House to vote on Turkish return of churches

(Hurriyet) - The powerful Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives is planning to hold a vote Wednesday on an amendment calling for Turkey to “return stolen Armenian and other Christian churches to their rightful owners.”

The committee will meet for a markup session to discuss and vote on the State Department’s “Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2012;” the “return of churches” measure will likely be offered as an amendment to that authorization bill, the Armenian National Committee of America, or ANCA, said in a statement Tuesday. See above video of Rep. Gus Bilirakis, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on Turkey and other nations who engage in religious persecution (transcript available here).

ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian urged all U.S. citizens of Armenian origin to “call your U.S. representative by July 20 and urge him/her to support this powerful religious freedom measure.”

“The Turkish Embassy is working overtime to kill this resolution and erase forever even the memory of Armenians and other Christians in our ancient homelands,” Hamparian said.

The Turkish Embassy in Washington rejected the charges in a recent statement, saying, “The resolution is deeply regrettable because it unfairly distorts the facts on the ground while flatly overlooking Turkey’s efforts to promote religious freedom and tolerance.”

All known pro-Armenian lawmakers in the House, the lower chamber of the U.S. Congress, back the bill, as do some representatives sensitive to Christian-rights issues, as well as the Foreign Affairs Committee’s chairwoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida.

“Unfortunately the ‘honeymoon’ climate between Ankara and President Barack Obama’s administration is not shared by many in Congress. This bill is evidence [of that],” said a Washington-based analyst. “If this bill passes, it may harm the U.S.-Turkish relationship.”

The resolution’s chief sponsors are Ed Royce, a Republican from California, and Howard Berman, the committee’s ranking Democratic member from California.

“Conditions in Turkey have deteriorated with violent hate crimes increasingly linked to religion. My resolution urges Turkey to protect its vulnerable religious minorities,” Royce said.

“By expropriating church properties, harassing worshippers, and refusing to grant full legal status to some Christian groups, Turkey has failed to fulfill its obligation as a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which requires freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” Berman said.

Berman and Royce were also staunch supporters of earlier resolutions calling on the U.S. government to recognize claims that the killing of Armenians in 1915 at the end of the Ottoman Empire qualifies as genocide. Such resolutions have passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee four times since 2000 but have never come to a full House vote.