Bloomberg. Therese Raphael. Last week Turkey recalled its ambassadors to America and Israel. That decision came in response to Israeli forces killing 60 Palestinian protestors attempting to cross the Gaza border. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israeli actions a “genocide” on Turkish TV; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shot back on twitter: “I suggest that he not preach morality to us.”
Erdogan’s attack has opened an unanticipated window of opportunity, both in Washington and Jerusalem to break a decades-long refusal to join historians and many governments in recognizing a real genocide that Turkey continues to deny — that against Armenian Christians.
This, of course, is history. The genocide took place during World War I. It was carried out by an Ottoman Turkish caliphate which is long gone. But in the Middle East, history matters. Turkey has made it a policy to baldly deny the genocide, and demand acquiescence in this lie as the price of good relations with Israel and other countries…
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…The best answer Trump could give now would be to demonstrate American leadership by officially recognizing the Armenian genocide…
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…At least five senior ministers in the governing coalition have come out for measures that would punish Turkey and recognize its genocide. So have the speaker of the Knesset and the heads of the major opposition parties. It is hard to recall such trans-partisan enthusiasm.
Still, nothing will change without Netanyahu’s say-so. No legislation can pass without his consent and no new diplomatic policy can be adopted either, as he is also Israel’s foreign minister.
Netanyahu is a strategic thinker, and Turkey, like it or not, is a player in the regional game of thrones now underway. He will officially recognize the Armenian genocide only if he thinks it fits his purposes. That may be the wrong reason, but for once in this debate, for both Israel and the U.S., raw national interest and moral obligation are perfectly aligned: In a war against fanatics, truth is a powerful weapon.
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