Month: October 2006

WHO’S YOUR DADDY?
By Ariella Budick – Newsday Staff Writer

Newsday, NY
Sept 29 2006

A Whitney exhibit delves into how Picasso was the model for many 20th
century artists

October 1, 2006

Picasso was the great father of 20th century art, the fecund patriarch
who needed to be symbolically "dealt with" by scores of resentfully
indebted sons.

The Whitney’s "Picasso and American Art" tells an implicitly Oedipal
tale of how successive waves of artists on these shores came to terms
with their potent ancestor’s seminal and prodigious productivity. A
great many dimly mimed his gifts. Others struggled to adapt his
language to their own distinctive syntax. Jackson Pollock alone found
it necessary to kill him off, inventing entirely new structures for
self- expression.

Perhaps there is a concomitant Electra complex lurking in the history
of American art, an analysis of Picasso’s female followers, but the
Whitney is not interested in exploring that. Only five of the 153
works on display are by women, and the reason for the imbalance is
not self-evident. The show includes a fistful of works by Max Weber,
a shameless Picasso wannabe, but it has nothing to say about the way
Louise Nevelson struggled to break free of the great man’s grip.

One of Alfred Stieglitz’s Cubist-influenced cityscapes is here, but
his wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, pulled off some muscular skyscrapers, too,
and they go missing. The Whitney has rounded up such minor figures
as Jan Matulka, Morgan Russell and Abraham Walkowitz, but excluded
Dorothy Dehner, the sculptress and partner of David Smith.

(Smith does make the cut.)

Like father, like son

But never mind the women: This is a story about fathers and sons. The
first group pretty much tried to swallow dear old Dad in one big
bite. Weber, an American born in Russia, made a painter’s pilgrimage
to Paris in 1905 and came back a Picasso convert. He met the master
through Gertrude and Leo Stein, and took it upon himself to imitate
and promote Picasso’s work stateside.

Weber followed wherever the Spaniard led. In 1910, he completed
a sculptural trio of nudes in the vein of Picasso’s proto-Cubist
masterpiece "Three Women." He also emulated the style, structure and
fragmentation of planes in "Les Demoiselles d’Avignon." The worst
of these spinoffs, "Figures in a Landscape" (1912), looks like an
unwitting caricature, replacing Picasso’s scary African masks with
the delicate faces of kitschy, doe-eyed ladies.

Twenty years later, Arshile Gorky declared, "I feel Picasso running
through my fingertips." The stark linearity of the Great One’s
neoclassical period inspired "The Artist and His Mother" (1926-36),
Gorky’s tender, tragic self-portrait with the parent who perished in
his arms during the Armenian genocide.

Gorky’s stylistic leaps can be explained by tracing Picasso’s. "The
Organization" (1933-36) is an ambitious reaction to his idol’s surreal
"Studio" of 1927-28. Gorky adopts the same look and feel, the same
colors, the same use of black lines to map out the composition,
and the gridlike structure.

Gorky was a terrific draftsman, with an imaginative eye and a sure
technique, but these exercises look distressingly derivative. By the
1940s, the disciple had come into his own as the author of delicate
symphonies of line and color. None of those works can be seen here,
though; as far as this exhibit is concerned, when the progeny
definitively declares his independence, he ceases to be of interest.

Willem de Kooning was a friend of Gorky’s, and he, too, fell under
Picasso’s sway. In the 1930s he also fiddled with the "Studio,"
a not terribly productive duet. Much later, after a stint as a pure
abstractionist, he tried to return to the human body and turned for
help to "Demoiselles," just as Weber had done decades earlier.

De Kooning made much better use of precedent, and the Whitney expertly
delineates his process. He went horn to horn with Picasso in the 1948
"Three Women," which mimicked and exaggerated three prostitutes from
"Demoiselles."

Crude and cruder

Picasso’s squatting, taunting figures were crude; de Kooning’s were
cruder. He turned Picasso’s healthy pink skin to white, rotting
flesh. His women became beasts, baring fanged teeth and waving
rubbery limbs.

Having transformed his source, de Kooning performed the same grim
alchemy on his own work. The rightmost figure in "Three Women," the
one with fuchsia war paint and large vacant eyes, became the massive,
creepy heroine of "Woman I" from 1951, glaring at the viewer with
unrestrained sexual menace.

The same hag reappears, somewhat mollified, in "Woman and Bicycle"
of 1952-53. Her two mouths grin above her bubblegum-hued cleavage. De
Kooning succeeded better than any of the others at constructively
resolving his Oedipal issues. He internalized the most liberating of
Picasso’s rules: the mandate to constantly experiment and evolve.

Pollock teased de Kooning for being "nothing but a French painter,"
but despite his pioneer pose, he, too, felt the weight of Picasso’s
legacy. Unlike de Kooning, he couldn’t simply make his peace with the
old man. We can see Pollock’s Picasso fixation in "The Water Bull"
and other variations on the theme of "Guernica"; in "Magic Mirror" and
other riffs on "The Girl in the Mirror," and in his rough responses to
"Demoiselles."

Pollock admired Picasso’s raw energy, and tried to emulate it. You
can just make out the shape of a Picasso-style prostitute beneath the
scrim of brushstrokes in "Troubled Queen" (1945). But Pollock turned
the faceting of planes in the "Demoiselles" into harsh striations
criss-crossing the canvas. Picasso’s fearsomeness became Pollock’s
brutality and rage.

Soon, Pollock would abandon these congested surfaces for all-over
patterns and breathing traceries. The evidence suggests, however,
that Pollock didn’t altogether forsake representation; he veiled it.

First he would pour drawings onto the surface, then he would cover
them up with successive layers of drips. And those never-seen images
looked an awful lot like Picasso.

All of this suggests that Pollock wasn’t content simply to move in
another direction from the master or even to supersede him. He needed
to blot him out.

And yet Pollock did leave Picasso behind. The pictures he is famous
for, the masterpieces, take painting in an entirely different
direction. They represent the opposite of what Picasso stood for:
Europe, tradition, virtuosity and technique. Pollock was never much
of a draftsman, but that no longer mattered in the new world his
paintings opened up.

After Pollock, the rest of the exhibit is anticlimax. We see how Jasper
Johns and Roy Lichtenstein tried to engage with Picasso in the 1950s,
’60s and beyond, but by that time the sense of conflict, the clash of
newness and precedent, has dissipated. Pop artists’ Oedipal issues
lay primarily with the abstract expressionists who had immediately
preceded them. Pollock and de Kooning were their Picassos. The sons
had become the father.

WHEN & WHERE

"Picasso and American Art," through Jan. 28 at the Whitney Museum
of American Art, 945 Madison Ave. at 75th Street, Manhattan. For
exhibition hours and admission prices, call 800-WHITNEY or visit
whitney.org.

TURKEY’S RESTRICTION, EUROPE’S PROBLEM
Daria Vaisman

Open Democracy, UK
Sept 29 2006

Orhan Pamuk, Elif Shafak, Hrant Dink, and other leading Turkish
intellectuals face prosecution for writings that push the boundaries
of legal censorship and cultural policing. Daria Vaisman reflects on
their struggle to speak and live in truth, and says it is Europe’s too.

In 1997, Saddam Hussein decided to sue French journalist Jean Daniel
for the offence of having written that the then Iraqi president was a
"Caligula-style tyrant" who had allowed thousands of children to die.

Hussein was surprised to be informed by the Parisian courts that he
could sue Daniel not merely (as he had planned) under the civil law,
but under a French press law of 1881 which makes it a crime to insult
foreign heads of state, whether or not the insult is true.

In 2004, the king of Morocco sued Spanish journalists Rosa Maria
Lopez and Josè Luís Gutierrez under a 1982 Protection of Honor,
Privacy and Right to a Respectful Image Law. Lopez had written that
one of the king’s trucks had been seized at a Spanish port and found
to be carrying five tons of hashish. Spain’s supreme court rejected
the journalists’ appeal – even though the claim was accurate – on
grounds that her article "illegally disturbed His Majesty Hassan II’s
right to keep his honour."

These trials should sound vaguely familiar to anyone who had followed
the case against Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk (which was eventually
dismissed on a legal technicality) or the less-publicised trials
against other Turkish writers: among them novelist Elif Shafak
(acquitted on 21 September 2006) and Armenian-Turkish journalist
Hrant Dink (given a six-month suspended sentence in October 2005,
and arraigned on a new set of charges on 25 September 2006).

All have been accused of "insulting Turkishness" under Article 301
of the Turkish penal code, which states that insulting Turkey or its
institutions is a crime. Pamuk had mentioned the mass killings of
Armenians in 1915 – a Turkish national taboo – in a Swiss newspaper,
and Dink had written a newspaper article calling on Armenians to reject
"the adulterated part of their Turkish blood."

Daria Vaisman is Caucasus correspondent for Christian Science Monitor
and a freelance writer based in Tbilisi and Moscow. She has written
for Slate, International Herald Tribune, Foreign Policy, New Republic,
and other publications

Also in openDemocracy on writers and politics in Turkey:

Murat Belge, "Love me, or leave me?" The strange case of Orhan Pamuk"
(October 2005)

Gunes Murat Tezcur, "The Armenian shadow over Turkey’s democratisation"
(October 2005)

Hrant Dink, "The water finds its crack: an Armenian in Turkey"
(December 2005)

Ustun Bilgen-Reinart, "Hrant Dink: forging an Armenian identity in
Turkey" (February 2006)

Anthony Barnett, "Turkish freedom: a report from the frontline"
(20 February 2006)

Elif Shahak, "Turkey’s home truths" (25 July 2006)

The landscape of insult

The trials in Istanbul expose political and cultural divisions within
Turkey over nationalism, secularism, the understanding of the past
and the shape of the future. But they also illustrate an even more
fundamental gap: between Turkey and Europe. This has to do both with
the principle of freedom of speech, and with Europe’s own perception
of what it means to be European. That is, the trials of Turkish
writers are also about Europe. For they highlight the ongoing – if
largely unreported – campaign to persuade European states to repeal
defamation laws in their own criminal codes.

This campaign has been pursued by a wide range of organisations:
the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),
the new Human Rights Committee of the United Nations, the European
Court of Human Rights, and pressure-groups such as Article 19, the
International Press Institute (IPI), and Reporters Without Borders.

They invoke the joint declarations (issued in 1999 and 2002) calling
for the removal of these laws by three international bodies concerned
with freedom of expression: the UN special rapporteur, the OSCE
representative on freedom of the media, and the Organisation of
American States special rapporteur on freedom of expression.

The campaign continues. An OSCE roundtable in 2003 entitled Ending the
Chilling Effect: Working to Repeal Criminal Libel and Insult Laws,
saw various experts offer specific recommendations for governments,
officials, and legislative and judicial bodies. So far, only one EU
country – Cyprus, a member since 2004 – has managed the task. More
recently, Article 19 hosted a workshop for European Union justice
ministers, explaining to them why the laws should be repealed.

The background of these laws clarifies what is at stake. Insult laws
– which the Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organisations
(CCPFO) refers to as "legal anachronisms" – protect the "honour and
dignity" of public officials and representatives of foreign countries
(as in the French and Spanish cases), as well as of state symbols and
institutions. These laws fall under a broader category of defamation
laws that includes not cases of libel. Such defamation laws, with
all the criminal sanctions they carry, are used (the CCPFO says)
to restrict investigative reporting and "deprive the public of their
right to be fully informed". The CCPFO argues that defamation should
always be a matter for civil rather than criminal courts, and be
punishable by fines rather than imprisonment.

Europe has inherited these laws from the Roman empire via centuries of
feudalism in its heartland territories. In the feudal era, to commit
lèse majestè was to insult the state itself as well as its head, the
two being synonymous. Since the monarch received his powers from god,
he demanded "extraordinary" protection. Over the centuries, an adapted,
secularised version of insult laws worked its way into the legislation
of all the European monarchies.

Cases brought under these laws were often prosecuted alongside those
of treason; the common factor being the fact that the accused citizen
has violated the responsibility to protect his country’s (monarch’s,
state’s) image. This connection is also apparent in the way that most
insult laws came to include a provision that increases the punishment’s
terms if the insult is uttered outside the country.

(This, in fact, is what happened to Orhan Pamuk, whose potential
sentence was increased because he had made his remarks while in
Switzerland).

In their defence, European Union member-states point out that in
the modern era these laws are rarely, if ever, used. Ronald Koven,
European representative on the World Press Freedom Committee, told
the 2003 roundtable that democratic countries keep these laws on
their books as a kind of "sword of Damocles" on the off-chance that
they will need them one day. Miklos Haraszti, the well-known Hungarian
dissident of the late-communist era who serves as OSCE representative
on freedom of the media, says that many the countries just "can’t be
bothered" to remove them.

Old vs new Europe

But the existence of these laws points to another fundamental
divide within Europe: between the established fifteen member-states
and the ten which joined in May 2004. Many of the latter (Cyprus,
Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland,
Slovakia and Slovenia) routinely use criminal defamation laws to
prosecute freedom of speech. "In central Asia and in eastern Europe,
this is the single biggest reason for jailing journalists", says
Haraszti. "What we want to do is make it an issue of solidarity
(with other EU countries)."

In contrast to Turkey, these cases do not receive serious publicity,
nor have they served as a deterrent for these countries’ EU
membership. Prosecutions that were already underway at their
accession are still continuing. "I get letters from people in these
countries pointing out that other EU countries still have (such laws)
on their books", says Haraszti. The point is echoed by Toby Mendel,
law-programme director of Article 19, who comments that "transition
countries" say in effect: "Oh, yes, we have an oppressive law, but
that’s all right because Germany has it, and France has it, too."

Even Ader Sozuer, one of the drafters of the Turkish penal code,
responded to questions about Pamuk by highlighting the insult laws
still on the statute books of European countries.

The cases come to court with surprising frequency. OSCE’s 2005 Libel
and Insult Laws: a matrix on where we stand and what we would like
to achieve, reports that fifteen people in Estonia and sixty-five in
Hungary served prison sentences for defamation, libel, or insult in
2002-04. In Poland, reputedly the most restrictive country in the
European Union over freedom of speech, the numbers accused under
defamation laws increased from 6,272 in 2002 to 7,218 people in 2003.

The legislative processes also give grounds for concern. In 1996,
Croatia introduced an insult law, stipulating both fines and jail
sentences for slandering or insulting the national president or other
heads of states. In 2001, Slovakia’s parliament rejected an amendment
that would have removed existing insult laws from its penal code
(a move said to be have been pushed by the president himself).

A clearer parallel to the Turkish cases is that of the Polish
communist-era media apparatchik turned acerbic satirist, and editor
of the satirical weekly Nie, Jerzy Urban. Urban was prosecuted
for writing an article about Pope John Paul II (entitled "Walking
Sado-Masochism"), and faced between three months and three years in
jail. Haraszti tells me that Urban had written the article with the
specific goal of highlighting Poland’s restrictions on speech. "He
said, ‘I did it so that the human-rights world would defend me.’ It
was a clear provocation, and yet Poland went ahead and prosecuted him."

"It’s hugely embarrassing", says IPI’s David Dadge. "The EU is actually
weakening its argument in its negotiation with Turkey as it starts
the accension process. It is very difficult that Turkey should meet
benchmarks in regards to human rights while (other European states)
flaunt those very benchmarks."

Europe’s past, Turkey’s future

The EU seems to be asking Turkey to play by rules that its own members
break, and thus be guilty of hypocrisy. This implies that influential
elements within the EU have as little real interest in seeing Turkey
join as some factions in Turkey itself, and are simply using the
freedom-of-speech cases to undermine Turkey’s credentials.

But there is another explanation for Europe’s approach: that it both
genuinely believes that Turkey’s record on free speech and human rights
is severely deficient, but that what really angers it is the content of
what’s being restricted rather than the principle of freedom of speech.

The David Irving case is evidence for this point. Irving, a British
historian who has made a high-profile career from casting doubts about
the Nazi holocaust and Hitler’s knowledge of and responsibility for it,
was sentenced to three years in an Austrian jail for holocaust-denial
in February 2006. This was at the very time when Orhan Pamuk and Hrant
Dink were being tried effectively for stating that another genocide
(of Armenians) had occurred. The contradiction between Europe’s
protests and the actions of one of its member-states seemed stark,
and shaming. But the Irving-Pamuk "contradiction", when more closely
inspected, reveals the more fundamental dilemma of free speech in
a democracy that Europe is grappling with: that free speech as a
principle undermines the impulse to forbid what is deemed abhorrent.

In this light, the more deeply shared element of the Irving and the
Pamuk-Dinki-Shafak cases is Europe’s discomfort with denial of the
past. The idea that atonement for sins is an essential qualification
to be a democracy (as evidenced in notions of "collective guilt",
the genre of holocaust studies, and even the fashion among some
young Germans to wear the Star of David symbol) may owe as much to
modern, collective psychological conditions as to a true engagement
with history, but it is effective nonetheless. After all, Germany’s
readiness to accept responsibility for the holocaust was the key to
its rehabilitation in post-war Europe.

Against this background, official Turkey’s adamant and consistent
refusal openly to discuss the events of 1915 challenges a formative
tenet of the EU, a shared commitment to defend a series of core human
rights and to denounce their violation. Even more penetratingly,
Turkey’s attitude reminds Europe of its own history of colonisation,
slavery, war, and genocide.

Europe can dismiss or ignore the ongoing criminal defamation cases
in the newer EU countries (most of which involve accusations of
corruption) as minor; but the denial of genocide is far more serious.

Corruption is regrettable, a social ill – but prosecutions that
appear to endorse official suppression of the past and discussion of
it strike at the heart of modern European values.

In protecting its history from scrutiny as much as in restricting free
speech, Turkey will have its work cut out. "(Article 301) has become
a symbolic fight inside Turkey, the same way that flag-burning is
an issue in the United States", says Miklos Haraszti. It is a fight
that Turkey, if it wants to be part of the European club, won’t be
able to win.

y/free_speech_3952.jsp

–Boundary_(ID_0bha3lRTfUR xQ4kUhYCmcA)–

CHIRAC BEGINS 3-DAY VISIT TO ARMENIA

The Associated Press
International Herald Tribune, France
Sept 29 2006

YEREVAN, Armenia French President Jacques Chirac arrived in Armenia
Friday on a three-day visit to this ex-Soviet Caucasus nation.

Chirac was welcomed at the airport by Armenian President Robert
Kocharian who later treated him to a dinner. The two presidents were
set to have official talks Saturday.

On Saturday, Chirac was also scheduled to visit a monument to Armenians
who were killed in the final years of the Ottoman Empire or died in
a forced evacuation.

Armenians say that as many as 1.5 million of their ancestors were
killed in 1915-1923 in an organized genocidal campaign and have pushed
for recognition of the killings as genocide around the world.

Turkey rejects the claim that a mass evacuation and related deaths
of Armenians was genocide and says the death toll is inflated.

Later on Saturday, Chirac was to meet with local French community
and attend a concert by Charles Aznavour, a famous French singer of
Armenian origin.

Chirac also was set to meet with the head of the Armenian Apostolic
Church before leaving Sunday.

YEREVAN, Armenia French President Jacques Chirac arrived in Armenia
Friday on a three-day visit to this ex-Soviet Caucasus nation.

Chirac was welcomed at the airport by Armenian President Robert
Kocharian who later treated him to a dinner. The two presidents were
set to have official talks Saturday.

On Saturday, Chirac was also scheduled to visit a monument to Armenians
who were killed in the final years of the Ottoman Empire or died in
a forced evacuation.

Armenians say that as many as 1.5 million of their ancestors were
killed in 1915-1923 in an organized genocidal campaign and have pushed
for recognition of the killings as genocide around the world.

Turkey rejects the claim that a mass evacuation and related deaths
of Armenians was genocide and says the death toll is inflated.

Later on Saturday, Chirac was to meet with local French community
and attend a concert by Charles Aznavour, a famous French singer of
Armenian origin.

Chirac also was set to meet with the head of the Armenian Apostolic
Church before leaving Sunday.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DOCUMENTARY WILL NOT BE FEATURED IN TURKEY

Sabah, Turkey
Sept 30 2006

Authorities decided not to feature a documentary called "I hate
dogs" which is about the so-called Armenian genocide in Istanbul
film festival.

Ban for Armenian documentary

A documentary called "I hate dogs" which is about the so-called
Armenian genocide has been excluded from the International 1001
Documentary Movie Festival which will be held in Istanbul this year.

Swedish production documentary is based on a real story told by
Garbis Hagopyan; an Armenian man who claimed himself a survivor of
1915 events. Director Suzanne Khardalian told that they have notified
about the exclusion just one day before the festival. Khardalian said:
"This morning we have received an e-mail which was informing us about
the exclusion. Then festival committee president Nurdan Arca called
my partner Pea Holmquist and notified him. She told us we are still
invited to the festival as the directors but they can not guarantee
safety of our lives during the festival. She also told us that the
reason behind this changed schedule was the Ministry of Culture’s
pressures against the festival committee."
From: Baghdasarian

SPANISH COMPANY ENGAGED IN WOODWORK IN ARMENIAN-OCCUPIED AZERBAIJANI LANDS

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Sept 30 2006

Spain’s company engaged in woodwork in the Armenian-occupied
Azerbaijani lands, APA reports. Garabagh-Spain joint enterprise-
"Max Wood" has been involved in exploitation of Azerbaijani natural
resources for six years.

Owner of the company Spanish Enrike Viver Kamin is living in Armenia.

"Max Wood" produces butt for rifle used in hunting, sports. The
products are exported to Spain, Italy and Russia. They use nut,
hazel-nut and other trees grown in Azerbaijani forests as raw
materials. The company has 30 employees.

Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry press center head Matin Mirza told the
APA the fact will be investigated, and Azerbaijani embassy in Spain
will take necessary actions if needed.

AZERI POLITICIANS CONSIDER NECESSARY TO CERATE NEW ORG. IN UNO FOR REGULATION OF CONFLICTS IN S CAUCASUS
Author: S.Agayeva

TREND Information, Azerbaijan
Sept 30 2006

It is impossible to achieve any progresses in the settlement of
Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within the framework
of format of OSCE Minsk Group, the Director of Human Rights Institute
of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, politician Rovshan
Mustafayev briefed journalists on September 30, Trend reports.

The co-chairs of OSCE Minsk Group themselves confirmed it with their
recent statement recognizing that the fancies have exhausted.

According to Mustafayev, a deadlock situation emerged in result,
but it needs to seek and find a way out with the international
organizations created under concrete goals.

The politician considers necessary to create a new organization that
should be a part of UNO. According to Mustfayev, the format of this
organization should cover not only Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but
also all conflicts caused by Armenian separatism in South Caucasus.

CHIRAC URGES TURKEY TO RECOGNIZE 1915 GENOCIDE OF ARMENIANS

Interfax Russia
Sept 30 2006

YEREVAN. Sept 30 (Interfax) – Turkey should admit the errors of
the past, including the 1915 genocide of Armenians, if it wants to
accede to the European Union, French President Jacques Chirac said
at a press conference during a state visit to Armenia on Saturday.

"I believe that any country, as long as it develops, also confesses
to mistakes it made in the past, and I think Turkey should seriously
think about this issue," Chirac said.

Chirac referred to the example of Germany, which has not lost its
greatness by admitting the Holocaust but, on the contrary, other
nations have started to trust it more.
From: Baghdasarian

IRAN, ARMENIA, GEORGIA SIGN MOU ON SUPPLY OF ELECTRICITY

Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran
Sept 30 2006

Energy ministers of Iran, Armenia and Georgia signed a memorandum of
understanding (MoU) in Yerevan on Saturday on an agreement for supply
of electricity.

The three ministers in the MoU stressed the importance of boosting
their tripartite cooperation in the field of energy.

Iranian Energy Minister Parviz Fattah said that based on the MoU Iran
would supply electricity to Georgia via Armenia and vice-versa.

He said that Iran will transfer some 50mw of electricity to Georgia
within the next two to three months while Georgia would transfer the
same amount in spring.

The Iranian minister said that the exchange of electric power would
be increased to 350mw in the next two years.

He said that some 800mw of electricity have been imported into the
country from Georgia this summer, adding that Iran now has the capacity
to produce electricity more than domestic demand which it can export.

RAGE OF ANKARA
By Nazlan Ertan

The New Anatolian, Turkey
Sept 30 2006

The Turkish temper has targeted two foreigners in the last seven
days: first Hansjoerg Kretschmer, the head of the European Commission
Delegation to Turkey, and Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president.

Camiel Eurlings, the author of a much-modified Turkey report in
the European Parliament, was clearly overshadowed by those two,
particularly after an offending reference to the Armenian "genocide"
being a precondition for Turkish accession in the European Union was
removed from the text.

Accountability

The remarks by Kretschmer, made at the launch of Almanak Turkey, on
the security sector and democratic oversight, weren’t particularly
different to previous ones in European Commission progress reports.

However, his remarks that the military has been exempt of
"accountability," which must be observed by all state institutions,
created an angry reaction from the top commanders. Gen. Ilker Basbug,
the Land Forces commander and possibly the next chief of General
Staff, reacted tersely to the remarks, saying that it could not be
considered undemocratic to defend the principles of the republic. The
reply that was most-awaited was that of Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, the
new chief of staff, who is considered more of a hardliner than his
predecessor. The critical date of the response is Monday, when Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in Washington.

Eurlings contained

The offensive report of Dutch Member of the European Parliament Camille
Eurlings was accepted by the EP general assembly this week, but Turkish
diplomacy, combined with distributed fact-sheets, letters and visiting
parliamentary delegations, managed to wipe out the most offensive
parts of the report. The wording that established recognition of the
Armenian "genocide" as a precondition to Turkish membership in the
European Union was withdrawn by Belgian Socialist Deputy Dominique de
Keyzer, after being reminded by her own party that the move may lead
to a loss of Turkish votes in the next local elections in Belgium,
scheduled for Oct. 8. For the first time, resident foreigners,
including Turkish guest-workers, will vote in the elections.

A reference to the Pontic Greek and Syriac "genocides" was also removed
from the text, replaced by an article which said that Turkey should
reconcile with its past.

In the words of Ali Babacan, Turkey’s two-hatted chief negotiator
who’s started a second tour of Europe by visiting Italy and Finland,
pointed out that the report, even at its present stage, is far
from satisfactory. True enough, the report carried heavy criticism,
part of which will be reflected in the Commission’s regular report
on Turkey. These centered around the role of the military, cultural
and religious freedoms, and the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish
Penal Code (TCK).

A new ‘Dawn’?

Yes, the notorious case against Elif Safak, whose last name means
"dawn," is over, but the debate on Article 301 of the TCK continues.

Attempts to change this article on insulting not only Turkish
institutions but Turkishness itself, continue. Criticized in a recent
Amnesty International report, the infamous article has been defended
by Justice Minister Cemil Cicek, who said that many European Union
countries have similar articles. Cicek, in a televised interview,
read a Polish text which makes insulting the national dignity of
Polish people and Polishness a criminal act. What he didn’t add,
however, is that this article was used for the last time in 1995.

Rumors indicate that the Foreign Ministry is eager to modify the
article before November, but that the Justice Ministry supports slower
moves in that direction.

Talabani speaks up

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has achieved what no Turkish politician
could: He managed to get pro-state, anti-EU daily Cumhuriyet, and
liberal, pro-EU Radikal, newspapers with widely different outlooks,
to run the same headline: "Talabani threatens Turkey." The Iraqi
president said, while in the U.S., that he spoke to the PKK and said
the terrorist group will declare a ceasefire in a few days. A few days
later, he announced that Iraq’s neighbors are interfering in Iraq’s
affairs too much and if they don’t stop, Iraq will reciprocate by
supporting opposition groups in those countries.

Turkey, angry at being compared to regional countries such as Iran
and Syria, responded with a reasonably moderate statement. Foreign
Ministry spokesman Namik Tan said that Turkey’s policy toward Iraq
is both transparent and in line with good neighborly ties. Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for once controlling his temper, said
that the remarks were unfortunate, and hoped it was a mistake which
would not be repeated. The harshest reaction came from Cemil Cicek,
the justice minister, who said, "This man is a boot kisser."

The remarks of Mr Talabani on interference by neighbors came at a
time when a Turkish Parliament delegation was in northern Iraq to
"see the situation of Turkmens and Kirkuk."

Mr. Erdogan goes to Washington

Erdogan left for London via Washington! In less than five days, the
premier will meet with both U.S. President George W.Bush and British
Premier Tony Blair. The joke in Ankara’s political circles is that
Erdogan intends to use this trip to clear the way to the presidency;
but he may be wiser to take his cues from Blair — and learn instead
to clear the way, period.

DELEGATION OF THE NA OF RA TO LEAVE FOR STRASBOURG

National Assembly of RA, Armenia
Sept 29 2006

On October 2 in Strasbourg the works will begin the PACE (Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe) plenary session, which will
attend the delegation of the National Assembly of Armenia headed
by Mr. Tigran Torosyan, President of the National Assembly of the
Republic of Armenia, Head of the Armenian delegation in PACE.

Armen Roustamyan, Hermine Naghdalyan, Stepan Demirchyan and Artashes
Geghamyan will leave for Strasbourg in this delegation.

Within the framework of the PACE plenary session the five years of
the accession of Armenia to PACE will be marked.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress