Month: October 2006

Zaman, Turkey
Oct 7 2006

France will Lose Turkey if Genocide Law Adopted
By Bahtiyar Kucuk, Ankara
Saturday, October 07, 2006
zaman.com

The Turkish Foreign Ministry warned Paris that bilateral relations
would suffer if the French parliament approves a law making it a
punishable offence to deny the Armenian genocide.

Namik Tan, a foreign ministry spokesman, told French officials that
France would, so to speak, lose Turkey.

"The Armenian issue has poisoned bilateral ties in the past, but the
bill will inflict irreparable damage on our relationship, The Turkish
public opinion would perceive the approval of the bill as a hostile
act. Adoption of the bill would mean the elimination of freedom of
expression in France," said Tan.

There’s some considerable volume of business between Turkey and
France, Tan noted adding that French parliament’s recognition of the
draft bill would imperil the outcome of the work for many years to
improve the situation between the two countries.

There’re some initiatives on the part of Turkey to prevent a possible
parliamentary recognition of the draft bill, said Tan, and detailed
those initiatives as follows:

Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer wrote to his French counterpart
Jacques Chirac on 4 Sept. 2006.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to have talks with
French businessmen in Turkey.

Erdogan will have a telephone conversation with French Prime Minister
Philippe Douste Blazy.

A commission of foreign affairs of the Turkish parliament was in
France to voice their concerns.

The Turkish embassy in Paris has held negotiations with French
officials.

While the bill will most likely pass parliamentary approval ahead of
France’s parliamentary elections, French businessmen with investment
plans in Turkey are at unease.

Debate on the bill, which was originally tabled in May, followed
stern warnings from Ankara on the repercussions for bilateral and
economic relations.

YOUTH TO PROVIDE FACTS ON ANTI-CRIMINAL

Panorama.am
17:52 05/10/06

Youth wings of several political parties discussed ways of combating
criminalism in Armenia. Narek Malyan, leader of youth wing of New Times
Party (Nor Jamanakner) said that education and military structures are
indirectly connected with criminalism and corruption. He suggested to
conduct a public opinion poll at the higher educational establishments
to decide the list of the most corrupt professors. Levon Lazarian,
minister of education and science, had said the ministry cannot ensure
the objectivity of the survey.

Naira Karapetyan, representative of People’s Party, suggested to take
actions. Another member of the same party suggested to establish a
youth analytical center that will unveil criminal cases and supply
information to Anti-criminal movement. /Panorama.am/

Detroit Free Press, MI
Oct 7 2006

BIO: Kirk Kerkorian

October 7, 2006

AGE: 89. TITLE: Self-made billionaire. Cochairman, president and CEO
of Tracinda Corp., a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based company named for
his daughters, Tracy and Linda. Tracinda is the majority owner of
casino and hotel operator MGM Mirage.

NET WORTH: $9 billion

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Born in Fresno, Calif., to Armenian immigrants. Flew
planes across Atlantic during World War II. First fortune: Sold Trans
International Airlines for $104-million profit in the 1960s, invested
proceeds in Las Vegas; acquired Flamingo Hotel in 1967. Has been in
the hotel and casino business ever since. His MGM Mirage owns more
than half the hotel rooms on the Las Vegas Strip.

EDUCATION: High school diploma.

HOMETOWN: Los Angeles.

PERSONAL: Two children, three divorces.

Source: Forbes.com, Hoovers Inc. and Free Press research

REPORT ON ARMENIAN PENITENTIARY INSTITUTIONS PRESENTED IN YEREVAN

Panorama.am
19:04 05/10/06

YEREVAN, 5 October 2006 – The results of a monitoring of Armenian
prisons in 2005, the conditions and treatment of prisoners, were
presented in Yerevan today.

Prepared by the Public Monitoring Group, it focuses on the medical
services and food the inmates receive, psychological problems, contact
with the outside world, daily exercises, as well as the prevention
of torture and inhumane treatment, and prison personnel.

The Group was established under the Justice Ministry to observe the
rights of detainees and is supported by the OSCE.

"This year’s report is a big step forward for the Public Monitoring
Group, because it offers more concrete facts, recommendations and
analysis," said Silvia Pogolsa, Human Rights Officer at the OSCE Office
in Yerevan. "I also welcome the constructive co-operation offered
by the Justice Ministry, which provided essential responses and took
into consideration many recommendations suggested by the Group."

Mikhael Baghdasaryan, the Head of the Public Monitoring Group, added:
"Our monitoring revealed that the Ministry implemented some of the
recommendations we made in our 2004 report. We hope that the points
outlined in this report will also be adequately considered and help
improve the conditions of the prisoners."

A practical guide for NGOs on monitoring places of detention elaborated
by the Association of the Prevention of Torture and the OSCE Office for
Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) was also presented. It
has been translated into Armenian with the help of the OSCE Office
and ODIHR.

The OSCE Office in Yerevan together with the Open Society Institute
Armenia Foundation have been providing support to the Public Monitoring
Group since 2004.

ELECTION CODE MAKES THE ROLE OF CONSTITUTIONAL COURT CLEAR

Panorama.am
13:48 06/10/06

Amendments in the Election Code clarify the role of the Constitutional
Court in deliberating election disputes. "Peculiarities of the
defined procedures will contribute to the organization of democratic
elections and will enlarge the responsibility of those institutes
that have powers. They can not more hide under other structures,"
Gagik Harutunyan, chairman of Constitutional Court told a conference
on the role of Constitutional Court in elections.

Janni Bukikio, secretary of Venice Committee of the Council of Europe,
said the decisions of the Constitutional Court must stem from the
interests of people. "In democracy, a Constitutional Court must
be transparent and fair in order its decisions be called legal,"
Bukikio said. /Panorama.am/

MercatorNet, Australia
Oct 6 2006

The War of the World
By Francis Phillips

Why was the 20th Century the bloodiest of all? Historian Niall
Ferguson ventures an answer.

The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of
the West
by Niall Ferguson
880pp | Penguin | ISBN 1594201005 | US$35

Niall Ferguson, along with Andrew Roberts and Michael Burleigh, is
one of the "Young Turks" among contemporary historians. A professor
at Harvard, a research fellow at Oxford and a senior fellow at
Stanford, he has successfully bridged the gap between academia and
the media. This book has itself been the subject of a recent
television series; indeed, it has a dramatic and forceful fluency
that lends itself to a visual presentation. At over 700 pages, with a
wealth of maps, graphs and photos to support the text, it is in every
sense a large book. The author describes it as the "Everest" of his
career; with its enormous span, encompassing both the whole world and
almost the whole of the 20th century, one can understand what he
means.

Taking as his imaginative starting point H.G. Wells’s famous work of
science fiction written in 1898, The War of the Worlds, Ferguson
moves from this eerily prescient scenario, in which an alien species
invades planet Earth in order to destroy it with terrifying,
scientific efficiency, to what he calls "History’s Age of Hatred".
Why, he asks, given the hundred years of comparative peace and
prosperity in Europe from 1814-1914, did this same continent trigger
an unprecedented orgy of violence in the century that followed?

In four parts, comprising the First World War, the growth of the
"empire states" that followed it, the Second World War and the
post-war period, the author identifies three major reasons for the
20th century’s endless aggression: ethnic conflict, economic
volatility and old empires in decline. These, he argues with a
formidable arsenal of facts and figures, were the "fatal formula".

While accepting the obvious point made by all commentators of the
period, that technological advance made mass slaughter much easier so
that, for instance, millions of men were able to be transported by
the new railroads to the battle fields of WWI and armoured tanks,
poison gas, bombs and submarines hugely increased the capacity to
kill, Ferguson’s analysis is more penetrating. He selects the
territory between the Baltic, the Balkans and the Black Sea as the
unhappy triangle, the fault line (he uses the graphic image of
shifting tectonic plates that cause earthquakes) of Europe. This,
despite the seeming tranquillity and progress that preceded the Great
War, was where the old empires, with their multi-ethnic populations,
their shifting demographic balance and their political instability,
were clustered together in an uneasy co-existence.

With the wisdom of hindsight, it is not difficult to realise that the
Hohenzollerns of Prussia, the Hapsburgs of Austro-Hungary, the
Romanovs of Russia and the Ottomans were bound, sooner or later, to
clash. New nation-states were emerging in Turkey, Russia, Japan and
Germany with their own sinister nationalist and imperial agendas.
Commenting on the Armenian Massacres of 1915-17, which he calls "the
first true genocide", the author writes that they were "a horrific
illustration of the convulsions that could seize a multi-ethnic
polity trying to mutate from empire into nation-state". Alongside
this, the British Empire, over-extended and under-manned, was in slow
decline; the "Pax Britannica" concealed its own ferment, unrest and
potential for violent conflict, later in the century to break out in
Iraq, India, Palestine and Northern Ireland.

These political changes were accompanied, Ferguson argues, with rapid
economic shifts: inflation, deflation, boom, bust and depression –
the volatility that, combined with other factors, will make conflict
likely, indeed inevitable. This conflict, he demonstrates, was not
simply of the conventional kind, directed against external enemies,
"the formalised encounter between uniformed armies" as in the past.
What was new about the 20th century was the scale and savagery of the
ideological "war" conducted internally by governments against their
own peoples: against the Jews, socialists, gypsies and others in
Germany, the kulaks and the intelligentsia in Stalin’s Russia, the
millions of Chairman Mao’s fellow Chinese. The empire established by
Lenin, for instance, was "the first to be established on terror
itself since the short-lived tyranny of the Jacobins in revolutionary
France."

In this sprawling book Ferguson is himself arguing on all fronts,
raising as many questions as he answers: were Stalin’s crimes
necessary to modernise an antiquated country? Was there any real
difference between Stalin’s "socialism in one country" and Hitler’s
National Socialism? What is the difference between Auschwitz and
Hiroshima? What was the better option: to cut and run as the British
did in India, or to stay on and fight, as they did in Kenya? He
delights in the odd coincidences of history, analysing the
differences between Roosevelt and Hitler, who both came to power in
1933 to countries in the grip of economic depression, or those
between Margaret Thatcher and Ayatollah Khomeini, who both assumed
power in 1979.

His book draws on a multitude of sources, literary and historical,
such as Erich Maria Remarque’s classic of the Great War, All Quiet on
the Western Front, Spengler’s Decline of the West (which, like the
philosopher of conservatism, Roger Scruton, he recognises as
important as it is cranky) and the Diaries of Victor Klemperer, which
Ferguson describes as "the most penetrating and insightful account
that was ever written of life and death under the swastika."

Given the unadulterated gloom of his subject, the author’s prose
fizzes with energy and a kind of mordant wisecracking; after 1945
"Stalag gave way to Gulag"; in Communist Russia "breakneck
industrialization was always intended to break necks"; Goebbels sold
Hitler to the German people "as if he were the miraculous offspring
of the Messiah and Marlene Dietrich".

It is his capacity to compress disparate events into an arresting
image as well as his command of so many different killing zones that
makes this work a brilliant tour de force. The sheer span of the
subject matter covered make it a mine suited to inexhaustible
quarrying. It also makes the book spiritually fatiguing to read for
it is, one might say, a prolonged and persuasive exercise in despair.
It is certainly not possible to read about this Age of Hatred for
long without fearing that large sections of the human race are
forever vulnerable to dictatorship by psychopaths. Ferguson cites
Richard Dawkins’ theory of a "race meme", whereby we identify some
people as "alien" and thus to be destroyed. This is not H.G. Wells’
fictitious Martians; it is men attacking their own species – "the
selfish gene with a death ray." He is also influenced by Freud’s
theory of the "death instinct"; rape and murder are merely suppressed
in civilised society, always ready to be unleashed when the
appropriate conditions lead to a breakdown. "We should not lose sight
of the basic instincts buried within the most civilised men".

Somewhere in the book Ferguson refers to "man’s inhumanity to man".
This poetical and much quoted phrase somehow doesn’t fit the bill
presented here; it is more accurately man’s sickening ferocity
towards his fellow man that we are witnessing time and time again. In
an appendix the author attempts to put the 20th century carnage into
historical perspective, with a brief glance at Ghengis Khan and
Tamburlaine and the trail of slaughter they left in their wake.
However, he is not convinced by the comparison, largely because he
assumes that modern man ought to be more civilised than his medieval
counterparts – only to demonstrate with depressing regularity that
this is a fallacy, when leaders of apparently civilised societies can
arouse "the most primitive murderous instincts of their fellow
citizens."

Ferguson concludes, "We shall avoid another century of conflict only
if we understand the forces that caused the last one – the dark
forces that conjure up ethnic conflict and imperial rivalry out of
economic crisis." But surely there is more to be said on the topic
than this. To understand is the easy part. Popular historian Paul
Johnson has commented that the repudiation of Judaeo-Christian values
has cast its own menacing shadow over the last century. It cannot be
a coincidence (though Ferguson does not reflect on it) that the most
callous regimes of the 20th century were either Marxist-Communist, as
with China and Russia (and Cambodia briefly, under Pol Pot), or
neo-pagan, as with Nazi "Aryan" Germany. Trotsky once announced, "We
must put an end to the papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of
human life" and Ferguson admits that the capacity to treat other
human beings as "members of an inferior or malignant species" was one
of the crucial reasons why the 20th century was so violent.

His diagnosis of the geographic, ethnic and political elements
comprising the "fault-lines" are entirely persuasive; but he needs to
bring his roving, pugnacious intelligence to bear on a deeper, more
metaphysical fault-line: the fissure within the soul of man himself,
as he struggles either to give expression to the good impulses within
him – or succumbs to the evil of which he is demonstrably capable.

Francis Phillips writes from Bucks, in the UK.

New York Times, NY
Oct 6 2006

Turkish Writers Say Efforts to Stifle Speech May Backfire

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Hrant Dink, a newspaper editor in Turkey, has been charged with
"insulting Turkishness" but is pleased with the debate cases like his
have stirred.

By IAN FISHER
Published: October 6, 2006
ISTANBUL, Sept. 30 – Not a week after a court dropped the case
against a best-selling Turkish novelist, another well-known writer
was charged with the same crime, one of the most ambiguous and
contentious here, that of "insulting Turkishness."

Hrant Dink, the newly accused editor of an Armenian-language
newspaper, Agos, takes the charges – those against him and scores of
other writers and publishers – as positive news.

"It is something good for Turkey," said Mr. Dink, though he faces the
prospect of three years in jail. "It is good for the dynamism. There
is a strong movement from inside, and I can say for the first time we
are seeing a real democratic movement."

This has not been the usual interpretation since the law was passed
last year, at a time when riot policemen guarded trials and the
European Union issued dire warnings that the law, called Article 301,
stood as a major obstacle to Turkey’s long ambitions for membership.

But some of the accused say that the turmoil is forcing a national
debate about what it truly means to be a democracy – and that, they
say, is pushing democracy forward, even if painfully.

"A lot of people were saying, ‘Wait a minute, this needs to be
changed, and we are so embarrassed about what is going on,’ " said
Elif Shafak, a novelist who went on trial in September for portraying
a character who referred to a "genocide" against Armenians in her new
novel, "The Bastard of Istanbul." In her case the charges were
quickly dropped.

[A fuller court ruling issued on Thursday defended her broadly and
called for changes in the law, Reuters reported. A judge wrote, "It
is unthinkable to talk about crimes committed by fictional
characters" and added, "it is necessary to define the boundaries of
the ‘Turkishness’ concept and place it on firm ground."]

But it is not certain that the government will try to undo the law,
which in theory was meant as a progressive substitute for older and
entrenched restrictions on some free speech here – especially as it
related to criticism of the government and discussion of delicate
topics, like the Kurdish rebellion or using the word genocide to
describe the mass killing and relocation of Armenians in World War I.

[Another writer, Ipek Calister, went on trial on Thursday on charges
of insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder, in a
biography of Ataturk’s wife.]

The intent in passing the new measure was to make Turkey’s laws
conform with its goal to join the European Union.

But nationalist groups opposed to joining the European Union have
taken advantage of the law’s language to bring court cases against
some 60 writers and publishers, including well-known novelists like
Orhan Pamuk and Ms. Shafak. The Turkish publisher of Noam Chomsky,
the American scholar, has also faced prosecution. The government
itself has not initiated such cases.

At a time when skepticism to Turkey’s membership is high both in
Europe and in Turkey, the cases seemed to question the nation’s
commitment to democratic ideals – and as each case is dismissed, the
nationalist group, the Turkish Union of Lawyers, files another, in
what critics say is an effort to derail European Union membership.

European officials have repeatedly warned Turkey about the law.

But people like Mr. Dink and Ms. Shafak argue that the legal
challenges may be backfiring, under the glare not only of Europe but
also among Turks themselves, so that in their view, a law used to
stifle debate may be encouraging it.

Judges have not hesitated to throw out cases they deem without merit.

While there have been convictions under Article 301, no one has
actually gone to jail. And the very government that drafted the law
now says it needs to be changed, though it is not clear exactly how
or when.

During Ms. Shafak’s case, she received phone calls from two of the
most powerful people in Turkey: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
who himself had been jailed briefly years ago under the old version
of the law, and his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul.

Her interpretation is that nationalist groups are filing a growing
number of cases under Article 301 "not because nothing has been
changing here in Turkey but because things are changing."

"And things are changing in a positive direction."

"We are learning in a way – how shall I say it? – to live in more
harmony with difference, be it ethnic difference, religious
difference, sexual difference," she added.

"At the beginning of the republic, the main idea was that we were all
Turks, period, that we were a mass of undifferentiated humans," she
said. "That kind of argument does not hold water any more."

The nationalist lawyers group that has brought the cases says it will
continue to do so, to uphold what they say were Ataturk’s principles,
which put the strength of a fragile state before the claims of
individuals and groups.

"Freedom of expression is different from insult and denigration, and
has limits in the world," said Kemal Kerincsiz, a leader of the
lawyers group. "Our system has to protect itself at the verge of
insults against the state and the Turkish identity."

Some critics question the actual commitment of Prime Minister Erdogan
to changing Article 301, saying that he is not eager to hurt himself
politically by shutting out the nationalists. In fact, they add, he
himself has filed suits claiming he was defamed.

But his top adviser on foreign policy, Egemen Bagis, said the march
toward free speech, and a likely change of the law, would not be
stopped.

"The dark days of Turkey were when they collected and destroyed the
books of Kafka and Dostoyevsky," he said. "I’m not saying everything
is perfect now. We’re on the track to that perfection."

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.

Turkish Daily News
Oct 6 2006

Arýnc: EU applying double standards
Friday, October 6, 2006

ANKARA – TDN Parliament Bureau

Parliament Speaker Bulent Arýnc said yesterday that double
standards applied by the European Union were a reason for an apparent
decline in public support for Turkey’s possible membership in the
25-nation bloc.

"We see that issues we have never imagined are included in progress
reports. That’s to say, Europe ‘shows death as an option and tells us
to agree to [a less dangerous situation when compared to death]
malaria," Arýnc was quoted as saying during a meeting with visiting
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn. Arýnc used a Turkish idiom in
order to explain that the EU was trying to prepare Ankara for a worse
situation by warning about the worst one.

Arýnc cited mistakes made by the EU as the main reasons for
declining public support for Turkey’s bid to join the bloc and gave
Rehn two examples which show that the EU could demand everything from
Turkey without looking at itself. "You tell us to amend or scrap
Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK). I tell you to take a
look at the Netherlands, France and Switzerland," he added.

Arýnc mentioned that Dutch politicians of Turkish origin were
removed from politics due to their denial of the alleged genocide of
Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire and in France, the
Socialists have put forth a law that criminalizes any denial of the
genocide and the bill would be debated next week at the French
National Assembly. "A contradiction lies here," he said.

Explaining the second example, Arýnc referring to the EU demands
from Ankara about minority foundations. "Now take a look at Greece.
It does not grant similar rights. [Turkish] Minority foundations
there are not provided with the same rights. Turks there ask for the
same rights but Greece rejects them," he said.

"There were the double standards that have impacted our belief and
conviction about the EU, Mr. Rehn. Please do not discourage our
public," he added and assured that the Turkish government and
Parliament was resolute to fulfill its responsibilities in order to
become a member of the EU without any excuse. "But from now all the
reforms and laws that we will pass will be in line with the same
criteria applied for other EU candidate countries," Arýnc said.

Rehn said it was a part of his duty to inform Turkey about the EU’s
views, regardless of whether they were positive or negative and
called on the Turkish public for calm with regard to the membership
process. "It’s necessary to sort out problems through dialogue.
Everyone should act calmly and with common sense and engaged in
dialogue. Otherwise, we cannot resolve problems and make progress,"
he added.

Rehn also stressed that an amendment of Article 301, which Brussels
says is restrictive of the freedom of expression and that has landed
a string of intellectuals in court for insulting "Turkishness," would
be a strong message that will be included in the EU Commission’s
progress report, due on Nov. 8.

–Boundary_(ID_xvhQQIKsbXoH+/9CYylIfQ)–

Turkish Daily News
Oct 6 2006

EU wants to trap Turkey
Friday, October 6, 2006

After the European Parliament made unfavorable alterations to its
report on Turkey, all eyes turned to the EU Commission’s progress
report. There is no consistency in the decisions taken and reports
published by the EU when it comes to Turkey.

Orhan Kilercioðlu

After the European Parliament made unfavorable alterations to its
report on Turkey, all eyes turned to the EU Commission’s progress
report. There is no consistency in the decisions taken and reports
published by the EU when it comes to Turkey. In other words, the
decisions and reports by the EU are constantly altered, and member
countries seem to be competing with each other to introduce their own
agenda and interests. This tendency has become acute, particularly
after the decision on Dec. 17, 2004 to begin accession negotiations.

Naturally this attitude is annoying to Turkey, which is trying to
adopt the Copenhagen criteria but which is constantly accosted with
new demands not previously cited as preconditions for membership. The
EU even deems it appropriate to demand that Turkey adhere to certain
conditions that even its own members do not.

While some EU member countries are harshly critical of Turkey,
others support it and emphasize its importance to the continent. In
other words, the EU appears to be confused and undecided on the
matter of Turkey.

The mainly technical negotiations between Turkey and the EU for
membership are constantly being diverted with the introduction of
certain political interests into the process. While Turkey needs to
confront the claims on the so-called Armenian genocide, it now has to
face new fictitious stories about genocides perpetrated against the
Pontus Greeks and our Assyrian Christian brothers. We are waiting to
see what the EU will make up in its next report.

Why don’t any of these reports mention the genocide Greece
perpetrated against Turks in Ýzmir, Manisa, Uþak and other provinces
during our War of Independence? Why is there no mention of the mass
murders perpetrated against Turkish Cypriots by Greek Cypriots? No
one talks about the massacres on Cyprus in the 1950s and 1960s.

The double standards practiced by the EU are upsetting the Turkish
nation. We can add to the number of such examples. What about the
inhumane treatment suffered by and the limitations imposed on freedom
of religion of the Turkish minority in Western Thrace, which
continues today? We can also mention the illegal immigrants being
left to die by Greece in Turkish waters. Not a word of criticism can
be heard from the EU on these issues. We see in the newspapers that
three Turks were removed from a party’s list of parliamentary
candidates in Holland because they refused to accept the Armenian
"genocide." What kind of freedom of speech and democracy is the EU
practicing?

It appears that the EU has no compunction about limiting the
freedom of speech and freedom of religion of some people and even
tries to criminalize its most basic tenets. They may argue that such
laws are only practiced by Holland. If this is the case, how can it
turn to us and criticize Turkish laws because they include similar
clauses?

Why does the EU insist on forcing Turkey to reassess and change
Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK)? How can it intervene in
the way our Sunni and Alawite brothers live and create useless
tension?

The biggest mistake the EU committed was to accept Greek Cyprus as
a member. Even though the EU countless times claimed it would never
admit countries that have problems with their neighbors, it still
accepted Greek Cyprus. Why would it do such a thing? Everyone knows
the reason. It now wants Turkey to open its ports and airports to
Greek Cypriot cargo. Isn’t the attitude a little strange?

It is obvious that the EU is currently making its own rules and
that the reports it publishes and decisions it takes have nothing to
do with the much-praised criteria. As the screening process
continues, Turkey is faced with incredible pressure from the union.

Turkey is being forced into a direction it does not want.

In conclusion, the union is committing serious errors when it comes
to its relations with Turkey. It is violating the principles it wants
Turkey to adopt. It needs to abide by signed agreements and past
promises. It needs to stop using its own domestic political concerns
to push Turkey into a corner. It needs to be sincere. If not, it will
be the EU that will suffer the consequences.

–Boundary_(ID_cn/ZmIY0SByvpmpXH+Y+ Jw)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Turkish Daily News
Oct 6 2006

Diplomacy Newsline
Friday, October 6, 2006

Dutch Turks could boycott elections:

ANK – TDN with AFP

Turkish groups in the Netherlands expressed concern on Thursday that
voters of Turkish origin will boycott elections after candidates
for parliament were bumped off the electoral lists for refusing to
acknowledge the alleged Armenian genocide.

Last week the Netherlands’ two biggest political parties removed three
prospective deputies of Turkish origin from their list of candidates
for the Nov. 22 elections because they would not recognize the World
War I killings of Armenians as genocide.

"We have heard from every side that voters of Turkish origin are
disappointed and do not understand, and we fear this could have
consequences for the participation of the Turkish community in Dutch
politics," said Ahmet Azdural of IOT, an umbrella group representing
some 300 local Turkish organizations in the Netherlands. "We have
called on all organizations and bodies together with national and
local politicians of Turkish origin to meet Sunday in Capelle aan
den IJssel (near Rotterdam) to agree on a course of action," Azdural
told Agence France-Presse. "It is very difficult to force candidates
of Turkish origin to choose sides in what is a historic debate. This
gives the impression that there is no freedom of speech in the major
political parties."

There are 235,000 voters of Turkish origin in the Netherlands,
corresponding in terms of population to some three seats in the
150-seat parliament.
From: Baghdasarian