Author: Ekmekjian Janet

Karabakh cannot be returned to Azerbaijan – US envoy
Mediamax news agency
25 Feb 05
YEREVAN
The Armenian National Committee of San Francisco has reported that the
US ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, has stated that despite the
USA’s policy of recognizing the territorial integrity of states,
“everybody understands that Karabakh cannot be returned to Azerbaijan,
because this will be a disastrous step”.
Speaking at a meeting with representatives of the Armenian community
in San Francisco on 19 February, John Evans said: “If Yerevan and Baku
agree on the settlement, I think that everybody will be ready to back
them,” the Armenian National Committee told Mediamax news agency
today. “If they reach an agreement, we cannot change that,” the
American diplomat said.
Commenting on the sensational statement by the press secretary of the
Azerbaijani Defence Ministry, Ramiz Malikov, that “in 25 years Armenia
will no longer be on the map”, John Evans described it as “outrageous”
and stated that “it evoked all the bad memories of the Armenians”.

Sun-Sentinel.com
One puzzler doesn’t ruin Shield’s season
By Phoebe Flowers
— Rob Lowman Film Writer Los Angeles Daily News
Posted February 27 2005
There comes a segment near the end of the third season of The Shield that is
immediately recognizable as the moment the show went too far. That such a
thing is even possible in a cop drama that has in its past featured, for
example, criminal suspects having their faces seared on stove burners may
seem unlikely. But the final scene of the episode titled “Strays” takes a
character to a place both inexcusable and, more important, unbelievable.
If you look to the commentary track, featuring creator Shawn Ryan, producer
Glen Mazzara and actors Catherine Dent (Officer Danny Sofer) and Jay Karnes
(Detective Dutch Wagenbach), for explanation of this perplexing plot
development, you won’t find one. On the contrary, it features Ryan bragging
that “Strays” was the favorite episode of FX, the apparently freewheeling
network that has aired The Shield since 2002. Guest director David Mamet
(Spartan, State and Main) may have had something to do with their blind
enthusiasm.
And yet, “Strays” is at odds with a season that is otherwise as smart, wild
and enthralling as those that have preceded it. Ever since Detective Vic
Mackey (Emmy winner Michael Chiklis) stormed into an interrogation room in
the series premiere to assure a suspect that he was “a different kind of
cop,” The Shield has constituted the most entertaining law-enforcement show
on television. Look at The Wire, HBO’s intricate police procedural, as the
equivalent of reading an edifying story about sequoia trees in The New
Yorker. The Shield, on the other hand, is Britney’s unauthorized honeymoon
diary in Us Weekly. 24 wishes it were this audacious or addictive.
Chiklis, who also pinch-hits as a producer and director, is the star of the
show as Mackey, who with his lumpy bald head and stocky physique is easily
the least likely sex symbol since Tony Soprano. The season picks up with
Mackey and his colleagues on the “Strike Team,” a cowboyish lot with
gleefully unorthodox crime-fighting methods, having stolen a huge amount of
cash from Armenian gangsters. The next 14 episodes find them discovering
just how bad an idea that heist was.
The journey is somewhat better than the destination, however. “Breaking
Episode 315,” an hour-plus featurette focusing on the making of the season
finale, is a perhaps excessively detailed behind-the-scenes portrait. And it
doesn’t do anything to distract from the fact that the episode feels less
like catharsis than it does a setup for season four. But luckily, we only
have a few weeks until it premieres on FX.
The Shield — The Complete Third Season, not rated, 700 minutes, $59.98.
Phoebe Flowers can be reached at [email protected].
Funny but not essential
Director Barry Sonnenfeld left out what he considers the funniest scene in
Get Shorty, the clever 1995 adaptation of novelist Elmore Leonard’s wry take
on Hollywood. The reason? “It seems to me that if you’re trying to make a
movie to entertain people, you want to entertain people. As horrible as
recruited audiences are, I’m one of the directors that needs them. I need to
see which jokes are working and which aren’t.”
In Get Shorty (the sequel Be Cool is out next week without Sonnenfeld), the
director edited out a scene with Ben Stiller, John Travolta and Gene
Hackman. Stiller is a recent film-school grad shooting a low-budget horror
flick for Hackman’s low-rent producer Harry Zimm and Travolta’s hood Chili
Palmer, who is trying to muscle into Tinseltown.
“The scene was funny, but it didn’t serve the overall movie,” says
Sonnenfeld. “So get rid of it. Don’t bore your audience.” Not to worry, the
scene is included on the just-released special edition of the film.
As for how much reality Get Shorty has in relation to the cutthroat business
of making a Hollywood movie, Sonnenfeld’s answer is simple: “Get Shorty was
letting the film business off easily.”
Get Shorty (Special Edition), rated R, 105 minutes, $29.95.

Transeuro Energy Begins Prep Work on Armavir Prospect in Armenia
Interfax Information Services, B.V.
Friday, February 25, 2005
The Canadian corporation Transeuro Energy (formerly Indusmin Energy) has
started preparation work to explore for oil and gas at a licensed block in
the Armavir region of Armenia, Andranik Agabalian, head of the fuel and
energy resource department at the Armenian Energy Ministry, told Interfax.
He said that when the weather improves the corporation will start to carry
out field work to decide on a location for a first well. Agabalian said that
Transeuro Energy has concentrated its efforts on searching for natural gas,
given the industrial structure in Armenia, which does not have any oil
refining capacity, but which has a developed gas transportation system. As a
result, gas production for industrial use is more promising than oil
production, he said.
Agabalian said that the company has promised to invest at least $10.5
million in prospecting for oil and gas in Armavir region. The company will
continue where the U.S.-registered Armenian-American Exploration Company
(AAEC) left off in the late 1990s. AAEC drilled a 3,524-meter exploration
well 30-km north of Yerevan, but did not discover any hydrocarbons there.
The company spent $28 million on drilling and seismic exploration.
Agabalian said that in March this year an agreement is to be signed with
Transeuro Energy to carry out exploration work at another block – in the
northeast of Armenia, covering the Tavush and Lori regions.
Armenian territory is split up into six license blocks. Transeuro Energy
chose the block in the northeast based on its own research and forecasts.
Indusmin Energy was renamed Transeuro Energy in fall 2004. The company
opened an office in Armenia a little later.

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Feb 22 2005
Frequent ceasefire violations show Armenia’s weakness – Defence
Ministry

Baku, February 21, AssA-Irada
The frequent ceasefire violations by Armenians on the frontline
observed of late show nothing but their weakness. The international
community already knows the truth, therefore, the Upper Garabagh
separatists decided to resort to subversive acts and thus prolong the
conflict resolution, the Defence Ministry spokesman Ramiz Malikov
told journalists.
He said that `after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe passed a resolution terming Armenia as aggressor and the Upper
Garabagh self-proclaimed regime as separatist, Armenia has been
trying to show its strength.
`This will not work. The sooner Armenians leave Azerbaijani
territories, the better it will be for them.’ Malikov added.*

Understanding Lebanese Armenians
By ANI AMIRKHANIAN
Glendale News Press
Feb 19 2005
Third in a three-part series.
In the past weeks I have been looking at the relationships between
Armenian sub-groups. Now, I want to turn my attention to the Lebanese
Armenians, the last sub-group I will be discussing in this series.
Like the other two Armenian sub-groups, the Lebanese Armenian community
is isolated in its own enclave and members tend to group with their
“own kind.”
Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic, in my opinion, about
Lebanese Armenians or “Arevmedahyes,” as they are known, is their
very distinctive dialect. Although the other groups speak in their
own dialects, the Lebanese Armenian dialect varies the most from the
other two.
I cannot remember a time when the three groups ever came together for
a mutual goal. There has always been a divide among the sub-groups
regarding their actions and understanding.
Lebanese-Armenians have always seemed to me to be the more “patriotic”
and most proud Armenians of their culture. That is not to say
that the other two groups are not proud of their heritage, but the
Lebanese-Armenian community has always been involved with activism
and progressive politics.
I recently spoke with a Lebanese Armenian college friend of mine
named Natalie who shared with me some of her observations about the
sub-groups and their relationship to each other.
“I always thought that Arevmedahyes and Barskahyes [Iranian-Armenians]
which are both Spurkahyes [Diaspora Armenians] got along but were
both doing their own thing to benefit the Armenians acculturating as
opposed to assimilating in the U.S.,” Natalie said.
She said “own thing” referring to both groups working separately but
for the same cause. Natalie also said that the different dialects and
cultural differences of the two groups has fueled these Armenians to
go about upholding the Armenian culture in their own way — separately.
Historically, Barskahyes and Lebanese-Armenians have had a positive
relationship even though they have gone about their own ways —
knowing they were striving to succeed for a common cause.
I do agree with Natalie’s thoughts about these sub-groups, but what
strikes me the most is that they still remain apart and have yet to
establish long-term relationships outside of community and cultural
activism. What keeps them apart in particular is their language or
dialectical disparity.
The dialects of the Barskahye and Arevmedahye sub-groups are on two
separate ends of the spectrum. I also asked Natalie what she thinks
about the relationship between Lebanese-Armenians and Hayastansis.
She said it is one where they intermingle and get along, but what
sets them apart from Lebanese-Armenians and even Barskahyes is their
mind-set.
The former groups are “more westernized in their train of thought,
since they did not grow up under the controlled government of
communism, as Hayastansis did,” Natalie said.
Another Lebanese-Armenian I spoke with, my cousin-in-law Hrant,
also agreed that the sub-groups are more cooperative and have just
got used to each other. Hrant said he had difficulty in the past
understanding the Barskahye dialect.
“I remember when I first came to the U.S. my only real problem was
understanding my sister’s Barskahye friends,” Hrant said. “But then
I mostly figured out their dialect.”
He also said that as a Lebanese-Armenian, he has noticed that the
sub-groups intermarry a lot more. For example, more Barskahye women
are marrying Lebanese-Armenian men.
Despite greater interaction between all three sub-groups, there is
yet still a divide when it comes to “intimate socializing,” he said.
“Most people still prefer to be with their own group,” said Hrant.
“Language, happens to be a prominent reason why Armenians in general
stick with their ‘own kind.'”
There is no denying that to coexist, language plays an important
role with the Armenian sub-groups. The only time when language is
not an issue is when Armenians of any sub-group speak in English,
which in turn the subject of disparity among the sub-groups fades out.
It seems unusual that when Armenian sub-groups speak another language
other than their own, they all become “Armenian” as one group. The
disparity becomes irrelevant.
So then does belonging to a sub-group give people a sense of a more
focused identity?
According to Hrant, “Time still tends to blend everything together
… ”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ATKINSON’S REPORT REFLECTS HIS OWN VIEWS, UK AMBASSADOR SAYS
ArmenPress
Feb 18 2005
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 18, ARMENPRESS: In an interview to a Russian
Regnum news agency, Great Britain’s ambassador to Armenia, Thorda
Abbot-Watt said her government hailed the EU decision to include
Armenia’s into its New Neighborhood initiative, adding also that
political relations between Armenia and Great Britain remain to be
close. She said the first progress from the Neighborhood Policy is
expected this year.
She said Great Britain will continue to support the activity of
the OSCE Minsk Group. “I hope Sir Brian Fall, a special UK
representative for the South Caucasus will visit Yerevan this spring
to meet with top Armenian leaders and discuss plans for further
strengthening of bilateral ties,” she said.
The ambassador said the embassy will continue to work for
implementation of development programs targeting two Armenian
provinces of Tavush and Gegharkunik. She said the programs will be
officially launched on February 21.
She also reiterated that the Government of the United Kingdom has
offered to pay 10% of Armenia’s World Bank debt repayments until
2015. The British Department for International Development (DFID)
will pay the money into a World Bank trust fund. The International
Development Association (the World Bank agency which provides funding
on concessional terms to the poorest developing countries) will in
turn reduce the repayments which Armenia makes over the next ten
years.
The British Government have offered this financial help in
recognition of the difficulties which low income countries face in
trying to reduce poverty while at the same time service their
international debt. The objective is to free additional resources to
enable Armenia to achieve its development goals. Armenia is one of
five countries to benefit in this way, all chosen in recognition that
they have sound public expenditure policies in place which will
ensure that the money saved will be targeted towards poverty
reduction. The other countries are Mongolia, Vietnam, Nepal and Sri
Lanka.
Armenia is due to repay the World Bank US$ 8 million, US$ 11
million and US$ 12 million in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively. The
United Kingdom contribution will be 10% of this – US$800,000,
US$1.1million and US$1.2million. Over the ten years of the initiative
(until 2015), the total United Kingdom contribution will be just
under US$20 million.
The ambassador also downplayed an opinion spread among Armenian
political circles that a resolution adopted by PACE on the basis of a
report by a British delegate to PACE David Atkinson, perceived here
as “anti-Armenian,” reflects the position of Great Britain.
“Though the report, on the basis of which PACE adopted the
resolution was drafted by a member of the British Parliament, it
reflects Atkinson’s personal views, but not the position of the
British government. In the first place we are all interested in the
peaceful resolution of the Nagorno Karabagh conflict, as it blocks
the economic development of the region,” she concluded.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

THE SUNDAY EDITION
CBC Radio One
Program City: TORONTO
Broadcast Date: 6/2/05
Start Time: 09:11:00
End Time: 11:58:53
Michael Enright, Host
Live: Start Hour Two
Recording: Come Dance With Me (00:01:00)
Work Name: COME DANCE WITH ME
Recording Format (Medium): CD
Recording Title (CD or Album): NIGHT OUT WITH VERVE, DISC 1; WINING
Spine: 31435317
Label Name: VERVE
LYRICIST, SAMMY CAHN
COMPOSER, JIMMY VAN HEUSEN
PIANO, OSCAR PETERSON
DOUBLE BASS, RAY BROWN
DRUMS, ED THIGPEN
Live: Taner Akçam (00:28:03)
A Conversation with Historian Taner Akçam on Armenian Genocide &
Turkish Statement (Feb 6/05)
SUNDAY EDITION (2) (CBC-R)
Aired: 06 Feb 2005, 10:06am, 00:27:40
Bowden’s Media Monitoring Ref#:44AC85 (44AC85-2)
Michael Enright: It is impossible to underestimate the power of the
word “genocide.” And it is equally impossible to underestimate the
consequences when the word is NOT used.
This past week, a special United Nations committee concluded that the
rape and murder of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur
constituted a crime against humanity …but it fell short of being a
“genocide.” Genocide, as the UN defines it, is “acts committed with
the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group.”
There will be fall-out for generations from the decision NOT to call
Darfur a genocide. As there has been fall-out for almost a century
from refusal of many governments to use the word to describe the
slaughter of Armenians in 1915.
Armenians themselves call it “The Forgotten Genocide.” And while it
may have happened 90 years ago, in a far-away corner of the Ottoman
Empire, it is as alive for Turks and Armenians today as it was those
many long decades ago.
Taner Akçam has become the first Turkish historian to call the
Armenian killings a genocide. In response, his life has been
threatened. No university in his own country will hire him. He has
been derided as a traitor, and hailed as a hero. Professor Akçam is
now a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota. This morning
he is in a Minnesota Public Radio studio in Minneapolis. Good
morning, sir.
Taner Akçam: Good morning.
ME: What a pleasure to have you with us after reading about you and
reading your work. It’s quite important that you join us this
morning. Let me ask you—I know that the Turkish government has for
years vehemently denied that what happened in 1915 was genocide. Are
they still denying it as strongly?
TA: This is still the official Turkish state policy, that what
happened in 1915 was not a genocide.
ME: And this is in the textbooks, in the schools, this is taught in
the universities, and all of that?
TA: No. It is a little bit complicated. Until recently, it was not a
topic in the Turkish curriculum. Nineteen-fifteen was referred to
only as a deportation of the Armenian people in eastern Anatolia
because of the war conditions. Only these two sentences, nothing
more. But recently they changed the curriculum. Now they are teaching
Turkish students—or the students in Turkey from all nationalities,
Kurds, Armenian students also—that what happened wasn’t a genocide,
this is only an Armenian lie.
ME: “An Armenian lie.” That’s the phrase.
TA: Yes.
ME: Just give us a brief synopsis, if you will, of exactly what
happened to the Armenians in Anatolia in 1915.
TA: The beginning of the deportation was in 1915, May, and continued
until the beginning of 1917. Almost the entire Armenian population of
Anatolia was deported to the deserts of Syria and Iraq. The official
version, the official reason was that the Turkish authorities—or the
Ottoman authorities—of that time considered the Armenian population,
especially in eastern Anatolia, as a threat. They covered up their
operations as a necessity of the war. During this deportation, they
organized a paramilitary organization, and this organization—a secret
organization, a military organization—attacked the Armenian convoys.
The number of dead is between, according to Turkish numbers, three
hundred and six hundred thousand, and according to Armenian or
scholarly estimation, around 1 and 1 million Armenians perished
during that period. Most of the reasons for the deaths were killing,
hunger, starvation, health conditions, disease, and so on. At the end
almost the entire Armenian population was deported and eliminated.
ME: What was the—obviously not the stated reason, because the Turks
didn’t want to—the Ottoman Empire at the time didn’t want to—talk
about it, but why the enmity toward the Armenians?
TA: It is not only a problem of a culture or a problem of hate. There
are certainly different reasons for deportation and for genocide.
Undoubtedly the culture of tension between Christian and Muslim
populations is one of these reasons. But both peoples, the Muslims
and Christians, lived in the area more than 500 years without any
problem.
There are of course different reasons, but, if you ask me, I would
underline one important reason, and I would define this more as a
political reason. The basic fear of the Ottoman Empire was that they
were going to lose the eastern part of Anatolia. In 1914, before
World War One, there was an agreement between the Russian government
and the Ottoman government. According to this agreement, the Ottoman
authorities should implement certain reforms in eastern Anatolia.
These reforms should give certain autonomy to the Armenians.
According to the Ottoman authorities, this was the beginning of
Armenian independence in eastern Anatolia.
ME: Which they couldn’t abide. They couldn’t have that.
TA: Exactly. This agreement was also not a desire of the Ottoman
authorities. They were compelled to sign this agreement. When they
entered the war, the first thing that they did was that they annulled
this agreement. They discharged this agreement. They declared this
null and void. When they lost the first war against the Russians,
they thought the Russian army will come and occupy eastern Anatolia
and what they will do first is to implement this reform plan. This
means the creation of an independent state in eastern Anatolia.
This was the history of the decline process of the Ottoman Empire.
This was how it started in 1812 with Serbia, then continued with
Romania, Bulgaria, then continued in Lebanon, then Greece. This was
the independence movement of the Christian nationalities in the
Ottoman Empire. They first get certain democratic rights, autonomies.
Ottoman authorities never implemented these democratic rights. Then
the big powers interfered, and it ended with a separation, with an
independent nation-state of each Christian group. They thought this
will—exactly this same process will happen with the Armenians. They
thought that instead of creating an establishment of an
Armenian—allowing of a nation-state there, to kill them, to
homogenize the region, is the best political solution.
ME: So it was ethnic cleansing and the deportations and slaughter.
But what I don’t understand is why—thirty, forty, eighty years
later—that the Turkish historians were not looking at it the way you
did, and coming out and saying that yes, in fact, it was a genocide.
Other countries have faced their own history: South Africa, Germany,
Rwanda, and so on. What was the problem with Turkey admitting what
had happened?
TA: I think there are a lot of factors which cause this denial
policy. I will start with the psychological, the moral, reason. If I
summarize this issue, I would say that the Armenians symbolized and
were a constant reminder to the Turks of their most traumatic
historical events, namely, the collapse of the Empire and loss of
almost 90% of their territory over a forty-year period. They lived,
in the last 100 years of their Empire, under the constant fear that
they would disappear from the stage of history. The fear of total
obliteration from the stage of history was a permanent feeling during
the demise process of the Empire, in a simple way. They felt that
they would disappear as actors from the stage of history. That’s why
they don’t want to be reminded of that past.
A very important factor also, an additional factor is that an
important number of founders of the Turkish Republic were either
participants in this genocidal process or they enriched themselves
from this process.
ME: Does that apply to Kemal Atatürk?
TA: Exactly, just the opposite. This is the important thing that I
constantly remind and write. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was one of the
opponents of this genocidal policy.
ME: And he was the founder of modern Turkey.
TA: Exactly. He openly accused the Unionist leaders who organized
this genocide of being murderers. But there are a number of other
founders of the Republic who participated in that process. It is a
psychological difficulty to call these founders thieves and
murderers. This is the basic psychological problem. But based on
Mustafa Kemal’s position, we can reverse this historiography in a
different way, definitely.
ME: Alright. Let me—I want to bring this down to yourself and your
researches and your writings. You use the word “genocide.” Now, what
happened when you published your work? What was the reaction, first
of all, among academics and perhaps other historians, but also in the
government and people?
TA: There are quite a number of other academicians in Turkey who
openly talked to me and told me that what happened was a genocide. I
think I would argue that among the critical scholars in Turkey, there
is a consensus that what happened was an ethnic cleansing. The term,
the G-word, is not actually the main problem in Turkey today, if you
ask me.
ME: “G-word,” the genocide.
TA: The “G-word” is “genocide.” Whether you call it genocide or
ethnic cleansing, it was a crime against humanity. There is a
consensus among the critical intellectuals in Turkey that what
happened was a crime against humanity. They never—
ME: Now, let me stop you there. Is this a consensus that those people
who are holding to it are willing to declare publicly? Or, why are
you the only one? Why are you the first to come out and do it and say
it publicly, if there is this consensus?
TA: I said, “among the critical scholars.” This is not—this is maybe
twenty, thirty percent of Turkish academia. The basic reason why they
haven’t come up with their statement is the fear that they would lose
their jobs. There is no open restriction, open suppression policy by
the state, but this atmosphere is very important.
After publishing my book, I can give an example. There was no single
book review. My first book was published in 1991. Can you imagine
that a book made five editions within two years without any book
review?
ME: In the whole country, there wasn’t one review of the book?
TA: There wasn’t one review, and the fifth edition—this means that
each edition was 2,500 [copies], and the book sold—this is an
academic book, a scholarly book—
ME: Right.
TA: —sold in Turkey more than 10,000 [copies]. Without any book
review, this book sold in that amount.
ME: What happened to you? You talk about some of the other
academicians who were fearful of losing their jobs. You couldn’t get
work as a professor, isn’t that right?
TA: Yes, between 1990—I was in Germany, and my Ph.D. is also from
Germany, and I was living in Germany. In 1995 I returned to Turkey
and tried to settle there and tried to find a job. I had certain
agreements with certain institutions. One private university in
Istanbul agreed to hire me, but at the last second, they decided to
drop their decision. It was the same experience with other
universities. They all gave me the same answer: We are scared, we
could get certain difficulties from the official authorities. I must
add that there was no official pressure at that time towards these
universities, but these scholars, the academicians who are going to
decide on that issue, got certain letters, unsigned or signed as “A
Group of Turkish Intellectuals.” In these letters, these scholars and
universities were warned [not] to get in touch with me. This is an
indirect threat. Everyone knew that these letters were coming from
the authorities, the Secret Service, or groups within the Turkish
state, and so the universities were scared to hire me.
ME: Our guest this morning is Taner Akçam. He’s a visiting professor
at the University of Minnesota. He’s in the studio in Minneapolis
this morning. He is the first Turkish historian—the first Turkish
historian—to use the word “genocide” in dealing with what happened to
the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, 1917. We’re
talking about the impact of that. Why is it important for you to tell
the story of the genocide?
TA: One important reason is my own experience. I know what torture
is, I know what suppression is, I know what persecution is. I was a
member of a certain students’ generation in Turkey, a certain
democratic tradition, a member of the ’68 generation in Europe and
Turkey—
ME: Right.
TA: —and I was a member of this generation who were really fighting
for human rights and democratic rights, in Turkey. That’s why I know
what torture means, I know what violence means. It’s part of my own
history.
ME: You’d better expand on that. You were thrown in jail in Ankara.
When you said earlier that you were living in Germany: you fled to
Germany, didn’t you. You had to get out of Turkey.
TA: Yes. I was arrested in 1976 because of the article I wrote in a
students’ newspaper. The reason why I was arrested is that I wrote
that there are Kurds living in Turkey. In fact, the Turkish state
claimed at that time that there were only Turks in Turkey. In the
1970s, this was a founding myth of the modern Turkish state. It was a
criminal offense. It was against the law to acknowledge the existence
of Kurds in Turkey. Because of that reason, I was put in jail and
sentenced to ten years. Then, after one year, I thought “it is
enough,” and I escaped from the prison. Then I came to Germany, where
I was given political asylum in 1978. After some personal tragedies
as a result of my political role, I decided to quit politics and
change the direction of my life. It was the middle of the 1980s. I
went to academia.
ME: Yeah, but people—you changed the course of your life, but people
were trying to kill you, right? I mean, the German police offered you
protection. They even offered you plastic surgery so you could change
the way you looked.
TA (laughs): If a filmmaker is listening, I can tell him or her the
details. The whole story’s really tailor-made for a movie.
ME: Well, you’re going to write your memoirs, I hope. Are you?
TA: Everyone wants [me to write them], but I don’t have time. I think
working on the Genocide is more important than my personal story, at
the moment. Yes, I was threatened by the PKK at that time.
ME: That’s the Kurdish—
TA: That’s the Kurdish separatist organization. One can compare this
organization with Pol Pot or Stalin or even with Saddam Hussein. The
number of people that the leader of that organization liquidated is
more than, unfortunately, 3,000. They liquidated more than 3,000 of
their own members. I was opposed to that also. They wanted to kill
me. They couldn’t find me, and so they killed one of my best friends
in Hamburg. This was the turning point for me.
I started very accidentally, coincidentally, studying the history of
violence and torture in Ottoman Turkish society. If one studies the
violence in Ottoman society, he unavoidably comes across the Armenian
Genocide, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Violence was a very common device against the Armenians. This was the
beginning for me, and it was the propelling factor for me to be
[involved] with the Armenian Genocide.
ME: Turkey is desperate to get into the European community. It wants
to join Europe. The European community has officially recognized the
Armenian Genocide. Does that mean, if for no other reason but for
practical, economic reasons, the government of Turkey will finally
come out and say, “Yes, it was a genocide,” in order to get into the
EU?
TA: I’m not sure whether it is so important for the Turkish
government to use the “G-word.” The basic problem is generally facing
the history. It is not only the Armenian Genocide. We have to see
that Turkey has a lot of human rights violences. I’ll give you only
one number. Only between 1921 and 1938, in the first sixteen years of
the Republic period, there were more than twenty Kurdish uprisings
against the Turkish authorities, and there were a lot of violence,
massacre, human rights abuses. I’m not counting all other human
rights abuses after each military coup d’état, which were supported
mostly by the Western powers: 1960, 1970, 1980, 1997, and so on. This
means if Turkey wants to be a member of the European Union, Turkey
should come to terms with its own history. Turkey should start to
discuss its past in a democratic way. If a country wants to become a
democratic country, there must be an open discussion on its own past.
The Armenian Genocide is a part of it. Turkey, in that sense, must
come to terms with its past. And that will happen.
ME: Will it—?
TA: They will apologize. This is our position—this is my
position—that Turkey should acknowledge this as a genocide, but there
are other ways of acknowledging that there are wrongdoings in the
past. We know that from different experiences in the world.
ME: Will you ever be able to go back to Turkey? I know you go as a
citizen, but will you ever be able to get a job at a university? Or
will you ever be able to teach in your homeland again? Or will you
ever be acknowledged by the elites or by the government or by anybody
as having done a courageous thing?
TA: I think there will be a change, and 2015 will, in that sense, be
a very important symbolic date. It is the hundredth year of the
anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, and it is—eventually also could
be— the official date of Turkey’s membership. We can make both of
these days one. In that day, Turkey can declare openly that what
happened in history was a genocide in the past, and so, then, become
a member of democratic Europe. So then it could be possible for me to
find a job in a Turkish university. I hope it could be earlier than
2015.
ME: Well, we join you in that hope. Thank you so much.
TA: I thank you.
ME: It’s a great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.
Professor Taner Akçam is the first Turkish historian to use the word
“genocide” in referring to what happened to the Armenians. This
morning he was in a Minnesota Public Radio studio in Minneapolis.
Now, we asked for a response from the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa. Here
is part of the Embassy’s official statement to The Sunday Edition.
[ME reads from statement:]
The question -whether the events in Anatolia during the First World
War can be termed a genocide- is too complex to treat in a short
time. The Turkish people, not only the Turkish Government as many
times mistakenly put, firmly believe that what happened to the
Armenians was not genocide. This stance does not aim to belittle the
suffering of Armenians as well as of Turks or to deny that high
numbers of lives have been lost in Anatolia. Every loss of life is
deplorable and tragic. To mourn these losses and learn about our
common history is one thing but attempting to use these tragic
–tragic equally to both sides- events for political or material gains
today is another.
In the years that the Ottoman Empire was getting closer to its final
collapse, Armenians had decided to wage an armed struggle against
Ottomans with the aim of creating an independent state of their own
in Eastern Anatolia.
The problem with the Armenian case was that in the territory that
they were claiming, they were only a minority. Therefore, for them to
be able successfully to form an independent state was possible only
by ethnically “cleansing” the majority Turks from these lands,
something which they planned and started to do. They actually
attacked and did whatever harm they could inflict on Turkish
interests. For the Ottoman Government, they were terrorists
instigating rebellion.
Alarmed by this imminent security risk and the strategic threat posed
by the Armenian support of the enemy, that is, the Allied forces, the
Ottoman Government decided in May 1915 to relocate only the eastern
Anatolian Armenians from the six provinces with Armenian population
to other parts of the Empire, away from a war zone in which they were
collaborating with invading Russian armies.
Many Armenian convoys, once uprooted, became victim of unlawfulness
prevailing in the region as well as the harsh natural conditions
aggravated by the war. As a result, many Armenians were killed while
many others made into one of these cities and formed today’s
Diaspora. But, one has to remember that the number of Muslim and
Turks perished in those years in those conditions is no less than
those of Armenians.
The Turkish people are deeply offended by the accusations branding
them as being genocidal- They find it disrespectful of their
unmentioned millions of dead in a time of desperation not only for
Armenians, but more so for the Turks. It is not accurate if the issue
is presented as one between the Armenian Diaspora and the Turkish
Government.
What determines genocide is not necessarily the number of casualties
or the cruelty of the persecution but the “intent to destroy” a
group. Historically the “intent to destroy a race” has emerged only
as the culmination of racism, as in the case of anti-Semitism and the
Shoah. Turks have never harbored any anti-Armenian racism.
There is no evidence that the Ottoman Government wanted to
exterminate Armenians by this decision of relocation. On the
contrary, all the evidence shows just the opposite that they wanted
to implement this relocation decision without risking lives.
Killing, even of civilians, in a war waged for territory, is not
genocide. The victims of genocide must be totally innocent. In other
words, they must not fight for something tangible like land, but be
killed by the victimizer simply because of their belonging to a
specific group.
What happened between Turks and Armenians was a struggle for land;
branding it as genocide, a term coined to depict the Shoah, is in our
opinion, the greatest disgrace to the innocent victims of the
Holocaust. It is deplorable that, some Armenian groups in the
Diaspora would like to exploit the horrors generated by the Holocaust
as a tool in their bid to realize their self-centered, dreamy
national aspirations, terribly hopelessly far from the realities.
ME: That’s the official statement from the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa.
–Boundary_(ID_tlhc2HGk+ZyYySCHjB7i4A)–

French Minister Haignere Meets Turkish E.U. Adjustment Commission Chairman Yakis
Anadolu Agency, Turkey
Feb 14 2005
ANKARA – French Minister Delegate for European Affairs Claudie
Haignere met Yasar Yakis, Chairman of Turkish Parliamentary Adjustment
Commission for the EU, on Monday.
Sources said that French referendum about Turkey’s EU membership and
position of France regarding the so-called Armenian genocide were
discussed during the meeting.
Yakis told Haignere, “it is not possible to understand and explain why
France is going to hold a referendum about Turkey’s EU membership. Such
a referendum will not be held for countries which will join EU in
2007 and for Croatia which is in the same situation with Turkey.”
Commission member Onur Oymen said, “referendum is something against
Turkey. We understand internal policy requirements of France but Turkey
does not want to pay the cost. The referendum will affect negatively
Turkey’s membership (to the EU), as well as Turkish-French friendship.”
Haignere said, “French government is willing to ask for the views
of its citizens about Turkey’s EU membership. Turkey should pursue
reforms which it has fulfilled until today.”
Meanwhile, Oymen said, “during our visit to France, people we met said
if Turkey does not recognize the alleged Armenian genocide, it will
not join the EU. This may affect Turkey-France relations negatively.”

Classical: BBC Philharmonic
The Independent – United Kingdom
Feb 12, 2005
Stuart Price
The young Armenian violinist Sergey Khachatryan renews his association
with the BBC Philharmonic this evening, in an all-Russian programme
helmed by Gianandrea Noseda (left), the orchestra’s principal conductor
and a guest conductor at Valery Gergiev’s Kirov in St Petersburg. The
19-year- old is soloist in Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No 1,
a work written for the Jewish violinist David Oistrakh in 1948 that
remained unperformed while Stalin was alive; its quoting of Jewish
melodies was a comment on the anti-semitism of the Soviet state.
The concert opens with Shostakovich’s orchestration of the Prelude
to Mussorgsky’s unfinished opera, Khovanshchina, and concludes with
Scriabin’s Symphony No 3, The Divine Poem. In a talk at 6.30pm, the
Independent’s Lynne Walker is in conversation with the music writer
David Nice about the work of Scriabin.
Bridgewater Hall, Lower Mosley St, Manchester (0161-907 9000) tonight,
7.30pm, pounds 7-pounds 28

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
February 8, 2005, Tuesday
NEWS FEATURE: Armenian genocide row as Germany confronts Auschwitz
By Leon Mangasarian, dpa
Berlin
A row has erupted in Germany over alleged pressure by a Turkish
diplomat which caused removal of the Armenian genocide from school
curriculums just as Germany held high profile ceremonies marking the
Auschwitz death camp liberation anniversary last month. It all began
when Turkey’s Consul in Berlin, Aydin Durusay, raised the issue of
the 1915 Armenian massacres with leaders of Brandenburg – the only
one of Germany’s 16 federal states, which described the killings as
“genocide” in its school curriculum. Most European and U.S.
historians say up to 1.5 million Christian Armenians were killed by
Moslem Ottoman Turks during World War I and that this was a genocide.
Eight European Union (E.U.) parliaments including France and the
Netherlands – but not Germany – have passed resolutions declaring the
deaths genocide. Turkey, however, firmly rejects the genocide label
and has long insisted far fewer Armenians died or otherwise succumbed
during World War I. More recently it has moderated its tone somewhat
and said the matter should be cleared up by a historical commission.
Over lunch at Potsdam’s exclusive “Villa von Haacke” restaurant,
Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck and his education
minister swiftly agreed to Durusay’s request to eliminate references
on Armenians in history classes, said news magazine Der Spiegel.
“Naturally the whole thing came out and just in the week the
liberation of Auschwitz was being commemorated – Platzeck and his
education minister disgraced themselves,” said the Frankfurter
Allgemeine, Germany’s conservative paper of record. Education
Minister Holger Rupprecht, however, defended the decision.
Brandenburg officials say a reworked curriculum will list a series of
genocides as examples. “Mention (of the genocide) was taken out
because both the premier and myself regarded it as a mistake to only
name the Armenians as a single example for such an explosive theme as
genocide. Turkey naturally reacted allergically,” said Rupprecht in a
Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten newspaper interview. But the
controversy swiftly took on an international angle with the angry
Armenian Ambassdor to Germany, Karine Kazinian, due to meet with
Platzeck later this week. A German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman,
Sabine Stoehr, declined to comment directly on the affair or on
whether the German government agreed that the 1915 killings of
Armenians amounted to a genocide. “Our view is that coming to terms
with the past is naturally very important but it’s an issue between
Armenia and Turkey,” said Stoehr. German Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer visited Armenia last year and made a stop at Yerevan’s
genocide memorial. Stoehr said his only official comment at the
memorial had been: “Reconciliation is the basis for a common future.”
A Turkish embassy spokesman in Berlin would not comment on the
discord in Brandeburg other than to stress the initiative came from
the Turkish consulate for the region – not from the embassy itself.
The man at the centre of the dispute, Brandenburg’s Prime Minister
Platzeck, is a member of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social
Democrats (SPD). Schroeder is a top supporter of Turkey’s bid to join
the European Union. Any issue which impacts on Turkey is tricky for
Berlin given that Germany has almost two million resident Turks who
comprise by far the country’s biggest minority. Many Turks in Germany
are poorly integrated and unemployment rates for Turkish youths are
high. And there is another angle: Germany’s own historic link to the
killing of the Armenians. As Huberta von Voss, the editor of a new
book on Armenian history and contemporary affairs notes: Germany has
“moral responsibility” for the Armenian genocide because Berlin was
allied with the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. “Many
German politicians are absorbed with the Holocaust … they don’t
have the strength for another genocide,” said von Voss in an
interview. Wolfgang Gust, a former correspondent for the news
magazine Der Spiegel, says in a chapter of the book titled “Partners
in Silence” that “German officers played an important role in the war
of destruction against the Armenians.” The involvement of Germans
ranged from diplomats failing to protest the massacres, to officers
taking part in executions of Armenians and the mass expulsion of
women and children who died in the Syrian desert, says Gust who is
compiling an archive of German Foreign Ministry documents on the
genocide available at Von Voss’s book dismisses
Turkish arguments that the killing of Armenians did not amount to
genocide. “The research has already been done. We do not even need
the Ottoman archives to be opened – the evidence is overwhelming,”
she said, adding: “Don’t pretend the Armenian genocide is a matter of
opinion. It’s a fact.” With Turkey gearing up to start negotiations
in October aimed at E.U. membership, von Voss warned that failure to
address the Armenian genocide could severely harm Ankara’s chances.
The parliament of the Netherlands, which only passed its Armenia
genocide resolution last December, did so in part due to anger that
the issue was left out of the formal E.U. decision to open accession
talks with Ankara, she noted. Turkey is not expected to join the E.U.
for 10 to 15 years and will only be able to do so if all 25 current
member states give it a green light. dpa lm ms