WASHINGTON—The Armenian National Committee of America is supporting close Senate scrutiny of President Biden’s controversial nomination this week of former Arizona legislator Jeff Flake – a longstanding ally of Ankara’s campaign of Armenian Genocide denial – to serve as our nation’s next Ambassador to the Republic of Turkey.
“Jeff Flake’s long and shameful record of complicity in Turkey’s denial of the Armenian Genocide casts a dark shadow over his nomination,” said ANCA Chairman Raffi Hamparian. “President Biden – who joined earlier this year with the Senate and House in recognizing the Armenian Genocide – is sending the wrong signal to Ankara – backsliding just months after this April’s landmark remembrance. We can and must do better – giving substance to our Armenian Genocide policy by sending Turkey an Ambassador, in the spirit of Henry Morgenthau or John Evans, with a strong public record of forcefully and forthrightly rejecting Ankara’s lies.”
As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and later the U.S. Senate, Flake consistently opposed bipartisan Congressional efforts to recognize the Armenian Genocide. In 2005, 2007, and 2010 – Flake as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against measures on the Armenian Genocide pending before the House International Relations Committee. In 2014, Flake was one of only five U.S. Senators to oppose an Armenian Genocide resolution advanced in the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations by its Chairman, Robert Menendez (D-NJ).
Over the coming weeks, the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations will consider Jeff Flake’s nomination. The ANCA will be working in a bipartisan manner to ensure that Flake’s complicity in Turkey’s denial of the Armenian Genocide is carefully scrutinized by members of this powerful committee.
This nomination says more about the person who nominated Mr. Flake, President Biden, than Mr. Flake himself. This is not sending the wrong signal to Turkey, this is sending the right signal to Armenians. With the Armenian government, and the so-called opposition in the parliament, being firmly in the right-hand side small pocked (where you put your small change) of Putin, Armenians give no viable option to the US to help Armenia in anyway they can.
….so before we get angry at others, let’s have a good look in the mirror.
Let’s wait and see how former Senator Jeff Flake answers questions directed at him by Senator Melendez. Armenian Genocide recognition is now official US policy. In view of the unanimous vote in the US Senate in late 2019, he should be asked how he would have voted if he were still in the Senate when that vote was taken. While Erdogan projects himself as a protector of Moslems across the globe (with the exception of Kurds), so-called Christians such as Flake have turned away from the Genocide of peaceful Armenian citizens of Ottoman Turkey, that included wanton murders of peaceful civilian Syriacs and Pontic Greeks, as well.
Don’t kid yourselves these people could care less about the plight of the Christians thousands of miles away from the US shores. The likes of Flake are only Christian in disguise. US interests in the region are the only thing these Capitalists care about. How can a Capitalist be a Christian or care about one? Christian Capitalist or Capitalist Christian is an oxymoron. The entire US foreign policy in the Middle East has long been hijacked by foreign agents who closely work with terrorist Turkey and support Turkish agenda in the region. Politics is dirty and religion is irrelevant in politics. It is national interests that drive policies. It was not so long ago that US armed the Afghan Taliban to kick the Soviets out of Afghanistan and that very same US has been fighting the very same Taliban for the last twenty years.