Affirming the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel), the chairman of the committee, for yielding. I thank Mr. Smith for his career-long advocacy of human rights and protecting the most vulnerable, not only in this country but throughout the world.

Mr. Smith and I had the opportunity to travel behind the Iron Curtain when it existed, talking about human rights, talking about the right to immigrate, the right to worship, the right to freedom of speech. We talked about the Helsinki Final Act. He and I were both members of the Helsinki Commission for a couple of decades together. He and I visited Turkey together, talking about particularly the freedom of the press and how many members and how many journalists were imprisoned.

Mr. Smith, Mr. Engel, and I, and certainly Mr. Schiff, and so many others have been supporters of this resolution for a very long time. It has not come to the floor. One of my duties as the majority leader is to bring bills to the floor, and I am proud, along with the chairman and the ranking member, to bring this bill to the floor.

This resolution, Mr. Speaker, recognizes the horrific and systematic efforts to commit genocide against the Armenian people a century ago. There can be no denial of the Armenian genocide, which is evidenced by historical documentation and the emotional scars still borne by the descendants of its survivors. It was a campaign of ethnic cleansing committed by the Ottoman Empire during and after the First World War, and it led to the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians alongside other targeted groups.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Smith referenced Ambassador Morgenthau, who was our Ambassador at this period of time. He said this: ``When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.''

He went on to say: ``I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this.'' Of course, we were, tragically, to see an even greater Holocaust, in terms of numbers of lives lost, just some 30 years later.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, the British Ambassador to the United States, in an October 1915 speech, said this: ``The massacres are the result of a policy which, as far as can be ascertained, has been entertained for some considerable time''--I want to read this language--``considered for some considerable time by the gang of unscrupulous adventurers who are now in possession of the Government of the Turkish Empire. They hesitated to put it in practice until they thought the favorable moment had come, and that moment seems to have arrived about the month of April.''

The reason I bring that up is this resolution is not anti the present Turkish Government. The sanctions bill will stand for that. This is about something that happened historically, that if not recognized may well happen again. When you say, ``Never again,'' you must recognize what the ``never again'' is.

I have talked to Turkish Ambassadors and others for over a quarter of a century as a Member of the Congress of the United States and said to them this is not about your government; this is about, as the British Ambassador says, a gang of thugs who took over your government over 100 years ago.

I regret that our Turkish friends have not recognized this as our German friends have recognized their genocide and said this was wrong because if they tell their people this is wrong, it is more likely that it will not be repeated.

Mr. Speaker, as the House joins in condemnation of that genocide and memorializes its victims, let us also keep our attention focused on populations today that are being subjected to ethnic cleansing and forced relocation. From the Rohingya to the Uighurs, from the people in Darfur to the Kurdish population being forced from their homes in Syria as we speak, we must declare, loudly and clearly: Never again. Never again. Sadly, ``never'' is now.

In particular, our Kurdish allies, who fought so courageously to help us defeat ISIS, are being forced to leave their homes by Turkey's campaign to seize control of northern Syria. Let today's action in this House be a reminder, Mr. Speaker, to President Erdogan and his government: The United States is watching. The American people will not turn our eyes away. Neither will we turn our eyes away from the millions of others in Syria who have been displaced and the hundreds of thousands who have been killed, who have been bombed, gassed, and brutalized by the Assad regime and its enablers.

That is why it is important to recognize the genocide perpetrated against the Armenian people so that we will recognize other such actions, which because of their race or their color or their ethnicity or some other distinction subject them to mass murder.

Mr. Speaker, we need to let the American people's Representatives give a clear message to our Armenian brothers and sisters, to our Kurdish brothers and sisters: We see you. We will not abandon you. Never again.

Mr. SMITH of New Jersey.

I thank my colleague and good friend, Mr. Hoyer, for his comments. We did travel so many times to the Soviet Union, to the Eastern Bloc countries, and to Turkey. We raised issues methodically, persistently. But this issue has always been one of those unresolved, festering sores that if we could get it right--and this House going on record I think is the beginning of that process. So I thank him for his leadership over these years, for his friendship, and, above all, for that very eloquent statement.

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