“Former U.S. Ambassador to Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands Arma Jane Karaer, has revealed a series of shocking revelations about the State Department's behind-the-scenes efforts on behalf of Turkey during the 1980s to kill Congressional initiatives commemorating the Armenian Genocide,” reports the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). The committee has relevant documents at their disposal, with description of State Departments’ activities. The revelation is a part of Karaer’s oral interview who also served as a commercial officer in Ankara.

“Turkey was the big, big issue, almost the whole time that I was there. About the time I arrived, then California Congressman Tony Coelho had introduced a bill in the Post Office Committee of the House of Representatives to declare April 25th or April something. Genocide Day. The purpose, ostensibly, was to help the American people recall the people who were lost in the so-called Armenian genocide. Why the post office committee? Of course this is a foreign policy thing. If the U.S. Congress says that their government committed Genocide, it would enrage the Turks. However, there were a lot of Armenian-Americans in Mr. Coelho's congressional district, and apparently whatever makes the Turks unhappy, makes them happy.

The Turks had informed the Secretary of State that if that bill got passed, something awful was going to happen in the bi-lateral relationship. They didn't know what, but something awful was going to happen. The Secretary had told the Assistant Secretary who told my boss, &‘Stop it.’ Well, fortunately, we were able to find some members of the House who, although they didn't know very much about this piece of history, were peeved with Coelho for trying this end-run around the Foreign Affairs Committee. Whatever the justice of his claimit didn't belong in the Post Office Committee. What they wanted from us primarily were lots of short speeches. Three minute speeches, two minute speeches, that they could pass out on the subject on why this was a bad idea.

We did get a certain amount of support from the Jewish lobby. They don't particularly want to share the genocide label with other groups. The gratuitous killing of a lot of people is an ugly thing. You don't like to be picking nits over language. But the word genocide means a particular thing, and the history does not support the charge that the Turks were trying to wipe an ethnic group. From their point of view, they were trying to stop a minority group from breaking off another part of the country. While many people died in Eastern Turkey, the Armenian communities in Western Turkey, who were not engaged in rebellion, were not touched,” ANCA website quotes Jane Karaer.

A.G.