US Senate recognizes Armenian genocide; House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair condemns ethnic cleansing in northeast Syria

On Thursday, the US Senate unanimously approved a resolution recognizing as “genocide” the murder of some 1.5 million Armenians under Ottoman rule roughly 100 years ago.

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – On Thursday, the US Senate unanimously approved a resolution recognizing as “genocide” the murder of some 1.5 million Armenians under Ottoman rule roughly 100 years ago.

The Senate move follows the passage of a similar resolution in the House of Representatives in October.

In addition, the influential Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Eliot Engel (D, New York), issued a statement condemning Ankara’s actions in northeast Syria, where Turkey is resettling Syrian refugees “in territory formerly inhabited by the country’s Kurdish population.” 

Senate Recognizes Armenian Genocide 

The Senate resolution, which passed by voice vote, declares, “It is the policy of the United States to commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance.”

Three previous attempts to pass such a resolution failed, because Republican senators had objected to it at the behest of the White House. However, on Thursday it passed unanimously.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D, New Jersey) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R, Texas.)

“The killing was done with axes, cleavers, shovels and pitchforks,” Menendez stated after the successful vote. “It was like a slaughterhouse.”

“The Senate finally took a stand and spoke the truth,” Cruz affirmed, “spoke the truth to darkness, spoke truth to evil, spoke truth to murder, spoke truth to genocide, and finally honored the 1.5 million innocent lives lost.”

The move followed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s approval of a bill on Wednesday sanctioning Turkey for its purchase of the advanced Russian missile air defense system, the S-400. 

Read More: Senate committee approves bill to impose sanctions on Turkey 

Ankara responded by condemning the measures. Fahrettin Altun, communications director for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, tweeted, “The sanctions bill that passed yesterday in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Armenian resolution that passed today in the Senate endanger the future of our bilateral relationship.”

Although Republicans control the Senate, Altun even claimed that the two measures reflect a “desire to corner President Trump due to his relationship with President Erdogan.” 

Rep. Eliot Engel Condemns Turkish actions in northeast Syria 

Engel, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a statement on Wednesday, condemning population transfers occurring in Syria.

“Turkish President Erdogan conducted a bloody ethnic cleansing campaign against the Syrian Kurds in Northeast Syria,” Engel’s statement began. “Now. he’s forcing Arab and Turkmen Syrian refugees to resettle in the Kurds’ ancestral homeland.”

“This action makes it even clearer what a destabilizing actor Erdogan is in the region,” the statement continued, as it strongly criticized US President Donald Trump for his close ties “to this thug.”

“We cannot stand by and watch while Erdogan ethnically cleanses Northeast Syria of its Kurdish minorities,” Engel affirmed. “And we must continue to support Syrian refugees and their rights,” including against involuntary return. 

Henry Morgenthau Sr: US Envoy to the Ottoman Empire 

Henry Morgenthau, progenitor of a prominent New York family, was the US ambassador in Istanbul in the first years of World War I and tried vigorously to stop the Ottoman persecution of the Armenians and other Christian communities. 

The Senate resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide explains that Morgenthau “organized and led protests by officials of many countries against what he described as ‘a campaign of race extermination.’”

His son, Henry Morgenthau Jr, was Treasury Secretary under President Franklin Roosevelt. A grandson, Robert Morgenthau, was the legendary, long-serving Manhattan District Attorney. A granddaughter, Barbara Tuchman, an historian, won a Pulitzer prize for her book on World War I, The Guns of August, while a later book, The March of Folly, convincingly and eloquently describes a regular tendency of governments to make bad decisions and, once made, persist in them.

A great grand-daughter, Sarah Morgenthau, writing last month in the New York Daily News, urged the Senate to follow the House in recognizing the Armenian genocide.

Her article, “Affirm the Armenian Genocide,” ties together disparate strands of that terrible crime and is worth citing at some length.

“My great grandfather, Henry Morgenthau Sr., US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, spoke out repeatedly for the US recognition of the genocide,” she wrote. “He did this as a Jew and an immigrant from Germany who perhaps held a special sensitivity to what was going on in Turkey.”

“The Ottoman efforts to annihilate the Armenians were used by Hitler to justify the extermination of the Jews. Just a week before invading Poland in September 1939, Hitler asked, ‘Who speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?’”

“Erdogan’s attack on the Kurds living along the Turkish-Syrian border is similarly justified in his mind by the Ottoman attack over a century ago,” she continued.

“Days after the House bill passed, Erdogan called the Armenian genocide [bill] ’worthless’ and the ‘biggest insult’ to the Turkish people.”

And she concluded, “We must stand for what is right against such a historical insult.”