CURRENT PRESIDENT OF AMERICAN - TURKISH COUNCIL WAS U.S. DIPLOMAT SERVING IN ANKARA IN 1990'S

Another fascinating tidbit for those following the news regarding the passage of the Armenian Genocide resolution in the United States Congress is that the head of the American-Turkish Council (ATC), a powerful pro-Turkish lobby, used to be the Deputy Chief of the Mission in the United States Embassy in Ankara from 1992 to 1995.

Retired Ambassador James H. Holmes, President and CEO of the ATC visited Turkey last month to confer with allies there to formulate a united plan of action to derail passage of the genocide resolution. While in Turkey, Holmes made the following comment in an interview given to the paper Today's Zaman...

The Armenian genocide resolution is the cause of great distress for us, for the commercial interests of our members as well as for the national security and foreign policy interests of both countries. We, as the ATC, are fully committed to the preservation and promotion of these relations. We see an enormous potential for cooperation and growth in commercial relations between Turkey and the US. There is increasing commerce between Turkey and the European Union, but we don't want Turkey with its 72 million population to become the property of the EU. The strong future of Turkey is one in which the US should participate as well.

For the US to risk our relations with Turkey on the basis of a meaningless resolution is just not right. Our interest is seeing this resolution defeated, derailed, delayed. I don't care what the formula is. We want it to fail. We want Congress to realize the consequences from the Turkish side.

Well, at least Mr. Holmes doesn't mince words when it comes to expressing his opposition to the genocide resolution. You can't call the man a hypocrite, unlike others who, when the s--t hits the fan, seem to find any excuse to escape the promises they once made. Case in point: For years we at SASSNA DZRER were fairly indifferent to the whole genocide recognition issue and viewed it as a meaningless exercise since all we were trying to do was to convince those very same European and American governments, who failed to fulfill the promises they made at the end of World War I to right the wrongs of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, TO NOW TAKE THE MORAL HIGH GROUND AND AND LEAST RECOGNIZE THOSE EVENTS AS A GENOCIDE!!!!

These are the same nations that felt no remorse to carve up the Middle East and Anatolia into spheres of influence for their own strategic interests and who for decades have enjoyed deep economic and military ties with successive regimes in Ankara. Democrats or Republicans -is there any essential difference between the two when it comes to safeguarding American national interests??? Of course not. After 90 years of silence, it will take more than the passage of resolutions for Armenians to reconstitute a presence in their historic homeland in eastern Anatolia.

There is a deep-rooted alliance of individuals and organized interests intent on quashing even this non-binding, symbolic resolution from passing. It's amusing to watch them squirm and squiggle in an attempt to distort the truth and their complicity in the cover up of historical reality. If this is how they react to such an innocuous initiative, one can only imagine their fear if true pressure was brought to bear down on them.