Month: October 2006

STATUE COMMEMORATING ARMENIAN DEATHS STOLEN

Indianapolis Star, IN
Oct 16 2006

Chaville, France — A statue commemorating the World War I-era massacre
of Armenians in Turkey was stolen, an official said Saturday, two days
after French lawmakers approved a bill that would make it a crime to
deny that the killings amounted to genocide.

The bronze monument, installed in front of the train station in the
Paris suburb of Chaville in 2002, disappeared between Friday night
and Saturday morning, said authorities for the Haut-de-Seine region.

The police have not ruled out the possibility that the statue, which
weighs several hundred pounds, was stolen to be sold as scrap metal,
said Stephane Topalian, who serves on the board of the local chapter
of the Armenian church.
From: Baghdasarian

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BILL IS "FOOLISH" – FINNISH FM

Newsroom Finland, Finland
Oct 16 2006

Erkki Tuomioja (soc dem), the Finnish foreign minister, said in an
internet diary entry posted Saturday that the French parliament’s
decision to pass a bill making it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide
was "foolish".

"When I say that I regard the decision to be foolish and hope for
its rapid withdrawal it has nothing to do with what happened to the
Armenians in Turkey," Mr Tuomioja said.

"Personally I consider genocide to be the right word to describe what
happened and hope that the Turkish would be prepared to accept this
as well. However, parliaments and governments are not to intervene
in it by legislating which historical truths are to be allowed and
which not."

Mr Tuomioja added that the bill would increase the power of hardliners
in Turkey.

AGAINST STATE-BACKED TRUTHS
By The Crimson Staff

Harvard Crimson, MA
Oct 16 2006

The French bill that criminalizes Armenian genocide should not
become law

Last Thursday, the French parliament exacerbated existing tensions
between European states and Turkey, which is in talks to join the
European Union. In an overwhelming 109-19 vote, the lower chamber of
the French National Assembly unwisely passed a bill to criminalize
the denial of the 1915 genocide of Armenians on Turkish soil. The
French Senate and President have the chance to bury the bill, and we
hope they take it.

Unsurprisingly, the Turkish government reacted swiftly against
this bill, as have Turkish emigrants all over Europe. Some Turkish
parliament members proposed a law criminalizing the denial of the
French colonial genocide of Algerians (historians prefer to deem it
colonial warfare). In France this weekend, vandals defaced one of
the many existing monuments to the massacred Armenians.

These actions must be understood in a larger context. Under the
proposed French bill, Armenian genocide deniers would face fines and
prison terms equivalent to those mandated by anti-Holocaust-denying
laws in some central European nations. Although the motivations
for these laws may have been understandable in the post-war era,
governments should not impose their version of the truth over their
citizens.

The French bill is well intentioned; its goal is to force Turkey to
confront the atrocities committed by the ruling Committee for Union
and Progress during World War I. But we cannot help but be skeptical
of any state trying to impose its version of history and truth.

States should simply avoid this business. Thus, our opposition extends
beyond the French bill to the laws like those in Germany, Poland,
Austria, and Switzerland which criminalize Holocaust denial.

France’s passage of this bill would be an ironic parallel to the
circumstances in Turkey, which tried Orhan Pamuk, this year’s
Nobel laureate for literature, for speaking about the Armenian
genocide-which violates Article 301 of the Turkish penal code. In
defending free speech, even the expatriate Pamuk spoke against the
French bill. A free market of ideas, not laws imposed by the state,
should establish what is true.

TURKEY’S POLITICAL FUTURE

Washington Times, DC
Oct 16 2006

In Turkey’s 2002 elections, only two parties received more than the
10 percent of the vote required to win seats in parliament. This gave
the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which elected Recep Tayyip
Erdogan prime minister in 2003, a two-thirds majority in Turkey’s
first two-party parliament since 1954. Several polls now have AKP
lower than its 2002 election performance. If the election were
held today, says Soner Cagaptay, a Turkey expert at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, AKP would receive around 25 percent
of the vote. Opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party
(CHP) and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), would likely receive
around 20 percent each. A three-party parliament is almost certain;
a four-party parliament is also quite possible. Even if AKP were to
win 30 percent of the vote, it would lose its parliamentary majority,
and some form of coalition government would be formed.

To achieve electoral success in Turkey, Mr. Cagaptay said, a party
needs two indispensable elements: a well-organized party structure
with good grass-roots support, and a charismatic figure with strong
name recognition. Turkish politics is largely personality-driven,
and Mr. Erdogan, by all accounts a captivating speaker, fits the bill
for the AKP. While several of the opposition parties have strong
organizational structures, they lack leaders with Mr. Erdogan’s
charisma.

The only opposition party to cross over the 10 percent threshold
in the 2002 elections was CHP, which is also the best contender
to overtake AKP in the Nov. 2007 election. CHP is nationalist,
secular and supports government involvement in the private sector —
a left-of-center party similar to the British Labor Party before
Tony Blair. As the only opposition party with seats in parliament,
CHP has also become functionally an anti-AKP party, opposing it on
every issue, sometimes irrespective of its own ideology.

MHP is a nationalist party that naturally picks up support as anger at
AKP — particularly the perception that AKP is failing to deal with
the terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) — grows. The PKK is a
particularly difficult issue for Washington and has proved to be one
obstacle in restoring the U.S.-Turkey relationship that soured in 2003
when Turkey denied the United States use of its territory during the
invasion of Iraq. In the years since, Turkey has been upset by both
the emboldening effect that any increased Kurdish autonomy in Iraq will
have on Kurdish separatists in Turkey and Washington’s refusal to allow
Turkish forces to strike PKK camps located in Northern Iraq. Turkish
attitudes toward America have deteriorated accordingly. Although CHP
and MHP reflect the strong and widespread anti-American sentiment,
both are less vehemently anti-American than Mr. Erdogan’s ruling party.

Opposition to AKP is also widespread in the country’s roughly 50
minority parties. Ali Mufit Gurtuna, like Mr. Erdogan a former mayor
of Istanbul, last week told us of his plans to use his strong name
recognition and good relations with civil society groups to bring
together minority opposition groups in 2007. Mr. Gurtuna, who called
for Turkish support of the U.S. action against Iraq, spoke persuasively
about the need for real political opposition to AKP. In addition to the
PKK, the 2007 election will hinge on corruption and the escalation of
nationalist sentiment. AKP came to power with anti-corruption pledges,
but it has been losing that reputation in recent years due to scandals
involving lower-level party officials.

The problems Turkey has encountered during its European Union accession
to some extent reflect negatively on AKP, as many Turks believe the
process has not been what the government promised. Turkey believes
the EU is treating it unfairly by demanding concessions in Cyprus
and recognition of the Armenian genocide, a dark episode in Turkey’s
history that the government has never acknowledged. At the same time,
many secular Turks are troubled by a shift in the AKP’s position
away from secularism and towards Islamist fundamentalism in both
its domestic and foreign policy. The result of next year’s Turkish
election may well determine whether Turkey remains a friend of the
West, or slips deeper into a hostile Islamist Middle East.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FUNDS APLENTY FOR KARS-AKHALKALAKI-BAKU RAILWAY
By M. Alkhazashvili

The Messenger, Georgia
Oct 16 2006

Construction of the Kars-Akhalkalaki-Baku railway will cost
approximately USD 420 million. Turkey and Azerbaijan have both
committed funding. Azerbaijan has also generously extended a credit
of USD 220 million to Georgia, with no interest and no deadline
for re-payment. Initially, the US expressed interest in investment
in the project, however the Armenian lobby in the US Senate blocked
the initiative, pointing out that were it not for the fact that both
Turkey and Azerbaijan have closed their borders with Armenia over the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the already existing railway from Kars to
Gyumri. The US has now completely withdrawn from negotiations.

Of the two draft proposals for the railway’s construction, the
one which envisages costs of USD 420 million was selected during
the trilateral negotiations currently being held in Baku. Irakli
Chogovadze, Georgian Minister of Economic Development, representing
Georgia in the negotiations, stated that Georgia was very particular
about not allowing the Kars-Akhalkalaki railway to compete with
the Georgian ports of Poti and Batumi for transporting cargo. He
stressed that the Georgian government will control this issue through
implementing a tariff system.

On Georgian territory, the railway will cover 192 kilometres of
existing track in need of rehabilitation, and a 29 kilometre segment,
Marabda-Kartsakhi, which needs to be completely built from scratch.

Unofficially, all three sides expressed their disappointment in US
withdrawal from the project.

Earlier this year US Senators Rick Santorum and Robert Menendez tabled
a bill which prohibits US assistance for the building of railways
traversing the Caucasus that circumvent Armenia.

Most likely, Kazakhstan and China will also join the project.

POLITICS OVER THE PAST

Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates
Oct 16 2006

Editorial

RAKING up the past is a favourite pastime of the politicians. This
past week, France’s lower house passed a bill that makes it a crime
to deny Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks.

Turkey is understandably upset over the timing of the move by French
lawmakers. Ankara views the development as yet another attempt
to undermine its ambitions to join the European Union. Which is
a legitimate concern, given the growing paranoia in Europe with
respect to Muslim presence on the continent. Turkey does not deny the
excesses against Armenians during the World War I but they had been
part of a larger conflict that saw casualties on both sides. And the
modern Turkey is trying to heal the historical wounds by reaching
out to Armenia.

The French bill, introduced by opposition Social Democrats, does not
help this process of reconciliation between the two countries.

Besides, if we all go on digging up the past, where are we all going
to end up? And what about France’s own role in Algeria? It is better
for everyone to let sleeping dogs lie.

BUTCHERS OF BUSHLAND: IS THE PRICE WORTH IT?
By Luciana Bohne

Online Journal, FL
Oct 16 2006

There is no longer any doubt that Bush’s policy in Iraq is facilitating
genocide. The recent Lancet study makes that very clear.

Bush’s unprovoked attack on Iraq was a premeditated and documentable
conspiracy to subvert the peace — a crime for which the Nazi
elites were hanged. The war crimes Nuremberg Tribunal, Protocol,
and Principles would have no qualms calling the invasion of Iraq "the
supreme crime," a crime from which all other war crimes have derived,
including genocide.

The war against Iraq was, as far as international law is concerned,
the mother of all crimes. It violated the Constitution two, three times
over, starting with violating the UN Charter, which is the "supreme
law of [our] land," according to the Constitution, and encompasses
the principles of the Nuremberg Judgment. The occupation violated the
Geneva Conventions against mistreatment of prisoners. It violated
the Geneva and Hague Conventions on the occupier’s obligations 1)
by failing to provide Iraqis with security and basic services,
while at the same time disbanding the Iraqi army, 2) by failing to
safeguard the sites of their national patrimony (National Library,
museums, etc), 3) by attempting to sell off Iraqi assets, banks,
services to foreign bidders 4) by altering Iraq’s tax laws without
representation (Bremer’s "Orders"). Now comes evidence of national
dying on a genocidal scale from the Lancet study.

We live in a grotesque rogue state. Its disregard for law and human
life endangers the planet, yet the larger the crime grows the less
we are able to fathom it. A terrible numbness envelops us. We are
becoming one of "them" — the freaks at the helm. Or, are we hoping
that "elections" will deliver us from evil? We have to realize,
sooner rather than later, that the only thing that stands between
the horror and their victims is our willingness to oppose it. This
empire thing will not stop by electing the Democrats: they

have never opposed this war. They will send more troops; they will
expend more funds; they will tell more lies.

Unless they start to fear us.

We say we "support the troops." Do we know what that means?

It means supporting the death and injury not only of nearly 3,000
US troops and 20,000 casualties but also the death of over 650,000
Iraqis, the detention, torture, and disappearance of an unknown number
of others, and the projected partition of the country.

It means supporting genocide by denying it. Five hundred Iraqis
per day have been dying since 19 March 2003, when Bush decided to
despoil, rape, plunder, poison, bomb, torture and steal Iraq from
Iraqis because they were oppressed by Saddam Hussein.

It means supporting George Bush, the humanoid predator in the White
House, who sneered at the Lancet’s study, referring to the results as
"whatever they guessed at" — and that was just before he added as an
afterthought that the "innocent" death of Iraqis concerned him greatly.

It means supporting the US bullets that directly killed about 150,000
Iraqi men, women, and children, or 31 percent of the Lancet’s total
estimated deaths. The Lancet study, based on cluster sampling, used
the standard methodology employed to estimate mortality in cases of
conflict and disasters.

Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom has liberated Iraq of 2.5 percent
of its population in three years. Is the world better off without
Saddam? I wouldn’t ask an Iraqi that question!

France has just passed a bill in the lower chamber, proposing to
make it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide of 1.5 million people
by the Turkish government in WWW I. The war in Iraq is half way to
that number, and the warmongers are saying they won’t pull out until
2010 or 2011 (though I wouldn’t hold my breath; the US has 60 nuclear
warheads in bases in South Korea, half a century after that war,
and a similar number on Italian bases; it never "leaves"). If one
adds 1.5 million Iraqis killed by the US sanction regime (1990-2003)
and now over half a million killed as a result of the US occupation
regime we’re way over the number of people who died in the Armenian
holocaust — and the fat lady has not sung yet!

It means supporting more than 50 percent unemployment and 100 percent
anarchy in crucial parts of Iraq.

It means war crimes such as the destruction of cities such as Falluja,
Ramadi, Tel-afar and others.

It means one Iraqi child in four suffering from malnutrition.

It means a cost of $500 billion for the US wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq thus far while US citizens have scant defenses against natural
disasters and catastrophic illness.

It means no end in sight.

It is time we ask the butchers in the White House a question the poet
W.H. Auden asked in verse about another war: "To save your world
you asked this man to die:/Would this man, could he see you now,
ask why?" (Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier)

Luciana Bohne teaches film and literature at Edinboro University of
Pennsylvania. She can be reached at [email protected].

man/publish/article_1317.shtml

LE GRAND SHUSH

Cleveland Plain Dealer, OH
Oct 16 2006

Here’s a hint to French lawmakers, who just leaped into the realm
of stupidity and excess by voting 106-19 last week on a bill that
would make questioning a 90-year-old atrocity a crime: It’s exactly
the wrong message to send Turkey, which continues to deny its own
history in the 1915-1920 massacres of more than a million Armenians.

What should be encouraged is dialogue, openness and a reliance on
facts, not emotions. Those in France who hope to torpedo Turkey’s
application to the European Union with this nasty ploy should be
ashamed. Especially so, given the timing of the vote Thursday that
served to cheapen that day’s announcement that outspoken Turkish
novelist Orhan Pamuk had won the Nobel Prize in literature.

Pamuk is at the leading edge of a Turkish society struggling to break
free of old attitudes and prejudices through a real national dialogue
and give-and-take with Armenian scholars over the truth of those
long-ago atrocities amid the Ottoman Empire’s disintegration. That’s a
process worth supporting, not this suffocation of intellectual honesty.

ORHAN SPOKE FALSELY

Sabah, Turkey
Oct 16 2006

Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk’s mother, ªekure Basman, has commented on
her son’s controversial words after 1.5 years: "He spoke falsely."

Orhan Pamuk’s mother, ªekure Basman, has commented on Pamuk’s words;
"1 million Armenian and 30,000 Kurds were killed." ªekure Basman
said: "Orhan spoke falsely to a small European Newspaper. However,
the Turkish press exaggerated his false statement. The government
tried to cover it up, but the press scooped it up."

"My son said false things"

Orhan Pamuk’s mother has commented on her son’s words regarding the
death of 1 million Armenians on Turkish land: "Orhan spoke falsely."

ªekure Basman has given an interview to SABAH Newspaper, as the mother
of the first Turk to have ever received a Nobel Prize. ªekure Basman
said: "I am very happy for my son but when I heard he won a Nobel
Prize, I thought ‘God knows what they will write about him this
time…’. Orhan probably knew false things about history. I don’t
think he has much information about the subject. No one teaches these
things in school. I myself have no idea about this issue. Orhan spoke
falsely to a reporter from a small Swedish newspaper. However, the
Turkish press overexaggerated his statements. Although the government
tried to cover it up, the Turkish press scooped it up and took great
pleasure from doing so. I think it is the press we should blame."

–Boundary_(ID_itDUNMj1Lf9nTfI6AhtXn g)–

ROJ TV SHINE
By Kameel Ahmady

KurdishMedia, UK
Oct 16 2006

Recent political events along with turkeys negotiation and arms dealing
with US in relation to the "War on Terror" brought ROJTV (SUN-TV) once
again under pressure from turkey. While Turkey did not move forward
on its promises to EU in relation with improving human rights and
freedom of press it’s also rejected the offered unilateral ceasefire.

Now the Turkish Government has start it blocking viewers in some
parts of Turkey’s Kurdistan from watching the Kurdish television
station, ROJ TV and it continues to block signals in more areas main
land turkey. Such move represents another grave potential threat to
freedom speech and to expression of ethnic minority and identity in
Turkey and the world of free media.

Turkey has long campaigned to close down ROJ TV within EU and has
applied pressure on Demark, by whom the TV is licensed up to a point
that brought shame upon the Turkish Government when Danish PM Rasmussen
lectured Turkish PM Erdogan on press freedom after he failed to attend
a press conference in Copenhagen because ROJTV’s journalist was due
to attuned, saying that "Turkey has to realise that there are some
very specific conditions that need to be fulfilled if Turkey wants
to become an EU member one day, and one of them is respecting freedom
of press and freedom of expression."

There is been further embarrassment for turkey this week when Orhan
Pamuk, Turkey’s best-known novelist, who faced trial this year for
insulting his country, won the 2006 Nobel prize for literature from a
Swedish Academy, and add on to the pain and Turkey’s fury, the French
lower house of parliament approved a bill making it a crime to deny
the Armenian genocide. Pamuk was tried for insulting "Turkishness"
after telling a Swiss paper last year that one million Armenians had
died in Turkey during World War One and 30 000 Kurds had perished in
recent decades.

Such development can be seen as a test case for freedom of speech
in Turkey, but in another front turkey continues to ignore the basic
rights of the kurdish people and their rights of access to free media
and try to justify all actions as "war on Terror" While turkey’s
state terrorism in Kurdistan continues.

ROJTV for Kurds in Kurdistan and exile is not viewed as only news
source, for them the TV represent home and one free big family. The
same time as a forum for the expression of ideas about Kurdish
identity as well as a means to voice political debates and discussion,
its represents platforms for Kurdish movement, something that turkey
dose not allow the Kurds to practice in turkey. Such restrictions on
ROJTV will make many thousand homeless in Kurdistan, those who has
no voice of theirs in Kurdistan. ROJ has brought sense of identity
and belongings to Kurds and some may wonder how and why the free
world should turn a blind eye to very principle that they protect
and respect or their own citizens.

ROJTV has also played an important role in empowering younger
generations of Kurds throughout of the Diaspora and homeland, keeping
them in touch with each other and with their unique heritage. It has
supported the career development of many successful artists, musicians
and film-makers, and renewed a sense of pride in the contributions
of the Kurds to many world cultures around the world.

It provides them with positive role models and a means of education
regarding the positions and activities, to say nothing of keeping
people abreast of events in the Middle East.

Further, ROJTV has provided a means of contact and a voice for
those Kurds in places like Syria and the former Soviet Union as
well as Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan, who would not otherwise have
any connection to Kurds in other regions, due to the isolation and
repression they suffer in their home communities. It is a sole means
of informing people about events taking place across borders, not
only the Kurds but those who participate in their struggle, and in
the general struggle for peaceful solutions to the issues facing the
Middle East generally.

The threat ROJTV is face with by looking at recent political climates
and significant damage to formation of identify and image and
meaning of freedom of media also by drawing a parallel between the
opportunities and constraints of human mobility and border controls
with those on political ideas but freedom of expression in the 21st
century’s world of digital media which dose not recognise border
controls and scope of a satellite broadcast, which cant be restricts
a specific geographical area, and that’s here Amir Hassanpour’s quote
nicely applies that "Kurdish TV gave sovereignty to the Kurds in the
sky" . So giving such factors, the Kurds and the free loving world
can say to Turkey that: your threat to block the Kurdish TV once
again would be a failure.

No matter how dark the night is, ROJ always starts shining the next day

Kameel Ahmady maintains a website at: