What has this ‘genocide’ to do with Congress?

Istanbul

Two elderly shoe-shiners were shouting with rage outside my local in Istanbul. The subject was America, and they ranted on and on — first about the disaster in Iraq, then about the stirring up of the Kurds, and then about the latest effort in Congress to ‘recognise the Armenian genocide’. What is so very strange about all of this is that American relations with Turkey have generally been very good. In a sense, modern Turkey belongs with Germany and Japan as the most successful creation of the United States after the second world war. In any year, there are 25,000 Turks at American universities, some of them sprigs of the Istanbul rich, many on scholarships, with which the Americans have been generous. Co-operation has gone far in other ways: for instance, the great air base at Incirlik has been vital all along for America’s defence interests, and now, given the Iraq problem, the port of Iskenderun, the old Alexandretta, is also important.