07/30/10 - Remarks submitted for the Congressional Record - Madam Speaker, I wish to speak today about an injustice that has been taking place in Cyprus for the last 36 years.

In 1974, when hostilities broke out on the small island, Turkey began its military occupation of more than one-third of Cypriot land.

Nearly ten years later, the Turks declared this land to be the ?Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus?. To this day, the only country to recognize this declaration is Turkey, which still illegally occupies the northern part of Cyprus.

Currently there are about 36,000 Turkish troops occupying the North of Cyprus. They stand as a physical manifestation of the barrier Turkey is putting up against Cypriot reunification.

Turkey has made other efforts to discourage reunification. According to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, Turkey has deliberately and continuously modified the demographics of the island, and they have enacted a system of ?naturalization? that encourages mainland Turks to move to Cyprus.

This occupation is made all the more tragic by its needlessness. Thirteen million Turkish-Cypriots and Greek-Cypriots have crossed into each others communities without incident. They seek to live together as neighbors in countries to which they have emigrated. There is no reason for these peoples to be divided.

We have reason to be hopeful?Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders have been engaged in UN-sponsored negotiations since September 2008 to reunify the island.

The United States has an important role to play in the reunification of Cyprus. We must ensure that we are doing all we can to make the island unified once more by working with the European Union, Turkey, and all citizens of Cyprus toward a peaceful and fair resolution of this decades-old conflict.

03/10 - VOA interview with Sherman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ7-rcQYZ1o

03/04/10 - Remarks offered during House Committee on Foreign Affairs markup of H. Res. 252 --- Thank you, I want to acknowledge our two colleagues and their leadership, Adam Schiff and Frank Pallone who have been here throughout. I want to acknowledge the Ambassador of Armenia who is in the audience, Mr. Tatoul Markarian, and I want to thank him for the detachment of Armenian soldiers who fought for four years alongside Americans in Iraq, and for the detachment that was sent two months ago to fight alongside Americans in Afghanistan. And I want to apologize for the fact that the Ambassador had to sit here, while an opponent of this resolution falsely stated that Armenians have not fought alongside Americans in these recent conflicts.

I want to also acknowledge the survivors who are here. If someone has to ask ?why do it now? Why not put it off?? How long are you asking these survivors to wait? And shouldn?t we do it while they?re here to see it. We have seen many people come here and say ?shouldn?t we have both sides reconcile?? We all long for that. We?ve seen in many parts of the world: truth and reconciliation commissions, a truth and reconciliation process, and it?s worked! I have not seen falsehood and cover up commissions lead to reconciliation.

Now, one side in the protocols, the Armenian side, supports this resolution. The same President of Armenia who signed the protocols supports this resolution and believes it will help lead to the reconciliation that those protocols envision. The other side has basically thrown away the protocols. When the Prime Minister of Turkey says that another issue, not germane to the protocols, that of Nagorno-Karabakh, will hold them up forever, that he will not ratify those protocols until the people of Armenian abandon the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, what he is basically doing is saying ?thanks for signing the protocols, now I?m throwing them away.?

So, those protocols are dead unless we do something to shake things up, and nothing would do more then to show the people of Turkey that we cannot be coward into acknowledging, into denying the genocide, the first genocide of the 20th century. Because genocide denial is not just the last step of the genocide, it is the first step in the next genocide, and that is why Hitler, when faced with some wavering compatriots, was able to say ?we can get away with the Holocaust, after all, who today speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians.?

We are told that somehow this will hurt our relationship with Turkey, long term, we will not have a good relationship with Turkey until Turkey abandons this effort to deny the past and engage in genocide denial. Would we have a good relationship with a German government that was denying the Holocaust? And who would have a good relationship with us if we were denying slavery and so many other things of our past? And as the gentleman from American Samoa pointed out, the Comfort Women Resolution passed this committee even over the objection of our good friends in Japan. Now, it is unseemly for this, the greatest parliament in the world to be cowed into not recognizing what the opponents of the resolution, so many of them, describe as the truth, because we?re afraid of Turkish retaliation. But, it is particularly unseemly, in light of the fact that Turkey has proven these threats are false, that we are cowering in the face of a paper tiger.

Lets go through the record. Turkey threatened harsh retribution to countries that recognized the genocide and then only took token diplomatic steps or no steps at all against Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Argentina and 10 other countries. Forty American states have recognized the Armenian Genocide and our trade relations between those states and Turkey have only grown. The greatest attempt outside the United States was an attempt to try to prevent France from recognizing the genocide. In 2001, France passed a law recognizing the Armenian Genocide. In the subsequent six years, exports from France to Turkey went up four-fold even after France had been threatened with a with a boycott. And in fact, there have been massive increases in exports by Belgium, Canada, Greece, Italy, Lebanon and Russia. To Turkey, perhaps the key to getting Turkey on our side is to pass this resolution. That?s not what they say, but that?s what seems to happen when you look at their recent past. Turkey should acknowledge we?ve provided them with $23 billion in aid. We saved them from communism. We help build the pipeline that brings them oil today, we prevented an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq and we are the loudest voice for helping Turkey enter the European Union. With all that, they shouldn?t also ask us to act like cowards and deny the truth. I yield back.

2/12/2009 - Michael Messmer of the Gephardt Group emailed Evita Mendiola (Scheduler) regarding scheduling request for Mr. Murat Mercan, MP (Chairman, Turkish Grand National Assembly Foreign Affairs Commission) and delegation to meet with Sherman.

6/15/2010 - Michael Messmer of the Gephardt Group Government Affairs, LLC emailed Don MacDonald (Legislative Assistant), Erin Prangley (Scheduler) requesting a meeting between the member and visiting parliamentarians.