ARMENIAN OPPOSITION MEMBERS LAY WREATH AT ETERNAL FLAME
news.am
May 9 2011
Armenia
YEREVAN. – Members of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) visited
the Yerevan Victory Park on Monday to pay tribute to the memory of
World War II victims.
The delegation headed by ANC leader, former Armenian president Levon
Ter-Petrosyan laid a wreath at the eternal flame.
They also visited Yerablur military cemetery to pay tribute to the
memory of Karabakh war heroes.
From: A. Papazian
HAPPY V-DAY, EVERYONE (EXCEPT GEORGIA)! XOXO, DIMA
by Giorgi Lomsadze
EurasiaNet.org
May 9 2011
NY
May 9 is a post-Soviet family holiday. And, with that in mind,
Russian President Dmitri (“Dima”) Medvedev did not forget today to
send out greeting cards to the heads of state of all of Russia’s
World-War-II-era cousins (minus the black sheep, Georgia) to
congratulate them on the 66th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi
Germany.
He also had a few words of advice.
“Our duty is to prevent any attempts to rewrite history and foster in
the young generation the sense of patriotism and pride for our common
history,” Medvedev wrote to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev,
who was commended for resisting attempts to “reassess the outcome of
World War II.”
Azerbaijan indeed celebrated May 9 in a traditional way. But
its neighbor and sworn enemy Armenia chose to focus on Armenian
soldiers’ and Karabakhi separatists’ May 8-9, 1991 seizure of the
town of Shusha from Azerbaijan in the war over the disputed region
of Nagorno Karabakh.
Matters went much further afield in Georgia. Just as Medvedev feared,
many Georgians are busy reconsidering the May 9 observance.
Staying true to his vow to never-ever-speak-to-Saakashvili-again,
the Russian leader passed on his good wishes to the Georgian people,
but not to their president. Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze’s response
was succinct: “There are many ways to be a clown,” he observed.
Rather than May 9 (a holiday set up in 1965 under Leonid Brezhnev),
Vashadze contends that Georgia should celebrate victory over Nazi
Germany on May 8 — as does “all the rest of the civilized world”
( meaning Europe), agreed ex-Education Minister Gia Nodia in an
interview.
To set off in that direction, rather than watching a parade of military
hardware, Tbilisi today is marking “Europe Day.” The date commemorates
the 60th anniversary of the proposal for the French-German industrial
organization that was a foundation for the European Union.
Somebody throw a party.
From: A. Papazian
COURT ANNULS DEMOTION OF POLICE CHIEF OVER ALLEGED FAILURE TO PREVENT DINK MURDER
Today’s Zaman
May 9 2011
Turkey
An administrative court on Monday annulled an earlier Interior
Ministry decision to demote Ramazan Akyurek, the former head of the
National Police Department’s intelligence department, over his alleged
negligence in protecting Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.
Dink was shot dead in broad daylight outside his newspaper, the Agos
weekly, in Ä°stanbul on Jan. 19, 2007, by an ultranationalist teenager.
The ensuing investigation revealed that the police had been tipped
off about plans to murder the journalist.
Akyurek, who was at the helm of the intelligence department at the
time, was demoted by the Interior Ministry after allegations emerged
that he was among a number of police officers who had failed to prevent
the assassination of the journalist despite having credible evidence
that it was imminent.
The Ankara 14th Administrative Court on Monday reviewed an appeal filed
by Akyurek against his demotion and decided to annul the decision to
demote the former police chief. The court said there was no concrete
evidence that required his demotion over allegations of negligence.
Nineteen suspects are currently facing trial in the Dink murder case.
A majority of the suspects, including the hitman, are from Trabzon,
whose police department says it had informed the Ä°stanbul Police
Department about the plot to kill Dink on more than one occasion.
The ensuing investigation and trial exposed the hitman’s questionable
links to various individuals tied to the Ä°stanbul Police Department
and the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command. Despite significant evidence
pointing to the involvement of various officers in organizing the plot
to kill Dink, the identity of the masterminds of his assassination
remains elusive.
Lawyers representing the co-plaintiffs in the Dink trial have long
alleged that the murder was the doing of Ergenekon, a clandestine
group charged with plotting to overthrow the government.
From: A. Papazian
BWW Reviews:
THE HUMAN COMEDY by William Saroyan
– Something Appealing, Something Appalling
©2011. BroadwayWorld.com
by Duncan Pflaster
Monday, May 9, 2011
Astoria Performing Arts Center’s production of The Human Comedy is likely
the best imaginable possible production of the musical. Unfortunately, in
their admirable quest of dusting off this neglected gem from 1984, it seems
there are several good reasons it had been neglected. While Galt MacDermot’s
music is up to its usual caliber, with strikingly unusual harmonic and bold
rhythmic and melodic ideas, and the 1984 Broadway Cast Recording has a
certain cult following, the through-sung musical is less of a theatrical
piece and more of a meditative oratorio about the idea of Home; the libretto
by William Dumaresq is very nearly plotless, with banal lines often given
more importance than they deserve, borne on a wretched recitative, e.g. “now
you are completed, please be seated. Now class, tell us what you have
learned from this piece of prose”, and at times bursting out into
nonsensical songs celebrating noses, cocoanut cream pie or waving to people
on the train.
The piece is based on the 1943 novel of the same name by William Saroyan,
(which he originally wrote as a screenplay, but was pulled from the project
when the studio objected to the length). Saroyan’s oeuvre has often been
accused of sentimentality, and while that’s certainly true of his work for
the stage, they somehow work in any case. But The Human Comedy is entirely
constructed of sentimentality (it was intended to give hope to families
during the war), from adorable young children asking their parents about
names and death and birds, to young men coming of age too soon in a world of
war. Nominally set during WWII (though MacDermot’s music sometimes jumps
decades in its exuberance), the first act is mere exposition about the
quaint and wholesome town of Ithaca, California, where the people are “not
famous for anything.”. We follow an astonishing amount of characters who
live in the town (25), but mainly Homer Macauley (Anthony Pierini) and his
family, his mother Kate (Victoria Bundonis), sister Bess (Deidre Haren),
dead father Matthew (Jan-Peter Pedross), off-in-the-army brother Marcus
(Stephen Trafton), and young brother Ulysses (the adorably grating Anthony
Pierini). Since he’s now the man of the house, Homer gets a job at the
Telegraph office with Mr. Spangler (the charming Jonathan Gregg), Mr. Grogan
(Richard Vernon), and Felix (Michael Lee Jones), who are impressed with
Homer’s abilities to make up new songs for singing telegrams. Meanwhile,
Mary Arena (Rachel Rhodes-Davey) is engaged to the aforementioned
off-in-the-army Marcus. Everyone goes about their ordinary small-town lives,
with hints creeping through in the form of telegrams that their boys are
away dying in the war (leading to the bewildering number “I Let Him Kiss Me
Once”, which contrasts an upbeat 60’s style pop song about a boy who’s too
forward, with a mother’s grief on receiving notice of her son’s death).
In Act II, even more boys go away to war, and we get some scenes from the
War Front with Marcus and his new army buddy, black orphaned singer Tobey
George (D. William Hughes). Meanwhile, Mr. Spangler is courting rich woman
Diana Steed (Rayna Hickman), and worries he’s not good enough to meet her
parents, and is almost robbed by an effete mendicant (Philip Deyesso) to
whom he had given a free telegram in Act I. Also a character listed as
Beautiful Music (the luminous Marcie Henderson) wanders through the
proceedings as a sort of Dionne Warwick psychopomp (presumably in an impulse
to get more magical black people onstage in this very very white story).
Director Tom Wojtunik has done a great job staging the show with nods to the
simplicity and presentational style of Our Town, with most of the cast
sitting on wooden chairs facing the audience and watching the story when not
actually engaged in action, all forming a chorus of the community as a
whole. He also stages several complicated traveling scenes as Homer delivers
telegrams on his bicycle.
Perhaps the key to the authors’ obscure intent can be found in the song “As
the Poet Said”: “The threads of misery and joy / Are woven fine / Into a
vast design / When tragedy gives way to comedy / Until you can’t discern /
The line between them”. The show might have some relevance to those who
lived through a serious war like WWII or Vietnam, but those of us untouched
by such tragedy, the show seems blatantly constructed to be moving and comes
across as insincere. While aiming for homespun, it only hits hokey; when
intended to be transcendent, it only achieves bathos; when profound, cliché.
Costumes by Hunter Kaczorowski are wonderful, and the 6-piece band led by
Musical Director Jeffrey Campos rocks out. This is a well-done production of
a troubled show; if you’re a fan of the music or of theatre history, you
might not get a chance to see this deeply weird piece staged again.
Astoria Performing Arts Center
proudly presents
THE HUMAN COMEDY
Good Shepherd United Methodist Church
30-44 Crescent St, Astoria, NY 11102. Entrance on 30th Road.
May 5-21, 2011
Thursday – Saturday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm
Tickets $18
or 1-866-811-4111
Photo Credit: Michael R. Dekker
Aaron J. Libby, Richard Vernon, and Jonathan Gregg
From: A. Papazian
ARMENIAN AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA CONGRATULATES ON VICTORY DAY
news.am
May 9 2011
Armenia
Armenia’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Russia Oleg
Yesayan sent a congratulatory message on the 66th anniversary of the
victory in the Great Patriotic War.
“Victory Day is perhaps the most important historical holiday that
brings together not only the peoples of Russia, but also the former
Soviet states.
On this day we express our gratitude towards veterans of all nations,
who all defended their homeland.
Let me once again congratulate you on Victory Day and wish you strength
to be engaged in peaceful creative work, aimed at the prosperity of
our countries and peoples,” he said in a statement.
From: A. Papazian
Hovnanian, GTIS Partners Extend Joint Homebuilding Venture to VA,
MD and PA
05/09/2011
RED BANK, N.J. and NEW YORK — Hovnanian Enterprises, Inc.and GTIS
Partners announced that they have expanded their December 2010 joint
venture to acquire five additional homebuilding communities. The venture
intends to design, sell, and deliver homes in the communities, which
contain 745 lots across three communities in Northern Virginia, one
community in Maryland, and one community in Pennsylvania. Inclusive of
the three properties acquired in December, two in California and one in
Virginia, the joint venture now owns 1,168 lots in eight communities,
and expects its gross home sellout to exceed $500 million.
Approximately $123 million of capital has been invested in the
overall joint venture, with Hovnanian contributing 25% and GTIS Partners
providing 75%. Hovnanian will manage the day-to-day operations of the
venture. If certain financial targets are met, Hovnanian will receive a
promoted share of the cash returns from the venture. Additional details
related to the joint venture are not being disclosed.
“Expanding our partnership with GTIS Partners is an important step
forward in an already successful relationship with two organizations
that share a demand for excellence,” stated Ara Hovnanian, Chairman of
the Board of Directors, President and Chief Executive Officer of
Hovnanian Enterprises, Inc. “Within the joint venture, and our earlier
partnership with GTIS, we now expect to deliver over 2,700 homes in 19
communities. Our efforts to execute additional joint ventures with GTIS
or with others do not end here, as we continue to seek opportunities to
leverage our homebuilding expertise with financial partners’ desires to
invest in for-sale residential communities.”
Tom Shapiro, President of GTIS Partners said, “We are pleased to
upsize our investment with Hovnanian. They are a first class partner and
homebuilder. All of these communities are located in specific submarkets
in the U.S. where our underwriting validates a continued and sustained
demand for new homes.”
Added Robert Vahradian, Senior Managing Director and Head of US
Investments for GTIS Partners, “The portfolio is now geographically
represented in both Northern and Southern California, and in the greater
Washington D.C. and Philadelphia areas. It is further weighted toward
finished and partially finished lots. This investment provides our
investors with an attractive risk-reward profile, with a concentration
in markets that have consistently outperformed the overall country in
terms of employment, home pricing, and absorption.”
About Hovnanian Enterprises, Inc.
Hovnanian Enterprises, Inc., founded in 1959 by Kevork S.
Hovnanian, is headquartered in Red Bank, New Jersey. The Company is one
of the nation’s largest homebuilders with operations in Arizona,
California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland,
Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. The Company’s homes
are marketed and sold under the trade names K. Hovnanian Homes, Matzel &
Mumford, Brighton Homes, Parkwood Builders, Town & Country Homes and
Oster Homes. As the developer of K. Hovnanian’s Four Seasons
communities, the Company is also one of the nation’s largest builders of
active adult homes.
For more information, visit:
From: A. Papazian
TopNews
New Zealand – Jitendra Tiwari
MGM China to Raise $1.5 Million through IPO
May 09, 2011
The International Financing Review on Monday reported that MGM China, a
joint venture in the gambling arena between MGM Resorts International,
founded by Kirk Kerkorian and Pansy Ho, daughter of Billionaire, Stanley Ho
will seek to raise an amount of $1.5 million in the IPO (Initial Public
Offering) i. e. the first sale of stock by a company to the public in Hong
Kong.
MGM China Holdings Ltd. aims at selling 760 million shares in the IPO. In
order to determine the investor interest in the first offering and decide on
a price choice for the deal, MGM China has begun premarketing for the IPO in
Hong Kong. The company plans of initiating a road show on 17th May and
commencing the offering on 23rd May.
It was also found that J. P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America-Merrill
Lynch, Morgan Stanley were appointed to jointly manage MGM China’s IPO. The
company aspires to get enlisted on the Hong Kong stock exchange, the Asia’s
second largest stock exchange, in terms of market capitalization on 3rd
June.
From: A. Papazian
OFFICIAL ACCUSED OF NEGLIGENCE IN DINK CASE REINSTATED IN TURKEY
Hurriyet
May 9 2011
Turkey
Hrant Dink was shot in front of his Istanbul office in January 2007.
Hurriyet photo
A local Ankara court decided Monday to return Ramazan Akyurek, the
former head of the Central Police Intelligence Unit, to his post,
dismissing accusations of negligence in the murder of Hrant Dink
in 2007.
“The investigation conducted by inspectors did not prove any negativity
about Ramazan Akyurek,” the court said in its ruling.
The court also annulled Akyurek’s appointment as an expert to the
Security General Directorate’s strategy development division due to the
Interior Ministry’s failure to provide information on his replacement.
Erhan Tuncel, a former police informant in the Black Sea province
of Trabzon, has said he continually warned the Trabzon police
about threats to Dink’s life prior to the murder in Istanbul of the
Armenian-Turkish journalist. It was subsequently found that Akyurek,
the chief of police in Trabzon at the time, conveyed only one warning
out of 11 to the Istanbul Police Department, the Turkish media reported
in January.
Based on those accusations, the Interior Ministry removed Akyurek from
his position in October. Akyurek appealed to the local court in Ankara,
saying the ministry’s decision was illegal, unjust and unreasonable.
Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian origin, was the chief editor
for weekly Agos, a paper published in both Turkish and Armenian. He
was shot in front of his Istanbul office in January 2007. Ogun Samast
stands accused of pulling the trigger, but questions linger about
the real masterminds behind Dink’s death.
From: A. Papazian
WRITER AYTAV SAYS ‘ALI SHOULD THROW THE BALL TO HAGOP’ BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE
Today’s Zaman
May 9 2011
Turkey
A writer who has questioned how being “the other” is and what it means
in Turkey in his recent book has told Today’s Zaman for Monday Talk
that the society has been victimized by the republican state ideology
that idealized a “Muslim Hanefi secular Turk,” but that this doesn’t
have to be that way forever.
“Hrant Dink had formulated that very well: Ali should throw the
ball to Hagop. It’s time; indeed, the time is past. We should say
enough is enough. Ali has been playing ball only with other Ali’s;
but when he starts to play with Hagop, there will be a better game
because there will be a better team. We will solve the problem when
we realize this,” said Erkam Tufan Aytav, who wrote the book “Being
Other in Turkey” (“Turkiye’de Oteki Olmak”) based on his interviews
with eight people who are members of Turkey’s different communities
that have been singled out as “others” for a long time.
“But education alone is not enough. Media has an important role in
hate speech, which should be considered a crime against humanity,
should be eliminated in the media and from publications that lean
toward the left or the right because they all use it,” he added.
In Aytav’s categories of “others” are Turkey’s Jews, Greeks,
women who wear headscarves, Armenians, Syriacs, Kurds, Alevis and
Roma. His book consists of interviews with writer Mario Levi, IÅ~_ık
University engineering faculty dean Yorgo Stefanopulos, Taraf daily
columnist Hilal Kaplan, Ä°stanbul Bilgi University sociology professor
Arus Yumul, Syriac Catholic Community board of directors head Zeki
Basatemir, activist and writer Altan Tan, historian and writer Reha
Camuroglu and İstanbul Roma Association head Aydın Elbasan.
Answering our questions, Aytav informs us about being “the other”
as he considers himself one of the “others” even though he says he
once belonged to a “happy minority.”
Omer Laciner wrote in the foreword that as far as he knows, this is
the first book that directly addresses the Turkish Muslim majority. Is
that right?
This is unfortunately right as far as I can see, even though I
haven’t made a through research of the whole literature created for
that population.
Has addressing that community been your goal?
Yes. I’ve especially chosen a publishing house that is geared toward
a population with Islamic sensitivities. Indeed there is only a small
and “happy” minority in Turkey. The rest, probably about 98-99 percent
of the population, even though they are the majority in the numerical
sense, are all “others.” Those “others” are pushed out by the system;
however, they themselves see each other as “others” when they are
categorized, let’s say, as Alevis, Kurds, Armenians, Roma, etc.
Interestingly, they see and label each other through the eyes of the
system. This viewpoint creates problems in society.
What kind of problems?
As much as Kemalists and strict secularists tend to create unified
types — Muslim Hanefi Turks – and see the rest as “others,” Muslim
Hanefi Turks tend to view people who are different from them as
“others,” whether those “others” are Armenians, Alevis, Kurds or Roma.
However, I am hopeful that people who have Islamic sensitivities –
unfortunately, not the Kemalists or strict secularists — might be a
locomotive for a democratic and pluralist Turkey because they are the
ones who demand more democracy as they’ve become more integrated with
the world. Still, there is an issue: how they view the “other.” They
have to face up to the fact that they also view people who are
different from the majority as the “other.” They have to change
that view and empathize. Even though I target a wide majority of
the population to read and learn from the book, I hope conservative
Muslim Turks will read the book carefully in order to speed up the
democratic development of Turkey.
‘Younger Muslim Turks more democratic’ Were you worried that
conservative Muslims would not react very positively to the ideas in
your book?
I was worried in the beginning, but I’ve been proven wrong. I’ve
realized that I’ve not known conservative Muslim Turks that well. In
particular, the younger generation is more open and democratic in
that regard; they are more pro-freedom. I’ve not received any negative
reactions from people who have Islamic sensitivities; on the contrary,
I’ve been praised. I think this is because the book is concerned with
human feelings, our conscience. When people listen to how “others”
have been made “others,” how much they suffered, they feel empathy.
For example?
Think about two young people, one Muslim and one Armenian or Greek –
both are Turkish citizens who study in the same schools throughout
their basic education years. There comes a time for them to make
choices for what they are going to do in the future, what they are
going to choose as professions. The Armenian or the Greek youth knows
that he or she can’t choose certain professions, like a military
career, a career in the police force, a career in public service,
an occupation like being a governor. Don’t we feel bad for that young
person because she or he can’t pursue her or his dreams? Their dreams
are hindered. This is a crime against humanity.
What do you think about the establishment of the republic with a
certain ideology?
The establishment of the republic occurred following major wars and
tragedies. I am from Ä°zmir, and what has been etched in my memory
since my childhood is that some Greeks from Ä°zmir had welcomed the
Greeks who were going to occupy the city. This tragedy has been passed
down through the generations in each year’s Sept. 9 celebrations
[liberation of Ä°zmir from Greek occupation] in Ä°zmir. At the same
time, with the establishment of the republic, Anatolia has been
Islamized as it had never been before. Non-Muslims have been mostly
expelled. However, it has been wrong to present the case even today
as if all non-Muslims in Turkey have been traitors. The official
republican ideology with their hands in the media and education has
been doing this; the hands of the media have been especially dirty
in this regard. We don’t need to do that anymore. I’d like to point
out that the United States government started treating all Muslims
as “terrorists” following Sept. 11 when the number of deaths had
no comparison to the number of deaths in the fall of the Ottoman
Empire and the War of Independence. Even though we should not approve
such discriminatory practices following such tragedies, we have to
understand the circumstances that have created the paranoia.
‘Either be assimilated or leave’ You indicate in your book that the
policies of the republic have created some “crypto” people, be they
Armenians or Greeks.
Yes. This is the result of the dictated policies: Either be assimilated
or leave, just like what former President Suleyman Demirel had said
when he told women who wear headscarves to go to Saudi Arabia. This is
the language of the system: Love it or leave it. If you don’t want to
leave or if you cannot leave, what you will have to do is to become
isolated, to hide, to change your name and to be silent about your
“other” identity. You never say you are Alevi, Armenian or Kurd or
that you belong to a sect. So all of Turkey becomes a masked ball.
In recent years, there have been more and more people who have been
revealing their “other” identities.
Definitely. In some intelligence documents, there are worrisome
statements about the number of people who are becoming Christians.
Indeed, these are people who have been Christians, but they had not
revealed their identities until recently. Armenian Patriarch Mesrob
Mutafyan had told me that as society has been becoming more democratic,
those people have been demanding that they be baptized.
It seems like the people who carry the “other” identity in a way have
common concerns in Turkey. They are usually told by their parents to
keep that identity to themselves.
They are trying to protect their children. Crypto Armenians or Alevis
exist. This is normal in such a society that has made discrimination
a state policy for a long time.
You get into the relations of Alevis with the republican system. You
think the Stockholm Syndrome explanation falls too short to explain it.
It is not fair to Alevis to explain their relations with the system
only in the framework of the Stockholm Syndrome. First of all, there
is a deep distrust both by Alevis toward Sunni Muslims and by Sunni
Muslims toward Alevis. And Alevis are afraid of new Kerbelas. They
prefer secular Kemalists to pious Sunni Muslims. It is correct that
the fire at the Madımak Hotel occurred as a result of a provocation,
but it is not enough of an explanation. Sunni Muslims should questions
themselves more: Why are they prone to provocation?
All ‘others’ have mutual problems The issue of distrust is a problem
that we see in people’s, in all others’ relations with the rest of
the society, right?
That’s right, and the republican system has played a major role to
deepen that distrust. If all “others” come together and talk about
their problems, they will see that their problems are usually mutual
and related to freedom of expression and belief and basic human rights;
they all stem from the system of the state.
A lot of people you interviewed indicated that education is the best
remedy to bring down walls before people and to eliminate prejudices.
Hrant Dink had formulated that very well: Ali should throw the ball to
Hagop. It’s time; indeed, the time is past, we should say enough is
enough. Ali has been playing ball only with other Ali’s; but when he
starts to play with Hagop, there will be a better game because there
will be a better team. We will solve the problem when we realize this.
But education alone is not enough. The media has an important role
in hate speech; it should be considered a crime against humanity,
should be eliminated from the media, from publications that lean
toward the left or the right because they all use it.
And the school textbooks…
If we had learned Alevism as well as Islam as Sunni Muslims learned
their own beliefs, we would probably have been different people. There
have been hundreds of thousands of Hagops in Anatolia, there are still
some. There are Yorgos. They are not “foreigners,” they are from here.
Your interviewees also indicate that there is more openness in the
society since the 1990s.
Starting with the Ozal [former prime minister and President Turgut
Ozal] years, society has been breaking out of its shell. In more
recent years, with the AK Party [ruling Justice and Development Party]
government, we have seen some improvements with several initiatives,
be it the Alevi initiative or the Kurdish initiative, even though these
are not enough. Indeed, a political party that bases its policies
on the concept of equal citizenship rights cannot yet be a winner
in a society that still sees “others” almost as equal to “enemies
within.” No political party would be able to derive courage from that
kind of a society. Unfortunately, a liberal party that would point
out the concept of equal citizenship would receive very few votes.
In your foreword in the book, you say that Turkey’s “others” alternate
between feelings of having hope and hopelessness.
There is a big hope because there is some change signaling that the
status quo is not going to be permanent. Turkey’s accession process
to the European Union also backs those hopes. In addition, Fethullah
Gulen’s contacts with Turkey’s “others” influenced how the majority of
people in the society views “others;” think about Gulen’s meetings with
Armenian and Greek patriarchs in Turkey, in addition to his meetings
with the Jewish religious leader. Such relations led to a new thinking
in society. Other opinion leaders should show the same courage. Also
“others” should open themselves up and interrelate with the rest of
the society even though there is a “fear factor.” A woman who wears
a headscarf should question the official nationalist presentation
of the Kurdish issue as much as an Armenian should struggle for the
rights of women who wear headscarves.
——————————————————————————–
Erkam Tufan Aytav’s story: From ‘happy minority’ to ‘the other’ What
is the story of Erkam Tufan Aytav? You started out as someone from
the “happy minority” but have since become included in the group of
“others.” How come?
I am from a Sunni Turk family who identifies with a secular
lifestyle. I was never in conflict with the republican system from
the beginning up to my university years. I grew up with the “ugly”
images of “Islamist” in my mind created by the Gırgır humor weekly. I
didn’t known what an Alevi was until my best friend told me years after
we had first met in middle school. Kurdish, same story, why do they
fight? What do they want? We live together, happily and merrily. I’ve
known Armenians because they were our neighbors in Ä°stanbul, but
they moved out of the country. Even one of my best friends from
the Armenians never told me why they were leaving. I’ve seen the
“skittishness of a dove” that Hrant Dink had mentioned in those
Armenian families. I always remember the jokes of Turkish children for
our Armenian friends; they’d say “Ataturk should have sent you away,
too” or “Armenian offspring.” During my university years, I was in
contact with people with Islamic sensitivities; I’ve met Fethullah
Gulen, whose ideas have changed a lot in my life. Until that time,
I was living as a “happy minority.” Then I became the “other.” This
was my luck.
You see being “the other” as an opportunity.
It has added a lot to my life. Otherwise, I’d probably never have had
a chance to establish the kinds of dialogues that I am able to do now.
I am still learning. For example, Roma people; I’d never imagined that
they wouldn’t be accepted to public office or as civil servants. How
would they be singled out? Not all dark-colored people are Roma. I’ve
learned that the state knows from the records of where they live.
Yorgo Stefanopulos said the same thing — they were complaining that
the state doesn’t know them, but indeed the state knows them all
too well.
——————————————————————————–
Erkam Tufan Aytav
Born in Ä°zmir and completed his education in Ä°stanbul, Aytav
describes himself as one of the “others” since he is a follower of
Fethullah Gulen’s ideas. After being involved in freelance journalism
in the past, he served in 1998-2008 as the general secretary of the
Diyalog Avrasya Platform. He also was the chief editor of the Da
magazine. He is currently the general secretary of the Journalists
and Writers Association Medialog Platform. He produces radio programs
on Burc FM and writes column at haber7.com. He is the writer of
the recent book “Being Other in Turkey” (“Turkiye’de Oteki Olmak”)
published by Mavi Ufuklar.
From: A. Papazian
A Handbook to Stop a Genocide
By NATHAN HODGE
WSJ
MAY 9, 2011,
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.’Harvard professor Sarah Sewall has pushed the Pentagon to
have a plan on the shelf for responding to mass atrocities, ethnic cleansing
and genocide. Now, with Libya as a backdrop, her efforts are beginning to
bear fruit.
The U.S. has launched a high-level initiative to make the military more
ready and able to respond to potential mass killings. A senior Department of
Defense official said the project, which is at an early stage, would help
develop “a complete set of options that the leadership can consider in the
preventive area before it comes to sending in the military, or not sending
in the military.”
Since 2007, Prof. Sewall has led a tight-knit group of academics, policy
makers and military officers lobbying the Pentagon to embrace a handbook
that details, step by step, the options for sending in the cavalry to
protect civilians. She and her allies are pitching the plan at conferences,
in war games and at military headquarters, urging the U.S. to incorporate
the lexicon and principles of genocide prevention into military planning.
The emerging doctrine is a blueprint for an interventionist foreign policy
that places such ideas as “responsibility to protect” on a par with the
principles of realpolitik. It falls within a broader debate in international
politics, and at the United Nations, about balancing state sovereignty with
the desire to protect civilians.
But on the definition of an atrocity, the atrocity handbook is agnostic,
leaving it up to government leaders to decide how much killing is too much.
According to the foreword, the document “is concerned with answering the
‘how,’ not the ‘whether.’ ” As with the classic definition of pornography,
users of the handbook are expected to know genocide when they see it.
In theory, the handbook can be pulled off the shelf, offering what are
presented as formulas for thinking about the use of military force: when to
step up peacekeeping and monitoring of a volatile situation; when to
position forces as a deterrent or begin enforcing a no-fly zone; when to go
in heavy with ground forces, pursuing and arresting war criminals. It even
provides the organizational charts for an anti-genocide task force, which
could be scaled from a modest intervention of 2,000 troops to a contingent
of 25,000.
The 160-page document is heavy on jargon and acronyms that would be familiar
to a military planner. A fill-in-the-blanks “strategic guidance” document
for a hypothetical intervention in “Country X” outlines courses of action
that include everything from sending spy planes to document unfolding
atrocities to deploying special forces to train rebels. Scenarios in the
handbook underscore the value of ISR (intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance), PSYOP (psychological operations) and I&W (indicators and
warnings).
The military runs on doctrine’planning documents that guide the machinery of
war when threats appear around the globe. In the 1980s, it was built on the
idea that the armed forces would have to fend off Soviet divisions in
Europe. Since the September 2001 terror attacks, the military has crafted
doctrine designed to put down insurgencies. But military planners don’t have
a formal blueprint for responding to large-scale atrocities.
“What was clear to me in the problem of mass atrocities, genocide prevention
… is that the military didn’t think of it as a responsibility, so they
didn’t invest any time in trying to understand it,” said Prof. Sewall in an
interview at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “But that’s what needed
to be done in order to inform civilian decision makers.”
Now military leaders such as Gen. Carter Ham, who runs the military command
that led the initial attacks on Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in Libya, are
looking to Prof. Sewall’s work as a guide for the next time the U.S. feels
compelled to intervene to stop a massacre. Brig. Gen. James Lukeman, a
senior deputy to Gen. Ham, said Prof. Sewall’s handbook was “a great tool to
have” for thinking about the unique problems such a challenge posed. The
current campaign in Libya, Gen. Lukeman added, was an “obvious parallel” to
the scenarios the handbook describes.
The Pentagon’s initiative on atrocities draws direct inspiration from Prof.
Sewall’s efforts. “Sarah Sewall gets enormous credit for pushing to focus
peoples’ attention on this issue,” said Rosa Brooks, senior adviser to
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy. “We are very much in
the spirit of the conversation that Sarah started.”
Ms. Sewall is no Ivory Tower type. She has close ties to such influential
military officers as Gen. David Petraeus, commander of allied forces in
Afghanistan and the freshly nominated head of the Central Intelligence
Agency. She said her views were forged during the administration of
President Bill Clinton, when she was a senior Pentagon official dealing with
peacekeeping and humanitarian-assistance operations.
The handbook has come in for some strong criticism. Celeste Ward Gventer, a
defense expert who served in the administration of President George W. Bush,
said that “alarm bells went off” when she read a copy. Ms. Gventer, who
served two tours in Iraq with the Coalition Provisional Authority and as a
civilian adviser to the military, said the effort looked like a way “to try
to force this [mission] into the military’s toolbox … ‘Here’s your manual,
don’t worry about whether you want to or should do this, but here’s the
How.’ ”
Joseph Collins, a professor at the National War College, questioned whether
the military should be reorganizing around a new type of conflict when it is
coping with insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and bracing for a budget
crunch at home.
“We are desperately trying in the ground forces to regain our skill in
conventional warfare, while at the same time training people massively for
counterinsurgency,” Prof. Collins said. “And along comes somebody who says,
‘Hey, this is a unique business, and you really need to train hard for this
particular scenario.’ It comes at a bad time.”
But Ms. Sewall’s ideas are taking hold. The Army Operating Concept, a
document that envisions how the Army will fight in the next decade and a
half, says that the service “must be prepared to conduct mass-atrocity
response operations” as one of its core tasks.
Asked about the Libya intervention, Prof. Sewall gave measured praise to the
Obama administration, saying that “some aspects” were “exemplary,” including
the speed of the response. But she said it was an operation conducted
without the proper “foresight and consideration.”
Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge @wsj.com
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
From: A. Papazian