondering what the move says about the state of U.S.-Turkish relations.
Experts tell Haaretz that while Saturday’s recognition may not doom relations between the two countries, it is a remarkable moment in itself and the latest marker in how far U.S.-Turkish relations have deteriorated over the years.
“The fact that Biden took this step is a reflection of how far [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan has changed the relationship over the past several years,” according to Merve Tahiroglu, Turkey program coordinator at the Project on Middle East Democracy in Washington. “That in itself is unprecedented,” she says.
Howard Eissenstat, associate professor of Middle East history at St. Lawrence University, New York, believes the recognition is not only about increasingly problematic U.S.-Turkish ties, but is also an effort to correct the Trump administration’s handling of the relationship.
Biden’s announcement was the culmination of more than 40 years’ work to have the U.S. recognize the atrocities as a genocide – efforts that had hitherto been rejected due to geopolitical considerations.
Then U. S. Vice President Joe Biden, left, talking with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a meeting in Ankara five years ago. Kayhan Ozer/AP
The genesis for the push to recognize these events as a genocide can be related to the Jewish community’s evolving commemoration of the Holocaust, Eissenstat explains.
“From 1948 through 1967, there was hesitancy about putting the Holocaust at the forefront of Israeli or Jewish identity,” he recounts. “After 1967, there was an increasing interest on the part of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora to consider the Holocaust very explicitly,” he says, noting that the sense of national pride and self-confidence empowered Jews to grapple with its legacy.
In the 1970s, meanwhile, the second generation of Armenian Americans – looking at the development of Holocaust studies as well as their own parents’ stories – began to see echoes of the Holocaust in the massacre of their people.
“You start to have the development of a historiography. They’re looking at their parents’ experience and trying to figure out a way to commemorate it as a parallel event to the Holocaust,” Eissenstat says. “By the late 1970s, there’s the emergence of a public debate and more effective lobbying for official recognition.”
Over the next several decades, the Armenian genocide became a matter of public discourse – though not necessarily a partisan issue. Eissenstat notes that events such as the dissolution of the Cold War and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia clarified for many Americans that genocide was a recurrent event and not singular to the Holocaust.
“It’s a political football because [genocide] is seen as the ultimate crime: it’s often perceived as equating the perpetrating state with the Nazis; it has political repercussions in ways that things like ‘massacre’ don’t necessarily have,” he says. “There are repercussions in terms of how the international community is supposed to respond. It’s a legal term, unlike other types of historical events.”
The Armenian-American community has pressed U.S. presidents to recognize the atrocities as a genocide dating back to the days of Ronald Reagan in the White House. “In the past, when a new president came to office with their campaign promise to recognize the Armenian genocide, they would immediately face a ‘dam’ of U.S. government departments, explaining to the president why this move is bad for U.S. interests,” says Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
He highlights the U.S. Department of Defense as the key building block in this dam, making a case to each incoming president that U.S. strategic ties with Turkey supersede any campaign promises regarding the Armenian genocide.
Eissenstat, meanwhile, cites the role of another department: “Candidates become presidents, then back off because the State Department tells them that Turkey is going to respond negatively and we don’t want to disrupt relations between the U.S. and Turkey at this critical time – and each year turns out to be a critical time,” he says.
Armenians protesting outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington last week. SAMUEL CORUM – AFP
U.S. policy regarding Turkey has consistently been based around security concerns, Tahiroglu says. “Because Turkey has been considered the southern flank of NATO and its location has been so vitally important, no one has wanted to disrupt that relationship over this decision to recognize” the Armenian genocide, she notes.
Deteriorating relations
The downturn in U.S.-Turkish relations began toward the end of the Obama administration’s first term, when Erdogan began to assume more and more powers for himself. “He had been ruling for nearly a decade, but the West still had this image of him as a pious Muslim Democrat,” Tahiroglu says. Then-President Barack Obama, who originally enjoyed an empathetic relationship with his Turkish counterpart based on their underdog rises to power, became disillusioned with Erdogan following his crackdown on the Gezi Park protesters in Istanbul, in May 2013.
Bilateral relations continued to deteriorate for the remainder of Obama’s time in the White House, particularly concerning Erdogan not cooperating in the fight against ISIS. “When Obama became so fed up that the U.S. partnered with the Syrian Kurds, this became a major point of contention that remains a big issue,” Tahiroglu says.
Turkey’s human rights situation continued to deteriorate, particularly following the failed coup attempt in July 2016; Erdogan declared a state of emergency, changed the constitution, gave himself immense powers and jailed tens of thousands of critics.
“Turkey’s situation went from bad to way worse,” she relays. “Most people in the Biden administration who deal with Turkey also served in the Obama administration,” she notes, adding that “this is the genealogy of the current administration’s thinking on Erdogan and how that shifted during the Obama years.”
Meanwhile, senior officials in the Obama administration vocally supported recognizing the genocide – a relatively unprecedented move in itself. “It was a decision Obama made to go against his campaign promise. He had to veto senior members of his own administration, even though he essentially followed the same line as every other president,” Tahiroglu says.
Biden assumed the presidency with the baggage of his experiences during the Obama administration, compounded by Erdogan’s continued descent into authoritarianism. However, the president’s views on Turkey are now also largely shared by Congress and the U.S. military.
“Erdogan’s crackdowns, plus his antagonistic and aggressive attitudes in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East and North Africa, have led Congress to develop a bipartisan and bicameral belief that Erdogan is turning Turkey into an undemocratic adversary,” Tahiroglu says.
Supporters of Turkey rallying in front of the Turkish Embassy in Washington last week following U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to recognize the mass killing of Armenians in 1915 as genocide. JOSHUA ROBERTS/REUTERS
She lists some of Erdogan’s actions – buying the S-400 missile defense systems from Russia in 2019; not playing a cooperative role in the fight against ISIS; doing numerous things that were actively harmful beyond the U.S. partnership with the Kurds – as reasons why the U.S. military wouldn’t come to Turkey’s aid, either. Combined, this gave Biden even greater political capital to recognize the Armenian genocide.
Location, location, location
The question now is how Biden’s decision will impact bilateral ties moving forward. As bad as relations currently seem, this is unlikely to presage a new reality where the U.S. and Turkey become adversaries.
“What was true for Turkey for all previous presidents remains true: its geopolitical location is important, and it will always be in America’s interest to keep Turkey as an ally and within NATO. No one, including Biden, wants to destroy this relationship,” Tahiroglu says. “But this cold shoulder has been really felt in Ankara. He’s shown that his administration has little tolerance left for Turkish sensibilities.”
Eissenstat believes the relationship is shifting into a new era of transactionalism. “[Donald] Trump thought of himself as a transactionalist, but he was actually really bad at it. The Biden administration is signaling that if what you really want is transactionalism, then transactionalism also means that we can play with sticks as well as carrots,” he says, noting that the White House will reassert the importance of rule of law within U.S. state processes.
“Biden and NATO are no longer looking for cooperation with Turkey on these common threats, but rather want to change the calculation to keep Turkey from causing problems. The question is no longer ‘Will we lose Turkey to Russia if we do something bad?’ We’re past that point. They’re just trying to minimize the risks,” Tahiroglu says, adding that recognition of the Armenian genocide shouldn’t be what makes or breaks ties.
Turkey will likely not be able to take any further retaliatory steps beyond a commensurate statement, as Erdogan has escalated his domestic repression – itself antithetical to Biden’s human rights-centered foreign policy. “There’s willingness in Ankara to improve the relationship, but the terms it’s willing to engage with will not be enough for Biden,” she notes. “It’s all about managing the relationship at this point.”
Eissenstat does not expect relations to be as warm as they once were, but says they simply aren’t as important as they had previously been. “Relations are going to be shakier, more transactional and contingent, but that’s not the end of the world for either side,” he says.
While he believes Biden’s recognition is a positive development in itself, he also thinks the political expediency of it plays into much of the cynicism that has developed over the past four decades.
“We didn’t recognize the genocide when it was inconvenient to do so and we recognized it when it was convenient to do so,” he says. “For Turks who see the Armenian genocide as a cynically employed ideological bludgeon against Turkey, they can see good evidence for their cynicism. It would have been better had this [decision] been made at a time when it was inconvenient.”
Eissenstat adds, however, that “the only recognition that really matters would be for the Turkish government to recognize the genocide. Someday, maybe that will happen.”
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