Author: Chavushian

Hrant Dink

Armenian champion in Turkey

The Independent/UK
22 January 2007

Hrant Dink, journalist: born Malatya, Turkey 15 September 1954;
Editor, Agos 1996-2007; married 1972 Rakel Yagbasan (two sons, one
daughter), died Istanbul 19 January 2007.

‘For me, 2007 is likely to be a hard year," the Turkish Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink wrote earlier this month. "The trials will
continue, new ones will be started. Who knows what other injustices I
will be up against?" But with his computer filling up with e-mailed
death threats he knew it was only a matter of time, even if he thought
he would survive the year. He likened himself to a pigeon, constantly
looking around for signs of danger.

Dink was gunned down on Friday outside the offices of Agos ("Ploughed
Furrow"), the weekly Turkish Armenian paper he edited in central
Istanbul. "I have killed the infidel," his murderer was heard to
shout.

Hrant Dink was the most prominent and controversial ethnic Armenian
figure in Turkey. With some 60,000 people, the Armenians are the
largest surviving Christian minority in the country, despite a
systematic and brutal attempt to exterminate or expel the entire
population in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire in what Dink and
all other Armenians rightly insist was genocide.

That successive Turkish governments have devoted massive resources to
denying the genocide has poisoned relations between Turks and
Armenians to this day. Yet Dink sought to overcome this legacy,
arguing that the Turks of today are different from their Ottoman
ancestors who conducted the killings. He also argued that Armenians
around the world should no longer see relations with the Turks through
the prism of the genocide. "Turkish-Armenian relations should be taken
out of a 1915-metres-deep well," he argued.

But the Turkish authorities repeatedly tried to intimidate Dink into
silence, closing the paper in 2001 and prosecuting him, but he was
acquitted. Over the years he faced repeated trials, often under the
notorious Article 301 of the Criminal Code which punishes "insulting
Turkishness", on one occasion using deliberately twisted evidence.

Dink had a troubled childhood. One of a small number of surviving
Armenian families in south-east Turkey in what had before the genocide
been the heartland of Turkish Armenia, the Dink family disintegrated
soon after Hrant’s birth through his father’s gambling. The young Dink
was then cared for by his grandfather, the inspiration throughout his
life. Even in primary school the boy objected to the mandatory daily
recitation of the patriotic verse "I am a Turk, I am honest, I am
hardworking", insisting that he was a Turkish citizen of Armenian
origin.

When only seven, Dink and his brothers were sent to an Armenian
orphanage in Istanbul, where he would meet his future wife. In his
final year at an Armenian secondary school in the city he was expelled
for his left-wing sympathies and finished his schooling at a Turkish
school. In 1972 he legally changed his first name to Firak, which did
not give away his ethnic Armenian origin in a highly nationalist
country that refuses to embrace its many minorities.

Dink took a degree in zoology at Istanbul University, but failed to
complete further studies in philosophy. He was occasionally jailed for
his leftist activities. He and his wife then ran an Armenian youth
camp, but after this he was subjugated to Education Ministry control
he moved into journalism. For a decade he ran a bookshop with his
brothers, steering clear of political activity.

In 1996 he founded Agos, which was published in Turkish and Armenian
and came to have an influence beyond its circulation of 6,000. Run
collegially, it had its offices in a converted flat that were always
crowded and humming with debate. Dink paid particular attention to
training young ethnic Armenian journalists, many of whom joined the
mainstream Turkish media.

Not all in the Armenian community admired Dink’s role as its unelected
spokesperson. He was not devout and the Armenian patriarch often
disagreed with his approach, preferring a quieter line.

But Dink was above all a figure in Turkish society as a whole,
speaking up for democracy, human rights, free speech and the rights of
oppressed groups, including women, Kurds and other ethnic
minorities. A fluent Turkish-speaker (some say he was more eloquent in
Turkish than Armenian), Dink was a popular interviewee, able to
present difficult views directly and imaginatively without alienating
his audience.

This made his conviction in October 2005 of "insulting Turkishness"
and suspended six-month sentence particularly hard to bear. "When I
first heard the verdict I found myself under the bitter pressure of my
hope that I kept during all the months of the trial. I was stupefied,"
Dink recalled. "In my view, to humiliate people we live together with
on the basis of ethnic or religious difference is called racism and
this is something unforgivable."

Branding the verdict "a bad joke", he vowed to fight to clear his
name. He cried as he spoke of it. "My only weapon is my sincerity."

Felix Corley

Firstcoastnews.com Article
Hackers Attack Former Soviet Leader Gorbachev’s Web Site

January 20, ’07

MOSCOW (AP) — Hackers attacked the Web site of a foundation run by
former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, accusing him of brutally
suppressing a pro-independence demonstration in Soviet Azerbaijan in
1990.

The perpetrators posted photographs of the suppressed rally on the Web
site and published an open letter to the former leader, blaming him
for the deaths of more 130 people – a tragedy known in Azerbaijan as
the Black January.

The site was down by Saturday afternoon.

Fueled by the conflict over the disputed territory of
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region inside Azerbaijan populated
mostly by ethnic Armenians, pogroms broke out against Armenians in
Azerbaijan’s capital Baku in January 1990, forcing Soviet troops to
intervene and evacuate many Armenians.

Thousands rallied in Baku demanding the ouster of communist officials
and independence from the Soviet Union, causing Soviet troops to storm
the capital late at night on Jan. 19, 1990.

Shootings and violent clashes lasted several days, leaving 134 people
dead and more than 770 wounded. International rights groups said the
force used against the demonstrators was excessive and
disproportionate.

Azerbaijan gained independence in 1991 after the Soviet collapse.

No one from Gorbachev’s foundation was immediately available for
comment. It was unclear if the site’s owners took it down after
learning of the hack, or if it was taken down by hackers.

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, Gorbachev maintains an active
public life running the Gorbachev Foundation – an organization that
deals with international issues including globalization, security,
weapons of mass destruction, environmental and natural resources and
poverty.

Associated Press

Los Angeles Times, CA
Jan 20 2007

Journalist slain in Turkey

Hrant Dink, who had clashed with authorities over recognition of the
Armenian genocide, was shot on a busy street.

By Tracy Wilkinson and Yesim Borg, Special to The Times
January 20, 2007

ISTANBUL, TURKEY – An outspoken journalist who repeatedly clashed
with Turkish authorities here over recognition of the early 20th
century slaughter of Armenians was shot to death Friday afternoon on
a busy downtown street.

Hrant Dink, who as editor of a Turkish Armenian newspaper was the
leading voice for his ethnic community, was killed a week after he
wrote about threats from unknown forces who he said regarded him as
"an enemy of the Turks."

Hundreds of people marched Friday evening from Istanbul’s central
Taksim Square to the offices of Dink’s Agos weekly newspaper, near
the spot on a sidewalk where he was shot in the head. They held
candles and posters with his picture; a somber silence was
interrupted periodically with applause and chants for "the
brotherhood of peoples."

Istanbul Gov. Muammer Guler said late Friday that three people had
been detained in connection with the shooting, but no additional
details were released.

The slaying is likely to further darken Turkey’s reputation for
repressing critics of the government and for tightly controlling how
its turbulent past is portrayed.

Dink, 52, was part of an elite group of writers and thinkers,
including Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk and novelist Elif
Shafak, who have been tried on charges of insulting their country’s
"Turkishness" under a controversial and ambiguous law promoted by
hard-line nationalists.

While most, including Pamuk, were cleared, Dink was convicted in 2005
for writing articles that criticized the law and explored questions
of Turkish and Armenian identity. He was sentenced to a six-month
term, which was suspended.

Last year, an Istanbul court opened a new case against him after he
told a foreign news agency that the slaughter of hundreds of
thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Turks before and during World War I
was a genocide.

"Of course I say it was genocide," Dink had said. "With these events
you see the disappearance of a people who lived on these lands for
4,000 years."

Turkey maintains that the deaths and expulsions that Armenians say
claimed 1.5 million victims at the end of the Ottoman Empire were
part of a civil conflict in which both Christian Armenians and Muslim
Turks were killed.

Dink helped promote a conference of academics in 2005 who gathered
here to examine the era’s mass killings. The government attempted to
block the conference, and the justice minister accused participants
of "stabbing Turkey in the back."

On Friday, however, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was
among the first to condemn Dink’s "traitorous" and "disgraceful"
slaying.

"Bullets have been fired at free thought and our democratic life,"
Erdogan said at a news conference. He urged calm.

European governments, Washington and intellectuals across the globe
also deplored the killing.

"We are horrified," Larry Siems, an official with the international
writers association PEN, said in a statement. "Hrant Dink was one of
the heroes of the nonviolent movement for freedom of expression in
Turkey, … one of the most significant human rights movements of our
time."

U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said, "We certainly are
concerned any time someone who has been very outspoken in their views
is made to pay a price simply for their ability to speak their mind."

Turkish television Friday showed copies of letters containing death
threats that Dink said he had received in the last year. He said his
pleas for official protection went unanswered.

"We will silence you in a way that you will never speak again," one
of the letters said.

Writing in his weekly column Jan. 10, Dink said his computer was full
of "lines containing threats and rage.

"It is clear that those who try to alienate me, weaken me and leave
me defenseless have been successful," he wrote. "They managed to form
a group, with a serious number of people who see me as someone who
‘insults Turkishness’ with the dirty and wrong information they have
been funneling to society."

His friends and colleagues say Dink cherished his Armenian ethnicity
but remained loyal to his Turkish nation. His cause was freedom of
expression and an honest confrontation of the past, they say.

"I will not leave this country," Dink told the Reuters news agency
last summer, as legal charges against him mounted. "If I go I would
feel I was leaving alone the people struggling for democracy…. It
would be a betrayal of them."

FM Oskanian received the delegation of Syrian businessmen

ArmRadio.am
19.01.2007 10:04

January 18 RA Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian received the delegation
headed by President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Aleppo
Mohammad Saleh Mallah.

The businessmen appreciated the results of the visit, noting that
agreements were signed between the Chambers of Commerce and Industry
of Armenia and Aleppo, long-term arrangements were reached.

Minister Oskanian underlined the importance of Armenian-Syrian
business ties and expressed confidence that the stable economic
cooperation will further promote the progressive political relations
between the two countries.

The parties turned to the contribution of the Armenian community to
the commercial field of Syria.

PEN Alarmed by Murder of Armenian-Turkish Journalist
PEN American Center Online this Week

New York, NY, January 19, 2007— PEN, the international association
of writers, is appalled by the news of the murder today of
Armenian-Turkish journalist _Hrant Dink_
( /prmID/174) , who was shot
dead outside his office in Istanbul.

Dink, one of the most prominent ethnic Armenians in Turkey, was
editor-in-chief of the Armenian-Turkish weekly newspaper Agos, a paper
thatseeks to provide a voice to the Armenian community and create a
dialogue between Turks and Armenians. He was also a well-known
commentator on Armenian affairs. In July 2006, Dink was handed a
six-month suspended sentence for insulting Turkishness after writing
an article which called for Armenians to =80=9Cnow turn their
attention to the new life offered by an independent Armenia.’ A week
later, the Istanbul Public Prosecutor opened a new case against Dink
for referring tothe 1915 massacre of Armenians as a "genocide" during
a July 14 interview with Reuters. Dink was awaiting his next trial for
these charges at the time ofhis death.

`We are horrified,’ said Larry Siems, Director of Freedom to Write and
International Programs at PEN American Center. `Hrant Dink was oneof
the heroes of the nonviolent movement for freedom of expression in
Turkey-a movement in which writers, editors, and publishers have
practiced civil disobedience by defying laws that censored or
suppressed important truths in that country. Theirs is one of the
most significant human rights movements of our time. Hrant Dink’s
countrymen can help cement some of the gains he helped win for them by
sending a strong, unified message that those responsible must be
brought to justice for his murder.’

Just before his assassination, Dink had complained of death threats he
was receiving from nationalists. Early reports note that Dink was shot
four times by a young man who appeared to be 18 or 19 years
old. Police in riot gear surrounded Dink’s office in downtown
Istanbul. Forensic teams were combingthe pavement outside for clues to
the murder.

During the past 24 months, PEN has followed over 60 cases of writers,
journalists, and publishers who were brought before courts or faced
prosecution for their writings. Around 15 of these are currently
facing charges similar to those levied against Hrant Dink. Some recent
notable cases include that of _Orhan Pamuk_
() , the Nobel laureate charged
with insulting Turkishness for a comment published in a Swiss
newspaper in 2005 in which he was quoted as saying that `thirty
thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and
nobody but me dares to talk about it,’ Turkish prosecutors later
decided not to proceed with acourt case against him; five journalists
who were accused of `interfering=80=9D with the judiciary for their
comments on attempts to ban a conference; and publisher Abdullah
Yilmaz, who faces trial for issuing a Turkish edition of Greek writer
Mara Meimaridi’s novel The Witches of Smyrna. Scenes in that book
describing parts of the Turkish quarter of Izmir as dirty have
triggered charges of` denigrating Turkish national identity.’

Jiri Grusa, International President of _International PEN_
() , the world association of
writers, called the murder `a symptom of old hatreds that threaten the
relationship of all Turkish people to the democratic values shared in
Europe and the world.’ PEN calls upon the Turkish government to do all
in its power to apprehend Dink’s killer.

aID/1135

ARAM SARGSYAN STANDS FOR EQUAL CONCESSIONS IN THE KARABAKH ISSUE

ArmRadio.am
17.01.2007 16:50

The Dartmouth Conference Task Force on Nagorno Karabakh has suggested
its own way of settlement of the issue and has presented it to the
OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs. Head of the Democratic Party of Armenia,
member of the Armenian delegation in the Conference Aram Sargsyan said
in a press conference today that the document includes approaches as
an alternative to the current format of resolution of the Karabakh
conflict.

Representatives of Nagorno Karabakh were also participating in the
Dartmouth Conference activity. The document approved by representatives
of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh is of phasic nature. It
lays emphasis on the settlement of the issue through concessions.

Armenia’s representatives in the conference consider that speaking
about the return of territories, one should raise the question of
the return of Armenian lands, which include Getashen,Martunashen
and Artsvashen.

TURKEY: RAILWAY TO LINK TURKEY, AZERBAIJAN AND GEORGIA

AKI, Italy
Jan 16 2007

Istanbul, 16 Jan. (AKI) – Work on a 500-million dollar project for
the construction of a railway running between Turkey, Azerbaijan and
Georgia is expected to start in July 2007, the head of Georgia’s
railway authority has revealed. Irakli Ezugbaya said the 258
kilometre-long railway would be completed by mid 2009. Azerbaijan’s
minister of transport Ziya Memedov visited the Georgian capital
Tbilisi, over the weekend to discuss details of the project.

However the United States, which was to provide some financial support
has pulled out of the project in protest over the exclusion of Armenia
– which borders on all of the three countries – due to its political
problems with Turkey and its territorial disputes with Azerbaijan,
Turkish news reports said.

Lobby groups who are demanding that Turkey recognise that the Ottomans
carried out a genocide against Armenians in the first decades of the
20th century, have persuade Washington to withdraw from the project,
the report said.

The European Union has also announced it won’t provide any finance
for the project.

When completed the new railway line is expected to become
a part of a Trans-Asian railway network connected to the
Baku-Caspian-Turkmenistan-Altmati-China route.

RADIO STATIONS REFUSE TO PAY HIGHER FREQUENCY TARIFFS

Armenpress
Jan 15 2007

YEREVAN, JANUARY 15, ARMENPRESS: Recently chief managers of eight
Armenian radio stations sent a letter to the country’s president,
parliament chairman, prime minister and transport and communication
minister in which they protested against what they called ‘an illegal
decision’ of the transport and communication ministry to raise the
fee for use of radio frequencies from the current 600,000 drams to
900,00. Radio managers demanded the country’s leadership’s intervention
to prevent this ‘illegal decision from taking effect."

In response the communication and transport ministry said today it
had discussed the letter in question and will soon offer a compete
explanation grounding the rise.

The owners of radio stations refuse to pay the higher fee claiming the
minister’s decision is unconstitutional. They demand that this issue be
settled by a relating law saying the amount of frequency tariff and the
procedure of payment should be defined by a law, and not by a minister.

"I’M HAPPY TO BE RECEIVED BY ROBERT KOCHARYAN TOMORROW"

A1+
[05:32 pm] 15 January, 2007

The RA Foreign Ministry has not yet sent an invitation to the OSCE in
order to send an observing mission to Armenia for the Parliamentary
elections.

Nevertheless, Ambassador Christian Strohal, Director of the Office of
Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) arrived in Armenia
today in order to meet high officials of Armenia.

"The RA Government still has time to send the invitation. We are
here in order to discuss the ranges of cooperation between the OSCE
and Armenia. We must discuss both law and practical issues, as well
as those referring to the observers mission", said ODIHR Director
Christian Strohal to "A1+" after the meeting with Foreign Minister
Vardan Oskanyan. He found it difficult to inform how many observers
will arrive in Armenia.

Asked by "Haykakan Zhamanak" if it is possible to organize free and
fair elections in Armenia when there are no independent TV companies,
Mr. Strohal answered, "You know that monitoring of Mass media forms
part of the monitoring of the elections. Of course we would like
the pluralism of the pre-election campaign to be found in the Mass
Media too".

By the way, this is the second visit of the ODIHR Director to
Armenia. "Armenia is the only country in Europe where there is snow",
he said.

EurasiaNet, NY
Jan 11 2007

THE CHALLENGE OF DE-MINING KARABAKH

Photos by Sophia Mizante; Text by Zoe Powell 1/12/07

As preparations reportedly begin for fresh talks on January 23
between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway territory of
Nagorno-Karabakh, attention is again focusing on questions of
displaced persons and borders. But lingering in this remote
mountainous region is an issue that threatens to undermine any
chances for peace with a particularly devastating impact: land mines.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have indicated that mine clearance is a
topic that could prolong negotiations over the status of the
self-declared Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Yet, more than 12 years after a ceasefire ended the 1988-1994
hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the territory, the
UK-based non-governmental organization HALO Trust is the only mine
clearing operation at work here.

HALO representatives put that fact down in part to the bitter ongoing
dispute over the self-declared state’s status. "Trying to keep both
sides happy in Nagorno-Karabakh is nearly impossible," commented
Valon Kumnova, HALO Trust’s program manager in Stepanakert, the
territory’s capital. "In every other country we work in, it is
possible."

Although both Armenian and Azerbaijani forces used land mines during
the Karabakh conflict, HALO has received information about mine
placement only from the Armenian and breakaway Karabakh governments.

Conceivably, HALO’s past interactions with the territory’s military
officials could motivate the silence from Azerbaijan, which refuses
to negotiate with Karabakh’s separatist leadership. When the
de-mining organization arrived in Stepanakert in 1995, one year after
the cease-fire agreement, to set up a civilian-run mine-clearing
operation, the de facto state’s defense ministry wanted mine-clearing
support to go to the military. HALO trained Karabakh military
personnel for a year, pulling out in 1996.

The organization returned in 2000 after a slew of mine accidents and
fatalities – the highest numbers since 1995 — "indicated that the
military personnel were not using the equipment or standard clearance
procedures the way they had been trained," Kumnova said. With a
decrease in tensions and a new defense chief in place, the
organization this time established a civilian-run de-mining mission.
HALO currently employs 210 local residents in de-mining and support
program operations.

Azerbaijani officials could not be reached for comment about HALO’s
activities in Karabakh. HALO Trust does not operate in Azerbaijan;
mine clearance there is handled by the state-run Azerbaijan National
Agency for Mine Action. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight
archive].

Some 287 mine-related casualties or fatalities have been recorded in
Karabakh since 1995, the organization says. Another 215 accidents
have occurred. As of December, only two fatalities were recorded in
2006, and nine accidents with anti-personnel mines or unexploded
ordnance took place.

Though HALO claims that Karabakh has the world’s highest incident of
mines per capita (one per 13 residents, three times the number in
Afghanistan), finding funding for mine clearance in the territory has
been a challenge, according to Kumnova. The program manager charged
that Azerbaijan’s suspicion of HALO’s operations lies at the root of
the problem.

"It’s the most difficult place to raise money . . . it’s way too
sensitive," he said, conjecturing that "[n]ot many countries are
willing to have bad relations with Azerbaijan" because of the
country’s oil production. [For background see the Eurasia Insight
archive].

The organization currently has a $1.3 million budget for its
operations in Karabakh. The Dutch government funds 60 percent of that
sum; the US Agency for International Development provides most of the
remainder. Many smaller donations come from members of the Armenian
Diaspora.

Ridding Karabakh of mines goes hand-in-hand with the separatist
government’s push for re-development of the territory’s economy,
including tourism and agriculture. Throughout the territory, plowed
fields stand next to fields marked as potential mine fields.
Sometimes, the plowed field and the potential minefield are one and
the same.

Kumnova estimates that another five to six years remain before the
territory can be considered "mine-impact free." HALO has cleared
about 16 million square meters of land to date; another 10 million
square meters remain.

Karabakh’s sparse population hampers de-mining efforts. Local
residents traditionally offer some of the best information about
suspected mine fields and unexploded ordinance, but in Karabakh’s
case, there are few people around who can provide information.
Karabakh Armenian leaders put the territory’s population at 145,000,
based on 2002 estimates. Some outside observers, however, believe
true number to be far fewer. By comparison, a 1989 census put the
region’s population at over 185,000.

A tour of mine fields in the southern part of the territory, and near
the occupied Azerbaijani town of Fizuli, revealed the scope of that
emptiness. Apart from a few men, some in military uniforms,
collecting debris from ruined houses near Fizuli, little sign of
human activity existed.

As a result, setting an exact timeline for clearing Karabakh of mines
remains elusive, Kumnova said. "[W]ith the population it has at the
moment, you could drive Nagorno-Karabakh for hours and not see people
anywhere," he commented. "[A]fter being in the country for six years,
we’re still finding mine fields."

Editor’s Note: Zoe Powell is a journalist based in Tbilisi. Sophia
Mizante is a freelance photojournalist also based in Tbilisi.