Sen. Lindsey Graham blocked a Senate resolution earlier this month that would have formally recognized Turkey’s genocide of the Armenian people at the request of White House officials, Axios reported on Sunday.
Graham blocked the measure just after he had harshly criticized Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a tense Oval Office meeting for his invasion of Kurdish areas in Syria.
Graham said he agreed to the White House request immediately after the meeting, because, with Erdoğan in town, the resolution would have been poor timing, as “I'm trying to salvage the relationship [between the U.S. and Turkey] if possible.”
Turkey emphatically opposes recognition of the genocide, which was carried out by the Ottoman Empire during World War I, according to The Hill.
Asked whether he felt uncomfortable blocking the resolution, Graham said that he did, but I think that “with the president of Turkey in town that was probably more than the market would bear," Axios reported.
The Trump administration has been trying to convince Ankara to give up its Russian-made S-400 air defense system and determines that while negotiating over that and other issues, it would not be helpful for Congress to censureTurkey over human rights.
Last week the bipartisan resolution on the Armenian genocide was introduced again in the Senate. This time, the White House asked another Republican Senator, David Perdue, to block it, who did so “due to concerns that passage of the resolution would jeopardize the sensitive negotiations going on in the region with Turkey and other allies," according to a spokesperson for Perdue.
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