By STEPHEN MAJORS
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The state Elections Commission agreed Thursday to hear a case far outside the typical realm of Ohio politics, one involving claims of genocide, Turkish history, U.S. foreign policy and a growing and personal political rivalry.
At issue are comments made by an Armenian-American congressional candidate during the 2008 campaign. A Republican congresswoman from Cincinnati, Jean Schmidt, claims her opponent violated election law when he accused her of being a puppet of Turkish efforts to deny that the mass killings of Armenians during World War I constituted genocide.
The commission on Thursday found probable cause that David Krikorian’s statements violated election law, voting unanimously to bring the case to a full hearing.
The 94-year-old killings in Turkey are an unlikely topic for a congressional campaign in America’s heartland, where Schmidt’s staunchly conservative values find favor among a large portion of her constituents. But for Krikorian, Schmidt’s comments that she doesn’t have enough evidence to call the killings of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians “genocide” make her morally unfit to serve in Congress. Krikorian refused to shake the hand of Schmidt’s attorney following the hearing Thursday.
“It is my right under political free speech to point out these facts that she denies the Armenian genocide,” Krikorian told the commission Thursday.
He alleged that Schmidt had taken campaign donations from Turkish interests in return for “denying” the genocide.
“And, yes, I refer to it as blood money because where I come from, when you take money to deny the killing of innocent women and children, that is blood money,” he said. “That’s exactly what it is. It’s reprehensible.”
But the dispute isn’t just about the past — Krikorian is challenging Schmidt again in 2010, but as a Democrat. He won 18 percent of the vote as an independent in 2008, a performance Krikorian claims has Schmidt worried enough about 2010 to file a “frivolous” elections complaint to discredit him.
Schmidt’s attorney, Donald Brey, refuted all of Krikorian’s claims Thursday, taking particular issue with his equating Schmidt’s unwillingness to call the killings genocide with denial.
“She wasn’t a genocide denier,” Brey said. “She didn’t do anything as a quid pro quo.”
Federal Elections Commission records show Schmidt received $3,300 from the Turkish American Heritage Political Action Committee between January and October 2008. The committee was formed to defend Turkish heritage against “slanderous campaigns” carried out by ethnic groups in the United States to influence public opinion.
Schmidt’s unwillingness to proclaim what many history scholars regard as fact is also shared by the U.S. government. The U.S. foreign policy establishment’s careful positioning on the issue is driven by the importance of maintaining productive relations with a moderate ally in the Middle East.
In April, President Barack Obama refrained from branding the WWI-era massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey a “genocide” and instead referred to the killings that began in 1915 as “one of the great atrocities of the 20th century.” The careful words were a backtrack from Obama’s campaign promise to refer to the killing as genocide, which the Bush administration also declined to do.
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland recognized the killings as genocide in 2007, and former President Ronald Reagan did so in 1981.
Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, contending the toll has been inflated and the casualties were victims of civil war. It says Turks also suffered losses in the hands of Armenian gangs.
Turkey and Armenia have had no diplomatic ties since closing their border in 1993 because of a Turkish protest of Armenia’s occupation of land claimed by Azerbaijan.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press.