Month: October 2006

Turks protest outside French Embassy in Bucharest:

Turkish Daily News
Oct 20 2006

Diplomacy Newsline
Friday, October 20, 2006

ANK – TDN with AFP

Some 30 Turkish residents of Romania demonstrated on Wednesday outside
France’s embassy in Bucharest against a French bill making it a crime
to deny that Armenians were victims of genocide at the hands of the
Ottoman Empire.

They held up banners in French saying that politicians should not
legislate on historical matters.

Some of the demonstrators left a letter of protest at the embassy,
reported the Mediafax news agency.

The bill, which needs to be approved by the French Senate and president
to become law, provides for a year in jail for anyone denying the
alleged genocide. It was approved by a vote in the lower house of
the French Parliament last Thursday.

Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE)

Oct 20 2006

OSCE Office Head meets Armenian Parliament Speaker, discusses electoral
reform and media legislation

YEREVAN, 19 October 2006 – The Head of the OSCE Office in Yerevan,
Ambassador Vladimir Pryakhin, discussed today with Tigran Torosyan,
the Chairman of the Armenian National Assembly, the electoral reform
and amendments to the law on TV and Radio.

Mr. Torosyan informed Ambassador Pryakhin that the amendments to the
Electoral Code are expected to be adopted early December. Welcoming the
readiness by the Armenian authorities to improve election legislation,
Ambassador Pryakhin reiterated the concern expressed by experts
of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
(ODIHR) and the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe that a
late adoption of amendments might jeopardize the preparations for
the May 2007 parliamentary elections.

Ambassador Pryakhin said the OSCE was ready to assist Armenia in
conducting elections according to international standards, and that
the OSCE/ODIHR was ready to send an observation mission provided an
invitation was issued by the Armenian authorities in a timely manner.

The Chairman of the National Assembly agreed that the invitation
should be issued as soon as possible.

Speaking about the law on TV and Radio, Ambassador Pryakhin expressed
hope that public hearings on the draft amendments would be held
before the new draft was submitted to Parliament. The previous draft
was rejected in a first reading on 3 October. He also suggested an
expert review of the amendments could be carried out with the help
of the Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media.

The Head of the OSCE Office also informed Mr. Torosyan about the
assistance projects that have been implemented by the Office in order
to support the Armenian authorities in preparations for the elections
and in the area of capacity-building of the legislature.

Economist
Oct 20 2006

A prize affair
Oct 19th 2006 | ISTANBUL
>>From The Economist print edition

Orhan Pamuk, the French parliament and the Armenian massacres

WAS it for his writing or his commentary? The question has consumed
the country since Orhan Pamuk became the first Turk to win the Nobel
prize for literature (or indeed any Nobel). The comments, about the
mass slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, led last year to
Mr Pamuk’s prosecution on charges of insulting the "Turkish identity".

The charges were later dropped on a technicality, but not before they
had attracted a storm of international criticism.

Ascribing to him the Byzantine wiles displayed by some of his
characters, Mr Pamuk’s enemies are now saying that he engineered his
own trial so as to win the Nobel. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the mildly
Islamist prime minister, urged fellow Turks to "put aside polemics"
and congratulate Mr Pamuk, but the (pro-secular) president remained
pointedly silent.

The novelist’s detractors were given a boost, hours before the
award was announced, by the French National Assembly, when it voted
overwhelmingly for a bill to criminalise denial that the Armenians
were victims of a genocide. The bill is unlikely to become law, but
it still sparked a wave of anti-French demonstrations and vows that
France would somehow be made to "pay" for its misdeeds. Why not boot
out some 70,000 illegal workers from neighbouring Armenia, suggested
Yasar Yakis, a former minister from the ruling AK party?

The European Union enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, said that the
French bill "instead of opening up the debate [on the Armenians in
Turkey] would rather close it down." Mesrob Mutafyan, the Armenian
Orthodox patriarch in Istanbul, voiced fears that his 80,000-member
flock might now become targets for ultra-nationalist vigilantes.

Happily, no Armenian has been hurt (or deported) so far. Nor
have efforts to break the ice between ordinary Turks and Armenians
stopped-an exhibition by Turkish and Armenian photographers depicting
daily life in Istanbul and Yerevan is to open soon.

There may even be a silver lining to the French cloud. Basking on
the moral high ground, Mr Erdogan said he would not be trapped into
responding to France’s "assault on free speech" in kind. The justice
minister, Cemil Cicek, is hinting that Turkey’s article 301, under
which Mr Pamuk and scores of fellow writers and academics have been
prosecuted, may be scrapped. If it is, Turkey’s EU hopes would be
resuscitated-and future award-winning novelists could then claim to
have been judged solely by their works, not their deeds.

Screen Weekly, India
Oct 20 2006

Spirit & Impact

Rwita Dutta
Posted online: Friday, October 20, 2006 at 0000 hours IST

Indian Documentaries were much-talked about at the recently held
International 1001 Documentary Film Festival in Turkey…

Istanbul is history reincarnated. With the Asian part on one side
and Europe on the other, the city represents universality. Especially
the nine days of The "International 1001 Documentary Film Festival"
(September 29 to October 5, 2006) has accentuated the universality of
the seventh art form called ‘cinema’. The Association of Documentary
Filmmakers’ of Turkey may not have a mega budget to provide its
guests with sumptuous cocktail parties every night, but shows utmost
dedication in terms of choosing the right kind of documentaries coming
from all over the world. The festival provided a warm atmosphere for
the documentary filmmakers and spectators from all over the globe to
meet and get to know each other through cinema.

Nurdan Arca, the Director of this otherwise humble looking, low profile
festival declared the mission of the Association Of Documentary Film
Makers’ of Turkey who hosted this festival. They hold the eternal
belief that it is possible to live in a world without wars. Quite
formidable and indeed pertinent!

The festival has so far hosted more than 100 documentary makers with
754 films from 44 countries since 1977. They have till date 50,000
audience and more. This year, itself, they have a wide spectrum of
124 films from 29 countries. The documentaries exhibit varieties of
subjects. From human portraits to encounters in daily life as well as
social issues are hindered upon. This 9th edition of Documentary Film
Festival had twelve sections screened in four most significant venues
in the city: the Italian Cultural Center, the French Cultural Center,
Kamal Ataturk Cultural Center and Nazim Hikmet Cultural Center.

The focus country was Finland. It beautifully projects films, which
tell us the stories of a country perceived to be cold and distant.

Among the seven films travelling from the northern tip of the globe,
Arto Halonen was the famous one. On the closing day, the audience
was bemused by the retrospective of Arto’s six films. From Tankman
of Cuba, he has come a long way in the amazing Pavlov’s Dogs – his
latest on Russia.

Created in cooperation with the Polish TV, the four documentary films
from Poland looked at history by using footages from archives. There
were also few selected Armenian films from their one and only
International Film Festival "Golden Apricot".

Jan Vrijman Foundation is an offshoot of the founder of the biggest
documentary film festival, IDFA in Holland, Amsterdam. This foundation
is a boon for the talented, upcoming, independent filmmakers from
across the continents as it funds and supports various projects every
year. The ninth 1001 Documentary Film Festival presents a collection
of films supported by the foundation.

The Kultur and Culture is the joint venture of the documentary makers
of USA and Turkey. One of their latest productions Time Piece is an
ensemble of collective documentaries based on different time slots
in a single day. This film had its world premiere in this festival.

Celebrated documentary makers from USA such as Albert Maysels and
Sam Pollard ere also present with their works.

In the segment named "Cultures-Colors", eight documentaries were
screened. All of these tell us the stories of colors, cultures
and languages that are dying. For instance, Elizabeta Koneska, an
ethnologist from Macedonia traced back the existence of a Turkish
ethnic, nomadic group in Macedonia whereas a film from China highlights
the triumphs and traumas of acrobatic industry there.

Everybody Has A Story made a thoughtful insight into the everyday
lives of people, their stories and the hidden heroes among them.

Stories of forced migration and immigrants who struggle to establish
roots in their new countries seem to bear a universal theme. In
Far from Home, they share their stories of rootlessness. There were
elaborate Q/A sessions after most of the films and the audience enjoyed
the opportunity to meet with the filmmakers. Several panels were
organized amongst which were "Reproduction of violence in the media
and in documentary films", "Growing influences of documentaries". There
was also a master class of editing named "Editing Films: Editing Life".

The package of Bengal was extraordinary. Tales from both East and
West Bengal were truly represented in documentaries coming from
Bangladesh as well as Kolkata. Lots of questions were asked about
Indian documentaries, which were probably been satisfactorily answered
by the Indian Film Critics present there.

Documentaries are questioning life and presenting the ethereal. They
broaden our horizons open up new windows for us to discover what
lies behind the visible. The festival in the ‘City of two Continents’
was successful in bringing out the crux of the power of documentaries!
From: Baghdasarian

Economist
Oct 20 2006

Georgia’s prospects
Oct 19th 2006
>>From Economist.com

Russia’s mixture of economic, political and covert-action pressure
on Georgia recalls of another stormy and scary period, in the Baltic
states in the 1990s, that changed history completely

WHEN your correspondent lived in the Baltics in the early 1990s, it
was common to pooh-pooh the prospect of NATO membership. The obstacles
seemed insurmountable: Soviet occupation soldiers who wouldn’t go
home; disputed borders with Russia; the expense; the gulf between NATO
standards and those of the flimsy and ill-run Baltic home guards-and
most of all the deafening lack of enthusiasm from the West.

But just as Russia’s economic sanctions shunted Baltic foreign
trade westwards, its insistence that letting the Balts join NATO
was "impermissible" (a favourite Kremlin word) was the strongest
proof that membership of the alliance was not just desirable, but
necessary. Russia neatly backed that up with footdragging on the
withdrawal of the Russian military, refusal to recognise the Baltic
states’ legal continuity from the pre-war period and endless huffing
and puffing about the language and citizenship laws. It all made local
support for NATO soar: when you scare people, they buy more insurance.

After a bit, the West came round, too. The Baltic states are still
effectively indefensible; two of them (Estonia and Latvia) still lack
border treaties with Russia. Yet, rather like the even less defensible
West Berlin during the cold war, they have gained a symbolic importance
that means they cannot be abandoned. (Or so they hope).

As an illustration, just imagine how different history would have
been if the Kremlin line in the 1990s had been: "Sure, go ahead and
join NATO if you want. We wouldn’t dream of interfering and we want
excellent relations with NATO ourselves anyway. Of course we will
pull our troops out as soon as we can…and we will be delighted
to sign border agreements as soon as possible, recognising your
historical continuity."

That message would have destroyed the case for NATO expansion
overnight. It is unlikely that any of the ex-communist countries
would have wanted to join or that NATO would have wanted to have them.

Now Russia is making the same mistake with Georgia. NATO’s appetite for
expanding to the eastern shores of the Black Sea is mostly minimal. The
alliance is dreadfully overstretched anyway and the last thing it
needs militarily is another small poor country which needs a lot and
(pipelines apart) offers little.

But Russia’s determination to see Georgia as part of a ‘near abroad’
over which it wields a geopolitical veto is creating the mood-already
in Georgia and soon, with luck, in the West-in which the opposite
will happen.

It is not just because bullying goes down badly. Russia has signally
failed to show the benefits of being an ally. Every country that teams
up with Russia ends up regretting it. Nobody in the Kremlin seems to
have bothered to think about loyal little Armenia, savagely hit by the
sanctions against Georgia. In Belarus, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka
calls Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, "worse than Stalin" and is
putting out feelers to the West. Cheap gas sounds nice initially-but
it always comes at a high price.

The stubborn attractiveness of the ‘Euro-Atlantic orientation’ is
striking given that it survives both the hideously botched occupation
of Iraq and extraordinarily selfish agricultural protectionism. It must
surely give the Kremlin foreign policy thinkers pause for thought that
for all its faults NATO has a queue of real countries eager to join
it, whereas only a handful of puppet states such as Transdniestria
want to go in the other direction.

Economist
Oct 20 2006

Free speech under threat
Oct 19th 2006
>>From The Economist print edition

What Britain’s debate about the Islamic veil has in common with
France’s bill on Armenian genocide

IN 1999 Jack Straw, then Britain’s home secretary, was attacked for
being rude about an ethnic minority. There were demands for criminal
investigations, appeals to various commissions and public agencies, a
fevered debate over whether Mr Straw was racist. On that occasion, he
was accused of demeaning gypsies by saying that people who
masqueraded as travellers seemed to think they had a right to commit
crimes. In the past few weeks Mr Straw, now leader of the House of
Commons, has triggered a similar response by arguing that the Muslim
veil (ie, the full, face-covering niqab) is an unhelpful symbol of
separateness. This week he won the backing of his boss, Tony Blair.

These episodes are reminders not that Mr Straw is hostile to
minorities (he isn’t) but that any debate in Europe about minority
rights soon degenerates into a fight between self-proclaimed
community leaders, public agencies, the police, courts and the law.
It may be hard to reconcile militant Islam with secular Europe. But
Europeans have fostered a culture, legal system and set of
institutions that have a chilling effect on public debate, making it
hard to discuss the subject honestly.

The starting-point of this failure, argues Gerard Alexander, at the
American Enterprise Institute, is a surprising one: Holocaust-denial
laws. At the height of this year’s row over cartoons of Muhammad in a
Danish newspaper, devout Muslims argued that, if it was right to
limit free speech in one area, it was right to do it in another. They
wanted insulting the Prophet to be made a crime.

Restrictions on free speech are always undesirable. Holocaust-denial
laws may have been justified in Germany and Austria because they
helped to stop something even worse: a revival of Nazism. Yet that is
surely no longer a risk in either country. And it certainly does not
justify the extension of such laws to other countries where there is
no real threat of Nazism, such as France and Belgium; or the adoption
of "hate speech" legislation that has nothing to do with Nazism; or
the interpretation of laws against incitement to violence in a way
that constrains speech which merely causes offence.

The most vivid example of the creeping extension of Holocaust-denial
laws has come in the French National Assembly, which last week voted
for a bill to make denial of the genocide of Armenians in Turkey
during the first world war a criminal offence. The political context
for this was not just vociferous lobbying by Armenians in France but
also growing hostility among voters to the idea of Turkish membership
of the European Union. To appeal to such voters, the assembly proved
ready to place restrictions on one of the most fundamental of all
freedoms, that of speech (though in fact the bill is unlikely to
become law).

This is a perfectly logical extension of a slew of laws imposing
free-speech restrictions to suppress racial, ethnic and religious
hatred. Indeed, it may be an offence to deny the Armenian genocide in
France already, because its Holocaust-denial law was extended in 1990
to cover all crimes against humanity. Bernard Lewis, an American
historian, was condemned by a French court in 1995 under this law.
Britain also has laws against incitement to racial hatred; last
January it tried but failed to extend them to religious hatred. On
the face of it, then, it does not seem outlandish for Muslims to
demand that Islam be equally "protected" under speech-restricting
laws.

Laws against racial and religious hatred are often defended on the
ground that they are directed at racists and xenophobes. Certainly,
they have been used against such people. In 2004 Belgium’s highest
court found a Flemish far-right party, the Vlaams Blok, guilty of
racism, forcing it to disband (though it regrouped under a new name).
But such laws have not been restricted to the far right; they have
been used against pillars of society. Mr Lewis is a frequent guest of
both the Jordanian royal family and the White House. Last year, a
French court found Le Monde, the grande dame of French newspapers,
guilty of inciting hatred against Jews. Oriana Fallaci, one of
Italy’s best-known journalists, was awaiting trial for offending
Islam when she died. Such lawsuits do not discourage racists; they
discourage free speech.

Fighting for the right to speak
As always happens, an industry grows up around any such laws (and
lawsuits), dedicated to policing, sustaining and extending the legal
framework. The industry consists of government bodies, such as
Britain’s Commission for Racial Equality, which investigate
complaints; official agencies, such as France’s Conseil Superieur de
l’Audiovisuel, which monitor the media for racist remarks; and any
number of informal organisations that represent minorities and win
their spurs by doing battle with the political establishment.

Laws against incitement to hatred tend to hamper openness of debate
because they are too easily interpreted as laws against causing
offence. The placing of sanctions on "offensive" speech risks
conflating two different things: bigoted speech and constructive
criticism. The big danger is that, in the name of stopping bigots,
one may end up stopping all criticism.

The outcome is an odd combination, whereby Europe simultaneously
suppresses but also radicalises its debate about Islam. Acts of
self-censorship co-exist with fevered argument. Spain’s folklore
festivals may rid themselves of medieval depictions of Muhammad and
the Deutsche Oper in Berlin may cancel a production for fear of
Islamist reprisals. But at the same time, extremists exploit
arguments over the veil in Britain or over the pope’s reference to a
14th-century Byzantine emperor.

The good news is that politicians have begun to recognise the risk of
stifling debate. Germany’s Angela Merkel criticised the opera house
for self-censorship. Most of Mr Straw’s cabinet colleagues, and not
only Mr Blair, have rallied to support him. They are right to. It is
hard to integrate Muslims into European society. Restricting free
speech makes it even harder.

All stick and no carrot

The Messenger, Georgia
Oct 20 2006

Russia still insists the mass deportations of Georgians are just
what any western country would do: expel illegal immigrants. However,
as Russian newspaper Kommersant pointed out, when western countries
deport illegal immigrants they make sure that they are given the
proper care, and don’t let them die on the way to the plane.

The latest crisis amply demonstrates failure of Russian policy on
Georgia. Russia has pushed Georgia away probably for ever by its
actions, and now seems intent on just destabilising the country. This
short-sighted policy is all the more stupid when considering that
if they really do manage to push Georgia over the edge then Russia’s
North Caucasus will fall of the map with it.

Not even the most optimistic Kremlin apparatchik can be under the
illusion that a pro-Moscow force will ever come to power in Georgia
now. That might have been a possibility once, Moscow could have offered
to help return the separatist territories, and in return Georgia would
have been eternally grateful, but that time has long since passed.

Yesterday US Assistant Secretary of State for Eurasian affairs Dan
Fried said that a stable Georgia is in Russia’s interests. Though
that is patently obvious, it seems that no one in the Kremlin is
willing to accept the fact. Russia can only benefit from a peaceful,
predictable Georgia, and that means a democratic and united Georgia.
It is clear that any formal recognition of Abkhazia or South Ossetia
would compel the Georgian leadership to go to war, however disastrous
that would be. It is equally clear that the current status quo makes
it all but impossible for Russia and Georgia to have normal relations.

Russia has legitimate security interests of course, including not
wanting to see Georgia in NATO, or at the very least not in NATO and
with US bases on its soil, but there is more than one way to skin a
cat: deals can be struck. Georgia would almost certainly agree to most
Russian demands if Abkhazia was on the table, the all-stick-no-carrot
approach pays no dividends. Georgia bashing just makes Georgia ever
more determined to join NATO, as every time Russia lashes out it
proves that Georgia is in need of protection.

The situation as it stands could develop in two possible ways,
Russia could make good on the statements of some of its more
radical politicians and turn Georgia into a failed state. This
would be catastrophic for Georgia, but also for Russia. With
barely contained tensions in North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and
Kabardino-Balkaria-all on Georgia’s border-any chaos in Georgia would
snowball. There is also the possibility that a freefalling Georgia
would bring Azerbaijan and Armenia with it, which would really be
a disaster.

The other scenario is the Baltic one, Russia’s isolation of Georgia
forces the latter to find new markets, democratise and westernise
quickly and pay global prices for energy, and eventually, begrudgingly,
Russia is compelled to treat Georgia as an equal partner. Whether
Georgia meets with triumph or disaster is now largely down to the
sanity of Russian decision makers. In the latest crisis, Russia has
as much to lose as Georgia does.

Moscow officials pursue Caucasian residents
By Vahe Avanesian and Lala Nuri in Moscow and Sopho Bukia in Tbilisi

Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)
Oct 19 2006

Georgians in Russia fear for their future as Moscow-Tbilisi dispute
escalates

For a week now, Gia Paichadze has not left his apartment on Bagritsky
Street in Moscow, which he’s been renting for two years, except for
a quick dash to a nearby kiosk to buy food or a newspaper.

A week ago, Paichadze was still working as the manager of a chain of
grocery shops outside Moscow. The shops, which all belonged to ethnic
Georgians, have now all been shut down, and signs on the doors say
they are "closed for technical reasons".

Paichadeze said they had taken the decision to shut the shops
themselves, after the daily visits by tax officials, health inspectors
and others had become unbearable.

"The point is that we are Georgians, and that explains everything,"
he told IWPR by telephone. "My documents are in perfect order, but
showing my face on the street is still a risk. I stay at home and
watch the news. I’ll wait for a couple of months, and if things don’t
calm down, I’ll leave."

Moscow has kept up the heat on Tbilisi following the latter’s arrest of
four Russian officers on espionage charges on September 27, even though
the four were later released and handed over to the Russian side.

Moscow cut off all air, land, sea and postal links with its southern
neighbour. It has also imposed restrictions on bank transfers, directly
hurting the hundreds of thousands of Georgians working in Russia.

Over the last few days, Moscow courts have handed down deportation
sentences on 130 illegal migrants from Georgia and around 700 Georgian
citizens have left the Russian capital.

On October 17, Georgian citizen Tengiz Togonidze, 58, died in Moscow’s
Domodedovo Airport a few hours before he was about to be deported,
raising a storm of protest in Georgia.

Georgia’s foreign ministry accused the Russian authorities of violating
the rights of Georgian citizens. The ministry said Togonidze, who
was asthmatic, did not receive proper medical aid – an allegation
the Russians have denied.

Russia’s federal migration service says that deportation flights of
Georgians continue. People are being detained on the street and taken
to one of eight special stations set up in Moscow. A court ruling
is needed for the deportation to go ahead, but this is basically
a formality.

Mikhail Tyurkin, deputy director of the federal migration service,
said, "An analysis of requests from regions and subjects of Russia
has led us to conclude that we don’t need Georgian citizens at
the moment. They will be given neither quotas for living, nor for
temporary work."

Georgian-owned businesses are also being targeted. The well-known
Crystal and Golden Palace casinos in Moscow have been closed down.

The official charge sheet says the casinos failed to produce licenses
for some of their slot machines and, among other violations, paid
employees’ salaries in envelopes. But it also noted that the owners
are "natives of Georgia".

The Russian police have even traced illegal migrants from Georgia
through their children. They asked a number of schools in the capital
to provide them with a list of pupils with Georgian surnames and then
questioned the children about where their parents lived, whether they
had visas and were registered.

Nato Merabishvili, who has lived in Moscow for 15 years, said her son
Kakha had been interrogated. "It’s simply a disgrace, and it was done
in such a humiliating manner!" she fumed.

Russian citizen Sveta Smirnova has a Georgian husband and their
children go to a school in the centre of Moscow. "Every morning my
parents take the kids to school and wait for them there till the end of
the studies," she told IWPR. "My children have a Georgian surname, and
they won’t be safe so long as this anti-Georgian hysteria continues."

The Russian-Georgian conflict has also affected migrants from other
parts of the South Caucasus.

Teimuraz Huseinli, chairman of the Azerbaijani Society Yeni Sabakh
(New Day) in Moscow, said police raids on food markets, where many
Azerbaijanis work, had intensified lately. "Even after the terrorist
acts in Moscow, the checking campaigns were not as pervasive as
this one," he told IWPR. "They’ve begun checking documents even in
people’s apartments. Of course, you can always buy them off, but
the prices have risen sharply. They used to take 100 to 200 rubles
(four to seven US dollars) for an expired migration card, now the
cost is at least 50 dollars."

However, Georgians, who do not have the right documents, now prefer
to pass themselves off as Armenians. Georgian citizens Kristina
Sanikidze graduated from Moscow State University. Because she had
problems getting a job, she applied for a Russian passport with her
surname changed to Akopova. "After all these events, I’ve stopped
hoping that anything good will come out of it," she said. "My Georgian
passport has expired, and I can’t even go back to Tbilisi to get a
new one… I’m a captive in Moscow, I’m even afraid of going outside."

A young Georgian named Anzori has been working on Moscow building
sites for more than a year and his temporary registration, permission
to work and visa have all expired. However, he has managed to get
himself a paper saying that his documents are being processed –
and that he has an Armenian surname.

"That means they treat me fairly OK," Anzori told IWPR. "For instance,
my friends and I – none of us has normal documents – were coming
back from work, when policemen stopped us. What else could we
do? As one of the policemen was reading my papers, we said we were
against [Georgian president Mikheil] Saakashvili and swore at the
president. They took pity on us and let us continue on our way. They
even refused to take money."

IWPR witnessed how Georgians are now being treated. A policeman stopped
an Armenian passer-by, and asked him to present his documents. At
that moment, a colleague approached him, escorting a young man. "Look,
I’ve got a Georgian," he said, whereupon the first policemen returned
the documents to the Armenian, saying he was "free", and they led
the Georgian off together.

"I don’t know when all this is going to end," said Malkhaz Janashia,
a Georgian, who has lived in Moscow for 22 years. "Georgians can no
longer walk Moscow streets free of charge, even if their documents
are faultless. You have to pay bribes everywhere. Spending one week
in the country, of which I am a citizen, has cost me 3,000 rubles
(110 dollars)."

An informal poll among Muscovites shows that most support the official
line. "I am fully supportive of our authorities’ actions, Georgians
should know where their place is," said Valentina Nikolayevna. "If
they don’t agree with their president, they should speak out."

"This is the right thing to do to all of them, especially to the
Georgians, because they’ve proved to be the most ungrateful of all,"
said businessman Mikhail Vorobyov.

Only two of more than ten people questioned were critical about the
crackdown. "Georgians are toiling for the good of our country, and
this is how we respond," said one of them, Anna Ageyeva.

Russia shows no signs of wishing to lift its sanctions against
Georgia in the near future. "The release of our [officers] does not
mean a reversal of Georgia’s deliberate anti-Russian policy," Russian
foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told foreign journalists. "And there
is not yet a good reason for us to reconsider our actions."

Vahe Avanesian is director of the Moscow office of the Armenian
TV-channel Shant. Lala Nuri works for the newspaper Azerros in
Moscow. Sopho Bukia is IWPR’s Georgia Editor in Tbilisi.

My Notebook: Turkey’s still hanging on in the departure lounge
Hardev Kaur
20 Oct 2006

New Straits Times, Malaysia
Oct 19 2006

WHILE the Western world rightly recognised the works of Turkish
novelist Orhan Pamuk and awarded him this year’s Nobel Prize in
Literature, it does not appear as willing to accept his country as
a member of the European Union.

Just as Pamuk was named the winner of the award, another hurdle was
placed in the path of Ankara’s EU membership, raising suspicions that
it is no longer wanted as a member of the European "club".

The French Parliament voted last Thursday, by a wide margin, to make
it a criminal act to deny an Armenian genocide at the hands of Ottoman
Turks, enraging Turkey and further deepening its suspicion of the EU.

Meanwhile, Turkish lawmakers proposed a counter-bill that would
recognise an "Algerian genocide" carried out by colonial French forces
in 1945.

A British Member of Parliament, Denis Macshane, points out that
"it was the decaying elements of the Ottoman Empire that killed the
Armenians, not the modern Turkish republic. If the EU is to demand
apologies for historic misdeeds from its existing members, let alone
potential members, then it may as well dissolve itself".

Today, Turkey is a full and important member of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organisation (Nato) and has deployed its troops in a number
of areas, the latest being in Lebanon.

"We want your troops. You can die for our cause. But we do not want
you at the table as an EU member." That seems to be the message for
Turkey which has met the Copenhagen Criteria in 2002 for entry.

Even so, it is still in the "departure lounge" and every month a new
hurdle is put in its way, delaying its departure for the EU. There is
increasing belief that Turkey’s entry is not only a technical process
but also a political one in which other "non-Copenhagen Criteria"
play a role.

"Turkey is …too poor … too Muslim, too harsh, too culturally
different, to everything," Samuel Huntington wrote in The Clash of
Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order.

Even the pope seems to be weighing against Turkey’s membership. Jim
Bencivenga writing in the Christian Science Monitor in April last year
quotes Pope Benedict XVI as saying: "The roots that have formed Europe
are those of Christianity. Turkey has always represented a different
continent, in permanent contrast to Europe… It would be an error
to equate the two continents… Turkey is founded on Islam… Thus
the entry of Turkey into the EU would be anti-historical."

But a walk through the streets of Istanbul reveals the dynamism of
"Islam and Christendom, East and West, Asia and Europe". These may be
cliches but they come alive in this ancient city with a modern outlook.

Ali Babajan, Minister of State and EU chief negotiator, told a group
of Eisenhower Fellows in Istanbul recently that "Islam and secularism
operate in Turkey better and better".

He said Ankara’s reforms, undertaken in conformity with the Copenhagen
Criteria, were important not only for Turkey and Europe but also for
the region.

But the debate that it is different, with its large Muslim population,
continues to take centre stage. Turkey is different. "It is one of
the few countries that can do business with Israel and the Arab world
with the same level of acceptance," Babajan explains.

Even so, the doubts about Turkey persist. And if Europe pushes Ankara
away, the world would have lost an opportunity to prove that there
can be co-operation and collaboration between the Muslim and Western
worlds. There are common values in both regions that can and should
be exploited to bring the two worlds closer together especially in
the current environment and the need to fight the common enemy.

Unfortunately, "Europe is doing its level best to tell Turkey it is no
longer wanted as part of the European Union", Macshane, the Labour MP
for Rotherman who was Britain’s Europe Minister between 2002 and 2005,
wrote in the Financial Times.

It also sends a very strong albeit wrong message to the Muslim world,
under siege from numerous quarters, that it is not welcome to sit
at the same table as other Europeans not because it does not qualify
but merely because of the faith of its citizens.

Former Turkish president Turgut Ozal put it more bluntly when he said
that Turkey would not become a member of the European Community,
and the real reason "is that we are Muslim and they are Christian
and they don’t say that".

Pamuk told the Washington Post that "Turkey’s future lies in the
European Union", and that its inclusion would be "a wonderful thing
for Turkey, for Europe and for the world". Will the Western world
listen to the Nobel Laureate and accept his country as a member of
the EU just as they have accepted and honoured him?

The novel of ambiguity
Are the transformations effected in Orhan Pamuk’s novels an extension
of their author’s own positioning, asks Elias Khoury*

Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt
Oct 19-25 2006

Last year, at the Goteborg Book Fair, where dozens of writers from
the four corners of the globe meet at the Swedish dining table that
offers a main course called the Nobel Prize, I sat down to breakfast
at my hotel with Orhan Pamuk. The Turkish novelist looked distracted,
worn down with waiting. The newspapers were full of the news of the
legal charges brought against him on account of his statements about
the genocide of Armenians and rumours were rife among journalists and
other gossips that he was a likely candidate for the Nobel. I jokingly
said that anxiety did no good and that waiting for the award may mean
that it will never come. I went over the well-known story concerning
the prominent Turkish novelist Yashar Kemal who was led to believe that
renting a house in Stockholm would place him on the scene and the award
jury would, as a consequence, find him hard to overlook. The result was
that the prize eluded him; he became a prime example of miscalculation.

Pamuk made no comment and contented himself with a smile. It was the
first time his name had been mentioned among possible nominees. I
suggested that nomination by the newspapers was not a good sign and
that the prize usually goes to a name not bandied about in the media.

He asked me about Adonis and I said that in the Arab world we
considered that he had long ago won the award and was no longer in
any need of it.

I was wrong and Pamuk was right. His anxiety was well-placed: the
prize that passed him over last year has now been awarded him, thus
consecrating Turkish literature in its modernist and postmodernist
modes. Yashar Kemal had written stunning pastoral novels relying
on popular heritage and folk tales. Pamuk, on the other hand, has
produced modernist novels that border on the Borgesian text, playing
with fantasy and rereading the past in the language of the present.

The crux of the Pamukian novel is ambiguity: of identity, of
styles, of positionality. He is a European writer because, since
the Ataturk revolution, Turkey has been stricken by a frenzy of
Europeanisation, casting off the Ottoman tarbouche and rushing to
embrace secularisation, forgetting that the tarbouche is not indigenous
but had come from Austria and that secularisation, albeit one of the
hallmarks of the French Revolution, remains riddled with ambiguity
in many European countries.

Last Thursday, as I watched an Armenian demonstration in the Place
des Martyres in Beirut against Turkey’s participation in UNIFEL,
soon after the announcement that Pamuk had won the Nobel, I could
not help but think of his novel The White Castle. The story, which
centres on the ambiguity of identity, is about a trader from Venice
who falls captive to the Turks and becomes the slave of a Turkish
scholar who fervently wishes to learn astronomy, manufacture gunpowder
and construct a giant cannon. The story is not about the way the Turk
employs his European slave in his primitive scientific research but
about the resemblance between the two men, a resemblance so close that
they look like twins. The novel becomes a space in which memories are
exchanged, ending up as the site for the exchange of the present. The
Turk becomes a Venetian and the Venetian a Turk.

The game of the novel is pivoted on the personality of its author.

The reader wonders which one wrote the book, the Turk or the Italian?

It recalls similar ambiguities in the main character in Tayib Saleh’s
novel Season of Migration to the North. Who is Mustafa Saeed? Did he
really exist or is he the exotic facet of the narrator’s personality?

While The White Castle can be read as variation on Saleh’s novel
and a rewriting of it, it goes further in sounding out a latent
Borgesian inspiration that surfaces in all of Pamuk’s novels then
disappears behind a truncated detective game in The Black Book,
behind questions about the relationship between heritage and imported
European Renaissance art in My Name is Red, behind a fierce realism
and overwhelming imaginative flow in Snow or behind the labyrinth
of a passion occasioned by a book as in The New Life. But what is
the relationship between the Armenian demonstration in Beirut and
Pamuk’s literary texts?

No Armenian writer has won the Nobel Prize, nor has the Armenian
genocide entered Turkish literature. Pamuk, whose criticism of
the Turkish position that does not admit its responsibility for the
Armenian genocide raised hell in his homeland has not written a novel
about the Armenians, satisfying himself instead with the position
publicised in the media. It was a comment by Nedim Gèrsel about the
Nobel Prize being awarded to his colleague that turned the Armenian
demonstration in my eyes into an event related to the prize.

Did Pamuk receive the award in his capacity as an alternative to an
Armenian writer? Has the game of doppelgangers and the interlocking
of identities now overtaken the novelist himself, turning him into
the hero of a novel he did not write? The game of the writer’s
transformation into the hero of a novel he has not penned fascinates
me because it is one of the signs of the text’s revenge on the writer
who considers that his intelligence allows him to pass over the very
chalice he has given to the heroes of his novels to drink. Was this
not the fate of Salman Rushdie, Kafka and Emile Habiby, among others?

Pamuk’s game is played between the poles of popular commercial
and high literature. Despite being an experimental writer, his
experimentation does not include the breaking of new ground. He has
contented himself with a measuring of the pulse of experimentation,
constructing modernist narratives that go beyond realism to the
fantastic, build literary texts on literature, are enthralled by the
book, return to long-forgotten centuries without abandoning their
contemporaneity and are pivoted on Istanbul as a point of intersection
between memory and imagination. He is a writer whose ability to treat
current issues in his country and in the world singles him out for
popularity. He measures the pulse of the media then turns it into
literature, without lapsing into cliche or triteness.

Within the text it is intelligence that takes precedence over all other
aspects. The narrative is vivid, brilliant, and the writer resides in
flagrant ambiguity. As Pamuk never tires of saying, he is European by
inclination — Turkey joined Europe when the Italian merchant became
a Turkish scientist — a writer who rebelled against the realism of
his literary forefathers and who is a modernist in all things. He
does not live outside Istanbul because he has become its author.

* The writer is Editor-in-Chief of the weekly literary supplement of
the Lebanese daily Al-Nahar , and distinguished professor of Middle
Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He has published
11 novels, of which five have been translated into English : Little
Mountain ( 1989 ), Gates of the City ( 1993 ), The Journey of Little
Gandhi ( 1994 ), The Kingdom of Strangers ( 1996 ) and Gate of the Sun
( 2006 ).

–Boundary_(ID_ef7LgGXTMR2yq3KZUslZgA)–