Turkey & Genocide

[Brian]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/06/world/eu...oice&st=cse

Apparently the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to name the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during WWI as genocide. Is there a difference between the mass-killing of a particular ethnic group and genocide? Is this simply a matter of semantics?

Moreover, I never knew there were resolutions that dealt with definitions of events in an historical context. How does this work exactly? And what does it have to do with current foreign affairs?

[Jake_Ellison]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/06/world/eu...oice&st=cse

Apparently the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to name the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during WWI as genocide. Is there a difference between the mass-killing of a particular ethnic group and genocide? Is this simply a matter of semantics?

Moreover, I never knew there were resolutions that dealt with definitions of events in an historical context. How does this work exactly? And what does it have to do with current foreign affairs?

The Turkish government is refusing to acknowledge the crime. That is very much relevant to current foreign affairs, as is this committee's finding, since it establishes, in no uncertain terms, that what the Turkish government doesn't consider reprehensible or worth discussing is indeed a genocide.

Since there is the possibility of Turkey, some day, joining the EU, a clear US position on the matter is crucial. Of course this issue is also one of the reasons why they haven't yet been invited into the EU, despite wanting to join for a while now.

Edited March 6, 2010 by Jake_Ellison