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Five legislative bills targeting Turkey introduced to US Congress in the last five months

01 August 2011 09:50 (UTC +04:00)

Washington. Isabel Levine â€“ APA. In the last five months, ethnic special interest groups have been inciting anti-Turkish sentiment in Congress by introducing five legislative bills targeting Turkey, which made clear the need to unite for the Azeri and Turkish Diasporas, APAâ€™s Washington DC correspondent reports.

Those bills are: H.R. 304 charges Turkish nation with a crime of genocide with no historical evidence or international tribunal; H.R. 306 alleging that Turkey is destroying its Christian heritage, H.R. 180 and S.R. 196 interfering into secular Turkish affairs by seeking to essentially carve out a Greek Orthodox version of Vatican from Istanbul; H.R. 2597 labels the 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation to protect Turkish Cypriots from ethnic cleansing as an occupation.

Both Diasporas expressed the urgent need to unite and act against those bills and the lobbies that promote them in the Congress.

â€œLast week, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs adopted the Berman-Ciciline amendment to the H.R. 2583 accusing Turkey of religious discrimination. Expressing his disappointment over the Armenian- and Greek-American lobbying for the amendment, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) noted a "terrible double standard" exercised in singling out Turkey. Furthermore, the Armenian interest groups continue with their relentless campaign to legitimize the ongoing occupation of western Azerbaijan and to deprive some 800,000 displaced Azeri Turks of any US assistanceâ€, says the Diasporasâ€™ statement.

The pandering by the two ethnic lobbies comes amidst a catastrophic debt crisis in Greece and a failed state of economy in Armenia. According to a Bloomberg report, the Greek economy is now facing a partial default with its debt rating lowered to CC, just two steps above a complete default. And Forbes magazine recently ranked Armenia as a second among the "World’s Worst Economies". â€œIn contrast, both Turkey and Azerbaijan are experiencing an unprecedented economic growthâ€, says the statement.

â€œSo, instead of ethnocentric agenda which only damages the US foreign policy and distracts Congressional attention from troubled economy, Armenian- and Greek-American interest groups could benefit America as well as their respective ethnic homelands by promoting cooperation with the prosperous Turkic neighborsâ€, call the Azeri and Turkish Diasporas on the US officials.