Author: Andres-Papazian

THE AMBASSADOR OF POLAND: TURKEY IS NOT READY TO ENTER EU

Aysor
May 31 2010
Armenia

Today on the press conference Poland’s Ambassador to Armenia Zdislav
Rachinski touched upon Turkey’s chances of becoming a member in the
European Union. He expressed a view point that at this stage Turkey
is not ready for being a member in that alliance. “Turkey is not
developed enough to enter the EU,” he said.

According to the Polish diplomat Poland is assessing positively the
efforts of Turkey to become a member to that construction and is for
enlarging the European family. He mentioned that Warsaw is ready to
support Ankara in realizing corresponding improvements.

The ambassador thought it is possible that in the future Armenia as
well will be able to integrate the European Union. But till that
time according Z. Rachinski Armenia should take up serious steps
for providing freedom of speech, democracy and development of the
civil society.

From: A. Papazian

THE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES TRAPPED, SAYS POLISH AMBASSADOR

Aysor
May 31 2010
Armenia

The Karabakh conflict should be resolved with participation of
representatives of Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh, said Monday in the
press conference Poland’s Ambassador to Armenia Zdzislaw Rachinsky. He
pointed that he was on a visit to Nagorno Karabakh in 1990s and grasped
that it was impossible to settle the conflict without participation
of these two sides.

“Solutions linked to the conflict and the two nations’ future should
be made by their representatives,” stressed Rachinsky.

Referring to the Resolution 2216 approved by the European Parliament,
Ambassador Rachinsky said that Poland takes a neutral position over
the Karabakh issues and accepts the formula that goes with the norms
of the international community – there should be a peaceful settlement
to the conflict insuring the territorial integrity and right of people
to self-determination.

When asked by Aysor about priority of territorial integrity or right of
people to self-determination – Ambassador said that “all the European
countries were trapped in this issue.” Rachinsky pointed that the
territorial integrity and the right of people to self-determination
are contrary to each other. He said that when Poland recognized
the independence of Kosovo there were certain public views that the
recognition would become a precedent to settlement to other conflicts.

From: A. Papazian

YOUNG PEOPLE BLURRING BORDERS
By Beatriz Bissio

Inter Press Service

May 30 2010

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 30, 2010 (IPS) – Incorporating young people into
the task of fostering understanding between people of various cultural
and religious backgrounds is one of the four priority areas of the
Alliance of Civilisations.

The important role played by young people in achieving peaceful
cross-cultural coexistence was recognised by prizes for innovative
youth initiatives at the Third Global Forum of the United Nations
Alliance of Civilisations held May 27-29 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“We must foster young people’s creative capacity to build bridges and
promote a multicultural society,” former Portuguese president Jorge
Sampaio (1996-2006), who is U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s High
Representative for the Alliance of Civilisations, told IPS.

“The prizes we granted them at this third forum was the Alliance’s
way of helping to make them more visible, so they can serve as
encouragement for other young people to get involved in new projects,”
he said.

Besides the focus on youth, the Alliance of Civilisation’s other main
areas of implementation are education, the media and migration.

The Alliance of Civilisations, created in 2005 at the initiative
of the governments of Spain and Turkey under the auspices of the
United Nations, works to improve understanding and cooperation across
nations, cultures and religions in order to counter the forces that
fuel polarisation and extremism.

One of the award-winning youth projects was Akili Dada, which
facilitates access to education by bright girls from poor families
in Kenya who have stood out for their leadership potential.

Of the girls who made up the first group of beneficiaries, eight have
graduated from university, Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, the young Kenyan
woman who founded and heads the programme, explained to IPS at the
Alliance of Civilisations forum, whose theme was Bridging Cultures,
Building Peace.

Kamau-Rutenberg said it was an immense joy to see girls who could
not even have finished primary school go on to become professionals,
with the help of Akili Dada.

Another prize-winning programme was Forgotten Diaries led by Anush
Hayrapetyan, a young Armenian woman who lives in the northern Italian
city of Milan, where the organisation is based.

The focus of the initiative is to draw attention to “forgotten
conflicts” — armed conflicts that have received little coverage by
the mainstream media, like the civil war in Colombia.

The Forgotten Diaries web site explains that the aim of the project is
“to continue the long-standing tradition of young people keeping a
diary of their lives and their struggles in conflicts,” such as Anne
Frank and Zlata Filipovic.

Children and adolescents in conflict areas are invited to keep diaries,
talk about the experiences of their families and incidents in their
lives, and describe the effects of armed conflict on their lives
and dreams.

The youngsters receive training on the use of the internet, online
social networks and blogs. “This way, we can reach public opinion
by means of intense, original testimonies that have a greater impact
than a newspaper article,” Hayrapetyan commented to IPS.

Forgotten Diaries has projects in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia, the
Caucasus, Turkey and Kurdistan, Sarajevo in Bosnia, and other areas
in the former Yugoslavia.

“RandomKid: The Power of Anyone” was another of the prize-winning
projects. In this case, the aim is to encourage youngsters to help
come up with solutions to concrete problems.

The idea emerged in the United States in 2005, when then 10-year-old
Talia Leman explained her plan: urging kids to ask for loose change,
rather than just candy, while trick-or-treating on Halloween, to
collect money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, Anne Ginther,
cofounder of the organisation, told IPS.

Through a web site that they set up, Leman made contact with children
in 4,000 school districts across the United States, and 10 million
dollars in donations were raised.

The ABC television network put the story on prime time news, reporting
that only five U.S. corporations gave more than what was raised by
the schoolchildren, said Ginther, who also works with the Catholic
Church on projects involving disabled children.

RandomKid has orchestrated the efforts of more than 12 million children
and teenagers from 20 countries, who have helped build schools and
wells and expand health care in their communities.

Other initiatives focus on forming young leaders and journalists
committed to fomenting social and cultural inclusion.

In the Undergraduate ParliaMentors programme, run by the London-based
Three Faith Forum, university students with an interest in politics
spend time with members of parliament who discuss with them the issues
they are working on and foreign policy matters.

Many of the students are from families of immigrants. After their
mentoring period with the MPs, each team — trios of Muslim, Christian
and Jewish students — presents a concrete project to be carried out
in a poor community in Britain.

The director of the Three Faiths Forum, Stephen Shashoua, told IPS
that the interaction among the youth themselves and with the political
leaders, added to the work in needy areas, enables young people with
leadership potential to gain a broader vision of the various cultures,
and to promote actions that foster inclusion.

The Euro-Mediterranean Academy for Young Journalists (EMAJ) was
founded in Berlin in 2007 with the aim of combating the spread of
stereotypes by the media about “the West” and “the Arab world”.

Through training of young reporters on both sides of the Mediterranean
sea, EMAJ helps create solidarity networks to bridge the gap of
understanding. (END)

From: A. Papazian

ERDOGAN SCRAPS ARGENTINA VISIT OVER ATATURK BUST
By REUTERS

Arab News

May 30 2010
Saudi Arabia

ISTANBUL: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled a
trip to Argentina on Sunday after Buenos Aires authorities halted
the display of a bust of Turkey’s founder, a move Turkey blamed on
Armenian lobbyists.

The row over the statue, due to be unveiled in a park, comes during
a high-profile trip to South America by Erdogan. Turkey’s Foreign
Ministry said in a statement the two-day visit, which was to have
begun Sunday, had been canceled, and it hoped Argentina would take
steps to remove the shadow cast on Turkish-Argentine relations.

“The trip was canceled because written permission for the monument
given to Turkey beforehand by the … Buenos Aires district was
reversed as a result of initiatives by the Armenian lobby, which is
opposed to Turkey,” it said.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded Turkey in 1923 after the collapse of
the Ottoman empire and is highly revered by Turks. Busts and statues
of Ataturk stand all over the country.

Argentina’s president spoke with Erdogan to explain she could not
overrule the decision, yet he found this unacceptable and decided
not to go, the statement added.

Hopes that a historic accord signed between Muslim Turkey and Christian
Armenia last year could end a century of hostility suffered a blow last
month when Yerevan said it had suspended ratification of the accord.

The accord was the closest Turkey and Armenia had come to moving
beyond the mass killings by Ottoman Turks in 1915 that has poisoned
their relationship ever since.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians were killed but strongly denies that
up to 1.5 million died and it amounted to genocide. Armenian lobby
groups and the Armenian diaspora have long pushed for a recognition
of the killings as such.

Erdogan arrived in Brazil last week where he and Brazilian President
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defended their fuel swap deal with Iran,
which the United States says threatens a UN drive to impose new
sanctions. He is due to travel late to Chile.

From: A. Papazian

RISE OF ‘TURKISH GANDHI’ OFFERS HOPE TO DIVIDED NATION

The Globe and Mail

May 31 2010
Canada

Lurid sex scandal propels reformer into leadership of party founded
by Kemal Ataturk, giving opposition credible shot at power

Doug Saunders

Ankara — From Monday’s Globe and Mail Published on Monday, May. 31,
2010 2:35AM EDT

.Not just for his mild demeanour, his softly bespectacled appearance
and his conciliatory, incorruptible reputation is he known in some
circles here as the “Turkish Gandhi.”

As an ethnic minority bidding to lead a nation whose laws have
officially denied that minorities exist, and as a man able to
bridge the increasingly distrustful poles of a divided nation, Kemal
Kilacdaroglu has the potential to change the nature of politics here –
if he has the nerve to seize either opportunity.

In the wake of a lurid sex scandal that drove his long-serving
predecessor, Deniz Baykal, out of office last weekend after Mr. Baykal
was videotaped having an affair with a staffer, the little-known
financial bureaucrat and reformer, Kemal Kilacdaroglu, 61, was
suddenly thrust into the leadership of Turkey’s venerable secular
opposition party.

Almost overnight, he has given a credible shot at power to the
beleaguered party founded by Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern
secular Turkey. The CHP (Republican People’s Party) was driven
into distant second place after 2002 by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan’s Islamic Peace and Justice party (AKP), which has blended
the religious conservatism popular among the poor with a pro-business,
pro-Europe worldliness that has turned Turkey into an economic force.

In his first major interview with the North American media, Mr.

Kilacdaroglu spent an hour in his Ankara office describing how he
would take back the CHP, in part by paying less attention to the rigid
secularism and self-contained nationalism that Mr. Ataturk considered
the cornerstones of Turkish identity.

But he refused abjectly to use his most surprising quality to take on
an Obama-like role of a minority leading a party that spent decades
enforcing laws that made minorities illegal and unmentionable.

He is an Alevi – a member of Turkey’s Shiite Muslim minority who have
been brutally repressed under previous CHP governments – and a man who
spent his childhood as a poor villager in a Kurdish-majority region
(neither he nor his party will discuss whether his family background
is Kurdish).

“Since I believe that beliefs should not be the core of politics,
I don’t think it should really matter whether I’m Alevi, Sunni or
anything else,” he said, uneasily, when asked about whether he would
use his ethnic identity as a new sign of openness.

“My political approach is one in which beliefs and origins, like
ethnicity, are not emphasized, but a human-based politics, where the
core of everything is human.”

Mr. Kilacdaroglu did say, however, that he would support efforts –
including a possible constitutional change – to make Turkey acknowledge
that it is not a country with one ethnic group and one language, as
has been the law for decades, but a place with a number of languages,
religions and ethnicities, in which Alevites, Kurds and Armenians
have struggled against campaigns of forced assimilation or outright
cleansing.

“Turkey took the heritage of the Ottoman Empire, and that was a
multicultural, multiethnic community, so we cannot neglect or ignore
these minorities,” he said. “On the contrary, we accept them as part
of the richness of our culture.”

This statement, which would be a bland platitude in North America
and much of Europe, marks a revolutionary change in Turkey’s secular
establishment. It is still illegal to use the letters W, Q or X –
part of the Kurdish, but not the Turkish, alphabet. The CHP has
rigorously backed the law against “insulting Turkishness,” which
has been used to imprison dissidents, including Kurds and Armenians,
who have dared suggest that Turkey’s past included atrocities.

Much of this has changed under Mr. Erdogan, who has allowed the Kurdish
language to be spoken and opened a Kurdish-language public TV network;
has entered negotiations aimed at normalizing relations with Armenia;
and has sought a rapprochement with the leaders of Cyprus over the
Turkish-occupied province of North Cyprus.

This sense of dynamism inspired many otherwise secular-minded
Turks to back Mr. Erdogan’s AKP, despite their discomfort with its
headscarf-wearing female MPs and attempts to restrict alcohol sales.

The CHP has offered little other than secularism, and a closed,
nationalistic culture and economy.

On the need to win people back from the AKP, Mr. Kilacdaroglu mades
his most shocking suggestion: that the party stop talking about
secularism all the time.

“I believe that to those people who have gone to the AKP, especially
the poor, we should not be emphasizing the principle of secularism,”
he said. “Their priority is to be able to feed themselves.”

Mr. Kilacdaroglu said he isn’t completely willing to move away from the
old ways: He spoke fervently about the need for government subsidies
and a less aggressive path toward European Union membership, But he
would reform the electoral system, allowing parties with less than
10 per cent of the vote to sit in power – a move, though he wouldn’t
acknowledge this, whose main beneficiary would be the Kurdish party. It
would also hurt the AKP, which has won a strong Kurdish following.

If Mr. Kilacdaroglu is to have any chance in next year’s elections,
he will have to give these new politics a voice. Polls show that
the CHP gained support after he took over the leadership, but still
lags behind. If he is to build on this sense of electoral novelty,
he may discover that his own startling narrative is his most potent
political weapon.

From: A. Papazian

AXIS OF EVIL, A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE
Mat Rodina

Right Side News

May 30 2010

The American body politic and the sheeple that obey them, are ever
so fond of the now coined and excessively over used term of “Axis
of Evil”, placing one nation after another into these Axis. This is
almost as much fun as labeling one nation after another a “rogue”
nation or issuing out human rights reports slamming and defaming
one group of people after another. Are some of these deserving of
the labels given? Of course, which, like the Marxists, both the Red
and Brown, ever so loved, makes the whole and entirety of the lie so
much more potent. Add just enough truth and then apply the label with
a sloppy hand to any nation that does not bow down the Empire.

We will ignore, of course, the absolute loss of real freedoms in
America; the constant police violence; the over 7 million rotting
in jails and millions more on parole; the wars of aggression waged
against neighbor and foreigner, almost nonstop for the better part
of the past 250 years; or the constant arming of Islamic jihadists
around the world while the US exports revolution and regime change
like some Trotskyte on meth.

But, what, from an Orthodox Christian’s point of view, is the true
Axis of Evil? Why the US-UK-Saudi Anglo-Jihad Axis of Evil of course.

Allow me to expand.

Who armed Ataturk while he massacred Armenian, Assyrian and
Iotolan Greeks, all Orthodox Christians? Yes, the West’s paid for
revolutionaries in Russia did, under Lenin, as well as the US and UK.

The US and UK who also armed the Turks while they exterminated the
northern Cypriot Greeks after their 1970s invasion of that nation.

By the 1950s, when Saudi Arabia’s worldwide Jihad was coming into
full strength, the Anglo angle was there to stay. From the continued
support for Egypt in the 60s, while it exiled more than 10% of its
population, half of its Orthodox Christians. From the backing of the
>>From Carter’s backing of the Islamic Fanatics in Afghanistan to the
backing the Turks vs the Greeks by Reagan or his saving of the PLO,
who had murdered 100,000 Lebanese Christians, from destruction by
the Lebanese Christian Army and the IDF.

The real Axis of Evil has led terror bombing of Orthodox Christians in
Serbska Republic, forcing them to live under the Islamic overlordship,
to the terror bombings of Serbian cities and the theft of Christian
lands in Kosovo. To the betrayal of Orthodox Macedonia in favor of the
Islamic Albanian minority, in effect stealing a third of that country,
with US troops providing body shields to walk the surrounded Islamics
out. To the backing of Chechen Islamic Jihad with NATO bases in Turkey
and Axis of Evil funding. To the over throw of the Socialist Saddam
and the purging of Iraq’s Orthodox Christians.

Where there are no Islamics to launch Jihad, the Axis of Evil has armed
Catholics and attempted to split the Orthodox with made up heretical
groups of “localized” splinter Orthodox, who hold their allegiance
to Rome. Ukraine under the sock puppet Yushenko is a prime example.

So what new anti-Orthodox Christian crusades has the Axis of Evil
planned for us?

To the Orthodox, the true Axis of Evil, the post Christian Anglo
demonic alliance with the Jihad crazed Saudis is plain to see and a
threat to our very souls.

And yes, you, the vast majority of the American and British people,
are just as guilty of this as your despotic and low life leadership.

Why? Because without a doubt in your heads, you go along with
everything they say and demand of you. Like mindless drooling zombies
you repeat the cry for “brains” or “blood” that your owners and
keepers instill into you. They sacrifice, bomb, murder, one Orthodox
group after another, and have done so since WW1 and you go right
along, buying and mindlessly repeating idiot concepts like “they
had it coming”, “they stood in the way of a multi-ethnic state”,
“they were guilty of fighting” and so on and so on.

The few brave souls amongst you who stand up and scream this is a lie,
are screamed down, booed down as unpatriotic, as evil, as shills.

Instead it is you, the majority, the vast majority, who are shills,
dhimmis for Islam and to stupid to see the fact of the matter. It is
you, who will happily swim in your Christian brothers’ blood, as long
as you believe that Islam will respect you and view your Axis of Evil
as something nice and good. What kinds of bloody Christians are you
when you whore yourselves to these Jihadist savages and murderers, when
you so happily drop bombs and shoot missiles at Orthodox Christians,
while getting your hard ons watching the missile footage?

All in the service of Islamic foot soldiers?

What, pray tell, do you think God’s Judgment of you and your societies
should be? I would say, about what you are getting now and much more
to come. You worry about why the Islamics hate you? Worry more about
why God should love you after you butcher your fellow Christians for
gold, oil and the sought after love of the haters of Christ.

The words “Repent” still falling on the ears of the deaf and self
absorbed. Damnation, short to follow.

From: A. Papazian

NAGGING DOUBTS PERSIST

31 May 2010

They tell us Turkey is changing for the better.

They tell us Turkey is becoming a vibrant secular democracy.

They tell us the bad old days of the fascist generals are gone.

They tell us 200,000 Turks turned up at Hrant Dink’s funeral in
early 2008.

Turkish publishers are putting Genocide books on the market. This year
Genocide commemorations received the widest Turkish media coverage
ever. There was a groundbreaking two-day symposium on the Genocide in
Ankara this year. None of the speakers was a Genocide denialist. The
speakers talked even about confiscated Armenian property, reparations,
and how to confront the past. In mid-April, at the International
Poetry Festival in Istanbul, a poet from Armenia won a prize for his
poem about the Genocide.

We are not deaf or blind. We want to see Turkey change. We have an
interest in seeing a progressive Turkey. For one, an enlightened Turkey
is more likely to face the country’s Armenian Question: the Genocide,
reparations and restitution. An enlightened Turkey would also liberate
Turks from centuries of obscurantist, corrupt and despotic regimes
which have bred racism, violence and religious fundamentalism.

But we have nagging doubts. While Turkey seems to be changing, it’s
still true that:

–Turkish Penal Code Article 301 re ‘insulting Turkishness’ remains
in force –Ankara not only denies the Genocide, it has intensified
its anti-Armenian propaganda campaign —Ankara continues its
chock hold on Armenia by blockading that tiny, landlocked country,
and demanding that we hand over Armenian Artsakh to usurper Azeris
–Ankara is arming and training Azeris against Armenia and Artsakh
–Ankara continues the Turkification of Armenian toponyms and the
destruction of Armenian monuments –Ankara’s oppression of Kurds,
Alevis, Armenians, and other minorities continues unabated, while
the Turkish Army illegally occupies a large part of Cyprus.

Armenians also wonder about the much-ballyhooed Turkish democracy.

Despite its seeming independence, we suspect the Prime Minister Recep
Erdogan’s government remains in power because the cunning generals
have allowed him slack: the covert strategy is to allow Erdogan make
brave statements and thus persuade Europeans that Turkey is democratic
and thus deserving of membership in the European club. Last year’s
Protocol Tango with Armenia had the same goal: to qualify for EU
membership, Turkey has to have open borders with all its neighbours.

In light of the openness in the coverage of the Genocide in Turkey
in the past year, Armenians are naturally asking themselves: “Are the
righteous, democratic, humanist Turks being used by Ankara to improve
its creds, to impress Barak Obama and the Western world? Armenians
also wonder how representative and influential are the enlightened
Turks who raised their voices and shouted “We are all Hrant Dink”
at the funeral of the Armenian journalist. Ragip Zarakolu, Orhan
Pamuk, Taner Akcam, Sait Cetinoglu, Mehmut Konuk, Fikret Baskaya,
Baskin Oran, Mahir Sayin, and Asli Comu are people we are eager to
know and to befriend. However, this handful of intellectuals, writers
and scholars is not representative of 12-million-inhabitant Istanbul,
just as the biggest city of Turkey is not representative of Turkey.

It’s said there are four, if not, five Turkeys. There is Erdogan
and his fundamentalist Moslem followers; there is the military and
the far-right terrorist Ergenokon; there are the impoverished and
largely illiterate Anatolian masses; there are the minorities which
make a third of the country’s population; and then there is the
outwardly-Europeanized Istanbul metropolis. This Turkish bifurcation
makes genuine Armenian-Turkish negotiations a tough challenge. Who
matters? Who should we talk to?

Erdogan makes Armenians nervous. The man is not only a fundamentalist
Moslem, he is also a nationalist. He can be intemperate, hectoring,
arrogant, and threatening. Erdogan, who is busy these days, like
Pegasus, flying hither and thither, declaring Turkey to be the bridge
between East and West, between North and South, between Islam and
Europe, between Israel and the Arabs, between America and Azerbaijan…

can better utilize his time by overhauling the Turkish educational
system. For starters, he should push for the publication of history
textbooks, which dare tell the truth to Turks, especially to the new
generation. Erdogan should start by scrapping the mythical ridiculous
history dictator Mustapha Kemal foisted upon Turks. Lies such as
“alleged-Genocide”, “Armenians were fifth-columnists who collaborated
with the Russian enemy” and “ungrateful Armenians wanted to tear Turkey
apart” should be tossed into the dustbin of history. We realize that
in the face of centuries of denigration (“Bloody Turk”, “Sick Man of
Europe”)-particularly in the West-Turkish leaders and ruling classes
had to overcompensate by inculcating among Turks the belief that they
are super special-superior to other races, such as Armenians, Arabs,
Greeks, Bulgarians… The hilarious Kemal fantasy-historiography
claims that the Turkic race is the father of humanity and that most of
humanity’s greatest inventions were ACTUALLY fruits of Turkish genius!

For far too long, Turks have been fed lies by their government
and their educational system. To transform the brave efforts of the
Istanbul intellectuals into a nation-wide movement, Ankara has to come
clean and tell the truth. We realize that this is not an easy task:
decades of orchestrated deception can’t be erased in a few years.

Millions of Turks know little or nothing about Armenians, let alone
be aware that Eastern Turkey was Armenia for nearly 4,000 years. It’s
high time revisionist Turkish scholars and historians were allowed
to tell the truth about Turkey’s history. To gain credibility and
respect, Turkey has to discard its fantasy history. The longer Ankara
delays this vital project, longer will Turkish psychic ills continue
to fester the Turkish body politic, culture and society.

“Once bitten, twice shy” is an eloquent axiom. Armenians have
been bitten and …burned more than once by Turkish government’s
mendacity-be they the sultans, the Young Turks, Kemal and then his
idolatrous followers. Nearly a century ago our trust almost resulted
in the extinction of our nation. As much as we want to trust the
“new” Turkey, we need concrete, credible, meaningful proof of its
good intentions.

Related Articles:

Is “Reconciliation” Compatible with Justice?

What Davutoglu Fails to Understand

From: A. Papazian

PM CANCELS ARGENTINA VISIT OVER ARMENIAN INTERFERENCE

Today’s Zaman
May 31 2010
Turkey

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has canceled the Argentina leg
of his Latin American tour to protest the cancellation of an event
honoring the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
under pressure from the Armenian diaspora.

Erdogan traveled to the Chilean capital of Santiago from Brazil,
skipping a planned two-day visit to Argentina.

“The reason for the cancellation of the Argentina visit is the
cancellation of written permission given earlier by the Ministry
of Environment and Public Space of the Autonomous City of Buenos
Aires for an Ataturk Monument that was to be inaugurated at the Jorge
Newbery Park, following attempts by Armenian circles who are hostile
to Turkey,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a written statement
released on early Sunday morning.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, during a bilateral meeting on the
sidelines of the Third Forum of the Alliance of Civilizations, held
in Rio de Janerio, told his Argentinean counterpart, Jorge Taiana,
that the Argentinean government should fulfill the promise made to
Turkey concerning the unveiling of the memorial, the statement said.

It noted that Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
called Erdogan expressing understanding but explained that the
Autonomous Buenos Aires Administration’s decision cannot be overruled
by the federal government due to Argentina’s constitution.

Following this explanation, Erdogan told her that he found this
unacceptable no matter what the reason was and cancelled the visit,
the Foreign Ministry said. During talks between the Argentinean and
Turkish sides and due the Turkish side’s firm insistence on keeping
to the original agenda of the visit, Kirchner also tried to persuade
the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires to return to the original agenda,
Today’s Zaman learned from reliable sources, yet these efforts failed.

Argentina is home to the third-largest Armenian diaspora community
following the United States and France. In the past, a monument of
Ataturk was removed after pressure by the Armenian community.

In November 2006, the lower house of Argentina’s parliament adopted
a resolution recognizing the killings of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire during World War I as “genocide.” In January 2007, in a move
that brought applause from the Armenian diaspora, then-Argentinean
President Néstor Kirchner approved a draft law proclaiming April 24
“the day of tolerance and respect.”

The inauguration of the monument was requested from Erdogan personally
by President Kirchner during correspondence between the two sides
at the planning stage of the visit, Today’s Zaman learned from
high-level sources.

The meetings held while Argentinean and Turkish officials were trying
to resolve the crisis prevented Erdogan from participating in several
scheduled programs such as the inauguration of “The Ottoman Worldview
from Piri Reis to Katip Celebi,” an exhibition of maps depicting
some of the most significant contributions to Ottoman geography and
cartography, in Rio de Janeiro. The exhibition was instead opened by
Culture and Tourism Minister Ertugrul Gunay.

Erdogan also abandoned his plan to watch a match between Flamengo and
Gremio in the fifth round of the Brazilian championship played at
the Maracana stadium, while Chilean officials responded positively
to the Turkish delegation’s request to start the visit to Chile a
day earlier than planned.

From: A. Papazian

EUROVISION STILL THE WRONG CONTEST FOR UK – CLEARLY EUROPE HATES US
By Jim Shelley

Mirror

May 31 2010
UK

During the build-up to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, Graham
Norton uttered words guaranteed to strike fear into any sane man’s
heart… “Azerbaijan is the hot favourite.”

Did no one think the UK – the country that gave the world The Beatles,
punk rock and Making Your Mind Up – had a hope of beating Azerbaijan?

No, non, niet, they didn’t.

With four hours of “semi-finals” and a three-hour final, the BBC
was taking no chances. Someone in Britain, they judged, must give
a monkey’s.

This year’s contest had all the classic ingredients of a
great/appalling Eurovision:

– A Moldovan fiddler standing on a giant record player, spinning
round at 78rpm.

– Eastern European backing dancers performing street mime you’d see
in Covent Gardenski.

– Songs with exclamation marks, including Allez Ola Ole! by Frenchman
Jessy Matador (not, I suspect, his real name).

There were the usual angst-ridden political anthems containing gnomic
philosophies such as Life Looks Better In Spring by Cyprus. Rather
confusingly, it was sung by some bloke from Wales.

Iceland’s song, meanwhile, was called Je Ne Sais Quoi while Denmark’s
representative was a Sting impersonator who had sold 40 million albums
in Russia.

A hooded Ukrainian version of Roxy from EastEnders sang Sweet People.

“Oh sweet people,” she admonished us. “Vot haff you done? Must you
go on killing/Just to pass the time?”

God knows what Armenia’s Apricot Stone was about, but it included a
piccolo-player in his pyjamas carrying a vase and, you’ve guessed it,
a huge apricot stone.

The night started with Spain’s answer to Leo Sayer facing a stage
invasion by a man in a bobble hat who was taken away by security –
either to the Norwegian equivalent of Guantanamo Bay, or forced to
stay and watch the rest of the show as punishment.

The most surreal sight was the hosts’ trans-European dance routine,
presumably intended to demonstrate the universal language of appalling
music.

The sight of 18,000 audience members waving their hands in the air
in Oslo resembled a Norwegian Nazi rally.

Graham Norton then promised: “In a few moments, we’ll be going live
to a flashmob in Germany.” Don’t!

My favourite was by Greece. Titled Opa, its militaristic disco-Cossack
was so catchy, you believed a small army of butch men in white jeans
and beads could invade another country’s discos chanting “O-pa!”

The worst effort was a ladyboy version of Fernando Torres performing
what can only be described as Serbian reggae.

Speaking of rubbish, the UK was represented by 19-year-old
novice/non-entity Josh Dubovie singing a song written by those
contemporary pop masters Mike Stock and Pete Waterman called That
Sounds Good To Me.

But 120 million Europeans begged to differ.

We’ve come in the bottom two three times in four years. It’s time to
take this tripe seriously.

Azerbaijan invested £2million and recruited Beyonce’s choreographer.

Surely someone half decent must want to perform in front of 120
million people?

Simon Cowell: your country needs you. The winner was Lena, the night’s
most irksome act, a German version of Bjork (just vot ze world needs).

Her song Satellite stormed home with 246 points – 76 clear of the
runners-up and a mere 236 ahead of the UK, who came last with dix
points.

Why we screen it, I don’t know. The message is clear: Everybody
hates us.

From: A. Papazian

THE JOURNAL TIMES
May 31 2010

LETTERS
A painful analogy

Human groups often find other peoples to be in the way of their
aspirations. European immigrants destroyed Indian nations in America;
Ottoman Turks removed Armenians by deportation and massacre; Nazi
Germany killed six million Jews and millions of others. In such
disasters, tribal interests and raw power tend to prevail. For over
a century, a similar struggle has taken place in Palestine. Al-Nakba,
an event in that struggle, is painfully remembered by Palestinians.

The British sought to keep peace between the indigenous Arabs and
the immigrating Jewish population following WWI. Terrorism by Jewish
groups, some led by future Prime Minister Menachem Begin, led the
British to abandon the mandate and leave the problem to the United
Nations.

In November 1947, the U.N. General Assembly voted 33 to 13 (with
10 abstentions, including the United Kingdom and China) to divide
Palestine into a state for Israel and one for the Palestinians. No
Arab nation supported the resolution since it in effect stole land
from peoples who had lived there for centuries.

Al-Nakba (The Catastrophe) took place in 1948. Benny Morris, a Jewish
historian, researched the events. (Google “Benny Morris Haaretz”)
He concludes that Israeli forces were ordered by Ben-Gurion’s team
to expel Palestinians and destroy villages. The violence resulted in
“about a dozen” cases of rape, usually ending in murder, some 800
Palestinians massacred, and 750,000 Arab Palestinians driven from their
homes and villages. Hence, the Arabic term “Al-Nakba.” Since 1948,
Israel has stolen more Palestinian land. Morris supports the strategy
of ethnic cleansing or “transfer.” He notes that immigrants to America
annihilated Indians in order to possess the land. A painful analogy.

Worldwide peace groups, Jewish and non-Jewish, hope that tribal
interests and raw power might somehow be trumped by justice. In the
meantime, Palestinians remember Al-Nakba.

From: A. Papazian