Author: Baghdasarian Karlen

TER-PETROSIAN – PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE

A1+
[07:25 pm] 26 October, 2007

Levon Ter-Petrossian has just announced at Azatutiun Square that
he will run for presidency. He is a presidential nominee starting
this moment.
From: Baghdasarian

OPINION: WILL TURKEY RETALIATE?
By Chicago Tribune (MCT)

Chicago Tribune, IL
Oct 25 2007

As if the United States government didn’t have enough troubles to deal
with in the Middle East, another one is looming along the northern
border of Iraq. Kurdish rebels who operate from Iraq have been at war
with the government of Turkey, and over the weekend they carried out
an ambush that left a dozen Turkish soldiers dead and others missing.

The attack came just days after Turkey’s parliament passed a measure
authorizing cross-border military action against the insurgent force,
known as the PKK ( Kurdistan Workers’ Party), which Turkey and the
U.S. regard as a terrorist organization. A Turkish invasion of Iraqi
Kurdistan now looks like a possibility.

That would be calamitous for just about everyone. It would further
destabilize the Iraqi government and underscore its weakness. It
would force the U.S. to choose between Turkey, an important ally in
the region, and Iraq’s Kurds, who predominate in the most stable part
of the country. It could unleash a larger regional conflict involving
neighbors such as Iran and Syria.

It could also be a disaster for Turkey. Besides the serious danger of
being mired in a bloody guerrilla war on foreign soil, an invasion
would almost certainly spark nationalist sentiment among its Kurds,
which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has done much to defuse. A
full-scale assault would also damage Turkey’s reputation in Europe
at a time when it is seeking membership in the European Union.

The Turks don’t need to be told any of this. The parliament’s vote was
clearly meant to induce Washington and Baghdad to act so Ankara won’t
have to. But no government can passively accept terrorist attacks from
a neighboring country. Unless someone else tries to curb the rebels,
Erdogan may be forced to do something.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Bush administration has launched what the State Department calls a
"full court press" to dissuade the Turks from invading. While calling
on them to exercise restraint, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also
emphatically stressed to the Iraqi government "the importance of Iraq
working actively with the Turkish government to counter what is a real
threat to Turkish citizens," according to spokesman Sean McCormack.

Unfortunately, now is not the best time to expect a sympathetic ear
in Ankara. The recent House committee to declare the killings of
Armenians by Turks during and after World War I "genocide" has fueled
antagonism in a public already angry about the Iraq war. But the Bush
administration should get some credit from Erdogan for opposing the
House resolution, which now looks unlikely to pass.

The administration will have to do far more than that though, if it
hopes to pacify the Turks. Specifically, it will have to bring heavy
pressure on both the Baghdad government and Iraqi Kurdish leaders to
make visible efforts to rein in the PKK.

As they should know, that is not just in the interest of the U.S.

Failing to act would only reduce the chances for a stable, peaceful
Iraq — something they need more than anyone else.
From: Baghdasarian

TURKEY AS A REGIONAL POWER

Hakimiyet-i Milliye, Turkey
744
Oct 24 2007

Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas based in northern Iraq
ambushed Turkish troops near the border Oct. 21, killing 12 soldiers
and suffering 23 casualties in the ensuing firefight, according to
the Turkish government. For its part, the PKK said it captured eight
Turkish troops, though Ankara has not confirmed the claim.

Based on prior PKK attacks, the Turkish parliament last week
authorized the use of force in Iraq. This latest attack, therefore,
was clearly designed to challenge that decision. Even before the dust
had settled Oct. 21, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, rejected
an earlier demand from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
that Baghdad shut down all PKK camps in Iraqi territory and hand over
PKK leaders. Talabani said Iraq cannot solve Turkey’s problem, given
that PKK leaders hide out in rugged mountains and even the "mighty"
Turkish military has failed to kill or capture them. Specifically,
he said, "The handing over of PKK leaders to Turkey is a dream that
will never be realized."

If that position holds, it is difficult to imagine that the Turks won’t
move into northern Iraq and re-establish the sphere of influence and
security they had during the Saddam Hussein era. The United States
is working furiously to satisfy Turkey by taking responsibility for
controlling the PKK. It is not clear whether the United States can
deliver, nor is it clear whether the Turks are prepared to rely on
the United States. Some move into Iraq is likely, in our mind, but
even if it doesn’t happen in this particular case, tensions between
Turkey and the United States will remain. More important, Turkey’s
willingness to play a secondary role in the region is declining.

This is not really new. The Turks refused to allow the United States
to invade Iraq from Turkish territory, even though Washington offered
them free room to maneuver in northern Iraq in exchange for their
cooperation. The Turks, however, were not unhappy with the status
quo in Iraq. They also were concerned about the consequences of an
American invasion and were not eager to be seen as a tool of the
United States in the Islamic world.

At the same time, the Turks did not want a rupture with the United
States — given that the relationship has been the foundation of
Turkish foreign policy since World War II. The refusal of the European
Union to admit Turkey in particular made it necessary for Ankara to
preserve its relationship with Washington. Therefore, although the
invasion was problematic for the Turks, they have cooperated with
the United States, allowing a large portion of the supplies for
U.S. troops in Iraq to come through Turkey.

The Turkish balancing act on Iraq has pivoted on one fundamental
national security consideration: that the autonomy given to Iraq’s
Kurds remains limited. The Kurdish nationality crosses existing
borders — into Iraq, Turkey, Iran and, to a lesser extent, Syria —
and represents a geographically coherent, self-aware nation without
a state. Historically, the Kurds generally were compelled to be part
of larger empires, including the Ottoman Empire. When that empire
collapsed — leaving Turkey as its successor — these other countries
contained Kurdish lands, with more than half of the Kurds living in
Turkey. The Turks, dealing with the collapse of their empire and the
building of a new nation-state, feared that Kurdish independence
would lead to the disintegration of that nation-state. Therefore,
they had — and continue to maintain — a fixed policy to suppress
Kurdish nationalism.

>From the Turkish point of view, the greatest danger is that an
independent Kurdistan will be created in Iran or Iraq, and that the
homeland will be used to base and support Kurds seeking independence
from Turkey. In fact, each of these countries — and outside powers
such as the United States, Soviet Union and United Kingdom — have
used the Kurds as a tool to apply pressure on Turkey, Iran or Iraq
at various times. They have used Kurdish separatism as a threat,
and then normally double-crossed the Kurds, making a broader deal
with the nation-state in question.

The evolution of events in Iraq is particularly alarming to the
Turks. Hussein was not necessarily to the Turks’ liking, but he did
pursue one policy that was identical to that of the Turks: He opposed
Kurdish independence. The U.S. policy after Desert Storm was to use
the Iraqi Kurds against Hussein — and the United States helped carve
out an area of Iraqi Kurdistan that he could not reach. The Turks,
uneasy with this arrangement, entered Iraq in the 1990s to create a
buffer zone against the Kurds. The United States did not object to
this move because it increased the pressure on Hussein.

In looking at current U.S. strategy in Iraq, the Turks have drawn
two conclusions. The first is that the United States, focused on
Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite areas, has little interest in controlling
the Kurdish region — the one area that is fairly unambiguously
pro-American. The second is that the Iranians and Shia want an Iraq
divided into three regions — or even independent states — and that
a U.S. policy designed to create a federal state with a strong central
government will fail.

Therefore, Turkey’s perception is that it already is dealing with the
post-war world, one in which an increasingly bold Iraqi Kurdistan is
pursuing a policy of expanding Kurdish autonomy by facilitating a
guerrilla war in Turkey. The PKK’s actions in recent weeks confirm
this view in their mind. They also believe they cannot deal with
the Kurdish challenge defensively, and therefore they must defend by
attacking. Hence, the creation of a security zone in Iraq.

>From the Kurds’ point of view, if there ever was a moment to assert
their national rights, this is it. However, their highly risky gamble
is that the United States will not chance an anti-American uprising
in Iraq’s Kurdish areas and so will limit the extent to which Turkey
can intervene. Moreover, with the United States at odds with Iran,
it might support a Kurdish uprising there. Hence, though the stakes
are high, the Kurdish gamble is not irrational.

The Kurds in Iraq are correct in their view that the United
States does not want conflict in the one area in Iraq that is not
anti-American. They also are correct that this is a unique moment for
them. But they are betting that the Turks don’t recognize the danger
and thus will place their interests second to those of the United
States — which is more concerned with stability in Iraqi Kurdistan
than with suppressing attacks in Turkey’s Kurdish areas. Although
this might have been true of Turkey 10 years ago, it no longer is
true today. The U.S.-Turkish relationship has flipped. The United
States needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the United States —
for reasons beyond getting supplies to Iraq.

Al Qaeda’s geopolitical threat has subsided, no uprising capable of
effecting regime change has occurred in the Islamic world and the
threat of a unified Islamic world has vastly decreased. Meanwhile,
the grand strategy of the United States has remained the same. It
played Hitler against Stalin, Mao against Brezhnev and is now playing
Sunni against Shi’i. The Sunni threat having subsided, the Shiite
and Iranian threats remain. The current U.S. task is to build an
anti-Iranian coalition. Regardless of whether the Europeans approve
sanctions against Iran, its neighbors are important — and one of
the most important is Turkey. However, given that Turkey and Iran
have a common interest in preventing an independent Kurdish nation
anywhere, the more the United States supports the Iraqi Kurds, the
greater the danger of an Iranian-Turkish alliance. At the moment,
that is the last thing the United States wants to see, which is why
the resolution on Turkish responsibility for Armenian genocide in
the U.S. Congress could not possibly have come at a worse moment.

But that is atmospherics. When we look beyond al Qaeda and beyond Iran
— a country that has been unable to create substantial spheres of
influence for many centuries — we see a single country that is likely
to begin bringing order to the region: Turkey. Turkey is the heir
to the Ottoman Empire, which at various points dominated the eastern
Mediterranean, North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Caucasus and
deep into Russia. Its collapse after World War I created an oddity
— an inward-looking state in Asia Minor. Cautious in World War II
and strictly aligned with the United States during the Cold War,
Turkey played a passive role: It either sat things out or allowed
its strategic territory to be used.

The situation has changed dramatically. In 2006, Turkey had the 18th
largest economy in the world — larger than that of any other Muslim
country, including Saudi Arabia — and the economy has been growing
at a rate of between 5 percent and 7 percent a year for five years.

Most important, Turkey is not a purely export-oriented country. It
has developed a substantial middle class that buys the products it
produces. It has a substantial and competent military and is handling
the stresses between institutions and ideologies well.

It also is surrounded by chaos. Apart from Iraq to the south, there
is profound instability in the Caucasus to the north and the Balkans
to the northwest. The southern region from the Levant to the Persian
Gulf is tremendously tense. The stability of Egypt — and therefore
the eastern Mediterranean — after President Hosni Mubarak departs
is in question. Turkey’s longtime rival, Greece, no longer presents
the challenge it once did. Moreover, the European Union’s effective
rejection of Turkey has freed the country from many of the constraints
that its membership hopes might have imposed.

Turkey has a vested interest in stabilizing the region. It no longer
regards the United States as a stabilizing force, and it sees Europe
as a collective entity and individual nations as both hostile and
impotent. It views the Russians as a long-term threat to its interests
and sees Russia’s potential return to Turkey’s frontier as a long-term
challenge. As did the Ottomans, it views Iran as a self-enclosed
backwater. It is far more interested in the future of Syria and Iraq,
its relationship with its ally, Israel, and ultimately the future of
the Arabian Peninsula.

In other words, Turkey should be viewed as a rapidly emerging regional
power — or, in the broadest sense, as beginning the process of
recreating a regional hegemon of enormous strategic power, based in
Asia Minor but projecting political, economic and military forces
in a full circle. Its willingness to rely on the United States to
guarantee its national security ended in 2003. It is prepared to
cooperate with the United States on issues of mutual interest, but
not as a subordinate power.

This emergence, in our view, is in the very early stages. Just as
Turkey’s economy and its internal politics have undergone dramatic
changes in the past five years, so have its foreign policies. The
Turks are cautiously reaching out and influencing events throughout
the region. In one sense, the intervention in Iraq would simply be a
continuation of policies followed in the 1990s. But in the current
context, it would represent more: a direct assertiveness of its
natural interests independent of the United States.

Looked at broadly, three things have happened. First, the collapse
of Yugoslavia drew Turkey into a region where it had traditional
interest. Second, the collapse and resurrection of Russian power has
made Turkey look northward to the Caucasus. Finally, the chaos in
the Arab world has drawn Turkey southward. Limits on Turkish behavior
from Europe and the United States have been dramatically reduced as a
result of Western strategy. Turkey believes it needs to bring order
to regions where the United States and Europe have proven either
ineffective or hostile to Turkish interests.

Considering the future of the region, the only power in a position to
assert its consistent presence is Turkey. Iran, its nearest competitor,
is neither in competition with Turkey, nor does it have a fraction
of its power — nuclear weapons or not. Turkey has historically
dominated the region, though not always to the delight of others
there. Nevertheless, its historical role has been to pick up the
pieces left by regional chaos. In our view, it is beginning to move
down that road.

Its current stance on the Kurdish issue is merely a first step. What
makes that position important is that Turkey is pursuing its interests
indifferent to European or American views. Additionally, the reversal
of dependency between the United States and Turkey is ultimately more
important than whether Turkey goes into Iraq. The U.S. invasion of
Iraq kicked off many processes in the world and created many windows
of opportunity. Watching Turkey make its moves, we wonder less about
the direction it is going than about the limits of its ambition.
From: Baghdasarian

IRANIAN CARPETS EXHIBITED IN ARMENIA
Translated by L.H.

AZG Armenian Daily #194
24/10/2007

Culture

An exhibition of Iranian carpets and handicrafts is opened in the
Government Meetings Hall, in Yerevan, on October 20. 12 companies
participate in the five-day exhibition: 10 of them exhibit carpets
and 2 companies – handicraft.

The organizer of the exhibition, representative of Iranian Carpets
Union Reza Vusoghi hopes that the exhibition will contribute to
cooperation of Armenian-Iranian carpet makers.

The Iranian carpets are exhibited by Iranian companies of Tavriz,
Shiraz, Neshabur and Ghom.

The participants of the exhibition hope that at the end of the
exhibition they will be able to come to agreements with Armenian
carpet makers.
From: Baghdasarian

WHEN TRUTH OFFENDS HONOUR
Mark Abley

Toronto Star
Oct 23 2007
Canada

One of the stupidest trends in Canadian education has been the decline
in history teaching. History is a regular victim when school boards
and education departments decide that glossy topics like "information
technology" outweigh the past.

The trend is unfortunate for many reasons. One of them is this: We
can’t understand the contemporary world without some grasp of what
formed it and deformed it.

Consider the uproar about a resolution now before the U.S. Congress,
defining the Turkish killings of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 as
"genocide." To Turkey’s rulers, and most of its people, the idea is
an outrage – an offence against national honour.

Those events happened so long ago that few eyewitnesses remain. One
of the oldest survivors, Arousiag Aghazarian, died in Montreal last
month at the age of 104. Throughout her adult life she was haunted
by the memory of a girl’s decapitated head in a pile of body parts,
ribbons still attached to her ponytail.

Nearly all Armenians are convinced that their people’s destruction
was carefully planned. Before the atrocities, 2 million of them
lived in the Ottoman Empire (the precursor to modern-day Turkey);
about 500,000 survived.

Turkey, however, insists that the killings took place on a much smaller
scale. It notes that most occurred in wartime, when the Ottomans were
battling Russia; they saw Armenians as an internal enemy.

The rhetoric on both sides is heated. But the Armenians’ evidence
is strong. "I am confident that the whole history of the human race
contains no such horrible episode as this," wrote Henry Morgenthau,
the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. "The great massacres and
persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to
the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915."

Empty rhetoric? Not if you read what Turkey’s allies were privately
saying. Richard von Kuhlmann, Germany’s foreign minister in 1917,
deplored "the large-scale destruction of the Armenians" and warned
that "this policy of extermination will for a long time stain the
Turkish name."

Some Turks were prepared to admit responsibility. Gen. Mehmet Vehib, a
celebrated army commander, wrote in 1919: "The massacre and destruction
of the Armenians and the plunder and pillage of their goods were the
results of decisions reached by the Central Committee (of Turkey’s
ruling party)."

So why the endless genocide denial by Vehib’s successors – a denial
that continues to affect how events unfold in the Middle East today?

History is not a bare list of dates and events; history also
involves story and psychology. For Turks to admit what many of their
grandparents and great-grandparents did would be to acknowledge the
most shameful act any people can commit. Small wonder the admission
sticks in their throat.

A much smaller admission sticks in ours. From the day its new building
opened in 2005, the Canadian War Museum was attacked by veterans’
groups who charged that its display concerning the carpet-bombing of
German cities during World War II had reproachful overtones.

The veterans finally won. Two weeks ago, the museum changed the
display’s wording – even though its previous label was factually
correct. Viewers are now told: "Allied aircrew conducted this gruelling
offensive with great courage against heavy odds."

That’s not the point. Or rather, it shouldn’t be. As history makes
clear, Allied bombs killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people
for very dubious military reasons. But we don’t like an offence to
our national honour.

And so, like the Turks, we sometimes close our eyes to the truth.
From: Baghdasarian

PM: ARMENIA’S GOVERNMENT TO PROPOSE AMBITIOUS PROGRAM OF REFORMS

ARKA News Agency
Oct 22 2007
Armenia

YEREVAN, October 22. /ARKA/. Armenia’s Government will propose an
ambitious program of further reforms and hopes for proper technical
assistance and IMF consultation, said Armenian Prime Minister Serge
Sargsyan.

"The reforms will include modernization of tax and customs
administrations, financial sector, issues of increasing the economic
cooperation," said Sargsyan during his meeting with Director of
International Monetary Fund Dominic Straus-Kan, Washington.

The RA Government’s public relations department told ARKA that
Sargsyan pointed out that since 1992 within the IMF joint programs,
Armenia has managed to achieve macroeconomic stability, rehabilitate
the shaky economy after the collapse of the USSR by providing high
indices of the economic growth.

Talking about the further cooperation with the IMF, Sargsyan pointed
out that the IMF program which terminates in May 2008 should be
continued.

The sides also discussed urgent trends of the economic development
in the country and the prospects of Armenia’s cooperation with the IMF.

Dominic Straus-Kan said about his plans about the IMF reformation
and expressed hope that Armenian Premier will assist him as a head
of government of the IMF member-state. Sargsyan promised to study
attentively the initiatives of the IMF Director and assist to
implement them.

Sargsyan also met with the American Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group
Matthew Bryza. During the meeting they discussed issues of mutual
interest.
From: Baghdasarian

A VOICE FROM THE PAST
By Richard Lourie

The Moscow Times
Oct 22 2007
Russia

Would Russia have benefited from a process of de-Sovietization like
the de-Nazification program that has apparently worked so well in
Germany? Why didn’t that happen? Is it too late?

A lot of ink has been spilled to demonstrate the similarities between
Nazism and communism, but the differences matter too. For one thing,
Nazism was over quickly, the 1,000-year Reich lasted less than 15. At
war’s end, the Nazi criminals were still young and their crimes
fresh. An executioner who was 30 at the apex of the Stalin’s terror in
1937 was in his 80s during the Gorbachev years and would be 100 today.

The worst crimes of the Soviet era were committed in the 36 years
between the 1917 Revolution and Stalin’s death in 1953. But the
Soviet Union had another 38 to go, some of them benign (Khrushchev,
Gorbachev), some nondescript (Andropov, Chernenko) and even the worst
of Brezhnev’s long reign was small potatoes. There was only one Nazism
— Hitler’s — but there were many varieties of Soviet communism.

The short duration of the Nazi era made its evil more intense. Though
it is difficult to measure degrees of evil past a certain point,
Stalin’s mass murders were probably not as bad as Hitler’s premeditated
genocide, which included the deaths of 1.5 million Jewish children.

Hitler’s path led to suicide — for himself and for Germany. In
it for the long haul, the Soviet Union always played it more
conservative. Stalin had the A-bomb for four years without rattling
that saber.

Finally, the Soviet Union was on the right side in World War II,
which was also the winning side. The crimes of victors are forgiven.

Some might argue that Russia did, in fact, undergo a sort of double
de-Sovietization — the de-Stalinization that occurred under Khrushchev
and the mass of revelations that surfaced in the glasnost years,
including all of the horrors from the murder of the royal family
to the use of psychiatric institutions to punish dissidents like
Bukovsky. They’d say that there’s a monument to the victims of the
secret police on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, a gulag museum in downtown
Moscow and readily available books and videos on the subject of
Communist crimes. De-Sovietization may have been done in slipshod
style, but it was done, and in any case, it’s too late to do much
more about it.

Another group, maybe as much as a quarter of the population, would
point out that the collapse of the Soviet Union was de-Sovietization
enough and that the problem with today’s Russia is that it isn’t Soviet
enough. If anything, they’d be in favor of a little re-Sovietization.

The crimes of the Soviet era were ordered by the Communist Party
and executed by its sword and shield — the KGB. The Communists lost
power, the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and when the dust cleared,
the KGB were in power. As some of its members are fond of explaining,
this is, in fact, a good thing because the security services were
the only group organized enough to save the country from the abyss
of chaos. Not only that, the KGB had done much that was good in
the Soviet era (stealing the plans for the atomic bomb), and it
was itself the victim of Stalin’s crimes; recall how many officers,
not to mention KGB heads, perished in the purges.

But the past is rarely over and done with. Turkey’s fierce reaction
to the U.S. Congress classifying the World War I-era slaughter of
Armenians as genocide shows quite clearly what happens when ghosts
are not laid to rest. And Russia is still a haunted land.

Richard Lourie is the author of "Sakharov: A Biography" and "A Hatred
For Tulips."
From: Baghdasarian

Harvard Crimson, MA
Oct 20 2007

Nobel Winner Pamuk Recounts Thirty Years of Writing

Published On Friday, October 19, 2007 3:13 PM

By ALISON S. COHN
Crimson Staff Writer

`I think that most of fiction is autobiographical,’ Turkish novelist
Orhan Pamuk reflected before a packed Memorial Church audience last
Friday night, exactly one year to the date of his winning the Nobel
Prize in Literature. `The art of the novel is that in writing, you’re
talking about yourself while making people believe you’re talking
about herself, himself.’

During the Harvard Book Store event, Pamuk used excerpts from `Other
Colors,’ a new collection of `essays and a story’ he has written over
the last 30 years, as a jumping-off point for a freewheeling
discussion of precocious melancholy, the calling to literature, and
the political necessity of open communication. `This book is full of
slices of life, things that I have experienced,’ he said.

Pamuk read aloud a cluster of short lyrical essays originally written
for the Turkish political humor magazine `Oküz’ (`Ox’). `I’m Not
Going to School,’ a gently sardonic dramatic monologue, detailed a
child’s dislike of school (`The teacher gives me a nasty look, and
she doesn’t look too good to start with. I don’t want to go to
school.’). `When Rüya is Sad’ offered a novelist-father’s more
self-reflective perspective.

`Does she have a stomachache? Or maybe she is discovering the taste
of her melancholy. Let her be, let her be sad, let her lose herself
in solitude and her own smell. The first aim of an intelligent person
is to achieve unhappiness when everyone around her is happy,’ he
read.

A self-characterized graphomaniac and author of seven novels
including `Snow’ and `My Name is Red,’ Pamuk reminisced about the
burgeoning of his compulsion to write.

`I argue that just like some people need a pill every day, I need
some time to be alone in a room…to write every day. If I do that,
I’m okay. If I don’t do that, I’m upset,’ he said.

Pamuk was asked by an audience member for his thoughts on the
proposed condemnation of the Armenian Genocide by the United States
Congress.

`You know, I was expecting this question. Don’t worry, I will get out
of it!’ he quipped.

Charges against Pamuk of `insulting Turkish identity’ for remarks he
made to a Swiss newspaper about the mass killing of Armenians in
Turkey during World War I were later dropped in January 2006
following an international outcry.

`Firstly, it is a moral issue. For me, it is a Turkish issue. And
unfortunately, now it is getting to be more and more of an
international issue. For me, it is an issue of free speech in Turkey,
that the Turks should be able to talk about this, no matter what you
say…I think it is upsetting that this issue can be an arm-wrestling
issue internationally, rather than a moral issue of freedom of speech
in Turkey,’ he replied, to applause.

Pamuk, whose works have been translated into over fifty languages,
spoke to the universal power of literature.

`A sentence is a sort of an episteme, a sort of a composition of
meanings and melody. Translation, I believe, depends on the essential
translatability of prose. And I also believe that poetry may
sometimes be untranslatable, but I write in prose. [In prose] there
are acknowledged universal meanings and they can be translated,’ he
said.

Reading an excerpt from his Nobel Lecture reprinted in `Other
Colors,’ Pamuk attempted to answer simply that question often posed
to authors: `Why do you write?’

`I write because I have never managed to be happy,’ he said. `I write
to be happy.’

9
From: Baghdasarian

A1+

LAUNCH ON NEW EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE
[02:27 pm] 19 October, 2007

25 October, Lanzarote – A new Council of Europe convention aimed at
protecting children against sexual abuse and exploitation will be
opened for signature at a conference of European justice ministers on
Thursday. The convention contains measures to combat sexual abuse in
the home and in the family, as well as child prostitution,
pornography, `grooming’ for sexual purposes and sex tourism.

Statistics indicate that in western democracies approximately one in
ten children or young adults is the victim of some form of sexual
abuse. Sexual abuse against children occurs in various forms: incest,
pornography, prostitution, human trade and sexual aggression. All of
these carry very serious physical and psychological consequences upon
children.

In July 2007, the Council of Europe adopted the Convention on the
Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual
Abuse. This instrument is the first to establish the various forms of
sexual abuse of children as criminal offences, including such abuse
committed in the home or the family. The convention fills the gaps in
European legislation and harmonises the legal framework to fight
against this plague.

The program ”Building a Europe For and With Children” completes this
legal approach. Its objective is the promotion of children’s rights
and their protection against all forms of violence.
From: Baghdasarian

Panorama.am

18:16 19/10/2007

NIKOLAY RIJKOV: `I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT FORCES ARE STANDING BEHIND
LEVON TER – PETROSYAN’

Nikoloay Rijkov, co-chair of the inter-parliamentary committee of
cooperation between Armenian National Assembly and Russian Federative
Council, raised a rhetoric questions today in a new conference
speaking about possible nomination of first President Levon
Ter-Petrosyan in the Armenian presidential elections 2008. He said: `I
do not understand what forces are standing behind Ter-Petrosyan.’
Rijkov also said: `You must have the support of very serious force in
order to become a president. I have asked today and learnt that his
party, HHSh, or… is hardly collecting 1 percent of votes and that’s
it. It is not serious.’

Source: Panorama.am
From: Baghdasarian