The Turkish Arms Embargo. James F. Goode
issues such as the opium trade, the Armenian genocide, and Turkish militarism. Saloutos told him that it was a good piece of writing but too polemical.
On Friday, September 13, Saloutos met with Dr. Hratch Abrahamian, an associate professor at the Georgetown University School of Dentistry and a leading Armenian activist. He also served as head of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). The two men had lunch together, and Abrahamian shared his family history, telling Saloutos how his parents had fled to Iran from Smyrna to escape the violence and chaos there in 1922. Later, Saloutos took Abrahamian to AHEPA headquarters and introduced him to the organization’s executive secretary, George Leber, who arranged for them to visit AHEPA’s Cyprus committee, which was meeting at a nearby hotel. When they arrived, the ambassador of Cyprus, Nicos G. Dimitriou, was speaking, and he left the impression that Archbishop Iakovos was the head of the Cyprus relief program in the United States. A number of AHEPA members took exception to this interpretation, explaining that the church had played a very limited role in Greek war relief during World War II. “Iakovos seems to think he is an ethnarch,” wrote Saloutos, “and more or less operates as such.” Former supreme president John Plumides, who served on both the AHEPA committee and the Archdiocesan Council, was not clear on the dividing line between their different spheres of activity.38
Finally, Saloutos introduced Abrahamian to the committee. He had earlier mentioned to Rossides that it would be a good idea to join with the Armenians in commemorating the upcoming sixtieth anniversary of the Armenian genocide of 1915. The Cyprus committee voted unanimously in favor of this recommendation. Saloutos then spoke individually with some committee members about happenings on the West Coast and the role of actor Telly Savalas in supporting their cause. Saloutos was very satisfied with the day’s work.
On September 15 Saloutos was pleased to read two editorials that were favorable to Cyprus in leading newspapers, one in the New York Times and the other in the Washington Post. Another brief visit to AHEPA headquarters brought more criticism of Iakovos’s attempt to take command of Cyprus relief. AHEPA would not disband its efforts to follow the archbishop.
After almost a week in Washington, Saloutos traveled to New York City on September 16, where he discovered a number of groups willing to aid Cyprus. He talked at length with representatives of the Emergency Food Aid Committee for Cyprus at Cyprus House; they were collecting and shipping food and clothing under the auspices of the seventeen clubs of the Cyprus Federation of America, founded in 1951. They too expressed strong suspicions of Iakovos, noting that the archbishop “had never displayed great concern over Cyprus in the past. Why now?” They also questioned whether sending relief funds to the Cypriot embassy in Washington was a good idea. They wondered aloud whether such donations went to refugees or toward the operating costs of the government of Cyprus. On his last day in New York, Saloutos visited the Cyprus mission to the United Nations.39
This trip provided Saloutos with ideas about how his committee in Los Angeles could best contribute to the relief effort. He returned to California well informed about the various movements—and tensions—within the Greek American communities on the East Coast.
Congress Becomes Engaged
During the brief hiatus between the two Turkish incursions (July 20–August 14), Congressman Brademas focused more intently on the crisis. He continued his frequent contacts with Iakovos. At a State Department meeting on August 2, he expressed his deep concern to Undersecretary Sisco about Turkish troops on Cyprus and later introduced a resolution in the House urging the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops, both Turkish and Greek, from Cyprus. He and his four Greek American colleagues considered introducing an amendment to the foreign aid bill that would cut off aid to Turkey unless it removed its troops from the island. He knew the State Department would not be pleased, but Senator Walter Mondale had already proposed an amendment aimed at doing the same thing owing to Turkey’s decision on the opium poppy. Reasoned Brademas, “An amendment to cut off aid to Turkey given the opium and troop build-up on Cyprus might well be successful.”40
On the day of the second attack, the five Greek American congressmen sent a letter to their House colleagues urging them to support a resolution to cut off aid to Turkey. Here, a new argument began to emerge. “It is an outrage,” they stated, “that American taxpayers should be supplying arms to Turkey that are used in attacks upon a friendly country in violation of NATO commitments.”41 This view would become the basis for a broad legalistic and persuasive argument capable of attracting widespread bipartisan support in Congress. Arms agreements forbade the use of weapons in such a manner and prescribed an arms cutoff in the event of a violation. Turkey was therefore breaking the law, and the administration must punish Ankara as the law stipulated. Coming on the heels of the Watergate scandal and the chief executive’s bold violation of the law, this argument resonated with members of Congress. They were being called on to defend the basic principle of upholding the law—a principle for which they had struggled in recent months. If they failed to act now, all they had achieved could be lost. This approach lifted the debate from a narrow ethnic concern to a legal imperative. Also in play were humanitarian concerns for the displaced Cypriots, which coincided with rising support in Congress for human rights in general, an issue that received a cold reception from the secretary of state. This combination of principles would surely attract the interest and support of most members of Congress.42
Cartoon published in the Denver Post, October 16, 1974, showing President Ford fondly cradling a diminutive Turkish pasha wielding a bloody sword and a hypodermic needle. (©2019 Patrick Oliphant/Artists Rights Society, New York)
The day after the attack, the five congressmen met with Kissinger and his senior staff to discuss the situation on Cyprus and US policy to address the crisis. The secretary tried to put a good face on developments, arguing that, in hindsight, the United States might have done things differently, but “anything constructive that had developed during the crisis in Cyprus had been the result of US pressure.” Brademas, the most senior of the five, attacked the State Department’s failure to speak out at key moments about the coup, the Turkish invasion, or the Geneva talks. The United States, he claimed, had remained virtually silent. They were not blaming President Ford, he told Kissinger, “but rather … we place the blame squarely on you, sir.” Private diplomacy had failed, and they expected an end to US military sales and grants to Turkey until its armed forces left the island. Kissinger indicated that he could live with a sense-of-Congress resolution but not with any kind of mandate. He did not want to take action that would “mortgage our long-term relations with the Turks.” He favored a cantonal arrangement for Cyprus. Brademas ended by assuring Kissinger that he and his colleagues were not acting out of any sense of ethnic chauvinism.43
In this one long meeting, the two sides set out their basic arguments, which they would repeat many times over the following months. Kissinger knew that Brademas was a skillful tactician and fully conversant with the legislative intricacies of the House of Representatives. Brademas had served in Congress for fifteen years and would soon become the Democratic majority whip; he was thought to aspire to an even higher position in the House hierarchy. In fact, on another occasion, Kissinger would say to Brademas, “They tell me that one day you will be Speaker. Help me now with the new members of the House.” The secretary knew he could not trifle with the Indiana congressman.44
As protests large and small unfolded across the country, embargo forces were organizing in both houses of Congress. Theirs was no easy task because they faced intense pressure from the White House, which warned of dire consequences to US-Turkish relations should an arms cutoff be mandated. Nevertheless, new champions of censure arose in both the House and the Senate, and they were not Greek Americans; thus, they were unlikely to be accused of pursuing parochial interests. In the House, Benjamin Rosenthal (D-NY), a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, became a leading spokesman for the embargo, based on the principle that the invasion violated American law. He and Pierre DuPont (R-DE) introduced an amendment to the continuing appropriations bill that would suspend aid to Turkey until the president certified that a satisfactory agreement had been reached regarding military forces on Cyprus. On September