The following exchange between Senator Bob Menendez and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on March 22, 2023 exemplifies the Foreign Relations Committee chairman’s uncompromising commitment to human rights and the rule of law:
Senator Menendez: “What do you call a country: That violates another country’s airspace and territorial waters without provocation?
Drills in another country’s Exclusive Economic Zone?
Buys Russian military equipment in violation of US law?
That has more lawyers and journalists in jail than almost any other country and jails its main political opponent, right before elections?
That seeks by force to block the rights of an EU country to explore its energy deposits off its outer continental shelf?
Has not only NOT joined EU-led sanctions against Russia but HAS exported roughly $800 million worth of goods to Russia?
That continues airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, including against US partners like the Syrian Democratic forces?
That stopped the critical enlargement of NATO?
That continues to occupy an EU country with 40,000 troops and, in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions, seeks to open up an area that the United Nations has frozen?
That denies religious freedom to the religious leader of millions of citizens of the Greek Orthodox faith?
That converts a church into a mosque in violation of its UNESCO commitments?
That arrests and jails US Embassy locally employed staff?”
Blinken: “I think I will call that a challenging ally.”
Menendez: “Well, I call the country Turkey. And the reality is that I don’t believe that such a country deserves to have F-16s sold to it.”
The State Department must accept responsibility for Turkey’s current state. US officials appeasing the Turks over the years made them feel invincible.
Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official, traced the US’ appeasement of Turkey and its adverse effects to 1974 when Henry Kissinger “green-lighted” the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
“No matter their provocation, Turkish leaders now believe that Washington will defer to their size and throw any smaller country under the bus. Not only does the northern part of Cyprus, therefore, remain Europe’s last occupied territory, but Erdogan now believes force might win him possession of Greece’s Aegean islands,” he wrote.
“It will take crippling sanctions on Turkey…and further US deployments in the Eastern Mediterranean to right historical wrongs and deter new conflict,” Rubin stressed.
Menendez denounced Turkey for not acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. He condemned Azerbaijan’s aggression on Nagorno-Karabakh and Turkey for supporting Baku and enabling the massacre of innocent Armenian civilians.
Senator Menendez’s foreign policy approach, which goes beyond the Eastern Mediterranean and the South Caucasus, should be an example to emulate. It is morally right and in America’s paramount national interest to protect an international order based on the rule of law. The United States must hold on to this supreme interest and not relinquish it to other less critical considerations or short-term strategic objectives. Turkey’s aggression is a frightening example of what can happen when states believe they can defy international law and violate human rights.
Tony Antoniou
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