Sen. Rand Paul has proposed legislaiton intended to stop the Biden administration helping Turkey’s Islamist regime from supporting the murder Armenian Christians.
His resolution would block the sale of F-16 military fighter jets to Turkey, which are being used to help support Azerbaijan in their genocidal campaign against Armenian Christians.
Senate Joint Resolution 60 (SJR60), is described as “a joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval of the proposed foreign military sale to the Government of Turkiye of certain defense articles and services.”
The move was celebrated by Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), which noted the purposes such weapons are used for.
“Turkey deployed US F-16s to Azerbaijani during its 2020 aggression against [Artsakh] (Nagorno Karabakh) – in violation of US and NATO restrictions on the third-party transfer of these weapons systems,” the ANCA wrote on the X platform.
Turkey deployed US F-16s to Azerbaijani during its 2020 aggression against #Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) – in violation of US and NATO restrictions on the third-party transfer of these weapons systems.
— ANCA (@ANCA_DC) February 7, 2024
Azerbaijan’s military campaign against ethnic Armenians in recent years focuses on the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region recognized as part of Azerbaijan but with a majority ethnic Armenian population.
The most recent and intense escalation began in 2020, with Azerbaijan launching a military offensive to reclaim control over the region. This conflict led to thousands of casualties, displacement of ethnic Armenians, and ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire, granting Azerbaijan control over parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territories.
Although the term is vehemently denied by Azerbaijan and Turkey, many prominent observers have described the actions against Armenia, the world’s oldest Christian nation, as a form of genocide.
Writing in the The Washington Post last September, Argentinian lawyer Luis Moreno Ocampo, the inaugural prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, outlined the crimes by Turkey-backed Azerbaijani forces
Rather than comply with the court’s binding order to end the blockade, Azerbaijan security forces doubled down in June, sealing off the enclave entirely, preventing even the transfer of food, medical supplies and other essentials.
Since then, Aliyev has repeatedly ignored calls from the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. secretary of state to comply with the court’s ruling. He correctly understood that Azerbaijan would bear no serious costs from the international community for its actions.
Ocampo went on to make the case that “genocide” was the only appropriate term to describe Azerbaijan’s military campaign:
The world must call the crime by its proper name. Resistance to using the term “genocide” has been a long-standing problem in international affairs. In April 1994, most U.N. Security Council members refused to label the mass killings in Rwanda as genocide. Little has changed in 30 years.
Today, as always, geopolitics explain the world’s reticence. Azerbaijan is an ally with the West against Iran; it provides energy to Europe and it spends millions on sophisticated Israeli weapons. But such exigencies must not get in the way of the world’s responsibility to stop what is happening before its very eyes: the Armenian genocide of 2023.
As previously noted by RedState, Joe Biden was the first U.S. President to recognize the Armenian Genocide happened. However, he has since undermined that position by waiving section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, allowing the U.S. to also provide military assistance to Azerbaijan.
