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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 22, 2007 / 10 Mar-Cheshvan 5768

The Wrong Time to Rile Turkey

By Mort Zuckerman

Mort Zuckerman
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | As if we don't have enough problems dealing with the present, we now are in serious difficulties dealing with the past — about what happened nearly a century ago in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire.


When "the sick man of Europe" finally expired, Turkish generals and political leaders created a new nation, a new culture, and a new self-image as a civilized, decent country. Modern Turkey has become a crucial ally of the United States. Now the Turks are enraged because the Democratic leadership in Congress has chosen this time to brand Turkey with the terrible crime of genocide.


The Turks acknowledge that Armenians were massacred, but so, too, they say, were many innocent Turks. The key question is whether there was a systematic attempt to eliminate every Armenian because of ethnicity or religion. Large numbers survived — which is more than can be said of the Jews under the Nazis.


The weight of opinion among historians outside Turkey is to mark the deaths as genocide. This is the judgment of some 22 countries, including many in the European Union, which Turkey wishes to join. It is an argument about history, but it has moral reverberations today when ethnic cleansing is a plague. In Iraq, the Shiites wage ethnic war against Sunni Muslims and Iraqi Christians, driving out at least half of Iraq's entire Christian minority of 2 million people. In Lebanon, Hezbollah and Syria have combined to eliminate Maronite Christians and their western allies. In Bethlehem, the home of the Church of the Nativity, the former Christian majority has been reduced by Muslim extremists to less than 2 percent. In Nazareth, the radical Muslim mayor sought to build a mosque in the parking lot of the Church of the Annunciation (an effort halted by the Israeli government).


Taboo topic. The Turks have not handled their history very well. They closed state archives; they have punished people for raising the subject. This has cost them credibility. But how wise is it for Congress, at a particularly sensitive time, to get into the business of rewriting history with respect to crimes committed nearly a century ago by an empire that no longer exists? Few Americans would place the Armenian disaster on a list of pressing issues. Similar legislation has been defeated in the past, including in 2000 when Bill Clinton was president. Eight former secretaries of state, three former secretaries of defense, and Clinton have all come out against the congressional exercise in branding.


We need good relations with Turkey. We need the Incirlik Air Force Base in southeastern Turkey and passage through the Habur Gate on the Iraq border to supply our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and, maybe one day, to withdraw those forces. Some 70 percent of our supplies, one third of our fuel, and all of our armored personnel carriers come through Turkey. And we already have one nasty little crisis brewing: The Turks are threatening to move into northern Iraq to deal with the Kurdistan Workers Party, a terrorist organization that recently crossed the border to murder nearly 30 soldiers, police officers, and civilians.


There is a lot at stake. Support for America by the Turkish public is down to only 11 percent, and right-wing nationalism and radical Islam within Turkey are reviving, inflamed by xenophobic comments from Europe's leaders unwilling to admit Turkey to the European Union. Turkey, let us not forget, is the only Muslim nation that has long been grounded in the West, has membership in NATO, and has bilateral ties to the United States. Now Turkey may seek alternative affiliations, either with its Islamic neighbors or with Russia, so we are on the verge of provoking an irreparable breach with this Muslim country and with the Muslim world, reinforcing those who believe that coexistence of western and Muslim countries is hopeless even for this western-oriented, secular Muslim democracy. Turkey is remarkable because it is secular even as it is Muslim; because it is western oriented yet attached to the Islamic world; because it is committed to democracy and economic reform under the leadership of an openly religious Muslim party. It is a bridge to cross the growing schism between the West and the Islamic world.


Modern Turkey must deal with the Armenian tragedy. A joint international commission with access to archives would be a good starting point — better at this time than an ill-considered resolution. We must find the restraint and wisdom to find a more appropriate time to address the issue of atrocities perpetrated by long-dead rulers of a long-defunct empire instead of beating up on modern Turkey, which did not exist at the time of the massacre. It's only a little more relevant than Muslims beating up on England for bad things done in the Crusades — or Europeans on the United States for its crimes against the American Indians.


America surely can expect more understanding of our national security interest from the Democratic leadership of Congress.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Mort Zuckerman is editor-in-chief and publisher of U.S. News and World Report. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

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