....Turkey is enormously important to American military efforts in the Middle East. So leading American politicians past and present have lined up to oppose the resolution. President George Bush has said historians, not legislators, should decide the matter. Turkey has hired Dick Gephardt, a former leader of the Democrats in the House, to lobby against the bill. All eight living former secretaries of state, from Henry Kissinger to Madeleine Albright, who lost three grandparents in the Nazi Holocaust, oppose the bill. So does Condoleezza Rice, who holds the post now. Jane Harman, a powerful and hawkish Democrat, initially co-sponsored the measure. But last week she urged its withdrawal. A trip to Turkey, where she met the prime minister and the Armenian Orthodox patriarch, changed her mind.
Ms Harman echoed an argument that others have made against the resolution: that Turkey itself is tiptoeing towards normal relations with neighbouring Armenia. The resolution could throw that process off course. But in other ways Turkey has not helped its own case: its criminal code has been used against writers within the country who dare to mention genocide.
And other Turkish behaviour has further distanced it from America. Turkey recently signed a deal to develop oil and gas with Iran, and has made overtures to Hamas, which runs part of the Palestinian Authority and continues to refuse to recognise Israel. Such behaviour has cost Turkey some support among Jewish Americans—formerly ardent supporters of Turkey as a moderate Muslim republic that is friendly to Israel. Some even worry that a freshly insulted Turkey will not heed America’s opinion when, for example, it thinks about crossing the border into Iraq to pound Kurdish fighters....
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