Will US Genocide Resolution Satisfy Armenian Christians?

The Middle East diaspora appreciates the House’s recognition at last. But what they really want is repentance.

Armenian Americans breathed a sigh of relief this week when the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved Resolution 296 to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Around 1.5 million Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1923, as the defeated Ottoman Empire transitioned into the modern Republic of Turkey. Less than half a million survived.

The resolution mentions also the Greek, Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac, Aramean, Maronite, and other Christian victims who lived in Asia Minor and other Ottoman provinces at the time.

If the House legislation is passed in the Senate and signed by President Donald Trump, the United States will be committed to commemorate the genocide, to reject its denial, and to educate people about it in order to prevent similar atrocities in the future.

The 405–11 tally reversed what had long been an uphill battle in American politics to even present recognition of the Armenian genocide for a vote.

Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California and co-sponsor of the bill, worked 19 years on its behalf. Pressure against the resolution from Turkey, a NATO ally of the US, quashed previous efforts in 2000 under Bill Clinton, in 2007 under George W. Bush, and in 2010 under Barack Obama.

During the Bush administration, nearly 70 percent of air supplies to the US military in Iraq went through Turkey’s Incerlik airbase.

According to Open Secrets, Turkey spent $13.4 million to lobby against the bill in 2017–18.

“We cannot pick and choose which crimes against humanity are convenient to speak about,” said Schiff, as reported by Reuters. “We cannot be cowed into silence by a foreign power.”

But if Armenian Americans are finally pleased, the diaspora in the Middle East—much ...