The senior Turkish official said there was no plan to intervene and no link to the genocide bill. But Ankara is increasingly impatient over US reluctance to suppress armed PKK separatists who launch raids into south-east Turkey from Iraqi Kurdistan. And according to Asli Aydinbas, of Sabah newspaper, a “limited and defined” Turkish military intervention in Iraq is already on the cards.

“The US government believes passage of the Armenian resolution would make a cross-border operation more likely,” he said. “Even a debate on the floor of the House of Representatives would end Washington’s power to deter such an operation.” Seen this way, the genocide bill could spark a whole new bloodbath. ~Simon Tisdall

Normally I would take very seriously when an allied state insists against our government doing something that would badly damage bilateral relations.  However, the genocide denial in Turkey is absurd and it is a colossal lie.  The genocide did happen, and it was genocide, and there is every reason why Congress should acknowledge it as such.  Perhaps when one of its greatest allies and patrons acknowledges it, Ankara’s continued denial will become that much more untenable. 

Normally I am quite satisfied to allow other states to perpetuate their own self-serving lies about their own history, since it is not the business of our government to compel them to acknowledge historical truth, and nothing in the bill before Congress will change the laws or official propaganda in Turkey.  It will, however, stop the U.S. government from enabling Turkey in its genocide denial any longer.  It will demonstrate some solidarity with those relative few Turkish citizens who have been fighting for some genuine freedom of expression and for the sake of historical truth.  It may even embarrass Ankara enough that it will have to stop prosecuting people for speaking the truth, though I am not so naive as to assume this will be the case. 

Normally I am not interested in our government taking deliberately provocative steps towards allied states over a matter that they regard as fundamentally important.  But in this case Ankara is so profoundly in the wrong, and each day that our government officially plays along with Ankara’s lie is another day that the U.S. government fully embraces the Kemalist regime in all its repression, be it repression of its minorities or the attempted repression of history itself.  If Ankara wants to try to blackmail Washington with threats of meddling in Iraq to maintain the decaying facade of denialism, our government should not be intimidated by it.