TRKNWS-L Turkish Daily News (March 10, 1996)

From: TRKNWS-L <trh@aimnet.com>

Turkish News Directory

CONTENTS

TURKISH DAILY NEWS / 10 March 1996

[01] Grassroots of Anti-Turkism in America

Turkish Daily News

"Anti-Turkism" is not a word you would find in Webster's. But it's a word that has a concrete meaning for those observers of the U.S. Congress who, for year after year, have had to watch a broad anti-Turkish coalition propose or sponsor resolutions that aimed at punishing Turkey for one thing or another. The issues varied from the alleged "mistreatment" of the Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul (while the Turkish mufti was jailed in Greece), to lifting of the embargo on Armenia (while Armenian troops continue to occupy 20 percent of Azerbaijan).

Greeks, Greek-Cypriots, Armenians and Kurds living in the United States have acted in unison to have their representatives in the U.S. Congress chastise Turkey -- whether it served the larger U.S. national interests or not. In the most recent resolution on "Armenian Genocide", even the "Romanian-Americans" joined the anti-Turkish bandwagon, trying to "settle" God knows what kind of score lost in the distant Ottoman past.

Opponents of Turkey have usually attributed the picture drawn above more to "Turkish paranoia" than anything else. But a quantitative corroboration of the dictum that "all politics is local" was provided recently by none other than the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), the largest Greek-American grassroots organization with 60,000 members and 1,000 chapters across the United States and Canada.

In the most recent "Congressional Report Card on Greek American Issues," published by AHEPA in November 1995, one could clearly see the "local pressures" driving members of the U.S. Congress to vote against Turkey.

What AHEPA did was to grade all 535 members of Congress on how they voted on seven resolutions that concerned Greece: 1) Demilitarization of Cyprus; 2) "Porter/D'Amato" cuts in aid to Turkey; 3) "Cyprus Enclaved" Res.; 4) Arms export "Code of Conduct"; 5) Res. on Patriarchate; 6)"Human Rights Compliance" Act; and 7) Supporting Greece on Macedonian issue.

AHEPA graded U.S. legislators according to their "friendliness" to the Greek issues. It did not come quite as a shock to Turkish observers that the legislators who were graded "A-plus" also turned out to be the most vociferous opponents of Turkey in Congress. In contrast, almost all of the "friends of Turkey" received straight "F"s from AHEPA.

AHEPA's list of straight-A-plus students of the Greek cause reads like a who's who of the anti-Turkish caucus. A considerable number of them are from New Jersey or New York: Frank Pallone (NJ); Robert Andrews (NJ); Robert Toricelli (NJ); Carolyn Maloney (NY); John Edward Porter (IL); Dick Zimmer (NJ); Eliot L. Engel (NY); Gary Ackerman; Nita M. Lowey (NY); Michael Bilirakis (FL); David E. Bonior (MI); Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (ME); Robert Menendez (NJ); Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL); Patrick J.Kennedy (RI); Anna Eshoo (A-, CA); Joseph P. Kennedy (MA); Sen.Edward Kennedy (A, MA); Elizabeth Furse (OR); Sen. Paul Sarbanes (MD); Nancy Pelosi (CA); Esteban E. Torres (CA); Constance Morella (MD); Alfonse D'Amato (NY); Sen. Paul Simon (A-, IL); Sen. Larry Pressler (SD); Sen. Barbara Mikulski (MD); Charles S. Robb (VA) and Peter Visclosky (B+, IN).

And look at those who got an "F": Dan Burton (IN); Bob Livingston (LA); Sen. Mitch McConnell (D+, KY); Greg Laughlin (TX); Jim Bunn (OR); Sen. RObert C. Byrd (WV); Charles Wilson (TX); Edward Whitfield (KY); and Newt Gingrich (GA). Nine of the fourteen "F students" (64 percent) are known as vocal supporters of Turkey on issue after issue. Gingrich has even announced that Ataturk was one of his mentors of revolutionary social change.

Another F grader, Dana Rohrabacher of California, is also known to be sympathetic to Turkish concerns in general and was one of the few lawmakers present during the first Ramadan Iftar dinner hosted this year at the U.S. Senate.

But that's not all. AHEPA has also ranked Congress members according to the percentage of Greek Americans living in their districts. Again, not surprisingly, most of the anti-Turkish legislators lived in districts with a higher-than-average percentage of Greek-Americans. The national average was 0.446 percent per electoral district in 1995.

Some of the figures are as follows: Maloney (2.83 percent); Ackerman (2.74); Bilirakis (1.75); Toricelli (1.46); Kennedy (Edward) (1.36); Morella (1.35); Lowey (1.33); Porter (1.29); Visclosky (1.19); Kennedy (Joseph) (1.13); Zimmer (0.99); D'Amato (0.89); Pallone (0.88); Bonior (0.81); Simon (.81); Eshoo (0.69); Sarbanes (0.67); Kennedy (Patrick) (0.64); Engel (0.58); etc.

The reason why New Jersey and New York legislators have a leading position in the anti-Turkish front could be due to the fact that these states once served as the gate through which immigrants from Balkans and Eastern Europe entered the United States in record numbers before 1918. Among them were Greeks and Armenians from the Ottoman Empire, with memories of bitter ethnic conflicts. These minorities wielded considerable influence over the local politics of New Jersey and New York. An Armenian-American, Chuck Haytaian, for example, served for long years as the speaker of the New Jersey Senate. Even today, Turks constitute a negligible minority in New Jersey, with only 7,579 Turks to 60,899 Greeks (0.7 percent of NJ population) and 14,664 Armenians (0.2 percent), according to the 1990 U.S. Population Census.

In U.S. politics, demography is fate, and anti-Turkism is no mere paranoia. The best the Turks can do to have their voice heard in the United States is to migrate and propagate. The AHEPA study is proof of this uncomfortable fact.