Lindsey Graham Blocks Armenian Genocide Resolution Hours After Meeting With Turkish President
Sen. Lindsey Graham emerged from a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and hours later blocked a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide. But Graham wants it known that he was totes hard on Erdoğan in the meeting.
The House of Representatives had already passed a resolution recognizing the early 20th century genocide, in which the Ottoman Empire killed 1.5 million Armenians. That was a strongly bipartisan vote, passing 405 to 11. But thanks to Graham, who claims he blocked it “not because of the past but because of the future,” it won’t get a Senate vote.
Axios reports that, earlier in the day, “Erdoğan got into a heated back-and-forth with Graham over Turkey's recent invasion of Syria, according to four sources familiar with the meeting.” Graham confirmed that to Axios (and let’s be real, one of those sources may well have been someone working to burnish Graham’s image). But apparently Graham came out of that exchange convinced that the way to prevent Turkey from a Kurdish genocide is to protect the country from consequences for a century-old genocide committed not by the Republic of Turkey but by its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire.