Méandres washingtoniens de la crise Turquie-USA

La crise actuelle entre la Turquie et les USA est certainement d’une grande importance, mais pas nécessairement quelques-unes de ses causes. Certains ont pu s’interroger, notamment, à propos de l’intervention du Congrès dans l’affaire arménienne, au plus mauvais moment possible pour le déroulement de cette crise.

Sur son site Informed Comment, Juan Cole donne, le 12 octobre, une analyse détaillée de la crise qu’on peut consulter avec profit. Juan Cole est un excellent spécialiste des questions politiques et stratégiqsues du Moyen-Orient, d’autant plus intéressant qu’il n’est pas lié à un des réseaux d’expertise de Washington.

Quant à l’aspect le plus intrigant et le plus polémique, Cole nous donne l’explication attendue. L’intervention du Congrès est simplement due à l’imbroglio des lobbies washingtoniens, avec leurs tendances, leurs concurrences, leurs affrontements internes, avec les parlementaires les plus corrompus de l’histoire de la démocratie et ainsi de suite. La chose n’a aucun sens réel, comme toutes les choses importantes aujourd’hui à Washington. Elle suit la fortune de l’argent et de la corruption.

Nous donnons ici la partie qui concerne l’intervention du Congrès mais le reste de l’analyse mérite d’être lu.

«Then the US Congress abruptly condemned modern Kemalist Turkey for the Armenian genocide, committed by the Ottoman Empire, provoking Ankara to withdraw its ambassador from Washington. I have long held that Turkey should acknowledge the genocide, which killed hundreds of thousands and displaced more hundreds of thousands. The Turkish government could then point out that it was committed by a tyrannical and oppressive government — the Ottoman Empire — against which the Kemalists also fought a long and determined war to establish a modern republic. I can't understand Ankara's unwillingness to distance itself from a predecessor it doesn't even think well of — the junta of Enver Pasha and the later pusillanimity of the sultan (the capital is in Ankara and not Istanbul in part for this very reason!)

»But no dispassionate observer could avoid the conclusion that the Congressional vote condemning Turkey came at a most inopportune time for US-Turkish diplomacy, at a time when Turks were already raw from watching the US upset all the apple carts in their neighborhood, unleash existential threats against them, cause the rise of Salafi radicalism next door, coddle terrorists killing them, coddle the separatist KRG, and strengthen the Shiite ayatollahs on their borders.

»The Congressional vote came despite the discomfort of elements of the Israel lobby with recognizing the mass killing of Armenians as a genocide. Andrew E. Mathis explains Abraham Foxman's intellectually bankrupt vacillations on this issue. Foxman and others of his ideological orientation have been forced grudgingly to back off their genocide denial in the case of the Armenians by a general shift in opinion among the American public, and his change of position may have removed any fears among congressional representatives that the Israel lobby would punish them for their vote. (Turkey and Israel have long had a strong military and diplomatic relationship, which the Israel lobby had earlier attempted to preserve by lobbying congress on Turkey's behalf with regard to some issues. But the Israel lobby is now split between pro-Kurdish factions and pro-Turkish factions, and the pro-Kurdish ones appear to be winning out. Richard Perle & Michael Rubin of AEI are examples of the pro-Turkish Neoconservative strain in the Israel lobby. They are losing.)»

Mis en ligne le 15 octobre 2007 à 15H12