Friday, March 5, 2010

Armenian Genocide Vote: Turkey Displeased

If you haven't run into this in the news, you probably will in the next few days:
"Turkey said on Friday chances of its parliament ratifying peace protocols with Armenia were jeopardized by a U.S. congressional panel vote that labeled as 'genocide' the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915...."
(Reuters)
Maybe not on Reuters, but it's been in The New York Times and on The Associated Press feeds: so odds are that your favorite news source will get around to mentioning that vote.

Or, not. Depends on what the editors decide.

And what Congress does.
"There are no plans at this point to schedule a full U.S. House of Representatives vote on a resolution labeling as genocide the World War One-era mass killings of Armenians by Turks, a Democratic leadership aide said on Friday...."
(Ynet)
Congress works according to a set of rules - or is supposed to. The 'genocide' resolution was non-binding, and may not have the support required to pass the matter along.

You may not have heard of the 'Armenian genocide' in the early 20th century. Interestingly, Turkey had a different government when all those Armenians just happened to drop dead (the official explanation). Not a different administration. Not a different party with a majority of votes. A different government.

The closest analog, using American history, would be to imagine a situation where someone criticized actions taken by a royal governor, pre-1776. And the American Congress took that as a personal affront.

I've written about this before.

Related post:
In the news:

2 comments:

Brian H. Gill said...

聊天室 / Chat room,

Forget it. I'm a foreigner: but I'm not stupid.

No spam.

Brian H. Gill said...

Everybody else,

That Chat room comment was another of those with about a dozen links, one for each character in a line of periods.

I have to budget my time, so I have to assume that anything in Chinese, with multiple blind links, is for a selection of porn sites.

That's been the case in all instances before.

I know that there's more to Chinese culture than porn, but some folks are going to a lot of trouble to give that impression. Too bad.

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