Genocide Recognition by US States: 49 and Counting

Although the German resolution also called upon the Turkish government to work to redress the harms that the Ottoman Republic had done to the Armenians, Turkey continues, as it has done for decades, opposing the passage of a similar proposal in the US Congress.

Presidential leadership, an essential element that would propel serious consideration of the resolution, is still missing from the debate. President Trump has done nothing to indicate that he would rally the Republicans in favor of passage.

The need to gain a persuasive Republican voice fighting for the resolution suffered a serious blow in 2014 when Rep. Eric Cantor, one of the strongest Republican voices in Congress, suffered a surprising loss in his re-election bid. Cantor, who had risen to House majority leader and was on the road to becoming House speaker, might have been able to provide convincing advocacy to gain passage of a resolution through Congress — as he had when he was a member of Virginia’s House of Delegates.

In 2000, he steered the resolution through Virginia’s lower legislative branch and gained a last-minute compromise with Virginia Senate that assured its statewide passage. Cantor, whose State House staff included a long-time legislative researcher of Armenian heritage, also signed his name to the resolutions that were introduced in Congress during his term in office.

On the other side of the political aisle, several Democratic hopefuls on the presidential campaign trail — including former Vice President Joe Biden, Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris — have stated they would sign a Genocide recognition proposal if they are elected. But that remains a very big if. At the present time far less than a needed majority of congressmen have signed their names supporting the resolution that was filed in April by Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California and Rep. Gus Bilirakis, Republican of Florida.

In the interim, the effort to gain passage of the resolution in the Mississippi, the only state in the nation which has yet to adopt it, will hold center stage. The drive to gain recognition of the Genocide began in California in the mid-1960s, according to an archive assembled by the Armenian National Institute. https://www.armenian-genocide.org/current_category.11/affirmation_list.html

California Led the Way

In 1968, the California Assembly passed a resolution honoring the construction of an Armenian Martyrs Memorial outside of Los Angeles and those who had been martyred in the “Genocide.”

As the sensitivity towards what their ancestors had suffered in 1915 grew in the Armenian-American community, as well as the importance for political awareness, groups in other states began to press their political leaders to join the national drive and give official recognition of the Genocide. With the Armenian National Committee of America and the Armenian Assembly separately providing support within the confines of their legal limits (the Assembly as a tax-exempt organization is restricted from lobbying on political issues) the drive for adoption of the resolution became primarily a grass-roots effort with local Armenians leading the drives for passage.

But because the state-by-state passages have taken place without national publicity, the Turkish lobby has been relatively silent. But there is no underestimating Turkey’s opposition to the Schiff-Bilirakis proposal that is pending in Congress. Concerned about the blow that such a condemnation would bring to its international prestige, Turkey appears willing to spare no expense to derail passage of the Genocide resolution.

Its team of lobbyists has included former top congressional leaders Democrats and Republicans including former Speaker Richard Gephardt and Republican Bob Livingston. Since Donald Trump’s political rise, Turkey has added such favorites as Michael Flynn, President Trump’s first national security advisor, and Brian Ballard, who has been described by Politico, “the most powerful lobbyist in Trump’s Washington.”

(Stephen Kurkjian served as chief of the Boston Globe’s Washington Bureau as well as a founding member and later head of its investigative Spotlight Team during his 40-year career with the newspaper.)