Month: April 2007

TIGRAN MANSURIAN DIGS DEEP FOR HIS CRAFT
By Chris Pasles, Times Staff Writer

Los Angeles Times, CA
Calendar Live
April 20 2007

Perhaps Armenia’s top living composer, he says writing music is always
a struggle.

Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian may not be a household name. But
in his homeland, in Armenian diaspora communities and in Europe’s new
music circles, he is regarded as Armenia’s greatest living composer.

Recently, he’s been getting even wider notice.

The taste-making German label ECM has issued four CDs of his music
("Monodia" was nominated for a 2005 Grammy), and a fifth is planned.

Within the last month, New York has heard two U.S. premieres: "Con
Anima" for string sextet at Merkin Concert Hall and an Agnus Dei for
clarinet, violin, cello and piano at Carnegie Hall. And between tonight
and Wednesday night, the Glendale-based Lark Musical Society, which
sponsors the enterprising Dilijan Chamber Music Series, is presenting
"A Mansurian Triptych" – three concerts programmed to commemorate
the 92nd anniversary of the Armenian genocide.

Mansurian’s epic a cappella choral work, "Ars Poetica," will be
performed tonight at the downtown L.A. Colburn School’s Zipper Concert
Hall. Selections from his chamber music, including the Agnus Dei,
will be played Monday at Zipper. And on Wednesday, orchestral works,
including the U.S. premiere of his Violin Concerto No. 2, titled
"Four Serious Songs," and his Viola Concerto, " … and then I was
in time again … ," will be played at the Alex Theatre in Glendale.

What audiences will hear is "very strong emotional music," according
to Anja Lechner, cellist of the Munich, Germany-based Rosamunde String
Quartet, which has recorded three Mansurian works for ECM.

"That’s maybe why it goes directly to people’s hearts."

Mansurian himself believes that music has a spiritual purpose. "There
are two main roots to music," he said in an interview this week. "The
first one is the religious, Christian aspect, the issue of pain and
spirituality, the pain of Christ being crucified and the guilt that
comes from it and our relationship to God. The second one is our
instinctive search for Paradise Lost. That’s what makes music."

Because he shifted between Armenian and Russian, Mansurian was speaking
through several interpreters at the Lark Musical Society offices. A
gentle, elegant man with flowing white hair, he spoke in a light,
precise tenor, often animating his remarks with eloquently shaped
gestures that belied the struggle he said composing has always been
for him.

"Since childhood to now, my fingertips are bleeding from the conflict,"
he said. "It was always my personal fight or mission."

Born Jan. 27, 1939, to Armenian parents in Beirut, he moved with his
family to Soviet Armenia in 1947 and then in 1956 to the capital,
Yerevan, where they settled. He studied at the Yerevan Music Academy
and at the Komitas State Conservatory, where, after earning a
doctorate, he taught and later became rector.

He won two first prizes in the All-Union competition in Moscow in
1966 and 1968 and the Armenian State Prize in 1981.

Armenia is still his home, but his daughter, Nvart Sarkissian, lives
in Glendale, and because his wife, Nora Aharonian, died last year,
he plans to spend more time here.

His early works combined neoclassicism and Armenian folk traditions.

Subsequently, he adopted 12-tone and serial techniques. His more
recent works are a mix of all these influences.

"I have tried to find myself in the old Armenian music," he said. "I
have tried to find myself in Boulez’s serialism. When you go deep
in these traditions, you will find the things that are true to your
individual roots. Generally, I compose what’s been developing and
growing inside me for a long time."

In addition, he said, he has always been drawn to the written word.

"As a musician, the Armenian language was one of my first teachers,"
he said. "One’s childhood tongue and the first impressions of language
are very important for any musician."

"Four Hayrens," for example, is a setting of Armenian poems. "Ars
Poetica" consists of poems by Yeghishe Charents, a victim of Stalin’s
purges. The title of his Viola Concerto, " … and then I was in time
again … " is a line spoken by Quentin Compson, the doomed hero of
Faulkner’s "The Sound and the Fury."

"I have devoted 10 years of my life to Faulkner," he said, before
spontaneously reciting the opening of that novel in Russian.

"He’s difficult, but once you go into Faulkner, there is no higher
joy. If I were to choose the person who was most significant to me,
it would have been Quentin because of his incredible honesty."

Mansurian read the book first in Russian, but upon later reading an
Armenian translation, he said, he discovered that the Soviet version
had been heavily censored.

"Just like the Soviet state got involved in every other aspect of
life, it got involved in translations," he said. "That’s how things
were done."

Living under the Soviet system, he added, was "some sort of different
Faulknerian tale. It was another monumental feeling of loss."

For all his identification with his homeland, Mansurian said he prefers
to regard himself as a composer rather than an Armenian composer.

"To be truthful to myself, I have to rely on my genetic memory and my
way of praying and my whole being, which is of course very Armenian,"
he said. "But not in order to be called Armenian – just in order to
be true to myself."

lassical/cl-et-mansurian20apr20,0,3249433.story

TURKISH POLICE PROBE BIBLE KILLINGS AMID SHOCK

L’express.mu, Mauritius
April 20 2007

Turkish police have detained ten people in connection with the killing
of three people, including a German, at a Bible publishing house in
the mainly Muslim country, authorities said yesterday.

The three were found on Wednesday with their throats slit at the
Zirve publishing house in Malatya, a city in the southeast of the
country. Voicing shock across the country at the latest attack on
Turkey’s small Christian minority, a headline in the Milliyet daily
said: "The nightmare continues."

It linked the new attack with the murders of Turkish-Armenian editor
Hrant Dink in January and an Italian priest last year.

Malatya Governor Halil Ibrahim Dasoz told reporters the number of
people in custody had risen to 10 and that all were from the same
age group. He gave no further details.

CEREMONY TO COMMEMORATE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE VICTIMS
By: Scott Whipple, Herald Staff

New Britain Herald, CT
April 20 2007

Saturday will be a day of remembrance for area Armenians.

State Rep. John C. Geragosian, D-25th District, and the Connecticut
Armenian Community will hold a ceremony in recognition of the 92nd
anniversary of the Turkish government’s genocide of the Armenian
population. Events will begin outside the state capitol with a
flag-raising ceremony at 10:30 a.m., followed by a commemoration
ceremony and Requiem Service in the House chambers at 11 a.m. to
honor martyrs and survivors.

Genocide is the organized killing of a people for the express purpose
of putting an end to their collective existence.

During the genocide, over 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
the Ottoman Empire between the years 1915 and 1923. Five hundred
thousand others were driven from their homes into exile, where they
were imprisoned or forced into death marches and massacred.

"As human beings we should never forget the atrocities that were
perpetuated upon the Armenian people," Geragosian said. "The suffering
of the Armenian people was one of the most horrific events of the
20th century and possibly in the history of our world.

With mass killings occurring in places like Darfur today, the lessons
of the Armenian genocide must not be lost on people. We’re hoping the
U.S. Congress will finally pass a resolution to formally recognize
this injustice on the Armenian people."

This year’s ceremony will be in honor of Hrant Dink, an Armenian and
Turkish editor and journalist. Dink was murdered earlier this year
by a Turkish nationalist because of his advocacy for the Turkish
government’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

The keynote speaker will be award-winning artist and filmmaker,
Apo Torosyan of Boston, whose film "Voices" will be shown after the
commemoration ceremony.

"We’re extremely honored to have such an acclaimed speaker at our
commemoration," Geragosian said. "I hope the public will turn out to
hear his powerful words about genocide."

The Armenian Genocide is commemorated on or near April 24. According
to the Armenian National Institute, on the night of April 24, 1915
the Turkish government placed under arrest more than 200 Armenian
community leaders in Constantinople; hundreds more were arrested and
were imprisoned in Anatolia. Most of them were executed.

ARMENIANS RACE AGAINST TIME FOR STORIES OF THEIR DEVASTATION
By Russell Ben-Ali
Star-Ledger Staff

Newark Star Ledger, NJ
April 20 2007

Hagop Bahtiarian recalls the frantic grab he made for his father’s
coat: a terrified 5-year-old clutching his dad during an arrest by
police of the Ottoman Empire 92 years ago.

The elder Bahtiarian was jailed in 1915 and later killed, in the early
days of a period that would prove devastating for Bahtiarian’s family
and other Armenians. As a people, they were rousted from their homes
and expelled from Ottoman territory now part of Turkey.

Between 1915 and 1923, an estimated 1.5million Armenians were killed
or died of starvation and illness while in detention or in forced
marches into the Syrian desert during a campaign many historians call
the Armenian Genocide.

"These are things that are so hard for a kid to take," said Bahtiarian,
97, a retired watchmaker who settled in Bergen County and now lives
in the Armenian Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Emerson. "But
it hurts so much that it’s impossible to forget it. My father never
came back. How can you not remember?"

Historians are counting on vivid memories of survivors like Bahtiarian
as they try to document the oral histories of the Armenian calamity
while there is still time.

"If they’re going to remember anything, they’ve got to be close to 100
years old," said Samuel Azadian of Hamburg, New Jersey, who founded
the Armenian Genocide Commemoration in 1985.

BELATED REGRETS

The Armenian community has struggled for decades to promote broader
recognition of its losses, with the Turkish government strongly
resistant to the notion that ethnic cleansing was at work. This Sunday
in Times Square, thousands of Armenians are expected to rally at 2 p.m.

"Unfortunately, our community did not do the things that the Jewish
community has done in chronicling the Holocaust," said Azadian, a
former deputy commissioner for New York City highways. "Remember,
there was not the technological methods available that there are
today. Who even had tape recorders back in 1920?"

The killings were well chronicled by publications including the New
York Times. In the years since, some relatives have attempted to
record and videotape personal histories of survivors.

Azadian, 80, said he wishes he had done more to document his own
family history through his mother, who during the genocide lost four
children before he was born.

"I regret to this day that I didn’t sit down with a tape recorder and
interview my mother," Azadian said. "Her memories just kept haunting
her and haunting her."

The memories are troubling for Anahid Boghosian, 98, who also lives
in the Armenian nursing home. "Annie" was a child forced into exile;
her travels took her to Syria, Cuba, Revere, Mass., and then Cliffside
Park in Bergen County.

"My father had gone to Istanbul to look for work," said Boghosian,
hands trembling as she tried to recall the events during an interview
at the nursing home. "He was never heard from again."

‘WHAT’S THE USE?’

The stories she once told her daughters, Thelma Sarajian and Helen
Kenajian of Cliffside Park, are difficult to recall these days,
even with their aid and encouragement.

Sitting in a wheelchair in a nursing home conference room with her
daughters and the reporter interviewing her, she struggled with her
emotions. "Why do you people wait so late?" she asked. "It’s all in
the ashes. What’s the use? What’s the use?"

Around the world, Armenians generally remember the start of the
killings with a commemoration on April 24, the date in 1915 when
Armenian political, intellectual and other leaders were rounded up
and eliminated.

On Sunday, advocates will call on the U.S. government to recognize
the Armenian genocide, as some Western countries have. They also will
remember Hrant Dink, the prominent Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor
who was gunned down outside his Istanbul office in January. Dink
often chronicled the Turkish government’s treatment of the Armenian
minority in his weekly.

They also will push for the passage of House Resolution 160, introduced
in January by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to recognize the Armenian
Genocide.

Although the resolution is largely symbolic, it is strongly opposed by
the Turkish government. It is also opposed by the Bush administration,
which recognizes the Armenian deaths as a historic tragedy but declines
to call it genocide or accuse Turkey, its NATO ally, of participating.

POSTWAR BEDLAM

The Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923, has long denied initiating
a campaign to eliminate or expel from the Ottoman Empire the
Armenian people, who represent one of the world’s oldest Christian
communities. In the past, Turkey has attributed the Armenian deaths
to the bedlam surrounding World War I, as the old Ottoman Empire
unraveled and collapsed.

The government contends many Turks were casualties of this period,
too, killed by Armenians who aligned themselves with Russian troops
and might have had plans to take over land in the eastern part of
the Ottoman Empire.

Those contentions have inspired Armenian-Americans to work harder to
interview survivors.

"Their stories touch our hearts," said Dennis R. Papazian of Woodcliff
Lake in Bergen County, who is the founding director of the Armenian
Research Center at the University of Michigan at Dearborn.

Beginning in the 1970s, some 55 years after the genocide began,
Papazian began amassing hundreds of oral, and, later, video recordings
of survivor stories.

Such work is vital, Azadian said, to thwarting future acts of genocide.

"It’s a horrible blot on mankind — Darfur, Rwanda, Cambodia," he
said of genocide. "That’s why we do what we do."

AZERI FM: "ARMENIA CAN’T POSSIBLY JOIN REGIONAL PROJECTS UNLESS IT WITHDRAWS FROM AZERBAIJANI LANDS"

Today, Azerbaijan
April 20 2007

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov made speech at the
meeting of the foreign ministers of Black Sea Economic Cooperation
Organization in Belgrade.

Khazar Ibrahim, spokesman for Foreign Ministry told the APA minister
Mammadyarov touched upon different issues and commented on the
development of the organization and new regional projects.

Touching upon the regional cooperation, Azerbaijani minister stressed
the importance of this issue and said Azerbaijan is interested in
this cooperation. Elmar Mammadyarov stated Armenia can not possibly
participate in regional projects and Azerbaijani will not cooperate
with this country unless Armenia withdraws its troops from Azerbaijani
territories and Azerbaijani IDPs returning to their native lands
is ensured.

Elmar Mammadyarov had bilateral meetings in the framework of the
visit. He had negotiations with Foreign Ministers of Greece and
Romania, US representative, his Russian and Turkish counterparts
Sergey Lavrov and Abdullah Gul.

URL:

MOSCOW FOREIGN STUDENTS TOLD TO STAY IN AS RACIST ATTACKS RISE OVER HITLER’S BIRTHDAY

Buzzle, CA
April 20 2007

Russia’s most prestigious medical institute has told its foreign
students to stay indoors for three days because of fears they may be
attacked by skinheads celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

The IM Sechenov Medical Academy in Moscow yesterday advised its 2,000
non-Russian students to remain in their dormitories until tomorrow.

The institute’s deputy dean said the extraordinary measures were
necessary because of the risk of attack by ultra-nationalist thugs,
who are traditionally more active around Hitler’s birthday – which
falls on April 20.

"We believe that the best form of medicine is prevention," Sergei
Baronov, deputy dean in the faculty of foreign students, told
the Guardian. "I don’t think the problem in Russia is worse than
anywhere else. But there are a small group of people who are bent
on provocation."

Foreign students are also being taught self-defence and lectures have
been cancelled as security has increased. Officially the shutdown is
described as a fire drill.

"I was shocked when I first heard it," Vijay Ganason, 23, a medical
student from Malaysia, said. "Basically we are staying in. If you
want you can go out. But it’s at your own risk. We’ve filled our
drawers with dried food."

Other students, however, said they welcomed the move.

"We are finally getting a rest and some sleep," said Vishnu Ravee,
21, also from Malaysia. "We’ve been revising very hard and have exams
in a few weeks."

Next door the smell of Indian cooking came from the communal kitchen;
in an adjacent room another medical student slept on a sofa.

The students come from 82 countries – including Britain but mostly
from Malaysia and India – and they live in a renovated 19th century
block not far from campus.

In recent years there has been a steep rise in the number of racist
and xenophobic attacks across Russia. The victims are often migrant
workers from former Soviet Union countries.

Yesterday police said they had detained five suspects in connection
with the latest race stabbings in Moscow, one of which was recorded
on a video camera.

Khairullo Sadykov, 26, a street cleaner from Tajikistan, was stabbed
35 times on Monday evening outside an apartment building near a metro
station in eastern Moscow, a prosecutor, Sergei Vasilovsky, said. He
died at the scene.

According to Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, two teenagers, thought to
be skinheads wearing "high, laced-up army style boots", were captured
on video allegedly carrying out the murder. They were later arrested,
the paper said.

In another attack an Armenian businessman, Karen Abramyan, 46,
was brutally stabbed 20 times also on Monday evening, in south-west
Moscow. He died of his injuries in hospital. Three young men were
arrested.

"After he was taken to hospital the victim said he was attacked because
of his ethnicity, saying the young men were shouting racial epithets,"
a police source told Interfax news agency.

Last year 53 people were killed and 460 injured in racially motivated
attacks, according to the human rights centre Sova. Activists say
that the authorities are in denial about the problem and regularly
classify race attacks as the lesser crime of hooliganism. Courts also
impose lenient sentences, they say.

"It is nice that the university is taking care of us, but on the
other hand it’s absurd that our freedom is being limited because
of some militant groups," said Liah Ganeline, a second-year medical
student from Israel. "In a normal democratic country the authorities
don’t obey the interests of these groups, but on the contrary, law
enforcement forces protect people from them."

She said that students were aware of the real reason for the lockdown –
which has happened over the past two or three years – and that someone
had scrawled the word "skinheads" over the announcement of the measure
posted in a dormitory.

Founded in 1758, Moscow’s medical academy is famous in Russia for
its talented students and rigorous teaching. The institute has 8,000
students studying medicine, dentistry and pharmacology.

Backstory

Russia has been gripped in recent years by a series of brutal racist
attacks on foreigners, with at least 53 people murdered last year
alone. The victims are typically migrant workers in low-paid jobs from
the former Soviet Union. But there are also regular attacks on students
and on Jews. The violence appears to spike around Hitler’s birthday,
on April 20, when foreign embassies receive anonymous emails demanding
that all "non Russians" leave or face death. The attacks occur in all
of Russia’s big cities where immigration and nationalism are on the
rise. The situation is especially bad in St Petersburg and in Voronesh,
a city south of Moscow with a large student population. Critics say
the Kremlin is too lenient towards far-right groups.

EU: MALATYA ANOTHER INCIDENT IN SERIES OF ANTI-REFORM PROVOCATIONS

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 20 2007

The European Union believes the killing of three people in Malatya
is yet another provocation by those who want the reform process to
grind to a halt.

While the EU Commission has condemned the killing very strongly,
as did the Council of Europe and several MEPs, it thinks the motive
behind the killings was to stop the reform process that has deepened
since the AK Party came to power. A senior official from the EU
Commission told Today’s Zaman that those responsible were those who
were against the reform process, human rights and the deepening and
strengthening of Turkish democracy. Drawing attention to the murders
of priest Andrea Santoro and Turkish journalist of Armenian origin
Hrant Dink, the official said it was no coincidence that Christians
were targeted in all three incidents.

Meanwhile, Joost Lagendijk of the European Parliament’s Turkey
delegation, visiting the nearby southeastern Anatolian province of
Diyarbakýr, said the killings would send a negative message to Europe
and that there was paranoia about missionaries in Turkey. "The public
reaction to be shown against these murders is actually important,"
Lagendijk said, while also calling on the Turkish government to deliver
a call for tolerance. "Europe will perceive the killings to mean that
those who attempt to seek converts to other faiths in Turkey will
face a similar fate. It is very important for the government to appeal
for the acceptance of different religions and ethnic backgrounds."

In Seoul, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said murders in Malatya
would not be helpful for Turkey’s EU process. "I call on the Turkish
government to be diligent regarding democratic rules concerning
living together. The Turkish government should not let these kinds
of tragedies to change the political line that they have pursued,"
Prodi said. The right-wing opposition parties in Italy, meanwhile,
urged Prodi to inform the Italian Parliament concerning the incident
in Malatya.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier condemned the attack
"in the strongest terms," and said he expected Turkish authorities
would "do everything to clear up this crime completely and bring
those responsible to justice."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat Party, which
opposes Turkey’s bid to join the EU, said the attacks that included
a German citizen showed the country’s shortcomings in protecting
religious freedoms. "The Turkish state is still far from the freedom
of religion that marks Europe," the party’s general secretary, Ronald
Pofalla, said in a statement. Turkey is under pressure to guarantee
the protection and freedom of non-Muslim minorities as part of its
efforts to join the EU, but a recent series of attacks has raised
concerns that nationalism and anti-Christian hostility are on the rise.

In February 2006, Father Santoro, was shot dead as he prayed in his
church in the northern city of Trabzon. A teenager was convicted of
the murder and jailed for nearly 19 years. In January, journalist
Hrant Dink, a prominent member of Turkey’s Armenian community, was
gunned down in an Istanbul street. A 17-year-old, detained along with
11 other suspected ultra-nationalists, confessed to the killing.

SELCUK GULTAÞLI, Today’s Zaman with wires BRUSSELS, ANKARA

–Boundary_(ID_nXdOhzTQs3qLLbdY3OGa6g)–

SHAKEN AND ASHAMED AGAIN
By DoÐu ErgÝl

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 20 2007

Turkey has once again been shaken and ashamed after three people were
found dead with their throats slit in a publishing house in Malatya,
eastern Turkey, known to be printing and distributing Bibles and
other Christian literature.

Assailants killed three people Wednesday at a publishing house that
distributed Bibles, in the latest attack apparently targeting Turkey’s
tiny Christian minority.

One of the victims was a German citizen. According to Reuters, Carlos
Madrigal, an evangelical pastor in Istanbul, has identified the victims
as evangelical Protestants. Five men arrested on suspicion of having
committed the crime were young people aged 19 and 20, just like the
assassin who shot Hrant Dink, the Armenian-Turkish journalist murdered
in Istanbul, and the young killer of the Roman Catholic priest Andrea
Santoro in Trabzon. All of these crimes attest to two things: that
hate and intolerance has been steeped against Christian minorities
and that fanatical youth have been reared with extreme nationalist
bigotry and twisted religious sentiments. Both are dangerous and
constitute obstacles to Turkey’s bid to be a global country.

There is no doubt that there is a significant nationalist fringe
that has admixed religion to their fabricated group/national identity
through a secondary socialization process in extremist organizations.

They are xenophobes and their nationalism is more an ethnic construct
than political. This racial twist inevitably leads them to seek the
ethnic and religious purity of the Turkish nation, as they understand
it. What distinguishes this fanatical nationalist-religious youth group
is the secondary socialization they receive in extremist organizations
that exalt violence as a purifying force. This purification has two
ends: to purify the nation and to purify themselves as the savior of
the nation from internal and external enemies.

Although this criminal trend is relatively new and rare, it certainly
does not help Turkey’s bid for membership to the European Union. Nor
does it support its diplomatic struggle to abort parliamentary
resolutions adopted one after another in diverse countries concerning
the acknowledgement of tragic events that ended in the elimination of
vast numbers of Armenians during World War I in Ottoman Turkey. What
is happening today recalls the images of old tragedies that took
place four generations ago and supplies convincing argument to those
who claim that such crimes are still a part of life in contemporary
Turkey. But just as no one can claim that Americans in general shoot
each other en masse due to the recent school shootout in the US, the
tragic event that took place in Malatya this week cannot be attributed
to the whole Turkish nation. However, the event begs serious questions
as to why a mixture of fanatical nationalism supported by militant
religiosity wedded with a political agenda yield inhuman behavior.

There are several plausible answers:

1) In the 1970s and 1980s there was a strong leftist current in
Turkey. This current was most apparent in the labor movement and
the universities. The rulers of Turkey have exaggerated this leftist
trend that was more vocal than effective. Their fear of the left was
further exacerbated with the Soviet Union looming in the country’s
eastern border. Communism became a bogey to limit basic freedoms and
modernizing structural change. Instead it put the Turkish political
system under military tutelage. In addition, civilian forces were
groomed to fight against communism on the home front. It is during
this time that many youth of lower social standing were recruited into
paramilitary nationalist organizations and were trained as militia
to deliver the country from the "encroachment" of communism.

Their excesses were officially tolerated, and crimes against liberal
and democratic intellectuals and academics were covered up. This
impunity has lingered on to some degree until this day. The culture
of intolerance to diversity was cemented during this period.

2) It has been an official policy to deny that there are minorities
in this country other than several hundred thousand (now hardly
100,000) acknowledged Christians and Jews by the Lausanne Treaty
(1922). Although this treaty protects the legal, linguistic,
educational and economic (e.g., property) rights of the acknowledged
non-Muslim minorities, official practice most often times have violated
some of these rights. However, more than legal issues, non-Muslim and
non-Turkish (ethnically) minorities have been discriminated against in
clandestine ways. Apart from being denied bureaucratic and official
(army, police) service, most serious of this has been derogatory and
incriminating rhetoric that has affected the public opinion negatively
against such citizens. Indeed Christian citizens have been presented
as alien elements of this country and oftentimes as a fifth column of
foreign powers that want to dismantle Turkey. The outcome has been
a growing emotional rift between Muslim ethnic Turks and non-Muslim
non-ethnic Turkish citizens. Needless to say, the rift has been
more than emotional, non-Muslim citizens have felt insecure and they
have left the country in droves throughout the republican decades,
especially when open examples of physical threats have surfaced.

So it is easy to accuse individuals and groups with a fanatical
orientation. But behind their orientation is a socialization process
fueled by intolerance and discrimination at the official and unofficial
but social levels. Recently xenophobia and discriminatory rhetoric is
heard in abundance from the secularist sections of the society that
claim to be more modern. The reason is quite problematic: secularism
has been mainly upheld by the state (bureaucracy) in Turkey due to
the traditionalism of the insufficiently developed and modernized
society. Those "secular" groups who drew their power, privilege and
mission of upholding secularism from the state are losing their grip
on the state apparatus. The state is progressively being subjugated to
the control of society. The last blow to the nationalist-secularist
camp will be the loss of the presidency to the incumbent AK Party,
whose most likely candidate is Prime Minister Erdoðan, who has been
vilified by this camp as an agent of the West and the man who has
sold out Cyprus to the Greeks, and is now getting ready to give away
eastern Turkey to the Kurds. The surge of these sentiments may, as it
has already, take the form of the violent reactions of the so-called
nationalists who really represent a past that Turkey is struggling
to shrug off.

Bloody political crimes seem like birth pangs of future to come.

–Boundary_(ID_wQzOpaoiEupn6xRfryZP9A)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

THESE ARE ALL ORGANIZED ACTS
By Bulent Kenes

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 20 2007

First the Catholic priest Andrea Santoro last year, then
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, and two days ago three
missionaries brutally murdered in Malatya in a publishing house that
distributes Bibles.

That the perpetration of all these horrific murders comes at critical
junctures for Turkey, which has been making painstaking efforts to
distance itself from the bureaucratic status quo and go through a
great democratic transformation, and which has been suffering all
the growing pains from this profound transformation, cannot be a
coincidence. Those who know Turkey well will no doubt have noticed
that whenever the country is about to go through a critical period,
these kinds of horrendous provocations turn out the nightmares that
the Turkish public unwittingly expects, and that these nightmares
never fail to disappoint these expectations.

The generally held opinion in Turkey is that these murders, which
take place at certain intervals of time and bear a resemblance to
one another in terms of the chosen targets (foreigners representing
the "enemy within"), assassins (naïve and nationalistic youth) and
methods (gangland-style massacres), are being organized by certain
hidden forces. It’s as if some dark force or forces are planning such
plots beforehand in different places, and when the time comes, they
stage these acts in a conjuncture that will rattle Turkey and shock
the world. All of the backgrounds of the above-mentioned horrendous
murders provide enough evidence to support such an opinion.

In all three cases, the targets have religious or ethnic identities,
of a particularly naïve sort. And in all three cases, the perpetrators
are either minors or young people who could be considered minor. In
all three cases, the police were easily able to immediately catch
the perpetrators. And even though there is a common doubt over that
the real sponsors are behind the curtains, these masterminds cannot
be deciphered.

In all three cases, the real purpose seems to be to tarnish Turkey’s
positive image in the eyes of the world public, considering that it
has been pursuing multidimensional policies of opening up to the world
in recent years, expediting the process of integrating into Europe,
has managed to attract a considerable amount of foreign investment
and has become a significant tourist destination and a country where
foreigners increasingly prefer to settle and buy property. And the
real purpose is to reverse the trend of integration into the world.

It is impossible to view such attacks on people of a different faith
during this critical period as separate from the negative effects
on the world public that will be created by video footage of the
most recent horrible event. It is undeniable that all these events
have taken place in Turkey, but it is just as undeniable that the
ideologies of the organizers of these brutalities will benefit to
the extent Turkey receives vehement reactions from abroad.

It is clear that these murders share in the paranoiac attitude of
the parvenu neo-nationalist movement which keeps remarking that
the homeland is slipping out of our hands, the country’s lands are
being sold, that missionaries are converting our Muslim children to
Christianity and that Turkey’s foreign policy is determined by the
EU and the US. In fact, the desire of those who masterminded these
murders is to tear Turkey away from the world, to cause it to turn
inward and to transform Turkey into the regime of a sui generic,
anti-democratic and primitive republic.

Therefore, it would not be surrealistic to argue that these murders
were masterminded to exploit a conjuncture when the troubles put
forward against Turkey have increased in magnitude with its Muslim
identity used as a pretext against it in the EU accession process,
to strengthen the arguments in question.

That is, these provocations, which will deeply affect the European and
the Western public, can never be coincidental. Although there weren’t
strong religious elements in the characters of the perpetrators, the
religious identity of the chosen targets must have been considered
sufficient to help them achieve these heinous goals.

May God protect humanity from the malice of these ignominious
organizers!

–Boundary_(ID_i22ss1SPdq HL/wKW7ugTXQ)–

DEADLY MIX FINDS ITS PREY IN MALATYA

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 20 2007

[NEWS ANALYSIS]

The brutal murder of three Christian missionaries in the southeastern
city of Malatya on Wednesday, less than a year after the slaying of
an Italian priest in the Black Sea region and the assassination of
ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink — all by young, unemployed,
lower-class men at a time of increased political tension — are
likely to cause a sober questioning of the process whereby Christian
missionaries were made into objects of hatred, and at the same time,
and an uneasy examination of just where Turkey went wrong with its
young people.

Until just six years ago, Turkey’s Christians drew the ire of small
radical Islamist groups only. However, in 2001, a National Security
Council (MGK) meeting chaired by then-prime minister Bulent Ecevit
included "missionary activity" on its list of national security
threats, making it a widespread concern across the country. A wide
range of ideological groups from nationalist, neo-nationalists
and Islamists, started claiming that missionaries were carrying
out separatist activities and turning millions of Muslims into
Christians. Some even went so far as to suggest that the 2002
killing of a neo-nationalist academic was the doing of Christian
missionaries. All the aggravation directed at missionaries finally
worked, and Christians across the country came to be eyed suspiciously
by all segments of society, sometimes manifesting itself in outright
criminal activity. Attacks against churches became more frequent
and the long process hit its peak when Italian priest Andrea Santoro
was killed in Trabzon last year in February by a 16-year-old whose
mother later commented to the media that her son would "do jail time
for Allah."

In 2005 Rahþan Ecevit, the wife of the late former Prime Minister
Bulent Ecevit, in a statement she made criticizing laws allowing
foreigners to buy land, said, "One way of dividing Turkey is by
encouraging citizens to convert to other religions." Around the same
time, leading historians and researchers Ýlber Ortaylý, Hasan Unal,
Aytunc Altýndal and a senior member of Ecevit’s Democratic Left
Party (DSP) got together in the couple’s house in Ankara to discuss
"missionary activities in Turkey," a meeting that did not go unnoticed
by the media and consequently the public. Rahþan Ecevit reiterated
her concern about missionary activity in June of last year.

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli in a rally
in 2005 in the southern city of Adana also expressed concern about
missionary activities. In an earlier speech in 2002, Bahceli had stated
that "missionary activity in Turkey is on the rise, and evaluating
recent attempts to revive the Pontus ideology from all sides is an
absolute necessity." Neo-nationalist Grand Unity Party’s (BBP) leader
Muhsin Yazýcýoðlu, following the killing of Father Santoro in Trabzon,
claimed that Christian missionaries in Turkey were backed by the US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Saadet (Happiness or Contentment) Party (SP) leader Recai Kutan in a
recent conference had complained that the real extent of missionary
activity was "not adequately being relayed to the public." Another
politician, Haydar Baþ, who heads the Independent Turkey Party (BDP),
claimed only last year that missionaries were trying to "convert
our children."

The case of Malatya

Journalist and Bilgi University instructor Kurþat Bumin points out that
the murders in Malatya have an undeniably political aspect, but he does
not agree that such incidents, obviously devised to take up significant
space in the international media, are necessarily "provocations."

"They say this is a religious attack; this, too, is wrong," Bumin told
Today’s Zaman. Bumin asserts that recent attacks against minorities are
the result of a long process wherein certain segments of society were
gradually turned against missionaries. Bumin underlines that recent
murders are the result of a process and not the doing of organized
provocateurs. A youth group influenced by neo-nationalism with Islamist
overtones gradually emerged. Recalling how someone supposedly on the
left such as Rahþan Ecevit could make remarks about how Islam in Turkey
was in danger posed by missionary, Bumin points out that both the
media and politics are responsible for the fallout from the process.

Bumin gave as a recent example a radical daily reporting the
Malatya incident yesterday that omitted the comments of a foundation
representing Islam which had said the work of Christian missionaries
corresponds to Islam’s "explaining" of itself and that there is
nothing wrong with carrying out missionary activities. "The radical
daily only printed the part that condemned the attack," he observed.

Indeed, the daily entirely ignored the Muslim foundation’s remarks
that there was nothing wrong with Christians trying to spread the
word of their religion.

The right societal infrastructure

Nevzat Tarhan, psychiatrist and the author of numerous publications
on the social psychology regarding various issues in Turkey, points
out that the societal infrastructure of Turkey currently is fertile
ground for such ideological and political murders.

Pointing out that such murders are usually committed by "immature
personalities" who don’t have an ideal in life and who are unable to
make sense of concepts such as religion, are very open to manipulation,
he said, "Anti-EU or anti-US sentiment and paranoid perceptions
related to these are transforming into hostility against Christians,"
underlining that it is almost impossible for the perpetrators to see
the distinction between the two. However, he notes that it is not
very realistic to believe that five such young people, as in the case
of the Malatya Bible publisher murders, are capable of taking such
decisions by themselves. "They can’t do something like this without
relying on some power," he points out.

He notes that part of the problem is the existence of an increasingly
aggressive, disgruntled and unemployed youth. "There is a youth
without any social ideals. These kids usually have problems, and it
is very easy to make them members of a crime organization. In fact,
this is a method of suicide for many."

Tarhan also agrees that politicians are partially guilty. "Ambiguity
in politics such as the recent lack of clarity in the presidential
election adds to this atmosphere."

One important means to fight back would be to "make sure this kind of
behavior is unwanted in society." Tarhan thinks the reaction shown by
the media and the public in the aftermath of the Hrant Dink murder,
when hundreds of thousands gathered at his funeral to protest the
assassination, served that function. "Here, too, at least 100, 000
people in Malatya should march to protest the attack. Civil society
organizations should organize that," Tarhan said.

Sociologist Nilufer Narlý points out that the Italian priest’s murder
and Hrant Dink’s murder, as well as the most recent incident are
unarguably linked to the increasing violence in society.

Indeed, Turkey’s overall crime rate last year went up by a worrisome
61 percent. Parricides, rapes, murders and school violence hit the
newspapers every day. The danger is that the upsurge in the number
of violent incidents desensitizes people. "Widespread violence serves
to normalize violence," Narlý underlines.

In addition, polarization between marginal groups is one of the
factors motivating the incidents. The profile of an uneducated or
poorly educated male going through the tough years of his late teens
from the fringes of the city with little or no hope for a better
future is either too easily manipulated, or young men with this
profile easily commit hate crimes through fanatical interpretation
of what they read in the media.

If some light can be shed on the background of the Malatya murders
as well as other similar incidents, Turkey will be able to access
invaluable information on the situation of its youth. "Extensive
social rehabilitation projects can be started," Narlý says, adding,
"We need a series of policies targeting our youth."

Narlý says that young people in Turkey have been neglected too
long and that the lack of social policies targeting them in the
past decade or so has resulted in a fatal mistake that Turkey is
apparently now paying for dearly. "There is the [political] climate
and political tensions. Young people can readily pay lip service to
extreme political views."

–Boundary_(ID_URAFN3Wu2/3NDsjcrXN1c A)–