The decision by President Serzh Sargsyan this week to suspend the ratification of the Armenian-Turkish protocols in parliament, according to certain predictions, will breathe new life into discussions around US House Resolution 252 on the Armenian Genocide.



The short-lived joy of Armenians that came after March 4, when the US House Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly approved the resolution – the fourth to be approved by the key House committee within a decade that this year was passed with a margin of only one vote (23 yeas to 22 nays) – gave way to a vital question whether the resolution will actually reach the House floor or not. (It had not on any of the three previous occasions).

Giro Manoyan, Director of the International Secretariat of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) Bureau in Yerevan, says the decision on putting the Turkey accords process in Armenia on hold “partly removes the pretext for nay votes” in the House.

“Of course, this step by the president will to a certain extent help push the resolution forward, however the views being heard in the United States, which mainly call for a continued [Armenia-Turkey] process, clearly show that the White House will do everything to foil the adoption of such a resolution,” Manoyan told ArmeniaNow.

Last week, a group of US congressmen lobbying Turkish affairs addressed a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her not to put the resolution to the House vote. They argued that the resolution will cause “irreparable damage to the national security of the United States.”

According to Voice of America, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman sent a strongly-worded reply to his House colleagues rejecting in the letter what he called a “morally-blind” argument denying the indisputable historical evidence of the Armenian Genocide.

Analysts think that such activity by Turkish lobbyists shows possible shifts that have taken place in the discussion of the Genocide resolution.

Still before President Sargsyan’s US visit, Dashnaktsutyun’s Manoyan said that “the fate of the resolution depends on Sargsyan’s behavior.”

“If Serzh Sargsyan behaves in Washington like he did in Deir el-Zor, I think that the process will have a pro-Armenian progress, that is, the resolution will reach the House floor,” said Manoyan.

Armenian Revolutionary Federation representatives on the whole positively evaluate President Sargsyan’s visit, however, they still find it difficult to make predictions regarding the further fate of the resolution.

According to head of Dashnaktsutyun’s parliamentary faction Vahan Hovhannisyan, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA, or Hay Dat) offices undertake different evaluations in order to understand the likelihood of the Resolution passage, for instance – what the sentiments of the congressmen are, other factors, the Armenian-Turkish protocols, Turkish-American, Turkish-Israeli relations, which many have a serious impact on the outcome of the vote.

“We should make as correct calculations as possible because we cannot allow the resolution to be put to the full House vote and be rejected, which will only double the complexity of the task of getting the discussion and passage of a new resolution,” Hovhannisyan told ArmeniaNow, adding that as compared to what was in the past, today the likelihood [of a resolution passage] has considerably decreased because of the Armenian-Turkish normalization protocols.

The Armenian Assembly of America, meanwhile, is encouraged by the momentum the resolution has gained through the support of government leaders including Massachusetts
Governor Deval Patrick.

In March Patrick sent letters to Pelosi and Berman stating his support of recognition saying that HR252: “will honor the extraordinary efforts of our courageous diplomats who alerted the world to the carnage taking place and the U.S. humanitarian intervention that followed to help save the survivors.”

Along with the difficulties connected with the push for the resolution’s passage, the Armenian MP stresses new challenges that have emerged, namely the instruction by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made during a reception organized at the embassy of Turkey in Washington for “starting a direct dialogue with representatives of the Armenian Diaspora.”

Hovhannisyan describes it as another attempt to drive a wedge among the Armenians.

“The main goal of the protocols is to cause a rift in the Armenia-Diaspora relations, in which they have achieved certain success, and this new attempt of so-called dialogue is an attempt to split the Diaspora,” said the Armenian lawmaker.

In the Dashnak MP’s estimation, in order to prevent this process it is necessary to have a clear tactics in the direction of which the Hay Dat offices in the United States have begun to work.

“Unfortunately, even in the Diaspora there will be people, organizations that will take that bait of fake Turkish policies and one has to develop serious tactics in order to neutralize its negative impact,” Hovhannisyan told ArmeniaNow.