Author: Badalian Vardan

ROMANIAN AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA COMPLETING MISSION
PanARMENIAN.Net
16.10.2006 17:55 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian President Robert Kocharian received
Romanian Ambassador to Armenia Nicolae Iordache, who is completing
his mission in Armenia, reported the RA leader’s press office. The
parties thanked each other for joint work and voiced assurance that
the Armenian-Romanian ties will be developing and strengthening in
future. They also referred to the Romanian President’s visit during
which a number of agreements on further cooperation were signed.

The Guardian, UK
Oct 13 2006
A Nobel winner for our times
Margaret Atwood
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian

‘Pamuk gives us what all novelists give us at their best: the truth’
… Orhan Pamuk. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty

Orhan Pamuk, the celebrated Turkish novelist, has won the Nobel prize
for iterature. It would be difficult to conceive of a more perfect
winner for our catastrophic times. Just as Turkey stands at the
crossroads of the Muslim East/Middle East and the European and North
American west, so Pamuk’s work inhabits the shifting ground of an
increasingly dangerous cultural and religious overlap, where
ideologies as well as personalities collide.
It’s no exaggeration to say that you have to read Pamuk if you want
to begin to understand what’s going on in people’s hearts, minds and
souls, not only in Turkey, but also in Britain, where the current
Jack Straw headscarf controversy eerily mirrors the subject matter of
Pamuk’s recently-translated 1996 novel, Snow (in which we are
reminded that Ataturk’s ruthless modernisation campaign included a
much-disputed banning of headscarves.
Pamuk has felt the shockwaves from such factional collisions. He has
never been one to duck controversy: just a year ago he was facing
prosecution on charges of “un-Turkishness” – he’d been so rash as to
have mentioned the fate of the Armenians at the beginning of the 20th
century, a taboo subject for the authorities. Possibly in response to
international outcries, the charges were dropped, but many
lesser-known Turkish writers have not been so lucky.
He has already won many literary prizes, including the 2003 Dublin
Impac Award for his sixth novel, My Name Is Red. In Turkey, he is far
more than a novelist: people rush to read his novels as if he’s a
kind of sure-fire prophet, or a hugely popular singer, or a national
psychoanalyst or a one-man newspaper editorial page. There is nothing
programmatic about his novels; he simply writes out of the centre of
the whirlwind both his characters and his Turkish readers feel swept
up in every day.
Where is Turkey going? How will it come to terms with its
once-glorious, often-troubled history, and resolve the conflict
between old and new, and handle the power struggle between
secularists and Islamists, and find self-respect, or peace of mind,
or inner wholeness or a new direction? Pamuk’s novels don’t provide
cut-and-dried solutions, but they follow the tortuous lines of such
questionings with anguished and wrenching fidelity. Sometimes his
characters are almost literally torn apart by choices they don’t know
how to make, but are forced to make. His power as a novelist stems in
part from his refusal to judge the choices his characters make: their
tragedy is that no matter what path they take, they can’t be at ease;
and, worse, some other element in their society is bound to condemn
them.
Thus Pamuk’s heroes – they are typically heroes, not heroines –
wander through the plots of their books as if in caught in a
particularly anxious and threatening collective dream.
I wrote of his novel Snow in the New York Times Book Review: “The
twists of fate, the plots that double back on themselves, the
trickiness, the mysteries that recede as they’re approached, the
bleak cities, the night prowling, the sense of identity-loss, the
protagonist in exile – these are vintage Pamuk, but they’re also part
of the modern literary landscape.”
It is not unusual for a Pamuk protagonist to end up dead at the hands
of persons unknown.
Pamuk’s heroes are pestered by Turkey’s former pre-eminence: they may
stumble upon architectural fragments of the huge, opulent Ottoman
empire, or see an Armenian church standing empty, or be reminded of
earlier Russian rulers, or glimpse a fly-spotted picture of the once
revered Ataturk, whose attempts to forge a fully westernised, secular
Turkey now seem futile. Where has all the power gone? such echoes
say. The Christian Byzantine city of Constantinople casts a long
shadow, and the European west and the Muslim east are seen as
mirror-opposite twins ensnared in a net that traps them both.
Pamuk gives us what all novelists give us at their best: the truth.
Not the truth of statistics, but the truth of human experience at a
particular place, in a particular time. And as with all great
literature, you feel at moments not that you are examining him, but
that he is examining you. “No one could understand us from so far
away,” says a character in Snow. Reader, it’s a challenge.

TURKISH PM SAYS FRENCH REASON IN ‘ECLIPSE’ OVER GENOCIDE BILL
Agence France Presse — English
October 10, 2006 Tuesday
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired a broadside at
France Tuesday in a mounting row over a draft law on the massacres
of Armenians under Ottoman rule, calling the bill the product of “an
eclipse of reason” and urging Paris to rethink its own colonial past.
“We expect Paris to avoid this blunder, this political accident that
will harm Turkish-French relations,” Erdogan told the parliamentary
group of his Justice and Development Party in a speech interrupted
by applause.
“The EU must absolutely take a stand against this eclipse of reason
in France,” he said.
Erdogan rejected suggestions by some Turkish lawmakers for Ankara
to retaliate, if the bill is voted, with a similar law making it a
crime to deny that the killings of tens of thousands of Algerians
under French colonial rule amounted to genocide.
“No, we will not retaliate in kind — we do not clean filth with
filth,” he said, but he urged the bill’s backers to closely examine
their own past.
“Those vehicles of of slander and lies should look at their own
past… Let them look at what happened in Algeria between 1954 and
1962,” he said.
The French bill, to be debated and voted at the National Assembly
on Thursday, calls for one year in prison and a 45,000-euro
(57,000-dollar) fine for denying that Armenians were the victims of
genocide during World War I.
Erdogan said the bill will prevent free debate on a historical subject
and violate freedom of expression, a basic EU norm that Turkey itself
is under pressure to respect.
But he said the bill would not discourage Turkey from pursuing its
bid to join the European Union.
“Minor snags will not deter us from pursuing our major goals… Work
on our EU (membership) process continues unabated,” he said.
Ankara has warned France that it will be barred from potentially
lucrative economic projects in Turkey, including a planned nuclear
power plant, if the bill is adopted.
In a 2001 resolution, France recognized the Armenian massacres as
genocide, prompting Ankara to sideline French companies from public
tenders and cancel several projects awarded to French firms.
Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917.
Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000 Armenians
and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians seeking
independence in eastern Anatolia sided with invading Russian troops
as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.

U.S. POLICY AND THE GEORGIAN-RUSSIAN CRISIS
by Dr. Ariel Cohen
Heritage.org, DC
The Heritage Foundation
Oct 11 2006
Amid great power fretting over North Korea’s nuclear test and
continuing Iranian truculence against the West, Russia escalated
its confrontation with the neighboring Georgia. Moscow is now using
Georgia’s arrest of four alleged Russian intelligence officers two
weeks ago as a pretext to escalate its conflicts with Tbilisi. This
is a dangerous development for the West, and specifically the
United States, which could see its influence in the Caucasus region
crumble if Russia is successful in forcing Georgia into its sphere
of influence. U.S. policy must walk a fine line of encouraging
settlement of the current dispute without becoming a liability through
over-involvement.
Georgia may have overplayed its hand in arresting the Russian military
intelligence officers, whom it accused of sabotage, and not just
expelling them quietly-the normal modus operandi in such cases.
In response to the arrests, Moscow recalled its ambassador from
Tbilisi, evacuated diplomats and their families, and halted issuing
visas to Georgian citizens. The Russian military forces stationed
in Georgia are on high alert. Russia cut air and railroad links to
Georgia, and blocked money transfers from Georgians working in Russia,
an important source of income for many Georgian families.
Bearing the brunt of this invigorated conflict is one-million-strong
Georgian Diaspora in Russia. Ethnic Georgians, including children,
were loaded onto cargo planes and expelled from Russia. Russia cites
their illegal immigration status. Prominent Georgian intellectuals
who are Russian citizens are being harassed by the tax police.
Georgian businesses in Moscow are being singled out by law enforcement
authorities. The handling of this crisis is further damaging Russia’s
international standing as a dependable member of the G-8.
Georgian Overkill?
Since Mikheil Saakashvili rose to power in the Rose Revolution of
2003, Russia has warily witnessed anti-Russian statements by Georgian
leaders, a relentless push to evacuate Russian military bases (to which
Russia had agreed previously), an attempt to join NATO, and opposition
to Russian membership in the World Trade Organization. In response,
the Putin administration has embargoed Georgia’s key exports into
Russia: Borjomi mineral water and wine.
Russia has made little secret of its desire to spark a war
in the Caucasus to force regime change in Tbilisi. (See Ariel
Cohen, “Preventing a Russian-Georgian Military Confrontation,”
Heritage Foundation Webmemo No. 1024, March 31, 2006, at
ia/ wm1024.cfm.) It may
get its wish. In September, South Ossetian separatists, who receive
Russian military support, fired on a Georgian helicopter carrying the
Georgian Minister of Defense. This provocation, if successful, could
have led to renewed hostilities in the small secessionist territory
that is a part of Georgia.
Geopolitical Roots
Russia’s regional and global strategic aims explain why Moscow is
escalating its conflict with Georgia. First, Russia has attempted
before to block NATO enlargement into former Soviet territory. In 1999,
Russia fulminated against the Baltic States’ NATO membership.
But at that time, Russia was extricating itself from the 1998 economic
crisis while a power struggle was afoot in Moscow to succeed President
Boris Yeltsin. In part because energy prices were much lower in 1999,
Western European countries supported the Baltic States’ NATO bid
despite Russian protests. Today, with the West increasingly dependent
on Russia’s Gazprom, they are taking Russia’s foreign policy positions
much more seriously.
Second, the Kremlin is now buoyed by $250 billion in petro-dollar
reserves. These funds can buy a lot of hardware for the Trans-Caucasus
Military District and pro-Russian separatists in Abkhazia and South
Ossetia.
Third, Russia is uneasy over the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan main export
pipeline (MEP), which takes Azeri oil to Mediterranean markets and
crosses Georgia but bypasses Russia. Soon the Absheron-Erzurum gas
pipeline will come online, bringing Azeri gas to Turkey and Europe,
again bypassing Russia. Gazprom fears that this gas pipeline may
eventually allow Turkmeni and Kazakhstani gas to circumvent its
pipeline network on its way to Europe.
A Balance of Power Shift
If Georgia comes under the Russian sway, neighboring Azerbaijan and
Armenia will feel the full weight of the Russian presence. Foreign
policy experts in Moscow believe that the Russian government is angry
that Azerbaijan has not allocated enough oil patches to Russian
companies and has facilitated its oil exports via Turkey instead
of Russia. With increased power in the region, Russia will act on
these concerns.
Armenian opposition openly seeks a more pro-Western and less
pro-Russian policy, pointing out that close ties with Moscow did
not improve Armenia’s abysmal living standards and did not bring
international recognition of the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh,
a breakaway province of Azerbaijan, populated mostly by Armenians.
A pro-Russian Georgia in the Collective Security Treaty Organization
of the Commonwealth of Independent States would permit Russia and
Iran to dominate Azerbaijan and Armenia, severely limiting U.S.
policy options there. Furthermore, such a development would put to
rest American ambitions in Central Asia and could cut off strategically
important Kazakhstan from western energy markets.
The Kosovo Ripple Effect
Russia has warned repeatedly that it will retaliate severely if Kosovo
is granted independence against the will of Serbia, a historic ally,
and Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for the imposition of
the Kosovo criteria on separatist enclaves in the former Soviet Union,
including Transnistria (a part of Moldova), Abkhazia, South Ossetia,
and Nagorno-Karabakh. Under this policy, Russia would enforce referenda
in these territories and recognize their independence, opening the
door to their eventual incorporation in the Russian Federation. This
approach would create a dangerous precedent for the Crimea, where
the majority of the Russian-speaking population is pro-Russian;
Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine; and the predominantly Slavic
Northern Kazakhstan.
Violations and alternations of the current borders of the former
Soviet Union could generate severe tensions in Europe and open a
Pandora’s box of territorial claims and ethnically based border
challenges there and elsewhere, such as in Iraq and Kurdistan.
Conclusion
The United States today is preoccupied with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran,
and North Korea. Russia is a key player in all of these, and its
increased cooperation in these disputes would be welcome. The future of
U.S.-Russian relations and global security requires that Moscow behave
responsibly and constructively. Quickly defusing the Georgian crisis
through diplomacy would be a good place to start. Washington should
encourage the European powers, the European Union, and Turkey to become
more engaged in defusing the Georgian-Russian confrontation. Finally,
the U.S. should advise Georgia not to escalate its rhetoric on Russia
unnecessarily or needlessly antagonize its large neighbor. After
all, a peaceful and prosperous Caucasus is in Russian, Georgian,
and American interests.
Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian
Studies and International Energy Security at the Douglas and Sarah
Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn
and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The
Heritage Foundation.

VAHAN HOVHANNISYAN: TO RUSSIA GEORGIA IS CLOSER AND MORE FRATERNAL, THAN ARMENIA
PanARMENIAN.Net
10.10.2006 13:46 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ November 6 the next session of Armenian-Russian
Interparliamentary Commission on Cooperation will be held in Yerevan,
Armenian Vice-Speaker Vahan Hovhannisyan stated at a news conference
in Yerevan. In his words, at the session the Armenian party intends
to discuss the situation Armenia is in due to the tension in
Russian-Georgian relations.
“Georgia’s actions are aimed at withdrawal of Russia from the region
at any price,” the Armenian Vice-Speaker said. In his words, Armenia’s
actions should be aimed at reduction of economic threat within the
period of Russian sanctions against Georgia.
At that V. Hovhannisyan underscored that to Russia Georgia is a closer
and more fraternal people, than Armenia. “Not Armenia, but Georgia
is Russia’s advanced post. Georgian leaders want to turn the Georgian
people towards the West,” he said. He said that if Abkhazia and South
Ossetia do not want to live with Georgia it is their business. “I
do not think Armenians should interfere with internal affairs of
neighboring states,” Hovhannisyan added.

PRESS SCAN: HURRIYET
Turkish Press
Oct 9 2006
WHAT YOU`RE DOING WAS DONE BY STALIN AND HITLER
Journalist-writer Kenize Murad, citizen of Turkey and France, objected
to French Parliament`s bringing draft on so-called Armenian genocide
onto agenda again. Murad said that French Parliament`s initiative is an
intellectual terrorism, adding that re-writing history for political
interests was earlier done by Stalin and Hitler, and concluded with
a disaster.
FORGET NUCLEAR TENDER TO FRANCE
Turkish FM Abdullah Gul assessed the tense relations with France
to Hurriyet. Gul told French FM Blazy that if draft on so-called
Armenian genocide is adopted at French Parliament on October 12th,
then France shall forget all important tenders especially the one
for nuclear power plant.

SIMMONS: “I REGRET FOR NO NOTABLE IMPROVEMENT IN THE SETTLEMENT OF NK CONFLICT”
Today, Azerbaijan
Oct 10 2006
Azerbaijani Defense Minister, general-colonel Safar Abiyev received
Robert Simon, NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for
the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Safar Abiyev said that Azerbaijan goes on cooperating with NATO and
delay of Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict prevents successful development
of this cooperation, APA reports.
The Minister said that one of the main principles of NATO Partnership
for Peace (PP) is to respect territorial integrity of states, stating
that Armenia being the member of this program does not fulfil its
responsibility and UN Security Council four resolutions.
“The international organisations should exert pressure upon Armenia.
If the conflict is not solved peacefully Azerbaijan will restore its
territorial integrity by itself,” the Minister said.
Mr. Simmons said that NATO appreciates the successes of Azerbaijan
in fulfilling of PP, and follows it attentively.
“We regret for no notable improvement in the settlement of Nagorno
Karabakh conflict,” he said.
URL:

LET’S TALK ABOUT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
>From the desk of James McConalogue
Brussels Journal, Belgium
Oct 7 2006
Why is it that Turkey is still unable to recognise the atrocities
committed against the Armenians? Furthermore, why is it that the EU
is entirely antagonistic towards the idea of Turkey, a predominantly
Muslim country, recognising their genocidal past? Last July, I reported
to The Brussels Journal on the unjust suppression of the freedom of
expression in Turkey. The most high-profile case pertained to the
trial of Turkish novelist, Orhan Pamuk in December 2005 after the
author had claimed in a Swiss newspaper that 30,000 Kurds and one
million Ottoman Armenians were killed in Turkey yet nobody in the
Turkish population would dare talk about it. The trial was dismissed
by the Turkish Ministry of Justice at the beginning of 2006.
Two previous reports had also scrutinised the legal proceedings
against the novelist, Elif Shafak. Shafak, author of Bastard
of Istanbul, faced charges of “insulting Turkishness” under the
primitive legislation. Subsequent to an earlier dismissal, the seventh
High Criminal Court revived the charges made by Kemal Kerincsiz’s
nationalist jurist group, ‘The Unity of Jurists.’ Fortunately, in the
final week of September, Shafak was immediately acquitted although it
is difficult to determine whether the acquittal arose because of EU
pressure (threatening Turkish membership) or because the text truly
did not “insult Turkishness” according to Turkey’s dated legislation.
The suppression of free expression has occurred for authors such as
Shafak and others like her, precisely because of the notorious Article
301 of the Turkish Penal Code, prohibiting “insulting Turkishness”. The
legislation was passed in 2005 as a measure of harmonizing Turkish
law with Copenhagen criteria of the European Union.
Interesting in both the cases of Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak is
how these novelists came to represent such a gigantic insult to
Turkishness. Both novelists had referred to their mass killing –
or genocide – of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire. It is those
references to the Armenian genocide that led charges to be made by
Kemal Kerincsiz’s Unity of Jurists. The Turkish government still
denies the conceptual definition of the Armenian genocide.
However, the acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide has now become
a central issue for the Turkish government. It is so important that
the EU Commission spokesperson, Krisztina Nagy, commented after
the acquittal of Shafak trial that Article 301 “continues to pose a
significant threat to freedom of expression in Turkey and all those
who express a non-violent opinion.” Accordingly, EU member-states have
considered reform of Article 301 as important as the Cyprus issue,
tackling minority rights and social violence, in order for the EU to
properly consider Turkish accession.
However, has the EU’s request for reform of Article 301 missed the
point? After all, the Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, has
already hinted at an acceptance to change the legislation. Should
the EU, instead, as a condition of EU entry demand that the Turkish
government acknowledge the Armenian genocide? In both the cases
of Pamuk and Shafak – and eighty or so other authors – many of the
legal proceedings against Turkish writers have arisen as a result of
references to the Armenian genocide. That is the real obstacle for
the Turkish government and frankly, its revisionist approach to the
nation’s history is not at all suited to a future of diplomacy. It
is essentially denying a holocaustal error of its past. Furthermore,
all other national governments across the globe (other than Turkey)
have classified the Armenian events that occurred between 1915 and
1917 as genocide. International authorities recognise the event
as the Armenian genocide, a direct set of policies that led to the
persecution and death of 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians. It cannot
be named something else. It cannot be ignored. Neither can it be
understood from the Turkish historical perspective as a ‘civil war.’
That is why I paid strong attention to the French President, Jacques
Chirac’s words on 30 September. In a visit to Yerevan, the French
President declared to news agencies: “Should Turkey recognize the
genocide of Armenia to join the EU? […] I believe so. Each country
grows by acknowledging the dramas and errors of its past. […] Can
one say that Germany which has deeply acknowledged the holocaust,
has as a result lost credit? It has grown.”
It is certain that Chirac’s desire to enforce the acceptance of
the mass-killings as genocide amongst other EU accession conditions
has not been aligned with that of other European nations. Other EU
member-states seem to be fairly relaxed in letting Turkey off the
hook on the genocide issue. The last MEP interim report on Turkey’s EU
accession removed the request for an acknowledgement of the Armenian
genocide. More worryingly, the MEPs removed the condition of EU
accession out of fears that Turkish nationalists would be incited
into aggression against this.
It is never a good sign that a major political sanction should be
removed from a country simply out of fear of reprisals. Yet, that is
exactly what has happened. In brief, Europeans have decided not to
ask the Turkish to recognise the Armenian genocide simply because it
is scared that the Turks might actually bite. And, if the Turks do
bite? Well that can only be a result of a troubled national Turkish
culture – largely unable to confront significant genocidal errors –
and not because Europe has asked the wrong question. There are rumours
that the French will continue to push the ‘genocide recognition rule’
as a condition of EU entry, but if they are alone on that effort,
then there is very little that can be done to ensure it will be among
the requisites for EU entry. It might also be thought that Chirac
could not afford to push the condition too far, since it may bring
substantial damage to Franco-Turk relations before Turkey has even
begun to attempt its progress towards European harmonization. Whether
the European harmonization process is a good and worthwhile path for
either Turkey or Europe will always remain unclear.

VICE-PRESIDENT OF ALCATEL: ARMENIA HAS GREAT POTENTIAL IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Arka News Agency, Armenia
Oct 6 2006
YEREVAN, October 6. /ARKA/. Vice-President of Alcatel company for
CIS countries and Mongolia Johan Vanderplaetse told journalists in
Tbilisi that Armenia had a great potential in software development.
“Recent visit of President of Alcatel Serge Churuka to Armenia
together with the delegation of President of France Jacques Chirac
was conditioned not only by the fact that the company is a supplier,
successfully selling its solutions at Armenian market, but also by
the circumstance that Armenia has a great potential in the sphere of
software development”, Vanderplaetse said.
He said that as early as a year ago after Churuka’s meeting with
President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan it became clear that Armenia
was highly interested in software development.
“We find it a very right decision, since Armenia does not have gas
or oil reserves, but it has a great advantage thanks to its human
resources and high system of education”, Vanderplaetse emphasized.
“We are satisfied that in Armenia on the highest levels people clearly
understand that the development of telecommunication and availability
of internet not only in Yerevan but also across Armenia is a key
target of the country”, he said.
“We have unique offers on ViMax, which we want to promote in Armenia”,
he pointed out, meantime adding that in the country the development
of the internet itself depended on the operators, engaged in
telecommunication software.
Answering to a question about the possibility of opening an enterprise
of ready production of Alcatel company in Armenia, Vanderplaetse
pointed out that at present the software was the main part of
telecommunication software, and “the iron is less and less important”.
“We have a choice – either to invest into production of “slow-witted”
iron, or use brains of Armenian engineers in the sphere of software.
I think that the second is worth counting on”, he said.S.P.-0–

STATE MINISTER TUZMEN IN PARIS FOR TURKISH WEEK IN EUROPE
Turkish Press
Oct 5 2006
PARIS – “Turks have never committed genocide in their thousand years
of history,” said Turkish State Minister Kursad Tuzmen who spoke
at a panel discussion on “Europe’s Global Difficulties and Turkey”
which was held in Paris by Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s
Association (TUSIAD) within the scope of Turkish Week in Europe.
Assessing the draft law envisaging sanction (fee and imprisonment)
on denial of so-called Armenian genocide which will be debated at
French parliament on October 12th upon initiative of Socialist Party,
Tuzmen said, “this issue has started to be used as a domestic policy
tool in some countries, and we regret it. We also have domestic
politics but we don’t mix them with other countries’ matters.”
“We have never committed genocide in our thousand years of history.
We have not had any problems with our Armenian citizens neither in
Turkey nor during Ottoman period,” he added.
Noting that Turkey wants this issue to be examined by historians at
a commission, Tuzmen said that politicians should not make proposals
about history.
Tuzmen stressed, “there were two Armenian ministers in Ottoman cabinet
in 1915. They remained in the cabinet after relocation as well. If
there were really a genocide, these two Armenian ministers could
not have remained in the cabinet. When Russian history is examined,
it can also be seen that a genocide was not committed in that period.”
“Armenians were called ‘loyal community’ in Ottoman period. Many
Armenian diplomats and high-level officials served for Ottoman,”
he added.
Regarding the draft law to be debated at French parliament, Tuzmen
said, “I hope French parliament would act in common sense against this
draft law.” He added, “if this law is adopted, will I be imprisoned
when I deny so-called Armenian genocide in France after October
12th? I think it would be very wrong in this globalizing world.”
-TURKISH ECONOMY-
Regarding Turkish economy, Tuzmen said, “Turkey made more than half of
its foreign trade (which will totally exceed 200 billion USD in 2006)
with Europe this year, and France is very important in this aspect.”
“Our economic performance is better than many EU countries especially
the new EU members. We are the fastest growing country of Europe in
the last three years. We catch the highest speed in export increase
not only in Europe but also in OECD. Turkey’s EU membership will be
for the interest of both our country and the EU,” Tuzmen noted.
He said that Turkey will have important contributions to increase EU
economy’s competitive power as well as dynamism.