At his confirmation hearing at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Thursday, Gordon was asked to comment on a pre-election statement by Obama outlining his foreign policy priorities in which he said "a negotiated political settlement on Cyprus would end the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus and repair the island's tragic division while paving the way to prosperity and peace throughout the entire region." When asked if he agreed with the statement, Gordon said "yes," but when Sen. Robert Menendez pressed him to say if he considered the Turkish presence on the island an occupation, he only said the Greek Cypriot government and a number of experts considered it an occupation.
Gordon was then criticized by Menendez for opposing past attempts in the US Congress to pass a resolution recognizing claims that Armenians were subjected to a genocide campaign at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Menendez then said he was concerned over whether Gordon would act in a balanced manner regarding this matter. Gordon, for his part, insisted that congressional measures on the issue would provoke a "nationalist backlash" in Turkey. To prove that he would take a balanced approach, Gordon talked of the need to "recognize that terrible tragedy took place," and said "more than 1.5 million people were driven from their homes and massacred."
Congress has recently introduced a new resolution calling on the US president to describe the killings of Armenians as genocide. Turkey says any such move would both harm Turkish-US relations and undermine the efforts between Turkey and Armenia to normalize their relations, severed, among other reasons, due to the dispute over history. Ankara denies the genocide accusations and says the killings were a result of civil strife. In a sign of the importance attached to Turkey by the new US administration, Obama is expected to visit Ankara to discuss a wide range of issues including Iran's nuclear program, Iraq and Afghanistan. When asked why good relations with Turkey were important by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Gordon noted that the US image in Turkey had deteriorated badly in recent years and added that it was "hard to get work done in a democracy when there is such skepticism about our country." He added: "We have a lot of work to do with them. Turkey is critical for the energy routes between the Caspian, the Middle East and the West. Turkey is a country that has borders with Greece, the Black Sea, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the Mediterranean. For that reason alone it's a critical strategic player in the world. And it is an aspirant to EU membership. The global symbolism of a majority Muslim country joining EU will be very powerful."
"We have a compelling national interest in working with Turkey, which is not to say we agree with them on everything," he also said.
Gordon, a senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, was nominated to replace Daniel Fried on March 11.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
