Month: October 2005

Armenian Youth: Ready to Rock?

Hetq Online, October 17, 2005

On September 2, 2005, Yerevan staged its first international rock
festival, Rock ‘n People, in the capital’s central Republic Square. In
a country where most “live” pop music concerts – a music genre much
preferred over rock – are lip-synched, there are many obstacles to
overcome. However, the organizers of the festival were convinced that
audiences in Armenia would prefer to hear music being played live.

Sound checks, a relatively new phenomenon in the country, can prove
problematic. During the middle of a sound check by Empyray, a band
typified by heavy bass and drum rhythms as well as searing guitar
solos, an official from the nearby Ministry of Foreign Affairs
requested that preparations for the concert be put on hold for half
an hour while an important diplomatic meeting took place.

The number of police, including Ministry of Interior troops deployed
as security for the event, also surprised many. Although the festival
would only attract a few thousand people, hundreds of police assembled
in front of the stage. “Perhaps they think we’ll start a riot,” said
one young rock fan, arriving early to watch the main stage being set
up. “Maybe they like rock music,” joked another.

The location, flanked on all sides by government buildings, a luxury
hotel and the National Art Gallery, might not seem the most appropriate
of venues to stage a rock concert, but with sponsors such as Radio
Van and Viva Cell involved, permission was granted. Viva Cell, the
long awaited competitor to ArmenTel, has been consistent in targeting
its advertising and promotional campaigns towards youth.

Yerevan hasn’t seen a rock festival in such a high profile location
since the end of the Communist era. Even today, many consider the last
years of the Soviet Union to be the heyday of Armenian rock. Bands
such as Asbarez had huge followings and others even had a role to
play as ethnic conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis erupted
over the predominantly ethnically Armenian populated territory of
Nagorno Karabakh.

In 1989, for instance, Vostan Hayots took their set based on the 1915
Armenian genocide by Ottoman Turkey throughout the country and even
performed in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno Karabakh. The next
day, Soviet troops confiscated their equipment.

“We soon earned the reputation for arriving somewhere just before
trouble broke out,” remembers Hovhannes Kourghinyan, Vostan Hayot’s
vocalist. “When we went to Agarak [in Southern Armenia] there were
clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis and the same happened
in Kapan. We even brought information from Meghri to the Karabakh
Committee. A few people knew what was going to happen and were getting
ready by arming themselves. We were involved in that.”

Gradually, as tensions with Azerbaijan over Karabakh turned into
full-scale war, rock music became less and less popular in Armenia. In
particular, military conscription put an end to the careers of many
young and promising rock musicians. The electricity crisis of the
early nineties also forced many others to find work abroad. “Without
electricity you really can’t play rock music,” says Kourghinyan,
“It’s as simple as that.”

Other musicians were more fortunate, however. Hripsime Jangiryan,
wife of Eduard Abrahamyan, lead singer with Manic Depressive Psychosis
(MDP), remembers how the band assembled a hundred fans in Yerevan’s
Agricultural College in 1993 when the capital was otherwise deprived
of electricity. At the time, Abrahamyan worked as an electrician at
the college, one of the few buildings supplied with power.

A bottle of cognac convinced the college’s elderly security guard to
leave, and the premises became MDP’s to use.

But, even with electricity supplies now constant and Armenia’s
economy well on the mend, there are few people who listen to rock
music in the Republic. Instead, contemporary singers and musicians
are reliant on the support of government-connected businessmen rather
than CD sales to sustain their careers.

Even among those young Armenians that do like rock, however, many say
they instead prefer foreign bands. “In the nineties there were maybe
20 or 30 rock groups in Armenia,” says MDP’s Abrahamyan. “However,
after those difficult years, many left for England, the United States
and Russia. As a result, the market is under-developed and when the
quality of rock music deteriorated, the audience instead turned to
Western groups.”

Attracting listeners is also an ongoing obstacle, especially as rock
music is starved of exposure in the mainstream media. Live concerts
are also out because many young rock fans find it difficult to pay
the 1,000-1,500 drams [$2-$3] entrance fee to Yerevan’s two rock
clubs. Pricing tickets higher – over $15 – can lead to inadequate
sales and cancellations, as one three-day-event planned this August
near Lake Sevan showed.

Armenia’s large Diaspora, a potential market for Armenian music, is
also off-limits to local rock bands because ethnic Armenians living
abroad instead prefer to listen to music that serves a nostalgic or
nationalistic purpose. Even Bambir, a charismatic young band from
Gyumri that is fast earning a reputation with its eccentric live
performances in Yerevan, has so far been unable to find an audience
outside of Armenia.

Narek Barseghyan, Bambir’s 21-year-old guitarist, says that young
Armenians want something different, but a monopoly on the music
industry prevents rock bands from being shown on television or played
on the radio. He also says that when compared to other former Soviet
republics, Armenians are more conservative in their mentality. “In
Georgia, it’s different,” he says. “Here, if you have long hair,
people call you a gypsy.”

Despite the problems, however, Artyom Ayvazyan, president of the
Antennae non-governmental organization (NGO) and the main organizer of
the rock festival, is optimistic. In the past, national rock festivals
in Yerevan have attracted audiences of around 500. The free festival
staged on 2 September, however, attracted at least 2,000 people as
well as rock bands from neighboring Georgia.

“It’s true that rock music doesn’t attract a large audience in
Armenia,” he admits. “However, there are many people who want to listen
to something different, even if they don’t yet know what. Although
very few rock groups are played on the radio, there was almost
nothing before.”

Marieke Kitzen, a Dutch volunteer working with the Bem Youth
Progressive Action Center, a local NGO that considers the development
of youth culture key to involving young Armenians in the country’s
socio-political life, agrees. “I thought the rock concert was a great
success, although at the beginning, when there were more police than
spectators, I had my doubts if rock in Armenia would ever work,”
she says.

Text and Photos by Onnik Krikorian

—
From: Baghdasarian

PRESS RELEASE
Armenian National Committee
Eastern United States
P.O. Box 1066
New York, NY 10040
Contact: Doug Geogerian
Tel: 917 428 1918
Fax: 718 651 3637
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:

Time Apologizes and Prints Letter Condemnding DVD Denying Armenian Genocide

Time Magazine European Edition printed a full-page letter in its October 17,
2005 edition, decrying the magazine~Rs inclusion of a DVD that included a
documentary, which denied the Armenian Genocide. The letter was written by
Bernard Jouanneau, the President of Memory 2000, which is described as
~Srepresentatives of . . .French organizations whose aim is to fight against
racism, anti-Semitism and for the memory of the Armenian Genocide.~T Mr.
Jouanneau is a leading lawyer and activist defending against anti-defamation
concerning the denial of the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide.

Directly following Mr. Jouanneau~Rs letter, Time~Rs editors expressed regret
for the offense caused by distributing the DVD. ~SThe so-called documentary
portion of the DVD presents a one-sided view of history that does not meet
our standards for fairness and accuracy, and we would not have distributed
it had we been aware of its content,~T said the editors. Claiming that the
DVD was not adequately reviewed, the editors announced a change in their
review process to avoid such future incidents. They conclude by apologizing
to the Armenian community.

In his letter, Mr. Jouanneau asserts the magazine~Rs responsibility
regardless of whether or not the Turkish Chamber of Commerce misled them.
He says redress for distributing the DVD to 500,000 house holds across
twelve European countries should include 1) disclosure of officials
standards used by Time when considering the inclusion of an ad and whether a
similar DVD denying the Holocaust would have been acceptable, 2) free
distribution of a ~SDVD prepared by the European Armenian Federation for
Justice and Democracy (EAFJD) regarding the history and modern-day
consequences of the Armenian Genocide,~T and 3) a donation from the revenue
earned from the Turkish advertisement to a nonprofit organization dedicated
to informing the public about the truth of the Armenian genocide and other
genocides.

The letter describes in detail many of the ~Slies, racial defamation,
personal defamation and historical mistakes in this DVD, which contains all
the techniques of disinformation and propaganda.~T Jouanneau points out
footage of Justin McCarthy, a known revisionist of the Armenian Genocide,
who says that the survival of some Armenians proves that a genocide did not
take place. The letter strongly objected to the characterization of all
Armenians as terrorists and accusations that Armenians collaborated with the
Nazis to exterminate the Jews.

Mr. Jouanneau criticizes Time~Rs editors for contributing to Turkey~Rs
campaign to deny the Armenian Genocide. In doing so, Jouanneau condemns
Time for aiding Turkey~Rs precedent of having committed a genocide with
impunity. ~STIME magazine has helped embolden future perpetrators of genocide
with the knowledge that their crimes can be committed without consequence,~T
said Jouanneau.

####

PRESS OFFICE
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern)
630 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Contact: Jake Goshert, Coordinator of Information Services
Tel: (212) 686-0710 Ext. 60; Fax: (212) 779-3558
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:

October 17, 2005
___________________

ARMENIAN CHURCH TO BE REPRESENTED AT WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES BY
EASTERN DIOCESAN LEGATE

Bishop Vicken Aykazian, legate and ecumenical officer of the Diocese of
the Armenian Church of America (Eastern), recently attended a meeting of
U.S. religious leaders to map out goals and objectives for an upcoming
global ecumenical gathering.

The Diocesan legate is one of 13 people appointed by the Mother See of
Holy Etchmiadzin to represent the Armenian Church at the upcoming 9th
assembly of the World Council of Churches in Brazil this February.

In preparation for that meeting, Bishop Aykazian met with more than 150
American religious leaders in Chicago, IL, from October 10 to 12. The
leaders represented a majority of the member churches of the National
Council of Churches (NCC).

“At the meeting we discussed how we should represent the American-based
churches at the World Council of Churches assembly,” said Bishop
Aykazian, who is active in a variety of ecumenical organizations on
behalf of the Eastern Diocese. “We asked, what will our contribution be
and what will be the lessons to be learned from this assembly?”

Bishop Aykazian identified several subjects that interested the gathered
religious leaders in Chicago: problems in the Middle East; combating HIV
in Africa; fighting Islamist terrorism; and the genocide in Sudan. The
last point is something the Armenian Church has been involved with for a
while.

“These are all problems that concern human beings, so we have certain
responsibilities to help. It is the mission of the church to help the
powerless, the poor, the afflicted, the diseased, the sick, the
homeless. It is the main mission of the church,” he said. “And in the
Sudan they have suffered tragic genocide. We know there is a genocide
taking place and it is a continuing genocide and we have to help. But
our church, we as a people, understand more than anyone, because we have
suffered through a genocide.”

At the end of the conference in Chicago, Bishop Aykazian led a prayer
service with a priest from the Orthodox Church of America, an act that
shows the importance the ecumenical movement places on the participation
of Orthodox churches — the Armenian Church in particular.

“I’m very pleased that, thanks to the work of Bishop Vicken, the
Armenian Church has become a leading voice in the ecumenical movement in
the United States and around the globe,” said Archbishop Khajag
Barsamian, Primate of the Eastern Diocese.

— 10/17/05

# # #

PRESS RELEASE
A.R.F. Zavarian Student Association
Yerevanian Bldg. 4th Floor
Bourj Hammoud, Lebanon
Tel: (961) 01-240167
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:

MEETING BETWEEN THE ZSA & FREE PATRIOTIC MOVEMENT CENTRAL COMMITTEES

On Tuesday, the 4th of October 2005, a delegation from the Lebanese
Free Patriotic Movement Party visited the Yerevanian Center, where a
meeting was held between A.R.F. Zavarian Student Association and
F.P.M. Party committees. The meeting best served for strengthening and
developing the existing university-level relationship between the two
parties, and discussing the possibility of organizing future joint
events.

The two parties also talked about the state of the Lebanese Youth and
Student associations on a political level, and emphasized on the
importance of the participation of all parties in taken measures.

After the one hour gathering, both committees agreed on having
periodical meetings for exchange and coordination of opinions.

PRESS OFFICE
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern)
630 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Contact: Jake Goshert, Coordinator of Information Services
Tel: (212) 686-0710 Ext. 60; Fax: (212) 779-3558
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:

October 17, 2005
___________________

ARMENIAN CHURCH TAKES PART IN PRAYER SERVICE FOR UNITED NATIONS

Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, Primate of the Diocese of the Armenian
Church of America (Eastern), led a delegation of Armenians who
attended the 5th annual Orthodox Prayer Service for the United
Nations Community.

“This event is a symbolic representation of the power of faith and
the importance of assuring that our faith has a place at the table of
international politics and diplomacy,” the Primate said. “It is also
important that the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox Churches join forces
and stand with a united voice in calling for a full representation
of our faith at the United Nations.”

The annual event is organized by the Joint Commission of the Standing
Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas and the
Standing Conference of Oriental Orthodox Churches. This year’s service
was hosted by the Serbian Orthodox Church at the Holy Trinity Greek
Orthodox Archdiocesan Cathedral in New York City. Each year a different
participating church hosts the event, which also rotates in location
from the Greek Cathedral to St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral.

Attending this year with the Primate was Fr. Daniel Findikyan, dean of
St. Nersess Seminary; Fr. Simeon Odabashian, pastor of the Sts. Sahag
and Mesrob Church of Providence, RI; Fr. Mardiros Chevian, dean of St.
Vartan Cathedral, a number of seminarians from St. Nersess Seminary;
and Diocesan staff.

Armenia was also represented by His Excellency Armen Martirossyan,
the permanent representative of the Republic of Armenia to the
United Nations.

The guest speaker at this year’s service was His Excellency Dr. Milos
Prica, the permanent representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the
United Nations. He spoke eloquently about his faith and how emulating
the teachings of Christ can help us live in a world of peace. His
Eminence Metropolitan Christopher, Metropolitan of the Midwest American
Metropolitanate of the Serbian Orthodox Church, also spoke on peace,
focusing on the Biblical references to the idea of peacemakers.

“The fact that the prayer service was dedicated to all the personnel
at the United Nations and to bringing piece to the world was very
powerful,” said Jennifer Morris, the coordinator of youth outreach
for the Diocese, who attended the service. “The whole event was very
moving. To see all the bishops on the altar, together, putting aside
any differences they have and coming together to share their love
for Jesus Christ was just amazing.”

— 10/17/05

E-mail photos available on request. Photos also viewable in the News
and Events section of the Eastern Diocese’s website,

PHOTO CAPTION (1): Bishops gather at the altar of the Holy Trinity
Greek Orthodox Archdiocesan Cathedral in New York City on Tuesday,
October 11, 2005, for the 5th annual Orthodox Prayer Service for the
United Nations Community.

PHOTO CAPTION (2): Dr. Milos Prica, the permanent representative of
Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Nations, speaks about the need to
live the lessons of Christ.

PHOTO CAPTION (3): Church leaders and diplomatic dignitaries following
the 5th annual Orthodox Prayer Service for the United Nations Community
on Tuesday, October 11, 2005.

# # #

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESS OFFICE
Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern)
630 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Contact: Jake Goshert, Coordinator of Information Services
Tel: (212) 686-0710 Ext. 60; Fax: (212) 779-3558
E-mail: [email protected]
Website:

October 17, 2005
___________________

PARISHES TAKE UP SPECIAL OFFERING

In response to the devastation Hurricane Katrina caused in New
Orleans, the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern)
asked its parishes to take up special offerings in September and
welcomed donations from all Armenians.

Recently, His Eminence Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, Primate of the
Western Diocese, presented Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, Primate of the
Eastern Diocese, with a check for $30,500 to be sent to the Armenian
families of New Orleans who are now being sheltered and helped by
the community in Baton Rouge.

“We heard about the Armenian communities there (in New Orleans).
We are thankful there were no personal losses, but we hear they have
needs,” wrote Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, Primate of the Western
Diocese, in an Armenian letter accompanying his diocese’s donation.
“We appreciate that the Eastern Diocese immediately responded to
the needs of those Armenian families and acted to provide financial
support.”

The Western Diocese also raised thousands of dollars to fund recovery
efforts by the Red Cross.

Along with the money from the Western Diocese, the Eastern Diocese
has collected $44,050 for Katrina relief. Half of the money raised by
parishioners in the Eastern Diocese will be sent directly to Armenian
families who lost homes and businesses from the storm and the other
half will be sent to Church World Service (CWS), the humanitarian
aid arm of the National Council of Churches (NCC), to fund long-term
relief efforts.

“Our Armenian brothers and sisters in the New Orleans area are
thankful, I know, for all the support we have provided to them in
this time of crisis,” said Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, Primate of
the Eastern Diocese. “And along with our financial help, our prayers
have also been felt down in Louisiana.”

— 10/17/05

# # #

Author Pamuk “did not use the word genocide”
By our correspondent

NRC Handelsblad (Dutch newspaper)
October 17, 2005

Istanbul, Oct. 17. Turkish author Orhan Pamuk defended himself on
television against allegations that he had slandered his country. In
an interview with a Swiss newspaper, Pamuk earlier this year claimed
that “30.000 Kurks and one million Armenians were killed in these
areas and I am not the only who dares to speak about it”. This cost
Pamuk a trial that will begin in December.

However, according to Pamuk, many misread the challenged interview:
“I did not say: we Turks killed so many Armenians. I did not use the
word genocide.” The official Turkish line is that a genocide among
Armenians never took place at the end of the Ottoman empire.

The case around Pamuk is causing more and more fuss within and outside
of Turkey. The European Union, with which Turkey is now negotiating
membership, is very dissatisfied with the whole affair. Euro
commissioner on enlargement, Olli Rehn, recently visited Pamuk and
likewise British author Salman Rushdie, who had to go into hiding for a
long period of time because he was threatened to be killed by radical
Muslims, and took on Pamuk’s defence in a British newspaper. If this
already stirs up so much trouble, while the trial has not even started
yet, then cover yourself, well-known Turkish journalist Mehmet Ali
Birand wrote in a column last week.

Pamuk is being prosecuted based on an article in the new Turkish
Penal Code, forbidding slander against “the Turkish identity”. The
new code at the end of last year caused a great row between Ankara
and Brussels. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan wanted to criminalize
Adultery, which led to a severe admonishment from Brussels. The row
overshadowed the extremely vague articles on the slandering of Turkish
identity that appeared around the same time.

Earlier, Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was given a suspended
sentence of 6 months based on the same article. In an article, Dink
had called on Armenians to distance themselves from the “Turkish
part of their blood” because it “poisoned” them. According to Dink,
Armenians should focus on the future and especially on the new Armenian
state. According to the court, however, Dink had said that there was
“poison” in Turkish blood.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Accepting the Past Will Set Us Free

Talin Suciyan reflects on the groundbreaking Armenian conference and the
liberating effect that the open discussion of this history will have for
Turkey and for the Armenian diaspora.

BIA News Center
10/10/2005

By Talin Suciyan ([email protected])

BIA (Istanbul) – Are we able to admit the fact that after the departure
of Armenians this country became barren; ideologically, artistically,
politically and by every means socially? Can this society admit that we
need to be able to express this issue, and that the Armenian Diaspora
needs to hear it?

The recent “Ottoman Armenians During The Last Period Of The Empire:
Scientific Responsibility And Democracy” conference was realized as a
result of great efforts, and was an event of extraordinary properties,
meanings and references. Under our current conditions we are in, the
importance of this event can be approached from many different angles,
and people have been writing about if from every perspective.

I would like to take this chance to reflect on these two days, in which
many different disciplines complemented each other, while shedding light
on some old questions and presenting new ones. With the vast amount of
information and comments presented on this one particular period in
history, this conference shook its audience and lifted a huge dead
weight that was bearing on the shoulders of this issue.

The questions at the beginning of this article are asked in response to
Elif Safak’s paper and they are very important ones related to this
moment. Can we leave aside the never-ending polemics and claims–” it is
genocide or not”-and “they massacred us, the numbers of victims are such
and such,” and look at our present situation, where Safak directs her
attention?

Safak, in her paper, presents an extraordinary mix of her authorial and
academic identities. Her presentation on the life and works of feminist
Armenian writer Zabel Yesayan was prepared with the scrutiny of an
academic and the elegance of a writer of literature. She concluded it
with a quotation from a novel. Safak relays to us the answer of a
question which is asked of the hero of the novel: What would an Armenian
survivor of the events of 1915 like to hear from the Turks ?

He replied ” I would like to hear that after we left, their country
became barren”. Safak, directing this sentence to us, continued: “Yes,
after you left, our country became barren ideologically, artistically,
politically and every means socially, we have the need to say this, as
the Diaspora has the greater need to hear it “. In the end she presented
an approach that passed beyond the Armenian Diaspora’s, which dictates
‘You have to recognize the genocide first; then we start talking’ or the
official Turkish thesis, which claims ‘Genocide didn’t happen, in fact
they massacred us’.

Safak continued; saying that today the people of Turkey, having lost
their Armenian neighbors (except roughly 60 thousand people living)
should acknowledge that as a result of this loss, we became lonely and
barren. Today we should start mourning for this loss: “The mourning of
their absence, and that which made us barren”.

Feelings

Like Melisa Bilal said, can we integrate feelings into our social and
intellectual systems without the confines of nationalism? Can we recall
the feeling of times that we lived together? As she said, can people who
are living in this country really understand that Armenians in Turkey
were made homeless and that they are lost? Not all were necessarily made
homeless by means of deportation, but as Bilal defines it, “they were
uprooted from their language, religion, history at the very place they
had been living, [and entered a] state of homelessness by means of
estrangement. ” And indeed like Hrant Dink said, having been uprooted
and scattered around the world, as Bilal says, when they are constantly
searching for a surname with an ‘ian-yan’ suffix at the back credits of
every film, in reality they are searching for a piece of themselves.
Today, are the people of Turkey capable of understanding all of feelings?

Weight

Can we rethink the phrases that entered in to our language, particularly
those which carry the traces of negative historical weights? As in the
example Fethiye Cetin provided, why is it that while lifting a heavy
load, we say “It is heavy as an infidel’s corpse.” Are we able to ask
ourselves the question, “Why is the corpse of an infidel is that heavy?”

Paranoia and Trauma

As Erol Koroglu said in his presentation ‘Examples of forgetting and
remembering in Turkish literature: The breaking points of silence’,
Armenian-ness is an identity that is constantly kept at the threshold,
at at the same time we have the incapability of not being able to
describe it as different as well as familiar. This gives way to an idea
that makes Armenians traitors and enemies. Can we think over this idea
and accept it as a social paranoia? Hrant Dink is right to say that the
antidote to this paranoia is the democratization of Turkey. This process
not only would cure the paranoia in Turks, it would also help heal the
trauma that the Armenians live with.

Amnesia

Elif Safak directs our attention to writer Zabel Yesayan. When she
escaped the events of 1915 and settled in Baku, she started to write her
memoirs. This demonstrates her importance in preventing a social amnesia.

In contrast, Etyen Mahcupyan emphasized how the State, by its constant
repetition to Turkish people that they are a people whose memory is very
short and that Turkey is a country that should always look to the future
and not to the past, constantly creates space for communal amnesia . In
response to the victim’s attitude of ‘not letting it to be forgotten and
talking about it’ the perpetrators covers themselves to an extent that
they reache a point where even talking about events becomes frightful.
At this point, can the victim, with the comfort to speak, help the
perpetrator?

Empathy

As Aysegul Altinay says, Fethiye Cetin’s book “My Grandmother”, Takuhi
Tovmasyan’s book “Be Your Meals Cheerful” and Osman Koker’s “Armenians
In Turkey 100 Years Ago” books, follow a therapeutic approach which can
lead people to create an environment where empathy can grow, opening the
way to cry and laugh together. Following this approach, can we multiply
these examples so that we can exercise more empathy in this direction?

Defence and getting tired of being right

Halil Berktay describes the mood of Turkish foreign policy: defence by
means of digging a trench so deep that it became a synonym for being
stuck at the bottom of the trench, and therefore foreign policy became
enslaved by the trench. Temel Iskit, a former diplomat with a career of
40 years, agreed with Berktay’s characterization.

Iskit states that Turkish foreign policy was mortgaged by the Armenian
Question, because the ” power policy” that Turkey was following required
an absolute obligation to be right. He added, “During 41 years of
service I got tired of always being ‘right’.”

“We won’t do it”

Cemil Kocak presented an interesting story on Ruseni Bey and his place
in the Special Organization (Teskilat-i Mahsusa). Ruseni Bey coined a
definition of nationalism that stated “Societies grow/get nurtured by
eating one another.” Against this outrageously nationalistic statement,
is it too difficult to say ‘No, we won’t do it’? As Halil Berktay points
out, isn’t it about time that spanner needs to be thrown in the
clockwork of these spine-chilling historical repetitions– a repetition
that starts with “Every Armenian is a Tashnak Guerilla” and continues as
“Every Kurd is a PKK member”?

Purification

Berktay also told of an unfinished novel written by Omer Seyfettin
between 1912-13, named “Primo Turkish Child II”. Can we wake the hero of
this novel from his dream? In the dream, he sees a crescent moon and a
star in the sky, meanwhile he feels a wetness on his feet. This wetness
is the blood of Turkish enemies-and as he walks in their blood, he
notices the reflection of the moon and the star on the surface .

Departing from this point, Berktay continued to say that the red colour
of Turkish flag does not symbolize the blood of Turkish martyrs (as we
are always told), but actually comes from the blood of our enemies. We
can purify ourselves of this history of hatred and violence. We can get
out of pools of blood and set out to a new journey, in which the moon
and the stars won’t spare their light to illuminate our road, and with
the knowledge that at the end of a clear starry night, the coming day
will be sunny and hopeful.

Liberty

“This meeting will liberate us,” said former Health Minister Cevdet
Aykan, who compiled the memoirs of old people he knew. As Cem Ozdemir
stated, the realization of this conference will relax Europe as well as
Turkey . Turkey’s initiation of this talk on the “Armenian issue”–which
Europe saw as a burden to Turkey’s process of democratisation–will
lighten this load for Europe as well as Turkey.

It is time to acknowledge these loads, to recognize them, and to be
liberated from them. We will feel relaxed by means of liberation from
them. We passed the threshold and we are on that road now. We will
continue to move forward slowly but surely.

Mourning

As I was talking with historian Christoph Neumann, he draw my attention
to the point that during the conference there had rarely been talk of
mourning–only once or twice. He said, “Why is there no talk of
mourning?” …meaning not the mourning of events 90 years ago, but the
mourning of our state in the present, the mourning of our loneliness.
Maybe by acknowledging our present loneliness slowly, we can go back
from the present to the past and try to see more clearly how we were
made so lonely in the first place?

Despite all the insistences of amnesia, contrary to our state of
defensiveness due to unresolved traumas, we would be able to find the
path to empathy. By acknowledging the lost and deported ones, we could
start to sympathize with their sensitivities. And by getting rid of our
paranoia and trauma from historical burdens in our language and
consciousness, could we not turn back even just for a moment to our true
feelings, and mourn?

To Pass the threshold, pass beyond the ‘genocide’

Has any threshold been passed? Surely the answer is yes. This conference
has been the embodiment of that very crucial move. The conference has
led us pass the threshold of Turkey’s democratization progress, the
threshold of scientific freedom in universities, the threshold of
freedom of expression, the disappearing threshold of being unable to
speak, the threshold of endless arguments about ‘who massacred who’ and
‘is it or is it not a genocide’–and even past the thresholds of
hardened, polarized and immobile identities.

Today we reached a different point, because during these past two days
whoever witnessed this historical event tried to understand amnesia,
empathy, trauma, paranoia and what actually happened. While they
examined and scrutinized all these issues with the help of many
different disciplines, we mourned for our present day a little, we
became purified a little, and we became little more liberated. We
listened, we thought and we learned–and then we learned more, thought
more, and listened more.

Now, it is time for this experience to leave the confines of the
building where the conference was held and spread, so even more people
can rethink what they had already known and learn to listen more.
Because this conference has liberated us, it provides hope that there
will be many others. It is this very hope that will make our roads
intersect.
__________________________________
(Tr anslation: Arman Sucuyan)

BOOKS: THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION BY ROBERT FISK

The Independent, UK
Oct 17 2005

Robert Fisk of the ‘Independent’ is one of the best-known journalists
in the world, with a passionate sense of justice and a knack for
being in the right place at the right time.

Neal Ascherson looks on in admiration at his old friend and colleague
Robert Fisk is the sort of reporter who walks in the opposite
direction. I first came across him as an absence, 30 years ago in
Belfast. We, the pack, had spent the day waiting for the big Paisley
briefing, but where was Bob? It turned out that he had gone off alone
to the battlefield of the Boyne, to see what the place and the past
would say to him. In the first Gulf war, he enraged “pool” colleagues
under Army control by hiring an old car, putting on a borrowed helmet
and driving down forbidden roads until he reached the front. When a
“facility trip” is laid on for the press corps, Fisk stays behind,
suspecting – usually rightly – that it’s to get the hacks out of the
way while something interesting happens.

Right at the end of this book, he describes himself sitting in the
roadside mud with an Iraqi family, watching as a 40-mile convoy of
American armour thunders up Highway Eight towards Baghdad. For Fisk,
it’s a moment to reflect on Roman and American empires which have a
visceral need to “project power on a massive scale”. For the reader,
it’s almost a caricature: the journalist who wants to see the world
from down in the muck with the victims, rather than from a tank turret
as an “embedded” correspondent.

Today, Robert Fisk is one of the best-known reporters in the world.

Long before 11 September, he had an enormous following of readers who
had come to regard him as the only journalist consistently describing
the Middle East “as it is”. He has also accumulated a pack of vengeful
enemies, longing to discredit and silence him. Not all of them are
Israelis or American diplomats. Some are fellow-journalists, maddened
by his gift for being in the right place at the right time.

(The bomb which changed Near-Eastern history went off down his street
in Beirut; the dead man with his socks still burning turned out to
be his friend Rafiq Hariri, ex-prime-minister of Lebanon…)

For the last 30 years, Fisk has been covering an enormous arc of
territory which is not just “the Middle East” but reaches from the
Moroccan Atlantic to the Punjab with a northward extension into the
Balkans. Almost all the peoples who live there are Muslim. All of them,
without exception, have been the objects of imperial conquest and
colonialism, of cultural suppression and big-power frontier-drawing.

This is a book about what Fisk saw, heard, thought and wrote in those
years. It is not an autobiography. Apart from his relationship with
his parents, the door on his private life is locked. Neither is it a
complete chronicle. Having just written a separate book about them,
Fisk leaves out the experiences in Lebanon which generated some of
his best-known writing (his accounts of the Israeli shelling of Qana
in 1996, for instance). But what remains is overwhelming.

This is a very long book, allowing Fisk to interleave political
analysis, recent history and his own adventures with the real stories
which concern him. These are the sufferings of ordinary people under
monstrous tyrannies or in criminal, avoidable wars. Fisk reported
the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf war of 1991, the Palestine intifadas,
the Taliban rule in Afghanistan and its sequel as the Americans and
their allies invaded in 2002, the terror regimes of Saddam, the Shah
and the ayatollahs, the frenzy of bloodshed in Algeria as Islamists and
security forces competed to slaughter the innocent, and – of course –
the Bush-Blair war against Iraq and its outcome. His chapter on the
1915 Armenian genocide, still unpardonably denied and evaded and not
only by Turks, revives his famous report from Syria when he stumbled
across the mass graves at Margada (see extract, above).

The source of most of this horror, for Fisk, is the post-1918 carve-up
of the Middle East between European powers. “We” – Britain, France
and much later America – are responsible. Subtly, Fisk weaves this
sense of guilt around his own ambiguous feelings for his father,
a young officer in the Great War for civilisation who became at
once a cold, bullying husband and a stiffly proud parent. Shame for
that generation’s imperial mistakes, he seems to feel, is heritable,
and when he is attacked and almost killed by an Afghan refugee mob,
Fisk’s impulse is that they are not to blame. He might have done the
same to a Westerner, in their place.

All the same, the cumulative impact of these terrible accounts
of massacre, torture and almost unimaginable ruthlessness may not
be what Fisk wants. The case against “Us” (the West) diminishes;
the unjust impression that this is a zone of endemic savagery grows
stronger. He writes with a marvellous resource of image and language.

His investigative reporting is lethally painstaking (see how he
pieces together the biography of an American missile which somehow
came into Israeli hands, was fired at an ambulance and killed an
innocent Lebanese family).

But the sense of inescapable doom which builds up in this book is
misleading. What’s missing is a sense that it’s not just Fisk but
most of the world which finds Western policy crazy. Fisk includes here
several unforgettable, marvellously observed meetings with Osama bin
Laden. Maybe he should try his talents on a meeting with George W Bush.

Robert Fisk is the sort of reporter who walks in the opposite
direction. I first came across him as an absence, 30 years ago in
Belfast. We, the pack, had spent the day waiting for the big Paisley
briefing, but where was Bob? It turned out that he had gone off alone
to the battlefield of the Boyne, to see what the place and the past
would say to him. In the first Gulf war, he enraged “pool” colleagues
under Army control by hiring an old car, putting on a borrowed helmet
and driving down forbidden roads until he reached the front. When a
“facility trip” is laid on for the press corps, Fisk stays behind,
suspecting – usually rightly – that it’s to get the hacks out of the
way while something interesting happens.

Right at the end of this book, he describes himself sitting in the
roadside mud with an Iraqi family, watching as a 40-mile convoy of
American armour thunders up Highway Eight towards Baghdad. For Fisk,
it’s a moment to reflect on Roman and American empires which have a
visceral need to “project power on a massive scale”. For the reader,
it’s almost a caricature: the journalist who wants to see the world
from down in the muck with the victims, rather than from a tank turret
as an “embedded” correspondent.

Today, Robert Fisk is one of the best-known reporters in the world.

Long before 11 September, he had an enormous following of readers who
had come to regard him as the only journalist consistently describing
the Middle East “as it is”. He has also accumulated a pack of vengeful
enemies, longing to discredit and silence him. Not all of them are
Israelis or American diplomats. Some are fellow-journalists, maddened
by his gift for being in the right place at the right time.

(The bomb which changed Near-Eastern history went off down his street
in Beirut; the dead man with his socks still burning turned out to
be his friend Rafiq Hariri, ex-prime-minister of Lebanon…)

For the last 30 years, Fisk has been covering an enormous arc of
territory which is not just “the Middle East” but reaches from the
Moroccan Atlantic to the Punjab with a northward extension into the
Balkans. Almost all the peoples who live there are Muslim. All of them,
without exception, have been the objects of imperial conquest and
colonialism, of cultural suppression and big-power frontier-drawing.

This is a book about what Fisk saw, heard, thought and wrote in those
years. It is not an autobiography. Apart from his relationship with
his parents, the door on his private life is locked. Neither is it a
complete chronicle. Having just written a separate book about them,
Fisk leaves out the experiences in Lebanon which generated some of
his best-known writing (his accounts of the Israeli shelling of Qana
in 1996, for instance). But what remains is overwhelming.

This is a very long book, allowing Fisk to interleave political
analysis, recent history and his own adventures with the real stories
which concern him. These are the sufferings of ordinary people under
monstrous tyrannies or in criminal, avoidable wars. Fisk reported
the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf war of 1991, the Palestine intifadas,
the Taliban rule in Afghanistan and its sequel as the Americans and
their allies invaded in 2002, the terror regimes of Saddam, the Shah
and the ayatollahs, the frenzy of bloodshed in Algeria as Islamists and
security forces competed to slaughter the innocent, and – of course –
the Bush-Blair war against Iraq and its outcome. His chapter on the
1915 Armenian genocide, still unpardonably denied and evaded and not
only by Turks, revives his famous report from Syria when he stumbled
across the mass graves at Margada (see extract, above).

The source of most of this horror, for Fisk, is the post-1918 carve-up
of the Middle East between European powers. “We” – Britain, France
and much later America – are responsible. Subtly, Fisk weaves this
sense of guilt around his own ambiguous feelings for his father,
a young officer in the Great War for civilisation who became at
once a cold, bullying husband and a stiffly proud parent. Shame for
that generation’s imperial mistakes, he seems to feel, is heritable,
and when he is attacked and almost killed by an Afghan refugee mob,
Fisk’s impulse is that they are not to blame. He might have done the
same to a Westerner, in their place.

All the same, the cumulative impact of these terrible accounts
of massacre, torture and almost unimaginable ruthlessness may not
be what Fisk wants. The case against “Us” (the West) diminishes;
the unjust impression that this is a zone of endemic savagery grows
stronger. He writes with a marvellous resource of image and language.

His investigative reporting is lethally painstaking (see how he
pieces together the biography of an American missile which somehow
came into Israeli hands, was fired at an ambulance and killed an
innocent Lebanese family).

But the sense of inescapable doom which builds up in this book is
misleading. What’s missing is a sense that it’s not just Fisk but
most of the world which finds Western policy crazy. Fisk includes here
several unforgettable, marvellously observed meetings with Osama bin
Laden. Maybe he should try his talents on a meeting with George W Bush.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA IS RATHER ATTRACTIVE COUNTRY FOR INVESTMENTS, ARLEX INTERNATIONAL’S DIRECTOR AFFIRMS

Noyan Tapan News Agency, Armenia
Oct 17 2005

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 17, NOYAN TAPAN. The cooperation of South Caucasian
businessmen and trade among the countries to some extent can contribute
to the solution of conflicts existing in the region. US Ambassador
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to RA John Evans declared this at
the “Common Future” regional forum organized by the American Chamber
of Commerce in Armenia. J.Evans also noted that the governments
should also assist the development of business contacts in the
region. According to the US ambassador, first of all it’s necessary to
have “fair” courts for attracting foreign investments and development
of business in Armenia and the reforms carried out in the judicical
sphere of Armenia can promote development of business.

In the affirmation of RA NA Speaker Artur Baghdasarian, Armenia
still needs to attract foreign investments and the state must form an
atmosphere of mutual confidence in the sphere of economy. According to
him, the legislative field of Armenian economy is almost completely
formed and favorable conditions are created for free economic
relations. A.Baghdasarian also noted that a continual struggle against
corruption must be carried out for development of business.

In the opinion of Tomas Samuelian, Director of the Arlex International
legal-consultative organization, a simple legal field must be created
for development of business and attraction of foreign investments in
Armenia. Besides, according to him, Armenia’s complicated tax system,
in particular, superfluous bureaucratism, still hampers attraction
of foreign investments. According to T.Samuelian, it’s easy enough
to implement activity in Armenia if we exclude some bureaucratic
difficulties and in difference to a number of countries, no patronage
of the authorities is necessary here.

Armenia is rather an attractive country for investments and, in
particular, the Armenian culture, as well as international recognition
by means of the Spyurk contribute to it.