The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2021

12 JULY-AUGUST 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Christians (among them, my own Maronite ancestors in Mount Lebanon). Armenians and Assyrians were conve- nient scapegoats for Turkish resentments about being pushed around. These sentiments were exacerbated in the 1800s by Russia’s repeated efforts to court fellow Eastern Orthodox Chris- tians in its military campaigns to control the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara and the Turkish Straits (Bosporus and Dardanelles); free their fellow Slavs from Ottoman domination in the Balkans; and even recover Constantinople for Christendom. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, both sides committed atroci- ties targeting noncombatant Muslim and Christian civilians, particularly in Bulgaria and areas of Albanian Muslim settlement. The Russians further sought to cleanse Crimea of its Tatars, whose survivors sought refuge among the Otto- mans. Such war crimes designed to elimi- nate rival communities were not new. Rather, these horrors occurred in the aftermath of a Russian campaign in the early 1860s to forcibly empty the north- west Caucasus of its Circassian (or Ady- ghe) population. Perhaps as many as 1.5 million Muslim Circassians and Abkha- zians were either murdered or expelled. In justifying his military’s indiscrimi- nate killings and mass expulsions, one Russian general derided the Circassians as “subhuman filth,” while a Russian prince heartlessly declared to several con- cerned Americans: “These Circassians are like your American Indians—untamed and uncivilized. … Extermination only will keep them quiet.” Most refugees who survived fled to the Ottoman Empire. Memories are very, very long among expelled people. Spend an afternoon, as I have, in the crowded enclave of Bourj Hammoud northeast of Beirut, home to most of Lebanon’s 150,000+ Armenian community. The streets are named after former Armenian cities and villages in Anatolia, and the locals talk of returning. For them, irredentist aspira- tions—whether in Turkey or in Nagorno- Karabakh—are not far-fetched; they are deeply held. This, in part, explains why Ankara has refused to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide (or come to grips with the Kurds’ continued quest for an indepen- dent state). Perhaps we could help ease Turk- ish resentments and anxieties by fully acknowledging that we, too, committed terrible wrongs in subjugating Native Americans, that we recognize the Circas- sian Genocide of 1860-1864, and that we oppose a redrawing of Turkey’s borders without Ankara’s consent. George W. Aldridge FSO, retired Arlington, Texas Age: An Unacknowledged Bias With the increasing and long-overdue focus on the lack of diversity in the Foreign Service, Congress is considering legislation to create a midlevel entry pro- gram targeting underrepresented groups. Predictably, AFSA is opposing this leg- islation and will no doubt cite statistics to show that the department has no trouble attracting so-called “second careerists” to join the Foreign Service. This is consistent with the failure of AFSA or State Department leadership to recognize the unique challenges faced by those of us who come to this career later in life. It begins in A-100 class, as speaker after speaker leads off their talks with “you guys are too young to remember” and continues when members of the Senior Foreign Service address entry- level officers and talk about “your generation” as if all entry-level officers are the same age. On more than one occasion, when someone is giving an example of how not to behave in the Foreign Service, I have heard them pointedly note that the per- son in question is a “second careerist”— as if this category somehow made it more likely that they would behave badly. Such microaggressions signal that anyone whose age does not match up with their rank does not merit equivalent consideration as individuals on a more traditional career path. In an up-or-out system, it stands to reason that those who join earlier have a higher chance of reaching the upper echelons. Thus, we cannot hope to address the lack of diversity in the higher ranks of the department only by increas- ing hiring of underrepresented groups and hoping that enough of them will endure the many challenges and humili- ations they will inevitably face so that in 20 years or so we’ll have a diplomatic corps that truly represents our country. The proposed legislation offers one possible solution, but it is bound to fail without a change in the Foreign Service culture—in particular, the tendency to devalue experience outside of govern- ment and a bidding system that puts far more emphasis on established relation- ships than on demonstrated skills. If AFSA wants to truly represent all its members and promote a more inclusive and diverse State Department, it needs to begin by being more open to new ideas, rather than just defending the practices that got us here in the first place. n Timothy Savage FSO Embassy New Delhi