LEVON ARONYAN RANKS 7TH IN FIDE JANUARY RATING LIST
ArmRadio.am
08.01.2007 13:46
With 2744 points leading Grand Master of Armenia Levon Aronyan is
currently the 7th in the January rating of chess players issued by the
International Chess Federation (FIDE). The list is headed by Vesselin
Topalov of Bulgaria, despite his defeat in the game against Russian
Vladimr Kramnik for world champion’s title. Kramnik is the hird,
the second is Vishvanatan Anand of India.
BİA, Turkey
Dec 29 2006
Tariq Ali Diary on Diyarbakır and More
The PKK decision offers the possibility of genuine reforms and
autonomy, but this will happen only if the Turkish army agrees to
retire to its barracks. Economic conditions in the Kurdish areas are
now desperate.
London Review of Books
22/11/2006 Tariq ALI
BİA (London) – It was barely light in Istanbul as I stumbled
into a taxi and headed for the airport to board a flight for
Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish city in eastern Turkey, not far from
the Iraqi border. The plane was full, thanks to a large party of what
looked like chattering students with closely shaved heads, whose
nervous excitement seemed to indicate they’d never left home before.
One of them took the window seat next to my interpreter. It turned
out he wasn’t a student but a newly conscripted soldier, heading east
for more training and his first prolonged experience of barrack-room
life, perhaps even of conflict.
He couldn’t have been more than 18; this was his first time on a
plane. As we took off he clutched the seat in front of him and looked
fearfully out of the window. During the flight he calmed down and
marvelled at the views of the mountains and lakes below, but as the
plane began its descent he grabbed the seat again. Our safe landing
was greeted with laughter by many of the shaven-headed platoon.
Only a few weeks previously, some young soldiers had been killed in
clashes with guerrillas belonging to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK). It used to be the case that when Turkish soldiers died in the
conflict, their mothers were wheeled on to state television to tell
the world how proud they were of the sacrifice. They had more sons at
home, they would say, ready and waiting to defend the Fatherland.
This time the mothers publicly blamed the government for the deaths
of their sons.
Diyarbakir is the de facto capital of the Turkish part of Kurdistan,
itself a notional state that extends for some six hundred miles
through the mountainous regions of south-eastern Turkey, northern
Syria, Iraq and Iran. Turkish Kurdistan is home to more than 14
million Kurds, who make up the vast majority of the region’s
population; there are another four million Kurds in northern Iraq,
some five million in Iran and a million in Syria.
The Turkish sector is the largest and strategically the most
important: it would be central to a Kurdish state. Hence the paranoia
exhibited by the Turkish government and its ill-treatment of the
Kurdish population, whose living conditions are much worse than those
of the Kurds in Iraq or Iran.
Kurdish language and culture were banned at the foundation of the
unitary Turkish Republic in1923. The repression intensified during
the 1970s, and martial law was imposed on the region in1978, followed
by two decades of mass arrests, torture, killings, forced
deportations and the destruction of Kurdish villages.
The PKK, founded by the student leader Abdullah Öcalan in 1978, began
a guerrilla war in1984, claiming the Kurds’ right to
self-determination within (this was always stressed) the framework of
a democratised and demilitarised Turkish state. By ‘democratisation’
Kurds mean the repeal of laws used to harass minorities or to deny
them basic political rights. The constitution, for example,
established in 1982, requires a party to get 10 per cent of the vote
nationally before it can win parliamentary representation – the
highest such threshold in the world. Kurdish nationalists
consistently receive a majority of the votes in parts of eastern
Turkey but have no members of parliament.
When, in 1994, centre-left Kurdish deputies formed a new party to get
over the 10 per cent barrier, they were arrested on charges of aiding
the PKK and sentenced to 15 years in jail.
An estimated 200,000 Turkish troops have been permanently deployed in
Kurdistan since the early 1990s, and in 1996 and 1998 fierce battles
resulted in thousands of Kurdish casualties. By February 1999, when
the fugitive Öcalan was captured in Kenya – possibly by the CIA – and
handed over to Turkey, more than 30,000 Kurds had been killed and
some 3000 villages burned or destroyed, which resulted in a new
exodus to Diyarbakir; the city now has a population of more than a
million.
At the end of 1999, after heavy American lobbying, the EU extended
candidate status to Turkey, with further negotiations conditional on
some amelioration, at least, of the Kurdish situation. The pace of
reforms accelerated after the election of Recep Tayyip Erdogan ‘s
government in November 2002. In 2004, the Kurdish deputies who had
been arrested ten years earlier were finally released, and a
Kurdish-language programme was broadcast for the first time on state
television. In line with EU cultural heritage provisions, restoration
work began on the old palace in Diyarbakir – even while Kurdish
prisoners were still being tortured in its cellars.
My host, Melike Coskun, the director of the Anadolu Cultural Centre,
suggested a tour of the walls and the turbot-shaped old town. We
picked up Seymus Diken, cultural adviser to the recently elected
young pro-PKK mayor. He took us to a mosque that was once a cathedral
and before that a pagan temple where sun-worshippers sacrificed
virgins on large stone slabs in the courtyard. It was a Friday during
Ramadan and the mosque was filling up. The majority belonging to the
dominant Sunni Hanafi school occupied the main room while the Shafii
prayed in a smaller one.
We then visited three empty Christian churches. The first was
Chaldean, built in 300 ad, and its brick dome was exquisitely held in
place by intertwined wooden arches. The second, which was Assyrian,
was square, and even older, with Aramaic carvings on the wood and
stones. The caretaker lives in rooms attached to the church and grows
vegetables in what was once the garden of the bishop’s palace.
Hens roamed about, occasionally laying eggs beneath the altar. The
Armenian church was more recent – 16th century – but without a roof.
It was a more familiar shape, like a Roman Catholic church, and the
priest confirmed that the Armenians who had once worshipped here were
Catholics. Seymus began to whisper something to him. I became
curious. ‘It’s nothing,’ Seymus said. ‘Since my triple bypass the
only drink I’m allowed is red wine and there is a tiny vineyard
attached to a monastery in the countryside. I pick up a few bottles
from this church. It’s good wine.’ This was strangely reassuring.
We walked over to the old city walls, first built with black stone
more than 2000 years ago, with layers added by each new conqueror.
The crenellated parapets and arched galleries are crumbling; many
stones have been looted to repair local houses. From an outpost on
the wall, the Tigris is visible as it makes its way south. Seymus
told me that he had been imprisoned in the palace cells by the
Turkish authorities.
‘The next time you come,’ he promised, ‘this building will be totally
restored and we will sip our drinks and watch the Tigris flow.’ In a
large enclosed space below the wall there was an exhibition of
photographs of Diyarbakir in 1911. The images, of a virtually intact
medieval city, seemed to have little interest in the people who lived
there but concentrated on the buildings.
The photographer was Gertrude Bell,who later boasted that she had
created modern Iraq on behalf of the British Empire by ‘drawing lines
in the sand’. These lines, of course, also divided the territory of
the Kurdish tribes, which claim an unbroken history in this area,
stretching back well before the Christian era.
The first written records come after the Arab Muslim conquest. In the
tenth century, the Arab historian Masudi listed the Kurdish mountain
tribes in his nine-volume history, Meadows of Gold. Like most of the
inhabitants of the region they converted to Islam in the seventh and
eighth centuries, and were recruited to the Muslim armies.
They were rebellious, however, and took part in such uprisings as the
Kharijite upheavals of the ninth century. (The Kharijites denounced
the hereditary tradition as alien to Islam and demanded an elected
caliph. They were crushed.) The Kurds settled around Mosul and took
part in the epic slave revolt of the Zanj in southern Mesopotamia in
875. This, too, was defeated. Subsequently Kurdish bands wandered the
region as mercenaries. Saladin’s family belonged to one such group,
whose military skills soon propelled its leaders to power. During the
16th-century conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavids
who ruled Iran, Kurdish tribes fought on both sides. Inter-tribal
conflicts made Kurdish unity almost impossible.
When Gertrude Bell visited Diyarbakir in 1911, Muslims (mostly Kurds)
constituted 40 per cent of the population. Armenians, Chaldeans and
Assyrians, groups that had settled in what is now eastern Turkey well
over a thousand years before the Christian era, remained the dominant
presence. Istanbul was becoming increasingly unhappy with the idea of
such a mixed population, and even before the Young Turks seized power
from the sultan in 1909, a defensive nationalist wave had led to
clashes between Turks and Armenian groups and small-scale massacres
in the east.
The Armenians began to be seen as the agents of foreign countries
whose aim was to dismember the Ottoman Empire. It’s true that various
wealthy Armenian (and Greek) factions were only too happy to cosy up
to the West during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, but much of
the Armenian population continued to live peacefully with their
Muslim neighbours in eastern Anatolia. They spoke Turkish as well as
their own language, just as the Kurds did. But Armenian nationalist
revolutionaries were beginning to talk of an Armenian state and the
communities increasingly divided along political lines.
Kurdish militia was set up by the sultan to cow the Armenians, and
then Mehmed Talat, the minister for the interior (who would be
assassinated by an Armenian nationalist), decided to get rid of them
altogether. The Kurdish irregulars carried out the forced expulsions
and massacres of 1915 in which up to a million Armenians died.
Melike told me that her grandmother was Armenian, and that Kurdish
families had saved many lives and given refuge to Armenian women and
children who had converted to Islam in order to survive. Two years
ago Fethiye Çetin, a lawyer and a historian, published a book about
her grandmother, who in old age had confessed to Çetin that she
wasn’t a Muslim, but an Armenian Christian. The book was launched at
the cultural centre Melike runs. ‘The hall was packed with women who
had never been near our centre before,’ Melike said. ‘After Fethiye
had finished so many women wanted to speak and discuss their Armenian
roots. It was amazing.’ Çetin writes that her grandmother was a
‘sword leftover’ child, which is how people whose lives had been
spared were described: ‘I felt my blood freeze. I had heard of this
expression before. It hurt to find it being used to describe people
like my grandmother. My optimism, which was formed with memories of
tea breads, turned to pessimism.’
The political logic of ultra-nationalism proved deadly for both
victim and perpetrator. The aim of the Young Turks had been to expel
the non-Muslim minorities with a view to laying the foundations of a
new and solid unitary state. The exchange of populations with Greece
was part of this plan.
In 1922 Atatürk came to power and made the plan a reality under the
slogan ‘one state, one citizen and one language’. The language was
Latinised, with many words of Arab and Persian origin cast aside very
much like the unwanted citizens. Given that virtually the entire
population was now Muslim, the secular foundations of the new state
were extremely weak, with the military as the only enforcer of the
new order. The first blowback came with the 1925 Kurdish uprising.
Then, as now, religion could not dissolve other differences. The
rebellion lasted several months, and when it was finally put down all
hopes for Kurdish autonomy disappeared. The Kurds’ culture and
language were suppressed. Many migrated to Istanbul and Izmir and
other towns, but the Kurdish question would never go away.
I had been invited to give a lecture in Diyarbakir on the Kurdish
question and the war in Iraq. Four years ago, while the war was still
being plotted in Washington, Noam Chomsky and I were invited to
address a public sector trade-union congress in Istanbul. Many of
those present were of Kurdish origin. I said then that there would be
a war and that the Iraqi Kurds would whole-heartedly collaborate with
the US, as they had been doing since the Gulf War, and expressed the
hope that Turkish Kurds would resist the temptation to do the same.
Afterwards I was confronted by some angry Kurds.
How dare I mention them in the same breath as their Iraqi cousins?
Was I not aware that the PKK had referred to the tribal chiefs in
Iraqi Kurdistan as ‘primitive nationalists’? In fact, one of them
shouted, Barzani and Talabani (currently the president of Iraq) were
little better than ‘mercenaries and prostitutes’. They had sold
themselves successively to the shah of Iran, Israel, Saddam Hussein,
Khomeini and now the Americans. How could I even compare them to the
PKK? In 2002 I was only too happy to apologise. I now wish I hadn’t.
The PKK didn’t share the antiwar sentiment that had engulfed the
country in 2003 and pushed the newly elected parliament into
forbidding the US from entering Iraq from Turkey. But while Kurdish
support for the war was sheepish and shame-faced in Istanbul, no such
inhibitions were on display in Diyarbakir.
Virtually every question after my talk took Kurdish nationalism as
its starting point. That was the only way they could see the war.
Developments in northern Iraq, or southern Kurdistan, as they call it
in Diyarbakir, have created a half-hope, half-belief, that the
Americans might undo what Gertrude Bell and the British did and give
the Kurds their own state. I pointed out that America’s principal
ally in Turkey was the army, not the PKK.
‘What some of my people don’t understand is that you can be an
independent state and still not free, especially now,’ one veteran
muttered in agreement. But most of the people there were happy with
the idea of Iraqi Kurdistan becoming an American-Israeli
protectorate. ‘Give me a reason, other than imperial conspiracy, why
Kurds should defend the borders which have been their prisons,’
someone said. The reason seemed clear to me: whatever happened they
had to go on living there. If they started killing their neighbours,
the neighbours would want revenge. By collaborating with the US, the
Iraqi Kurdish leaders in the north are putting the lives of fellow
Kurds in Baghdad at risk. It’s the same in Turkey. There are nearly
two million Kurds in Istanbul, including many rich businessmen
integrated in the economy. They can’t be ignored.
As I was flying back to Istanbul the PKK announced a unilateral
ceasefire. Turkey’s moderate Islamist government must be secretly
relieved. The PKK decision offers the possibility of genuine reforms
and autonomy, but this will happen only if the Turkish army agrees to
retire to its barracks. Economic conditions in the Kurdish areas are
now desperate: the flow of refugees has not stopped and increasing
class polarisation is reflected in the growth of political Islam.
A Kurdish Hizbullah was formed some years ago (with, so it’s said,
the help of Turkish military intelligence, which hoped it might
weaken the PKK), and the conditions are ripe for its growth. Its
first big outing in Diyarbakir was a 10,000-strong demonstration
against the Danish cartoons. If things don’t change, the movement is
bound to grow. (TA/EU)
* This article of Tariq Ali was published in London Review of Books
on 16 November.
PROBLEM OF EQUAL CONDITIONS FOR ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT TO BE SOLVED WITH
LEGISLATIVE AMENDMENTS RELATED TO TAX SECTOR
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 22, NOYAN TAPAN. Thanks to a number of legislative
amendments made in the tax sector, equal conditions for economic
management will be ensured. Armen Alaverdian, Deputy Head of
the State Tax Service adjunct to the RA government, stated at the
December 22 press conference that it will increase efficiency of the
fight against underdeclaration of cash flows subject to taxation. By
these amendments, starting from January 1, 2007 the sale price of an
apartment in residential buildings will be decided by its cadastre
value. According to A. Alaverdian, henceforth the apartment owner will
not be able to declare any price when selling his apartment, because
in any case the cadastre value of this apartment will be taken as
the basis. He said that as a result of the legislative amendments it
will no longer be possible to consider the whole apartment building
as a private property not subject to taxation.
The builder may use up to 500 square meters of the apartment building
as private property, while in case of small buildings – no more than
10% of the total area. These standards will be used for detached
houses as well. In case of a detached house complex, the owner may
present only 4 detached houses as his property, and if their number
exceeds 4, they are subject to taxation.
Last Russian army trucks to leave Tbilisi Saturday
by: Eka Mekhuzla
ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
December 22, 2006 Friday 07:57 PM EST
The Russian army group in Transcaucasia on Saturday will complete the
withdrawal of motor vehicles and other assets of its Tbilisi garrison
from Georgia. Sources at the army group’s headquarters said a convoy
of five trucks will head for the Russian military base in Gyumri,
in neighboring Armenia.
Most of the garrison’s assets and armaments left Georgia on November 16
through December 14 by four trains – two bound for Armenia, and two,
for Russia. Several truck convoys carrying assets and equipment were
dispatched to Gyumri.
As for the garrison’s personnel, most troops had been taken out of
Georgia by trucks or by train earlier.
Another group of Russian military and their families – some 40 people –
will board a bus for Gyumri.
Georgia will take over the facilities the Russian garrison had used
in Tbilisi by December 25.
The early pullout of the Tbilisi garrison was ordered by the Russian
Defense Ministry.
The Russian base in Batumi will be closed down by October 1, 2008,
and that in Akhalkalaki, by October 1, 2007.
HUNGARIAN COURT OF APPEAL TO EXAMINE RAMIL SAFAROV’S APPEAL ON FEBRUARY
PanARMENIAN.Net
21.12.2006 15:04 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Hungarian Court of Appeal will examine Ramil
Safarov’s appeal on February 22, 2007.
Azeri army officer Safarov was sentenced to life imprisonment for
cruel murder of Armenian officer Gurgen Markarian in 2003. The Azeri
Embassy in Hungary has announced the names of the judge and lawyer,
who will participate in the process. The procedure will be held under
Judge Karpat Piroshki’s chairmanship.
George Madjar will defend Safarov. They both have already participated
in the first hearing. The Safarov family representatives are
Ikram Shirinoiv and Elmar Kerimov, both members of the Bar of
Azerbaijan. They will depart for Budapest January 15, APA reports.
ARMENIAN SECURITY CHIEF SAYS NINE FOREIGN SPIES DETAINED IN 2006
Golos Armenii , Armenia
Dec 19 2006
The Armenian security chief has said that nine agents of foreign
special services have been detained and convicted of espionage
in Armenia in 2006. Speaking to Golos Armenii newspaper, Armenian
National Security Service Director Gorik Akopyan said that one of the
detained foreign agents was also convicted of plotting a terrorist
attack. Armenia closely cooperates with foreign special services, in
particular with the Russian FSB, in the fight against international
terrorism, Akopyan said. He also said that his agency’s task ahead
of the forthcoming polls was to prevent "anticonstitutional actions".
The following is an excerpt from V. Darbinyan’s report on Armenian
newspaper Golos Armenii website on 19 December headlined "’The fight
against terrorism requires a multifaceted approach,’ Gorik Akopyan,
director of the National Security Service, has said in an interview
with Golos Armenii"; subheadings have been inserted editorially:
[Darbinyan] Mr Director, it seems it has become a good tradition
that at the end of every year, on the eve of the Day of Members of
National Security Agencies, you grant interviews to newspapers.
Nine foreign spies detained in 2006
[Akopyan] You are quite right. I am sure that both you and your
readers understand that for the National Security Service any report,
including those published in connection with their professional
holiday, cannot be an end in itself. Every time, to the credit of the
agency, we inform the public about specific results of our work. It
is particularly remarkable that while preserving the trend towards
qualitative progress in almost all fields of our agency’s activity,
the most significant results this year were achieved in the key areas.
To back up what I have just said, I will note one fact only. Yet
another agent of foreign special services, the ninth one, Valiakhmetov,
was uncovered on the territory of the republic and brought to book
in November. But while the previous convicts were charged with high
treason and espionage, for the first time the list included a foreigner
who was convicted of both committing espionage and plotting to commit
terrorist attacks.
Antiterror fight
[Darbinyan] The civilized world almost every day learns about terrorist
attacks and their horrifying consequences in different parts of the
world. The threat of terrorism is growing, and there is an impression
that ways to eradicate it have still to be found.
[Akopyan] Both national security agencies and the public, which
has been overcoming the hardest consequences of terrorist attacks
committed in the past decade, cannot overestimate the expanding
scale of international terrorism. I strongly believe that the key
precondition for the eradication of terror threats is the prevention
of religious and interstate disagreements and the demonstration of
the appropriate will to resolve them. Any terrorist attack creates
a new chain of terrorist actions, thus even more complicating the
already existing problems.
[Darbinyan] How does your agency assess this threat and in what way
is it involved in the fight against it?
[Akopyan] I believe you also know that reducing the terror threat
and its eradication is the task of all people. National security
agencies’ task is to carry out specific measures to fight this evil,
in particular to define the possible targets of terrorists and prevent
terror attacks. A division for the protection of the constitutional
government and for fighting terrorism has been operating within
our system for six years. The fight against terrorism requires a
multifaceted approach and close cooperation between relevant state
bodies. To ensure a more effective struggle, we cooperate with the
special services of the countries which play a vital role in the
creation of both regional and international security systems.
Cooperation with foreign special services
[Darbinyan] Was the Atom-Antiterror 2006 exercise part of this?
[Akopyan] The joint exercise Atom-Antiterror 2006 held in Armenia last
September is a graphic example of cooperation that involved CIS states
as participants, G8 countries as observers, as well as members of
influential international security organizations, and special services.
Major exercises like this have a specific aim – work out possible
options of joint action between partner special services in carrying
out antiterrorist measures if necessary. I am happy to say that the
exercise achieved all the goals and tasks set. I would like to also
note that such exercises will give an opportunity to Armenia’s state
bodies to act in a systemic and concerted way in case of a terror
threat and to take specific steps with the involvement of the Armenian
National Security Service and the Russian Federal Security Service
in case of an attack on nuclear energy facilities.
The aim of our cooperation with the partner services of foreign
countries is to expand effective collaboration both within our region
and beyond it in order to establish peace and security. I will give
you a recent example. I recently met Deputy Director of the USA’s
FBI John Pistole, who was visiting Yerevan. During the meeting we
discussed issues concerning the fight against terrorism and organized
crime. Practical measures were drawn up and carried out to prevent
ethnic Armenians of the USA who had committed crimes from hiding in
Armenia in order to avoid punishment. This can be backed up by the
arrest of a number of US nationals in Armenia and their handover
to the US authorities. Under our laws, if a criminal is an Armenian
national, he or she cannot be handed over to a foreign state, they
are prosecuted on the territory of our republic.
Agency to prevent anticonstitutional actions ahead of polls
[Darbinyan] Parliamentary and presidential elections are to be held
in 2007-08, and it seems the election campaign has already kicked
off. What is your agency’s role in this process?
[Akopyan] Although the National Security Service is not a political
body, taking account of the tasks facing it, we have to make the
current public and political processes the focus of our attention.
Our aim is to foresee possible anticonstitutional actions and take
appropriate measures. Our priority task is to prevent such attempts
and ensure the security of the people.
Unfortunately, very often the period in the run-up to any election
is perceived as a period of tension. The reason is that the natural
course of an election campaign, as a rule, is disrupted by a political
force or unions. In this context, our public’s task is to find a way
out of this complicated state of mutual distrust.
Incidentally, there are always quite a few people who are willing to
take advantage of this situation. Two of the leaders of the so-called
Armenian Union of Volunteers were arrested recently on suspicion of
plotting illegal and forcible interference in this process. These facts
once again prove that interference in the natural course of political
events runs counter to the interests of our nation in the first place.
Some media try to discredit national security agency
[Darbinyan] Mr Director, can you please comment on reports of illegal
actions by some members of your agency?
[Akopyan] We will not tolerate the destabilizing manifestations of
extremism that pose a threat to the country’s stability and people’s
security. Any political struggle should be carried out within the
constitution. This might be very dangerous for our country and have
a negative impact on the international image of our republic.
I strongly believe that there are two factors explaining this. First,
lack of knowledge on the part of some journalists about the functions
of our agency. Second, the deliberate manipulation of information. No
doubt, free press is a key element in the life of a democratic state.
However, some of the country’s media descend to publishing lies or
provocative information, not realizing that they might discredit an
organization whose sacred duty is to ensure the security of citizens,
public and state.
SYLVESTER STALLONE’S DREAM TO PRODUCE 40 DAYS OF MUSA DAGH
Armenpress
Dec 20 2006
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 20, ARMENPRESS" In an interview with Denver Post
actor Sylvester Stallone said one of his dreams was to to create an
epic, and the book that intrigues him is Franz Werfel’s ‘The Forty
Days of Musa Dagh,’ detailing the Turkish genocide of its Armenian
community in 1915.
"French ships eventually rescued some Armenians, and Stallone has
his favorite scene memorized: ‘The French ships come, and they’ve
dropped the ladders and everybody has climbed up the side. The ships
sail. The hero, the one who set up the rescue, has fallen asleep,
exhausted, behind a rock on the slope above. The camera pulls back,
and the ships and the sea are on one side, and there’s one lonely
figure at the top of the mountain, and the Turks are coming up the
mountain by the thousands on the far side.’ "Talk about a political
hot potato. The Turks have been killing that subject for 85 years,"
the super star added.
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is a 1934 novel by Austrian-Jewish author
Franz Werfel based around an event that took place on Musa Dagh
in 1915 during the Armenian Genocide in Turkey. The Forty Days of
Musa Dagh achieved great international success and has been credited
with awakening the world to the evidence of the persecution of the
Armenians.
The novel is a fictionalized account based on the real-life defense
of Musa Dagh’s Damlayik by Armenians who were facing systematic
deporatations and massacres put into effect by the government of
Young Turks.
Although written as a novel, the historical background content of
the book has generally been accepted as fact. In the 1930s Turkey
pressured the United States State department to prevent MGM Studios
to produce a film based on the novel.
A filmed version of the story was eventually made independently and
was released theatrically in 1982.
Turkey’s Killing Fields
By GARY J. BASS
New York Times Book Review
December 17, 2006
A SHAMEFUL ACT
The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility.
By Taner Akcam. Translated by Paul Bessemer.
483 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $30.
In July 1915, the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire sent Washington
a harrowing report about the Turks’ `systematic attempt to uproot peaceful
Armenian populations.’ He described `terrible tortures, wholesale expulsions
and deportations from one end of the Empire to the other accompanied by
frequent instances of rape, pillage and murder, turning into massacre.’ A
month later, the ambassador, Henry Morgenthau – the grandfather of the
Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau – warned of an `attempt to
exterminate a race.’
The Young Turk nationalist campaign against the empire’s Armenian subjects
was far too enormous to be ignored at the time. But decades of
government-backed denial have created what amounts to a taboo in Turkey
today. Instead of admitting genocide, Turkish officials contend the
Armenians were a dangerous fifth column that colluded with Russia in World
War I; many Armenians may have died, they say, but there was no organized
slaughter. Turkish writers who challenge this line, like the novelists Orhan
Pamuk and Elif Shafak, have risked prosecution for insulting Turkish
identity. And on the diplomatic front, when Turkey should be polishing its
credentials for eventual European Union membership, it is mired in
historical fights; this May, for instance, it pulled out of a NATO military
exercise to protest the Canadian prime minister’s acknowledgment of the
genocide.
`A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish
Responsibility,’ by Taner Akcam, is a Turkish blast against this national
denial. A historian and former leftist activist now teaching at the Center
for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, Akcam is
often described as the first Turkish scholar to call the massacres genocide,
and his impressive achievement here is to shine fresh light on exactly why
and how the Ottoman Empire deported and slaughtered the Armenians. He
directly challenges the doubters back home, basing his powerful book on
Turkish sources in the old Ottoman script – including the failed Ottoman war
crimes tribunals held after World War I. Although he bolsters his case with
material from the American, British and German archives, he writes that the
remaining Ottoman records are enough to show that the ruling party’s central
committee `did deliberately attempt to destroy the Armenian population.’
Akcam closely links the 1915 genocide with World War I. The Unionists, as
the nationalist leaders were known, dreaded the partition of their empire by
the European great powers. Not only did they suspect the Armenians of
dangerous disloyalty, Akcam writes, but massacres of Muslims in Christian
regions of the faltering empire before World War I had fostered a desire for
vengeance.
While never excusing the atrocities, Akcam does argue that the Turkish
leaders chose genocide in a mood of stark desperation. Staggered by a series
of early military defeats, and by the Allied onslaught at Gallipoli, they
fully expected their empire – driven out of so much of its vast territories
over the past two centuries – to collapse. The Turkish heartland of Anatolia
was threatened – as was Constantinople.
The fiercest Ottoman enemy was Russia, which had nearly seized
Constantinople in a bloody 1877-78 war and had a storied history of trying
to foment uprisings against Ottoman rule. The Turkish nationalist line puts
great weight on the internal menace of pro-Russian Armenians. But Akcam
argues that there was little real danger from the Armenian uprisings, which
were limited and directed mostly against the deportations. (British
officials considered the Armenians militarily useless and thus refused to
encourage the uprisings.) Akcam allows that the evacuation of Armenians may
have been justified by military necessity in areas where the Armenian
revolutionaries were strong – but not throughout the empire.
The killings were a colossal undertaking. Paramilitaries and Interior
Ministry gendarmes slaughtered Armenians en masse, while the Interior
Ministry under Talat Pasha, who coordinated the campaign, arranged for the
deportation of untold thousands more to the blazing Syrian deserts. Many of
the deportees were massacred along the way, and those who survived were left
without food, shelter or medicine, in what Akcam calls `deliberate
extermination.’ Akcam cites Ottoman Interior Ministry papers that chillingly
call for keeping Armenians to less than 5 or 10 percent of the population. A
postwar Turkish investigation found that some 800,000 Armenians perished.
After the war, Britain pressured the defeated Ottoman government into
setting up its own war crimes tribunals. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk himself, the
founder of the present Turkish republic, once said that the Unionist leaders
`should have been brought to account for the lives of millions of our
Christian subjects ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and
massacred.’ Today, those who deny the genocide have to dismiss these trial
records as mere victor’s justice. Akcam uses the records as important
evidence, though he frowns on Britain’s imperialist ambitions and cultural
biases.
This dense, measured and footnote-heavy book poses a stern challenge to
modern Turkish polemicists, and if there is any response to be made, it can
be done only with additional primary research in the archival records. In
1919, a British general hoped the Ottoman war crimes trials would `dispel
the fog of illusions prevailing throughout the country.’ Eighty-seven years
later, the murk still lingers.
Gary J. Bass, the author of `Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War
Crimes Tribunals,’ is writing a book on humanitarian intervention.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
NKR MFA EXPRESSED ITS BEWILDERMENT WITH THE EUROPEAN INTERNATIONAL STRUCTURES’ RESPONSE TO A REFERENDUM HELD IN KARABAKH
DeFacto Agency, Armenia
Dec 14 2006
The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic MFA expressed its bewilderment with the
European international structures’ response to a referendum held in the
NKR. According to the NKR MFA, by their statement the international
structures have attempted to cast doubts on the very fact of the
possibility of the Nagorno-Karabakh people’s being in legal field.
The Karabakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ official statement runs,
in part, "the Ministry notes the referendum is a new stage on the way
of firming democratic principles in the country’s Main Law and the
development of legislation as a whole and aims to give an impulse
to the formation and development of new, more liberal principles
in the sphere of state governance, as well as to the process of
civil society’s formation. In this connection the attempts of
the European instances, an architecture of which is based on such
pillars as democracy and superiority of law, to ignore and neglect
the democratic and legislative processes taking place in the Nagorno-
Karabakh look at least strange.
At the same time, the Ministry expresses its conviction that the
Constitution’s adoption will in no way hamper the international
mediators’ constructive attempts to settle the Nagorno- Karabakh
conflict peacefully.
If one follows the logic of the last statements, according to which
the constitutional referendum in the NKR will hamper the negotiations,
one can conclude that adopting the Constitution of the Azerbaijan
Republic at a referendum in 1995 and amendments made to it in 2002
the official Baku pursued namely such an object – to deliver a blow to
the negotiations held those years. So, why the European structures did
not criticize Azerbaijan’s policy then? It is not the first case for
the last 15 years, when the representatives of separate international
organizations respond asymmetrically to the analogous procedures
taking place in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijan. The
international community’s role in influencing on the character of the
processes in the conflict zone has always been great. Only the fact
that in 1991 the international community unilaterally recognized the
results of a referendum on independence in Azerbaijan, but refused
to recognize an analogues referendum in the Nagorno Karabakh, which
had been held before it, encouraged Azerbaijan’s pretensions to the
Nagorno-Karabakh, which became the reason of Azerbaijan’s aggression
against the NKR.
The constitutional referendum in the NKR cannot predetermine the
outcome of the consultations on the conflict solution being held
under the OSCE MG aegis. Moreover, a question arises whether the
position on territorial integrity voiced by Azerbaijan permanently
and the unitary of Azerbaijani state fixed in the AR Constitution
are the factors predetermining and violating the logic of the Minsk
process, which assumed the right to self-determination along with
other principles as a basis.
The NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses hope that the European
structures guided by their fundamental principles will reconsider
their preconceived attitude to the democratic procedures taking place
in the Nagorno-Karabakh", the NKR MFA Press Center reports.
ON THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH FRONTLINES
Zoe Powell
EurasiaNet, NY
Dec 14 2006
Recent announcements by Azerbaijan and Armenia have spurred hopes that
a Nagorno-Karabakh peace settlement is within reach. But on a windswept
Karabakh military post northwest of the disputed territory’s capital,
Stepanakert, the struggle over this self-declared state seems far
from over.
At this position, roughly 300 to 400 meters from the Azerbaijani
lines, exchanges of gunfire are a daily occurrence, soldiers said. A
seven-person unit that is refreshed every seven days mans the post.
An Azerbaijani sniper recently killed a Karabakhi soldier not far
from here.
In a recent tour of the frontline organized for international
journalists by Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
officers were reluctant to discuss their views on the ongoing Karabakh
negotiations, and on the potential impact of a settlement on the
separatist government and military they serve.
"That’s for the politicians," said one army representative, a veteran
of the 1988-1994 conflict with Azerbaijan who gave his name as Artur,
when asked to comment about recent announcements of a breakthrough
in the negotiations. "The military doesn’t mix with politics. Nor
should we, right? We’ll do what we’re told."
The size of the Karabakh army is "a state secret," officials say, and
information about the defense budget is not readily available. A 2005
report by the International Crisis Group, however, cites an unnamed
official in Nagorno-Karabakh’s Yerevan mission who stated that the
army has 20,000 soldiers. Another source cited in the report, a US
military expert, put the number at 18,500 soldiers.
Along with military hardware, Armenia is thought to provide some
of the troops in Karabakh defense force. Former Armenian conscripts
interviewed by Crisis Group in Yerevan reported that they had been
sent to serve in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Conscripts serving at the frontline post, a bleak collection of
trenches, observation hut, one-room office and one-room living
quarters, asserted that they came from Nagorno-Karabakh, adding
that they were there "to serve the homeland." A clock with a large
image of Jesus dominates the office visually, standing across from
a Russian-language wall poster describing how to fight tuberculosis.
"This isn’t the American army," one defense ministry representative
on hand for the tour commented with a laugh about the stark scene.
"This is the Karabakh army. They have to be tough."
Young men in Karabakh are required to serve two years of military
service. The government says conscripts are paid 3,000 Armenian drams
per month (about $6.83) for "extras." Army representatives detailed
a long list of food items – including first and second courses,
salad and soup for dinner — reportedly brought in to feed frontline
soldiers daily — and, indicating one particularly bulky conscript,
claimed that they’re fed meat each day.
An academy "with a military inclination" exists in Stepanakert, but
students who wish to serve as officers in the Nagorno-Karabakh army
do their training in Yerevan, army representative said. Plans exist,
however, to open a more formal military academy in Karabakh, where
students would be taught, "as in Tsarist Russia," foreign languages
and ballroom dancing along with their regular course of study, he said.
Twelve years after the cease-fire agreement that ended the 1988-1994
war over the territory, ruined houses and other buildings still dot
the landscape outside of Stepanakert. The military did not allow
photos to be taken, but the images seen suggest a conflict indelibly
engraved in residents’ minds.
The economy appears to be recovering slowly, but independently
verifiable economic data is unavailable. At a December 6 plenary
parliamentary session, de facto Minister of Economy and Finance Spartac
Tevossian reported that Karabakh’s Gross Domestic Product expanded
by 20.8 percent for the first nine months of 2006, as compared with
the same period in 2005, reaching $97.4 million, the Armenian news
bulletin service De Facto reported. Monthly salaries average around
36,605 Armenian drams, or about $83.38, the minister claimed.
Primarily an agrarian society, Karabakhis are returning to
cultivating vineyards and wheat fields. A gold mine opened in 2002,
and construction projects – including a new parliament building and
adjoining hotel – can be seen throughout Stepanakert, often financed
by diaspora Armenians. The separatist leadership is also putting
increased emphasis on tourism: The government claims that in 2006
some 3,750 foreign tourists visited this rugged region, prized among
Armenians for its monasteries and churches, and that the number of
such visits is steadily increasing.
Security concerns remain foremost in Karabakhis’ minds. Interviewed
residents routinely cited maintaining an adequate defense against
Azerbaijan, which formerly controlled Nagorno-Karabakh, as their
territory’s largest problem. Many cast a doubtful eye on the return of
the seven territories surrounding their region to Azerbaijani control.
"If Armenia frees those territories, without a doubt, then, Azerbaijan
should take reciprocal steps and recognize our independence or, in the
worst case, recognize our right to a free choice," commented Vahram
Atanesian, chairman of the Nagorno-Karabakh parliament’s foreign
affairs committee. "We went toward independence because it was the
best way to guarantee our security."
While war veterans, refugees from Azerbaijan and long-term residents
interviewed by EurasiaNet all spoke out strongly against any resumption
of armed hostilities with Azerbaijan, feelings were mixed about the
return of Azerbaijani refugees to this predominantly ethnic Armenian
land. The government of Azerbaijan has insisted on such a right
of return as one of the conditions for a lasting peace resolution
with Armenia.
"There’s no chance we can live together now," said octogenarian
Areg Oganisian, an Azeri-speaking ethnic Armenian refugee from
the Azerbaijani town of Sumgait who returned to his family village
outside of the Karabakhi town of Shushi after the 1988 pogrom against
Armenians in Sumgait. "But I also can’t say that all Azerbaijanis are
bad. They are civilized, too . . . . If it hadn’t been for Sumgait,
we could have worked things out, but Sumgait was a detonator."
"We took Karabakh by blood," said a Karabakh war veteran, who gave
his name as Artur. "How will there not be a war if Azerbaijan tries
to take it back?"
Editor’s Note: Zoe Powell is the pseudonym for a journalist based
in Tbilisi. Sophia Mizante is a freelance photojournalist based
in Tbilisi.
Dec 14 2006
France trying to cover up its role in genocide Wednesday, 13th
December, 2006
Alfred Ndahiro
By Alfred Ndahiro
Rwanda’s decision to sever diplomatic relations with France continues
to be a subject of animated discussion among those who have an interest
in the political evolution of Rwanda, and the proxy war that France has
waged since the defeat of the Interahamwe extremists who masterminded
the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The recently published report by Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, now
discredited by most legal experts and even those he claims to be his
informers, can only be construed as a facet of that proxy war.
>>From the time of the downing of the plane carrying Habyarimana
and his Burundian counterpart, credible commentators and analysts
concluded that extremists in the Habyarimana government, with the
help of the French army, brought down the plane.
Yet, Judge Bruguière brushes this aside and instead indicts the
leadership of Rwanda and senior aides of the Rwandan president. In
so doing, Bruguière aims to cover the role of the French government,
by intimidating Rwandans and attempting to divert them from their
effort to unearth the truth about French involvement in Rwanda.
The following are but a few of the facts that Judge Bruguière knows
but chooses to ignore: At the time of the plane crash, the entire
airport and the surroundings were under the control of the French
soldiers and the then Rwandan presidential guard.
When soldiers of the United Nations peace-keeping force in Rwanda
attempted to reach the scene of the plane crash, they were blocked
and prevented from accessing it by those same forces. That is how
the whereabouts of the black box have remained a mystery to-date,
although French officials admitted having it, at some stage.
France trained, armed, and fought alongside the former Rwandan forces
before, during, and after the 1994 genocide, just as its soldiers
trained the Interahamwe militias.
The Rwandan Patriotic Army fought and single-handedly stopped the
genocide.
France continues to harbour and give sanctuary to the architects
of the Rwandan genocide, including Agathe Habyarimana, Fr Wenceslas
Munyeshyaka, and others, who masterminded the carnage.
Judge Bruguiere’s so-called evidence is based on false testimonies
provided by genocide fugitives and Rwandan dissidents who aim to
use it either to deny the occurrence of the Rwandan genocide or to
advance their misguided goals and justify their applications for
political asylum.
The French government has never come to terms with the regime change
in Rwanda and have worked ceaselessly towards achieving their hope
that some day, their former proteges would be reinstated.
In ignoring the above facts, Judge Bruguière’s injudicious project
serves to advance the broader political enterprise and hidden agenda
of the French government.
All this, however, is beginning to crumble, and many legal experts
and his alleged informers are distancing themselves from his findings.
One such alleged informer, quoted in his report, is Emmanuel
Ruzigana. In a letter addressed to Bruguière on November 30, Ruzigaza
draws the attention of the judge to the fact that he was forcefully
picked from the airport in Paris and taken to Bruguière’s office by
his members of staff on March 29, 2004.
In Bruguière’s office, Ruzigana was questioned as to whether he
belonged to the "Network Commando" and whether he knew the person
who shot down the Habyarimana plane. In spite of having denied both
allegations, Ruzigana appears in the judge’s report as having confirmed
the allegations.
Another of his principle informers by the name of Abdul Ruzibiza was
a nursing assistant in the north-west of Rwanda, far away from the
scene of the plane crash. How such a fellow can claim to be privy to
the plans of an operation of such sensitivity boggles the mind.
Besides, he is a convicted criminal, having stolen soldiers’ allowances
before his escape.
A third key witness, a certain Innocent Marara, claims he was privy
to RPA planning to assassinate Habyarimana in 1993. Yet Marara joined
the RPA in 1994, and not 1990 as Bruguiere claims.
The missiles Judge Bruguiere claims shot down Habyarimana’s plane
were found to have been a hoax, foisted upon the world by a French
Parliamentary mission of information. One of the launchers allegedly
used to down the plane still had its missile unfired when it was
allegedly photographed after the event.
Finally, Judge Bruguiere, without a shred of evidence, accuses key
regional leaders, including President Museveni, of being complicit
in the killing of Habyarimana, a thinly veiled political attack on
what the French call their "Anglo-saxon" enemies.
There is no doubt that France can do a lot of good for itself by
coming clean. It cannot blame Turkey for refusing to acknowledge the
genocide of the Armenians in 1915 and at the same time withhold its
own ‘mea culpa’.
In any case, France, even in its might, should have understood that the
Rwandans are a people with a proud legacy of a rich culture, history
and values. They will not allow France to subdue and subjugate them.
France should also learn that people who uphold the truth, and who
have the right cause, will always triumph. It was so when Rwandans
fought the genocidaires on the battlefield, it will be so on the
‘diplomacy-field’!
The writer is the advisor in communication and public relations in
the office of the President of Rwanda
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