Author: Emil Lazarian

Armenian Assembly of America
1140 19th Street, NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-393-3434
Fax: 202-638-4904
Email: [email protected]
Web:

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 7, 2007
CONTACT: Karoon Panosyan
E-mail: [email protected]

SENATOR DURBIN HOLDS HEARING ON "GENOCIDE AND THE RULE OF LAW"
Armenian Assembly Calls for Strengthening International Safeguards
and for Educational Reforms in Turkey

Washington, DC – The Armenian Assembly on Monday called on Congress to
strengthen international legal protections against genocide and its
denial in testimony submitted for a Senate hearing on "Genocide and the
Rule of Law."

"We commend Chairman Durbin and his colleagues for establishing this
historic subcommittee, and echo Chairman Durbin’s praise for full
Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy’s vision in creating this
Subcommittee," said Executive Director Bryan Ardouny.
"Assistant Democratic Leader Durbin has a long-standing record in
support of human rights issues, including affirmation of the Armenian
Genocide," continued Ardouny.

The Assembly’s testimony, submitted to the first-ever Senate Committee
on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, noted that
the law was silent in 1915 when hundreds of thousands of Armenians were
sent on death marches, subjected to massacres and starved to death in
the parched desert.

The testimony said in part: "from the time of its founding in 1972, the
Armenian Assembly supported Senator William Proxmire’s unremitting
campaign to persuade the Senate to approve implementing legislation
enabling the U.S. adoption of the U.N. Genocide Convention."

The Assembly encouraged the Subcommittee to actively generate and
introduce new mechanisms to better protect potential victims from future
genocides and to improve the U.S. record on genocide prevention.

"[A]ffirmation of history by our lawmaking institutions is the best hope
available to respond to the power of denial with the decency of the law
and the principles that protect and defend basic human rights," stated
Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny.

The Assembly’s testimony also noted that "Turkey is the only country in
the world where speaking the truth about the Armenian Genocide is
regarded as a prosecutable offense," and pointed out that Hrant Dink,
the Armenian journalist and citizen of Turkey who was assassinated, had
been prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which
restricts citizens of Turkey from challenging their government’s
distortions and denials of historical facts.

The Assembly also called upon Turkey to pay serious attention to the
plea of the Armenian patriarch of Istanbul, His Beatitude Mesrop II
Mutafyan, who called for an end of the stigmatization of Armenians by
the Turkish educational system and for the reform of school curricula.
Ardouny stated that, "The application of law should not be limited to
prosecution after the crime has been committed. The laws on public
education are where prejudice is averted and the environment of
tolerance first is instilled."

The hearing, which was presided over by Chairman Richard Durbin (D-IL),
also included remarks by Department of Justice Deputy Assistant Attorney
General Sigal Mandelker, Canadian Senator Lieutenant General Romeo A.
Dallaire, actor and activist Don Cheadle and American University
Professor Diane F. Orentlicher. Some 14 organizations also submitted
testimony, including the Armenian National Committee of America, Amnesty
International and Save Darfur, among others.

The Armenian Assembly of America is the largest Washington-based
nationwide organization promoting public understanding and awareness of
Armenian issues. It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt membership organization.

###
NR#2007-028

Attached is the full text of the Armenian Assembly’s Testimony:

The Armenian Assembly of America
Testimony Regarding
Genocide and the Rule of Law
Submitted by Bryan Ardouny, Executive Director
Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee of the
Senate Judiciary Committee
February 5, 2007

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Coburn and members of the Subcommittee, the
Armenian Assembly of America is pleased to offer testimony at today’s
hearing on "Genocide and the Rule of Law."

The Armenian Assembly of America applauds the creation of the first-ever
Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law and commends Chairman Durbin
for making this hearing on "Genocide and the Rule of Law" a priority. It
is a testament to the importance that the United States places on the
respect for fundamental human rights. The work of the Subcommittee in
examining past crimes against humanity to draw lessons learned to
prevent future atrocities is further testament to this principle. It is
clear that the existing international legal framework as well as the
U.S. record on genocide prevention is insufficient. We hope this
Subcommittee actively generates and introduces new mechanisms to better
protect potential victims from future genocides and to improve the U.S.
record on genocide prevention. The Armenian Assembly and the entire
Armenian-American community stand ready to help in these efforts.

As we reflect on the continuing problem of genocide, certainly the 20th
century stands out as one marred by mass killings on a scale never
before seen in history. From the Armenian Genocide at the turn of the
century, which the world easily forgot but for Adolf Hitler, who
infamously invoked it by saying: "Who, after all, speaks today of the
annihilation of the Armenians?" as he unleashed the horrors of World War
II and the Holocaust – to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the
atrocities in Rwanda, and now in the 21st century, the decimation of the
population of Darfur, the trail of crimes against humanity painfully
continues.

The absence of international law to hold the perpetrators of the
Armenian Genocide accountable was dishearteningly evident at the end of
World War I. But for a brief series of domestic trials in Turkey, which
were too soon discontinued, the organizers of the Armenian atrocities
avoided responsibility and escaped judgment. This very lack of
accountability to one’s own nation and to the international community
for having committed mass atrocities propelled a true giant in the
defense of human rights, Raphael Lemkin, to ask why a murderer may be
charged for a single crime, while a mass murderer is excused. It would
take one more genocide for mankind to find the sense of outrage that is
now embodied in the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide, of which the United States is a signatory.

In fact, the Armenian Assembly of America was part of the coalition of
organizations headed by the American Bar Association advocating for the
U.S. adoption of the U.N. Genocide Convention. From the time of its
founding in 1972, the Armenian Assembly supported Senator William
Proxmire’s unremitting campaign to persuade the Senate to approve
implementing legislation enabling the U.S. adoption of the Convention.
The Armenian Assembly had the honor then of giving testimony in
committee and in writing, as part of the commitment of the
Armenian-American community to doing its share in creating greater
awareness of the danger of genocide.

The law was silent in 1915 when Armenians by the hundreds of thousands
were sent on death marches, subjected to massacres, and starved to death
in the parched desert. While the law was silent, leading voices of
conscience in the United States and elsewhere around the world were far
more vocal. Newspapers across America carried chilling accounts under
headlines such as "Armenians Are Sent to Perish in the Desert" and
"1,500,000 Armenians Starve" (New York Times, August 18, and Sept. 5,
1915, respectively). In turn, America’s diplomatic representatives in
the Ottoman Empire performed an extraordinary service by recording their
eyewitness accounts and sending them to the Department of State and the
President. Their horror and indignation prompted U.S. Ambassador Henry
Morgenthau, with the approval of the State Department, to appeal to
American humanitarians to respond to the crisis in the Middle East. At a
time when relief agencies were non-existent, the U.S. Senate called upon
the American people to rescue the survivors of the Armenian Genocide. A
resolution adopted by the Senate on February 9, 1916, reads in part:

Whereas the people of the United States of America have learned with
sorrow of this terrible plight of great numbers of human beings [several
hundreds of thousands of Armenians in need of food, clothing, and
shelter] and have most generously responded to the cry for help whenever
such an appeal has reached them: Therefore be it

Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That,
in view of the misery, wretchedness, and hardships which these people
are suffering, the President of the United States be respectfully asked
to designate a day on which the citizens of this country may give
expression to their sympathy by contributing to the funds now being
raised for the relief of the Armenians in the belligerent countries.

Further, in 1919 the Senate incorporated the agency called Near East
Relief for the express purpose of providing for the care of orphans and
widows and to promote the welfare of those rendered destitute by "the
cruelties of men."

Against the background of overwhelming evidence that would have been
sufficient to prosecute any number of the criminals involved in the
Armenian Genocide, today the Armenian-American community instead
struggles against the unremitting forces of denial that want to bury the
past, distort history, and erase the memory of this crime against
humanity. To quote Professor Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University, who
personally confronted the problem in court, "Denial of genocide is the
final stage of genocide; it is what Elie Wiesel has called ‘a double
killing.’ " It seeks to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the
perpetrators.

Descendents of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide in their
respective countries of residence have appealed to their governments to
stop this denial and to re-affirm the historic record on its occurrence.
For them, as for us in the Armenian Assembly of America, the affirmation
of history by our lawmaking institutions is the best hope available to
respond to the power of denial with the decency of the law and the
principles that protect and defend basic human rights.

Denial also subverts the essence of the rule of law. It is a form of
violation, a violation of the right to honor the memory of the victims
of genocide without facing the abuses and indignity of denial. For this
very reason the Armenian-American community with every Congress has
urged legislators to re-affirm this history, and most especially the
very honorable American record of humanitarian response to the Armenian
Genocide. Therefore, we remain deeply concerned that the Department of
State, despite the very evidence in its own archives, has consistently
opposed Congressional resolutions that properly identify the mass
killing of the Armenians as genocide. This policy is not consistent with
the American record on human rights and flies in the face of past and
current policy to expose those who commit atrocities and to bring them
to justice.

Most regrettably, Congress and the Department of State need to be
reminded that denial is not a problem of semantics alone. A mere two
weeks ago a terrible crime was committed in Turkey that reminded the
world how high can be the price of fighting denial.

Turkey is the only country in the world where speaking the truth about
the Armenian Genocide is regarded as a prosecutable offense. The
infamous Article 301 of the Turkish penal code coercively restricts the
freedom of expression and has been invoked in dozens of cases against
peaceful law-abiding citizens of Turkey who have taken a public position
challenging their government’s distortions and denials of historical
facts.

The new Turkish penal code, adopted by the Turkish legislature, as part
of its accession process to the European Union, and intended to
introduce reforms in Turkey, has clearly been shown to be a step
backward instead of progress forward.

It is extremely unfortunate that one of the most prominent figures of
the Armenian community in Turkey was prosecuted under Article 301. The
Turkish courts dismissed all other cases filed under Article 301 with
the exception of Hrant Dink, one of the most vocal advocates of human
rights and tolerance in Turkey.

For mere mention of the Armenian Genocide he was hauled to court and
found guilty in 2005. His very public prosecution in the courts and in
the Turkish media made him a target of extremists. Now he is dead,
assassinated in front of the office of the newspaper he founded, a
newspaper he published in Armenian and Turkish to foster understanding
and dialogue among those two communities.

In a country of 71 million people, the representative of the Armenian
minority (approximately 60,000) in Turkey, which numbers less that a
tenth of one percent of the population, the remnant of a people once
counted at over 2 million, happens to be the individual meted punishment
and public condemnation for speaking about events in history that
occurred more than 90 years ago.

Clearly, the law in Turkey violates the very spirit of what the law is
supposed to be, the instrument by which society protects its citizens,
the guarantee by which fundamental freedoms are protected, the
institution that looks after the safety and security of everyone of its
constituents.

Here the rule of law has been turned upside down by Article 301, abused
by prosecutors and judges to impose an authoritarian conformity adhering
to extreme and intolerant forms of nationalism, and applied in a manner
that targeted the bravest champion of democratic freedoms to the point
of exposing him and delivering him as the victim of a ruthless assassin.

Article 301 of the Turkish penal code has become a painful reminder of
the abuses of the law that allowed genocide to be committed in 1915,
much as it became the propellant that added the name of so distinguished
a journalist, a figure honored everywhere for his courage and decency,
to the list of victims of hate, racism, chauvinism, and extremism.

Many in Turkey condemned the murder of Hrant Dink. A reported 100,000
marched at his funeral, an outpouring of grief over the demise of one
man and a statement of public concern for the ominous dangers
threatening democracy and free speech in Turkey. Yet just weeks after
this act of solidarity, a different set of pictures has emerged from
Turkey, of police officers lining up to be photographed with the
assailant (a Turkish flag held between his hands), of crowds in stadiums
holding banners and chanting slogans with messages opposed to the
peaceful rally that carried Hrant Dink to his gravesite.

Hrant Dink did not break the law, as we understand the law. He believed
in the freedom of speech, and he wanted to speak freely. He believed in
the freedom of the press, and he wanted to publish freely. He believed
in the freedom of expression, and he wanted Turks and Armenians to
communicate without rancor. He needed the protection of the law, but did
not receive it. Hrant Dink did not violate the law. Rather, the law
failed Hrant Dink.

The rule of law means more than enforcement. It means respecting the
spirit of the law as the law was meant to be. By the murder of a single
person, or the slaughter of one and a half million, genocide and the
denial of genocide offends the spirit of the law and calls for justice,
whether from two weeks ago, two years ago, or 92 years ago.

The Armenian Assembly of America calls upon Congress to consider and
introduce measures that strengthen international legal protections
against genocide and to do the same regarding the denial of genocide.

The Armenian Assembly of America also calls upon Turkey to pay serious
attention to the plea of the Armenian patriarch of Istanbul, His
Beatitude Mesrop II Mutafyan, who called for an end of the
stigmatization of Armenians by the Turkish educational system and the
reform of school curricula.

The application of the law should not be limited to prosecution after
the crime has been committed. The laws on public education are where
prejudice is averted and the environment of tolerance first is
instilled. The U.N. Genocide Convention did not call for punishment
alone. It aspired for the prevention of genocide. Prevention, whether of
a single crime, or atrocities on the scale of genocide, starts with
education. So does the rule of law.

###

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

For Immediate Release

February 7, 2007

U.S.-Armenia Public Affairs Committee (USAPAC)
1518 K Street, NW, Suite M
Washington, DC 20005
Contact: Ross Vartian
Telephone: 202-783-0530

Administration’s Untenable Budget Request for Armenia and
Azerbaijan

Washington DC – USAPAC announced its opposition to the massive cut in
economic assistance to the Republic of Armenia and the asymmetrical
military aid request in favor of Azerbaijan over Armenia as recently
proposed in the Administration’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 budget request.

"Given Armenia’s successful performance in market reforms and
democratization and the significant role that U.S. bilateral assistance
has played in making these advances possible, our organization believes
that Congress will reject the Administration’s call for a near fifty
percent reduction over the previously allocated amount to Armenia,"
said Executive Director Ross Vartian. "Moreover, it is unfortunate
that the Administration appears to justify this cut by counting the
MCA grant against Armenia."

"Despite numerous rejections by Congress on previous attempts and
the military parity agreement for Armenia and Azerbaijan made by the
Administration as part of the waiver for Section 907 of the Freedom
Support Act, it has again requested an unequal amount of military
assistance for both countries," stated Vartian.

The FY 08 budget contains $4.3 million for Azerbaijan and only
$3 million in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) for Armenia while
simultaneously calling for $1 million for Azerbaijan compared to
$300,000 for Armenia in International Military Education and Training
(IMET) assistance.

"Once again the Administration has also requested nothing for Nagorno
Karabakh. Were it not for Congress mandating such assistance since
1998, Karabakh would be the only area of the South Caucasus precluded
from U.S. aid. "Congress will once again correct the Administration’s
exclusion of Nagorno Karabakh," predicted Vartian.

Even more troubling is the fact that this military aid and the
allocation provided for the Caspian Sea Initiative program can also
be used against Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. Azerbaijan’s President
repeatedly boasts that his country’s military expenditures will soon
exceed the total annual budget of Armenia and continues to warn that
he will launch another war should Azerbaijan’s demands not be met in
the Karabakh negotiating process.

"Under these circumstances, it is irresponsible for the U.S. to
propose asymmetrical FMF and IMET funding and also to continue the
Caspian program," said Vartian. "This in effect enables Azerbaijan’s
destabilizing militarization. Our nation’s assistance to Azerbaijan
would be much better spent on battling corruption and promoting
economic reform and democracy considering that nation’s rankings in the
annual studies performed by the Heritage Foundation and Transparency
International."

"USAPAC will work closely with Congress to increase Armenia’s bilateral
allocation and reinstate military assistance parity," added Vartian.

Azerbaijan was ranked 107th out of 157 countries in the Heritage
Foundation/Wall Street Journal’s 2007 Index of Economic Freedom.

Similarly, Azerbaijan was rated

130th out of 163 nations in the 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index
conducted by Transparency International.

As has been previously reported by Bertelsmann Transformation Index and
a myriad of other news sources and publications, democratic transition
in Azerbaijan has progressed only marginally. Previous elections,
including the presidential elections of 1993, 1998 and 2003; and
parliamentary elections in 1995 and 2000, were rated by Western
observers as thoroughly undemocratic, have only reinforced existing
conditions.

Various committees have begun holding hearings in the House of
Representatives and Senate to review the Administration’s FY 08 budget
request. The Foreign Operations Subcommittee on Appropriations will
commence drafting the Foreign Operations spending measures later
this year.

The U.S.-Armenia Public Affairs Committee is a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt and
not-for-profit organization established to advance Armenian-American
interests.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

OBITUARY: AI BEZZERIDES: SCREENWRITER VICTIM OF THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST, HE IS RENOWNED FOR THREE CLASSIC AMERICAN FILM NOIRS
Ronald Bergan

The Guardian – United Kingdom
Feb 06, 2007

In 2005, two feature-length documentaries appeared: they were Buzz,
and The Long Haul of AI Bezzerides, and they were built around the
reminiscences of a fragile nonagenarian in a woollen cap, filmed at
his modest home in Southern California. On camera, AI (Albert Isaac)
Bezzerides, who has died aged 98, recalled his Armenian mother and
Greek father; the way he put himself through college by driving trucks,
like his father, and doing other tough jobs; his friendships with
William Faulkner, William Saroyan, Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum,
and the period from 1942 to 1959, when he was one of Hollywood’s
top screenwriters.

Although Buzz, as he was known, scripted war films and westerns,
his main claim to fame were his screenplays for three classic film
noirs: Jules Dassin’s Thieves’ Highway (1949), Nicholas Ray’s On
Dangerous Ground (1952) and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955),
each featuring hard-boiled disillusioned loners, archetypal anti-heroes
of the genre.

Bezzerides was born in Ottoman Turkey, and moved to America with his
parents before he was two. He never forgot his proletarian roots nor
his Balkan heritage. There is the Greek immigrant trucker Nick "Nico"
Garcos (Richard Conte) in Thieves’ Highway; the Greek small farmer
also called Nick Garcos (George Tobias) in Juke Girl (1942); a Greek
deep-sea diving father (Gilbert Roland) and son (Robert Wagner) in
Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953) and Nick, the Greek motor mechanic
(‘Va-va-voom – pow!’ is his pet phrase) in Kiss Me Deadly, who is
crushed under a car. The Angry Hills (1959), starring Robert Mitchum,
is set in Greece during the second world war.

Bezzerides dropped out of the University of California at Berkeley,
where he was studying electrical engineering, because he wanted to be
a writer. He was working as an engineer for the Los Angeles Department
of Water and Power when his novel, Long Haul (1938), was turned into
the Raoul Walsh film They Drive by Night (1940), with George Raft and
Humphrey Bogart as struggling wildcat truck-driving brothers hauling
California produce on long distances.

It was only after Warner Bros paid him $2,000 for the rights to his
novel and put him under contract as a $300-a-week screenwriter that
Bezzerides discovered that a script based on his book had already
been written by Jerry Wald.

"I grabbed their offer so I could quit my putrid career and become
a writer," he explained.

His first Warner Bros screenwriting was Curtis Bernhardt’s Juke Girl
which, despite its title, was an impassioned plea for the rights
of migrant workers, led by Ronald Reagan, in his more liberal days,
and Ann Sheridan, in the title role. "Look bud, every time a freight
train shakes itself, fleas like you come hopping out" is her initial
reaction to itinerant farm worker Reagan.

Bezzerides saw out his Warner Bros contract in wartime by writing
additional dialogue for a number of the studio’s propagandistic war
films such as Action in the North Atlantic (1943) with Bogart as a
heroic first officer. The climax shows Bogart and his men greeted
by cheering Russians, a sequence which became an embarrassment for
Warners during the paranoid cold-war era. The screenplay was credited
to John Howard Lawson, who was blacklisted in 1948 and imprisoned for
not testifying in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Jules Dassin also fell victim to the HUAC after directing Thieves’
Highway, as did Robert Rossen, who co-wrote Desert Fury (1947) with
Bezzerides. Buzz survived the blacklist, but was put on a grey list,
meaning that he was continually at risk, he was not able to get top
salaries and was constantly under threat from producers who exploited
him. Prior to the dark days, Desert Fury was rare, not only for being
one of the few films noirs in Technicolor, but a delirious melodrama
which hinted at homosexual desires (Wendell Corey for his crooked
boss John Hodiak).

Thieves’ Highway was based on Bezzerides’ novel Thieves’ Market,
published in the same year as the film, written out of the author’s
youthful experiences as a Californian trucker. Independent trucker
"Nico" Garcos (Conte) soon lands in the brutal and crooked underworld
of the produce markets.

Nico: "Hey, do you like apples?" Rica (Valentina Cortese as an Italian
hooker whom Nico says resembles "chipped glass"): " Everybody likes
apples, except doctors." Nico: "Do you know what it takes to get an
apple so you can sink your beautiful teeth in it? You gotta stuff
rags up tailpipes, farmers gotta get gypped, you jack up trucks with
the back of your neck, universals conk out. . ." Rica: "I don’t know
what are you talking about, but I have a new respect for apples."

During the 1950s, Bezzerides, now a writer for hire, delivered Sirocco
(1951) starring Bogart as a world-weary expatriate gun-running in
Syria in 1925, and On Dangerous Ground, which saw Buzz back on more
satisfying noir territory.

Robert Ryan is a thuggish cop hovering on the brink of a nervous
breakdown, who ends up falling in love with the blind sister (Ida
Lupino) of the killer he is after. As Lupino tells him, "Sometimes
people who are never alone are the loneliest."

However, the peak of Bezzerides’ achievement was the cryptic
screenplay for Kiss Me Deadly, a multi-layered film noir that used a
Mickey Spillane pulp novel as the basis for a gripping allegory of
1950s America. "I was given the Spillane book and I said, ‘This is
lousy. Let me see what I can do’," Bezzerides recalled. "So I went
to work on it. I wrote it fast because I had contempt for it . . . I
tell you Spillane didn’t like what I did with his book. I ran into
him at a restaurant and, boy, he didn’t like me."

What Bezzerides did was turn the novel around, making Spillane’s
private-eye hero Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) into a narcissistic bully.

Hammer: "I bet you were out with some guy who thought ‘no’ was a
three-letter word."

Christina (Cloris Leachman): "You have only one real lasting
love." Hammer: "Now who could that be?" Christina: "You. You’re one of
those self-indulgent males who thinks about nothing but his clothes,
his car, himself."

And later, Hammer: "You’re never around when I need you." Velda
(Maxine Cooper): "You never need me when I’m around."

A year before the director Robert Aldrich died in 1983, he rang
Bezzerides.

"He wanted to tell me that he had just re-read my script for Kiss
Me Deadly.

When I asked why, Aldrich told me, ‘I wanted to see how I could’ve shot
it in three weeks. You know what? It was all there in the script.’"

In the 1960s, he turned very successfully to television, writing
episodes of The Virginian (1962) as well as creating the Barbara
Stanwyck television series The Big Valley (1965-69), for which he
wrote around 100 episodes, though he complained that its ethnic
richness was diminished by the producers.

Bezzerides, who claimed, "I was never part of the picture people. I
just wrote," is survived by his son and daughter from his first
marriage, and a daughter from his second to the screenwriter Silvia
Richards, who died in 1999.

Albert Isaac ‘AI’ Bezzerides, screenwriter and novelist, born August
9 1908; died January 1 2007

UGLY SIDE OF A BLACK SEA CITY OBSESSED WITH THE BEAUTIFUL GAME
By Vincent Boland

FT
February 8 2007 02:00

One evening last week, as a snowstorm arrived from the Black Sea to
envelop the Huseyin Avni Aker stadium, the people of Trabzon had
something to celebrate. Trabzonspor, their beloved football team,
earned a deserved 1-0 victory in the quarter-final of the Turkish
FA Cup.

The win lightened the mood in this city of 500,000, on the coast
of north-eastern Turkey. Bars and restaurants filled up despite
the atrocious weather. Post-match analysis dominated the local
airwaves. The team has to travel south to Gaziantep later this month to
play the second leg, and qualification is not assured. But the victory
was at least a distraction, because these are bizarre times in Trabzon.

Since the murder in Istanbul on January 19 of Hrant Dink, a
Turkish-Armenian journalist, and of Andrea Santoro, an Italian Roman
Catholic priest, at his church not far from the Trabzon stadium a
year ago this week, Turkey’s gaze has turned on this city as never
before. Anguished that the chief suspect in each case was a teenage
boy from this city, Turks have only one question: what is the matter
with Trabzon?

In their search for answers, experts have seized on the city’s alleged
status as a hotbed of ultra-nationalism and ultra-Islamism, the fiery
nature of Black Sea Turks, the rise of organised crime and gun culture
(a sign in the arrivals hall at the airport reminds people to collect
their guns), and educational under-achievement.

There is substance to these arguments, but anecdotal evidence
suggests Trabzon is no more nationalist or conservative than other
Turkish cities.

And these are symptoms, not causes. Trabzon’s problem, many here say,
is economic decline and social stagnation.

Other cities in Anatolia – especially Ankara, Kayseri and Konya –
are booming and vibrant places where people are flocking to live. But
the economic revival that Turkey has enjoyed since 2002 seems to have
passed Trabzon by.

There may be no better barometer of that decline than Trabzonspor,
the fading giant of Turkish football. The city’s self-image is
wrapped up in the club, as if it were a national team representing
an independent republic.

"Half of Trabzon’s brain is Trabzonspor," says Sadan Eren, president
of the chamber of commerce.

Selahattin Kose, vice-rector of Black Sea Technical University,
laments: "We have seven newspapers and five television channels in
Trabzon, and 90 per cent of what they cover is football." Karadeniz,
a local paper, devoted nine of its 24 broadsheet pages to football on
the day of the Gaziantepspor match. Another paper had seven reporters
at the game.

A football club cannot be held responsible for the emergence of
murderous teenagers. But Trabzonspor’s waning fortunes – it won
six league titles between 1976 and 1984 but is now flirting with
relegation from the Super League – are part of the psychological
make-up of the city. They add to the sense of grievance of a part
of Turkey that once believed itself able to compete with Istanbul,
at least in footballing terms. This puts Trabzon out of step with
modern Turkey. The city is not only hurting from a failing local
economy dependent on agriculture. As a port it has felt the impact
of declining maritime traffic in this part of the Black Sea. Strung
out on a narrow strip of land stretching many kilometres from east
to west and hemmed in by 2,000m-high mountains to the south and by
the sea to the north – from which its inhabitants are cut off by a
new highway – the city feels cramped and brooding.

It seems to have no horizon. "It’s hard work living in Trabzon,"
says Volkan Canalioglu, the mayor.

Trabzon has its attractions: spectacular landscapes, forests and an
active cultural life. An Armenian play has been running every Friday
at the city’s Arts Theatre for the past two months. But the obsession
with football seems incurable. Ahmet Sefik Mollamehmetoglu, a local
journalist, says: "If the main institution in a city is a football
club, the main topic of conversation is football, not the city’s
economic and social problems."

Cenk Altug Atalay, Trabzonspor’s spokesman, does not agree that
the club is too dominant for a small city. But he appreciates the
umbilical link between the two. "It’s true that people here live for
Trabzonspor," he says.

"Perhaps if we won more often, people might be more relaxed."

ARMENIAN CLAN IN RIDGWAY WINS RARE VISAS
By Nancy Lofholm

Denver Post, CO
Feb 7 2007

Denver Post file photo The Sargsyan family, Armenian natives living
in… (The Denver Post)

"1"Ridgway – Members of an Armenian family who fought deportation
for the past 2 1/2 years with the aid of their Ridgway neighbors have
won rare visas and are on the path to citizenship.

"We are euphoric," said Pete Whiskeman, a Ridgway businessman who
spearheaded the $150,000 fundraising effort to help the family in
this single-stoplight town of 4,000.

That money – along with an outpouring of community support – paid
the legal bills and drew political attention to the plight of the
five members of the Sargsyan family.

"I can’t even tell you in words," Nvart Idinyan Sargsyan said
Tuesday. "This is so incredible to finally be on the right side."

The family ran afoul of immigration laws and had been threatened with
deportation since the eldest daughter’s then-husband brought them to
the Ridgway area on student visas in 1999. Vaughn Huckfeldt, who the
family said had presented himself as a wealthy American minister in
their hometown of Yerevan, had allegedly bilked other Armenians by
promising to obtain visas for them, the family said.

The family was threatened by those who lost money after Huckfeldt
married Nvart, left Armenia and failed to deliver the visas, the
Sargsyans said.

The Sargsyans – parents, Susan and Ruben; daughter Meri; and sons Hayk
and Gevorg – quickly became valued members of the Ridgway community
after they arrived with a single dollar bill and the few possessions
they could carry. When Nvart divorced Huckfeldt in 2000, he turned
the family in for having improper visas.

The family was then victimized by an immigration attorney who has
since been disbarred.

As the family prepared for deportation in 2004, Whiskeman learned of
their plight. He began a fund drive that ranged from dollar donations
at a bake sale to $15,000 given by an anonymous out-of-state donor.

Ridgway students wrote letters to politicians, and more than 60
community members braved a winter storm in late 2004 to travel to
Aurora and rally support when the family was jailed at the Immigration
and Customs Enforcement detention center.

The family suffered numerous other setbacks in the fight for legal
residency, including the death of Nvart’s second husband, Max Noland,
in a construction accident.

Nvart moved to the Fort Collins area last year but said she still
considers Ouray County her home. Hayk and Gevorg are attending the
University of Colorado. Meri works for a Ridgway bank, and her parents
still work odd jobs around the community and are hoping to open an
Armenian restaurant.

Nvart plans to apply for citizenship when she is eligible in three
years. The other family members will be eligible to apply for permanent
residency in a year and for citizenship in five years.

The Sargsyans’ visas, granted on the basis of giving them relief from
"human trafficking," have been issued in only 629 cases since 2001.

Jeff Joseph, the immigration attorney who helped obtain the Sargsyans’
visas, said he has never handled another immigration case where the
federal government threw up so many roadblocks.

"It’s been a long battle," he said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN RESOLUTION BEFORE US CONGRESS COULD HARM TIES: TURKISH FM

NTV MSNBC, Turkey
Feb 7 2007

Gul queried whether Turkey’s losses of three million dead in the
First World War should be considered as genocide.

Guncelleme: 11:24 TSÝ 07 Þubat 2007 CarþambaWASHINGTON – If the US
Congress approved a resolution recognising the so-called Armenian
genocide, relations between Turkey and the US would be seriously
harmed, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said late Tuesday.

Gul said that the alleged massacre was not a political issue and as
such should not be allowed to undermine bilateral ties.

"I believe that the Turkey-the United States relations should not
be affected by such an issue," he said during an address to the US
National Press Club.

"This is not a political matter. I consider it a real threat to our
relations. If such a resolution will be approved, then why we support
each other?"

A resolution has been tabled with the US House of Representatives
calling for formal recognition of the so-called genocide committed
by the Ottoman Empire against its Armenian citizens during the First
World War. Turkey has always strenuously denied that any such genocide
took place.

"The events of 1915 constitute a tragic phase in the history of
Turks and Armenians who have co-existed peacefully for centuries,"
Gul said. "Earlier, Turkey proposed to Armenia to establish a joint
committee of historians to deal with the issue. We have already
opened our archives to researchers. We expect the same thing from
Armenia. However, Armenia has not given a response to our proposal yet.

–Boundary_(ID_T4/9utmvhORkQmtHKbhUMQ)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MATTHEW BRYZA W/TURKISH REPORTERS

CollectifVAN.org, France
Feb 7 2007

Mr. Bryza: The Foreign Minister’s visit comes in the midst of, and sort
of is at the highest level of a whole series of high level interactions
we’re having with Turkey now, and we have been. Look back to the
shared vision statement that was agreed when the Foreign Minister
was here back in June, I guess it was. In that document basically
we highlighted two sets of tasks. One set of tasks was to focus on
specific subjects and we can go through those in a little while. The
other set of tasks is to make sure we have a process underway to have
our various pieces of our governments following up on those specific
topics. So we do it at the working level and we do it at a very high
level as well. So the Foreign Minister’s visit here is pretty much,
besides a Prime Ministerial visit, the highest articulation of that
implementation of the shared vision statement.

But we had Undersecretary Burns just in Turkey, as you know, week
before last. That was a moment where we did the senior level review
of the whole process, and again we outlined in the shared vision
statement.

I guess what I’m trying to say is in terms of the process of
restrengthening US-Turkish relations at the official level, I think
we’re doing a good job in making sure we’ve got the communications
working together, making sure we have the same goals, and then
calibrating the tactics.

I still feel without any question, despite the complications we see
in US-Turkish relations and public opinion, I still feel confident,
we all do in fact feel confident that our official relations are
really strong and are moving in the right direction.

We have a real challenge ahead of us still on PKK, obviously, we
all know that. We know we have to deliver concrete results as I was
telling Kasim just the other day. We have to deliver. It’s not just
the Turkish military leaders or the Turkish political leaders that
are demanding concrete results, it’s the Turkish people that expect
it. The PKK is a serious terrorist threat to one of our most important
allies in the world so we’re obligated. But we’re also obligated to do
something against PKK by our own vision for Iraq and our own global
policy on terrorism. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a terrorist is a
terrorist is a terrorist. We have to eliminate havens for terrorists,
we are committed to doing so, and as our highest political leaders
have told Turkey’s highest political leaders, we will do it.

General Ralston is a remarkable military leader. I have been
surprised by how effectively he is able to work through our own
military bureaucracies, even though he’s retired, because he is
so respected by the career military. He’s one of the highest, most
effective and professional military officers I’ve ever encountered,
both internally, working within our system, and then diplomatically.

So all of that is a long way of saying there should be some concrete
results soon. There need to be, have to be, and I feel we’re actually
building some momentum. And again, as I was saying to Kasim just
the other day, if we don’t produce those results then I’ll have
no credibility with you. But more importantly, neither will our
government, so we’ve got to do it.

So I would presume that the Secretary and the Foreign Minister will
spend some time talking about the PKK, but I hope they’ll go well
beyond that when it comes to Iraq because we have so much more to
talk about on Iraq than just the PKK.

In the last couple of years we worked hard to improve our coordination
between our two governments on the ground in Iraq. We’ve tried to
make sure that our Ambassador and the Turkish Ambassador are having
regular contact, that we’re listening to each other, that the US side
is learning from Turkey’s extensive experience in Iraq over so many
years and decades and even centuries. I think that coordination is
working well.

I wasn’t here when (Turkish MFA Iraq Special Envoy) Oguz (Celikkol)
was here, (Defense Minister Vecdi) Gonul was here last week, but
I do try to see him any time I go to Turkey and I have sensed much
better coordination between our missions in Iraq than was the case
in the past.

Beyond Iraq, when it comes to the Middle East we are always
looking for ways, again, to work together with Turkey, to deepen
our understanding of the situation on the ground be it in Iran or
in Syria or in the Palestinian territories and to make sure we’re
moving in the same directions, and I think we are. You’ll probably
have specific questions to ask about that.

In Afghanistan where Turkey, as you know, has twice led ISAF, it’s
helping to run a PRT in Wardak Province, it’s pledged $100 million
for Afghan reconstruction. As we saw from the conference last week
the Secretary helped organize on Afghanistan, we want to make a new
rejuvenated push to provide the security assistance and the economic
assistance Afghanistan needs to rebuild and Turkey is a crucial
partner in that.

Turning to the economic side, we have a rich agenda right now with
Turkey. Just next week I’ll be traveling out with (EB) Assistant
Secretary Dan Sullivan to have our first EPC, Economic Partnership
Commission meeting in I guess two years. That’s way too long since
we’ve been able to pull that meeting together. It might be three years
even. I won’t go into all the items on that agenda, we can talk about
it if you wish to.

I just want to highlight one which is energy security. Energy —

Question: What is the date of that meeting?

Mr. Bryza: We’ll be there next Thursday evening, then Friday and
Saturday. Friday is the main day. So a week from today, the 9th,
10th and 11th.

Question: In Ankara?

Mr. Bryza: Yes, in Ankara. The 8th and 9th.

So on energy security, if you look back to US-Turkish relations in the
early `90s there wasn’t a whole lot to talk about in terms of strategic
partnership. I don’t think anybody was using that term in 1990. Then in
1999 we were saying US-Turkish relations are a strategic partnership.

There are two major things that happened during that period, maybe
three. One was Operation Northern Watch where we worked so well with
Turkey to provide security for the Kurdish populations in Northern
Iraq. Turkey was essential to that.

The second thing we did together was work with the international
financial institutions, especially the IMF, to help Turkey as it
implemented its reforms, to make sure that the IMF was there to help
Turkey as Turkey was reforming.

The third thing we did that was really substantial was our partnership
in Caspian energy which obviously meant Bakhu-Tblisi- Ceyhan which
many people thought would never happen, and meant the South Caucasus
gas pipeline which is about to open.

Today what we want to do is build on those pipelines, expand the
corridor that currently exists for natural gas and make it a major
one, a big one, a transit route that will help Europe diversify its
gas supply so that it doesn’t feel so much monopoly pressure from one
direction. Our goal is not to have a confrontation with GazProm, but
our goal is to increase competition, healthy commercial competition
which in the long run is good for everybody, including for GazProm
itself, by the way. The key to making all that work is helping the
Azerbaijani government work with investors to expand gas production
in Azerbaijan as quickly as possible to make sure gas is available to
fill the pipelines that will go from Turkey to Greece and Italy, as
well as an Abuko pipeline from Turkey to Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary
and Austria.

So that’s sort of the full realm, I think, of what will be on the
agenda for the Foreign Minister’s visit.

Question: What about Cyprus?

Mr. Bryza: They’ll probably touch on it, but as you know things have
quieted down quite a bit on Cyprus except for in the last couple
of days with the questions of the possible oil prospecting on the
Continental Shelf.

Frankly, that issue is not one I would think that merits at this
point attention by the Secretary of State and the Foreign Minister
of Turkey. We’re not party to that at all. That’s an issue for Turkey
to work through with the Republic of Cyprus.

In terms of the Cyprus question, it’s time now to implement the
agreement brokered by (United Nations) Undersecretary General
(Ibrahim) Gambari last July 8th on the island, which means soon Talat
and Papadopoulos will meet and then technical committees will begin
working through specific, everyday quality of life issues while at
the same time the two sides will work through substantive issues that
are pertaining directly to a comprehensive settlement. The Annan Plan
is something that isn’t, well it’s not formally on the table now but
it still has elements that are important, that reflect a lot of good
thinking, a lot of hard work, and that are promising, that will have
to be a foundation of a comprehensive settlement whenever we move
more rapidly toward a comprehensive settlement.

The port issue now seems quieter since the European Union decision.

Question: [Inaudible]?

Mr. Bryza: The so-called Armenian genocide, yes. What’s happening
with that? That will probably come up, yeah.

Our position on that is that our policy remains of course unchanged.

We don’t believe that political statements or diplomatic statements
are the appropriate way to resolve this issue of how to refer to these
horrible events of 1915. We all agree, I’m sure we all agree that
what happened was a horrible tragedy. It’s terrible. It’s an issue
that has so many sides, so many complicated angles, so many differing
points of view that politicians can’t do it justice by simply making
a determination. What has to happen from our perspective, what we
would like to see happen, is that learned people, everyday common
people, professors, philosophers, historians have a chance to sit
down and have a candid discussion over time for an extended period
that gets at the core of what happened and allows the societies of
Turkey and Armenia to reconcile themselves with their pasts and with
each other. You can’t do that through a political decision.

We also would like to see Turkish-Armenian relations normalize. I as
the Minsk Group co-chair for the United States totally understand
how complicated that is. I’m deeply sensitive to Nagorno Karabakh
and how that plays into this whole equation. Notwithstanding that
we would love to see movement toward an opening or a normalization
of the relations between Turkey and Armenia because that’s good for
everybody. It will be good for Turkish business people, it’s good
for regional stability, and it’s good for peace in the long run but
I understand how complicated it is.

Question: What could possible steps be on the part of Armenians and
Turks for that [inaudible]?

Mr. Bryza: Well Aliyah, as you well know, the Turkish government, the
Armenian government have talked about historical commissions. They’ve
talked about diplomatic discussions as well to normalize relations.

Then there’s the question now since the tragic murder of Hrant Dink,
about, an even more intensive discussion of Article 301. It’s hard for
the Turkish government simply to abolish Article 301 given political
realities. We understand that. But I think from our perspective it
would be a wonderful step if there no longer was this issue out there
of Article 301 that provides a pretext or a reason for people outside
of Turkey to criticize Turkey.

We are here as Turkey’s friend. I hope Turkey considers us one of its
closest friends in the world. In that spirit we want to do everything
we can for what we view as Turkey’s proud traditions of tolerance and
of co-existence, of all sorts of ethnic and religious communities. We
want the world, especially Europe, to understand what a strong record
Turkey has. Article 301 still makes that difficult. It has a magnetic
impact on thinking in Europe and gets everybody to focus just on that
issue rather than on all of the complex history of Turkey.

Question: Not on the Armenian genocide but on the PKK, you said that
you are, the US is obligated to do something on the PKK, that you’re
also obligated to do something against it because of your vision in
Iraq. So would you please fill in what concrete steps we are talking
about and why if this was your vision in Iraq what has changed? Why
are you feeling obliged to do it right now when the elections in
Turkey are getting closer?

Mr. Bryza: We’ve always felt obliged. Always. There is no change in
terms of our commitment. If you go back and read the statement that
President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and then Prime Minister Baroso
then of Portugal and President Aznar of Spain issued just a couple
of days before the Iraq war began you will see in it — it’s called
the Azores Declaration — one of the goals we outlined is that there
will be no haven for terrorists of any sort in Iraq. We meant the
PKK. I know, having been involved in the drafting of that document
what meant when we wrote that in there. We meant the PKK. So even
before any US troops set foot in Iraq that was our goal.

Question: You may say that, it sounds wonderful. It comes with such a
fantastic statement to the ears, but in reality it is something that
the US has not delivered.

Mr. Bryza: You’re right.

Question: That has created this enormous reaction toward the US
policies in the region, evoking the sense of [Sykes-Picot agreement].

So I’m just curious what has changed? What’s the new environment now
that you feel like you’re going to bring this into action now?

Mr. Bryza: Again, I’m trying to make the point that nothing has changed
in terms of what our commitment has been. What is changing, one thing
is that we over time have been able to get the Iraqi government to
a point where it now understands this is imperative, it has to happen.

Previously we had not been able to bring US forces to bear to resolve
or to eliminate the PKK problem in Iraq. Why? Number one, because the
solution is not only military. The Turkish military has been present
in Iraq for a decade. Long before the war there were Turkish troops
on the ground in Iraq. There were clashes. The problem wasn’t fixed.

Turkey has the most capable military in Europe. It wasn’t able to
fix the problem militarily. That’s not an excuse for no security
steps to be taken against the PKK, don’t get me wrong. But what I’m
getting at is it’s a very complicated issue, number one.

Number two, obviously US military forces and security forces have been
occupied with burning fires elsewhere in Iraq. One way to look at it
in a folksy way is that if your house is on fire and your neighbor’s
house is on fire you need to put out the fire in your house before
you can go take care of your neighbor’s house fire. Or in an airplane
they tell you before putting an oxygen mask on your child sitting
next to you, put it on your face first so you can function.

So for these last couple of years we’ve been working so hard to try
to get the situation under control in the rest of Iraq first.

Question: It’s even worse now.

Mr. Bryza: Yeah.

Question: The fire in Iraq in general is much worse now. So the fire
at home, your home, is even bigger now.

Mr. Bryza: It is even bigger, yeah. So what I’m saying is — That’s
a separate point. It’s true but a different point, Umit. Now we’ve
gotten to a point I think where we’ve gotten the Iraqi government to
a point where it realizes uh huh, we’ve got to do something.

We don’t want to be responsible. We can’t be responsible for fixing
this problem on our own because if we were to do so, if we were the
ones that were responsible, we would be undercutting the sovereignty
of the government of Iraq. If you do that then how do we maintain
the territorial integrity of Iraq if it’s the US that’s in charge of
fixing these problems on Iraq territory? So that’s a political reason,
so we’ve had to get the Iraqi government to do it.

Question: Are you saying that if you allow the Kirkuk Referendum to
go ahead, you’re going to put your signature to divide the country
into three, at least, different countries or nations, whatever you
name it. So do you agree with the Turkish vision in that?

Mr. Bryza: When the referendum in Kirkuk would take place is not
determined, right?

Question: It is determined in the Constitution. It will happen before
the end of this year.

Mr. Bryza: Or will it? Who knows if it will. Will it actually? I
don’t know if it will.

Question: What does the US think about Turkey’s position on it? Do you
agree with the Turkish assessment on Kirkuk? If the referendum goes
ahead it is going to be leveraged to divide the country or the Kurds.

Mr. Bryza: The way I would answer that is to say that our goal, as
President Bush just said, is to maintain a unified Iraq. Anything you
hear to the contrary, any pundits or political speculation, whether
they be people in power or out of power to the contrary, is false.

Our policy is to support a unified Iraq. We understand how sensitive,
how dangerous the situation in Kirkuk is.

The governments of the United States and Turkey and Iraq, and Baghdad,
I mean, share a common vision when it comes to Kirkuk in terms of
not wanting that situation to lead to the breakup of Iraq, right? And
wanting there to be a way to resolve the difficult property questions
and demographic issues that are what’s really fueling the political
fire in Kirkuk.

So on timing, et cetera, I don’t have anything else to say and if you
really want to get down into the details of that, talk to the Iraqi
people. But in general I can say we do share the Turkish society
and government’s vision that if Kirkuk is not managed properly it
can become a terrible problem that works against our shared goal of
maintaining a unified Iraq. That’s our goal. We’ve got to do that.

Question: On the PKK you said it is not only a military solution.

Keeping that in mind, when I talk to people in Ankara and Washington
lately I am getting the sense that indeed a military operation might
take place in the spring and with the consent of the US government.

Am I naïve to believe that? Is it still out of the question for the
US government or is it perhaps the sign they’re coming to an agreement
that may be a limited operation —

Mr. Bryza: You mean a Turkish military operation?

Question: Turkish, yes.

Mr. Bryza: You were never naïve. But that’s not something that we’re
really talking about at this point.

Our goal is to produce concrete results and preferably to have the
Iraqi government produce them, right? Because of what I said before.

We support Iraq’s territorial integrity. To do so the Iraqi government
has to be sovereign, it has to carry out its own functions on its
own territory. And frankly, if you’re a leader in Baghdad you have
no interest in PKK terrorists roaming through the country.

That’s a negative. Even if you’re (KRG President Masoud) Barzani or
(Iraqi President Jalal) Talibani, if you were still up in the north,
you know better than I do about the military clashes that ensued
between PKK and Kurdish groupings previously.

So there’s no desire in Baghdad to let this problem go on forever.

Our challenge is to focus and arrange, physically, mechanically get the
government of Iraq to a point where it can undertake these efforts. Of
course with our support. And all of this, obviously I’m not going to
give you a detailed answer to your question, but whatever happens has
to be done in a way that’s coordinated among all of us. The Turkish
government, the Iraqi government and the US government, let me put
it that way. But please don’t misinterpret that as either a green
light or a red light or a warning or an admonition or a statement of
approval of what you suggested, a Turkish unilateral action.

Question: My second question is about Makhmour (refugee camp). When
General Ralston was there he talked to the people in the camp and
asked them under what conditions they would go back to Turkey. They
said if there is an amnesty. There is a decision to close the camp.

There have been these discussions I think now two years ago between
the US and Turkey —

Mr. Bryza: Even longer.

Question: I’m wondering first of all if that working group or a
similar process of negotiations or talks will begin on the closing
of the Makhmour Camp, and what is your position of what Turkey can
do to persuade those in the camp to go back.

Mr. Bryza: Thank you.

We hope there will be trilateral discussions. Actually in a way,
quadrilateral, right? The government of Iraq, the government of Turkey,
the United States and the UNHCR. There is a pending agreement out there
that needs to be finalized. Turkey needs to provide its comments on
this document that’s co-drafted with the UNHCR. But so does Iraq. So
the next step ought to be that the parties come together, either they
sit down at a table together or if they just exchange information
and suggest edits to this agreement, then we can go forward even
further in closing Makhmour, but Makhmour is in the process of being
closed out, as General Ralston described. There were just actions
taken by the Iraqi government to confiscate weapons that were in
the camp. There’s a census that’s been conducted in the camp now as
well. These are all mechanical steps that need to transpire for the
camp to be closed down. Not because we say you have to go through
these steps, but this is what the UNHCR which has jurisdiction over
the camp has wanted to see happen, so that’s happening.

When it comes to the return of camp residents or other members of the
Kurdish population to Turkey yes, you’re right, as General Ralston
said, he was there, he did encounter a significant number of Turkish,
I guess former citizens, Turkish citizens of Kurdish ethnicity who
would like to return to Turkey. I don’t know exactly what it takes to
provide them the confidence that it’s "safe" to go back. I don’t know
what that is. I know how controversial an amnesty law would be. This
government would not suggest to any ally that they should turn the
other cheek and forget about terrorist crimes. Of course we would
never suggest that. If somebody has committed a terrorist crime they
should go through the normal judicial process, be prosecuted.

Investigated, prosecuted and the rule of law should proceed.

There’s a much more complicated question for people who are suspected
of or perhaps are or were members of the PKK who are not and were
never terrorist operatives. How do you deal with them? I don’t have
an answer to that. That’s up to the Turkish government to come up
with a way to resolve that problem.

What I can say is if the Turkish government does come up with a
mechanism like that, that will I think have a significant, maybe even
a dramatic impact in draining away the political or even physical
support for the PKK in Iraq. That’s very helpful. But that doesn’t
get away from our obligation or our need to produce other concrete
results on the ground in Iraq.

Question: Do I understand you right, you said you would like to see
the quadrilateral process begin again —

Mr. Bryza: Yes.

Question: — but there’s no decision?

Mr. Bryza: It’s sort of going along. The way this works is people
exchange papers, drafts, e-mails, it has to come to closure somehow.

And whether we force the coming to closure through an actual physical
meeting or whether working through embassies we just make it happen,
it just has to happen.

Question: I understand the US position is that Turkey should work
[inaudible] Iraqi government. Iraqis take care of problems, be they
PKK or other issues. Do you think, obviously Turkey does not invite
Mr. Talabani to Ankara and Turkey does not have a good relationship
with Mr. Barzani. Do you think this is helpful? Do you think it
could be a good thing for Turkey to engage more? Especially Turkish
[inaudible], have better outcome?

Mr. Bryza: Yeah. We do think it would be useful for the Turkish
government to engage even more with Kurdish regional leaders, but
with Kurdish regional leaders in the context of they being part of
the government of Iraq. The whole point is that we don’t want to do
anything that undermines the sovereignty of the central government in
Baghdad. So as far as we’re concerned, Barzani, sure he’s a leader of
the KDP, sure he’s the leader of the Kurdish region but he’s also a
member of the government of Iraq and we need always to consider him
in that regard. Or he’s an Iraqi official, let’s put it that way.

Just as the Governor of California is an American official. That’s
slightly different.

It’s useful in an operational way or in a practical way, for example,
for General Ralston and General Bashir to have interaction with
political leaders in the Kurdish area because there are so many
practical problems that need to be worked out to produce those concrete
results against the PKK I’ve been talking about. It’s a lot harder
to do if we don’t have that multilateral cooperation happening.

Question: The Cyprus government obviously angered Turkey with its
decision to have an agreement, a contract, having a contract with
Lebanese and Egyptians. It’s an internationally disputed area,
obviously. The United States is trying to find a resolution of the
problem there. Do you think was it timely on the part of Greeks to
pursue with that agreement? Is it helpful?

Mr. Bryza: You mean the Continental Shelf thing?

Question: Yes, the agreement with oil exploration. Was it timely? Was
it a wise move or a good move on the part of Greeks? Or it should
have been better if they delayed such actions after a resolution was
found for the dispute?

Mr. Bryza: It’s not really for me to assess whether the Greek
government’s decision was wise or unwise, but what I can say sitting
in the chair I sit in, also being our mediator on Cyprus, is that
any action that takes place that increases the level of emotionality
and political tension doesn’t help us get to the point where we
reduce tension and reduce emotion to the point that we can really
reinvigorate the Cyprus settlement process under UN auspices. So I
would hope that this issue will pass, will calm down, and that we
together will turn back to the UN process and implementation of the
Gambari Agreement from July 8th. That’s what I hope.

Question: I understand your [inaudible] about the [inaudible]
on the issue of PKK, but we know that President Bush gave
instruction to American Army [inaudible] without asking the Iraqi
authorities. And when your troops [inaudible] people all parts of
the Iraqi government. Maybe not [inaudible], but the Shiite and the
Kurdish ones [inaudible]. Is that a double standard? [Inaudible] with
the Iranians, you can arrest them, you can kill them, but without
asking Iraqi authorities; but on the other hand the terrorist PKK,
you called them terrorists, you know that they are, and you cannot
provide any instruction because you refer [inaudible] of Iraq.

Is that something, I think there is something wrong.

Mr. Bryza: That’s a very perceptive question, but my answer would be
no, there’s not a difference here.

Number one, when it comes to — I don’t know when the orders were
issued in terms of dealing with Iranians on the ground. There are
press reports —

Question: We know that they arrested them and that Iraqi authorities
protested.

Mr. Bryza: Yes. But what we don’t know is what other sorts of
arrangements may have been in place between us or the coalition and
various Iraqi authorities. I just don’t know the answer to that. I
don’t know. So what I’m saying is I don’t know the case that what we
did was totally against the wishes of the Iraqi government, but that’s
not that important. The difference here is that the Iranians are in
the midst of US forces, so we encounter them. If we encounter PKK
operatives we better arrest them as well, but we don’t encounter them.

We don’t have forces in the north. We don’t have them up there.

Question: With all due respect, sir, are you punishing the country
that’s behaving and loving its citizens to be killed by PKK terrorists
crossing the border from northern Iraq?

Mr. Bryza: I don’t understand your question.

Question: Because they do not intervene in the Iraqi theater? Because
they sit on their side, don’t cross the border. But the Iranians
are crossing the border, creating your, making your life much more
difficult in Iraq, so that you are taking an action against Iran. But
on the other side you are claiming to be an ally to Turkey and just
okay, they have to handle it.

Mr. Bryza: I don’t understand that point. Where is there a double
standard? Can you try it again?

Question: Can I [inaudible]? Does the United States need any PKK
attack to American troops for arresting them?

Mr. Bryza: No. Not at all.

Question: You need some encounterment with the PKK people in Iraq
for arresting them?

Mr. Bryza: No. It’s a question of the physical presence of where US
forces are. We do not have these concentrations of US troops in the
north. We’re not there. So we don’t come across PKK operatives the
way we come across these Iranians elsewhere in Iraq.

Question: But American troops arrested the Iranian in Irbil.

Mr. Bryza: It was in Irbil.

Question: It shows us that American troops may operate in north,
and just the first days of the occupation American forces attacked
and eliminated [inaudible] in north.

Mr. Bryza: Yes.

Question: Because [inaudible] terrorists. Yeah, he is terrorist. But
PKK also. So that American troops operated and are still operating if
necessary in northern Iraq, and they are operating against, they are
arresting Iranian people in northern Iraq, in Irbil. We know it is
[inaudible] PKK people [inaudible] or other places.

The question is the lack of encounter with the PKK in Iraq territory,
is the question? If PKK attacks, are you waiting for some kind of
literally attacks from PKK in order to —

Mr. Bryza: We’re not. No. That’s a good question. No, we’re not. We
are waiting to get the information that allows us to go after them
and there have been cases in the past where we’ve gotten information
and we’ve followed up on it, gone after them, and they weren’t there.

The operatives of the PKK weren’t there.

So we’ve been unsuccessful so far. I probably shouldn’t go beyond that
as to why we’re unsuccessful. I can’t really talk about why we were,
but we were unsuccessful. So we’ve got to be successful. We’ve got to
improve the flow of information for one thing. That means we’ve got
to get the right sources, to get the right sources, that gets back
to what I talked about before. We have to get the government of Iraq
more focused to make sure we get that information and we have to do
all of that information sharing and planning in close cooperation
with the government of Turkey as well, because the government of
Turkey can have information as well.

I can’t go beyond that because then I have to be talking about
intelligence operations.

Question: But you know that Turkish public opinion is very [inaudible]
about that every day, the relation of the action.

Fortunately [inaudible] PKK, fortunately. If one day they will decide
that we cannot trust them enough, [inaudible] decide to cut ceasefire,
break the ceasefire.

Although the ceasefire, the tension in the public opinion about
this PKK issue is very high. The tension in the circle of the
state operators also the same thing. So that the question is very
big and when you said that, the last time, [inaudible]. How can you
realize that they help people who might be [inaudible] and especially
[inaudible] to the electoral task, the campaign. So can you give some
specific means of [inaudible]?

Mr. Bryza: I wasn’t saying to Kasim just be patient. That’s not what
I was saying. What I was saying was if you’re patient a little while
longer you will see some concrete results. And General Ralston said
something similar today. He said something like, I didn’t read it but
I heard what he said, he said previously as a military man, right,
the use of force as a last resort. He didn’t say that today. He talked
about arrests today.

So when I said be patient I meant beyond our interview that we’re
having yesterday, or beyond this gathering here. We know something
has to happen quickly. Yes, the ceasefire may be lifted this spring.

Yes, you’re going through elections. Yes, there’s all this controversy
over the resolution in the US Congress. There is a lot of tension, all
coming together at the same moment in Turkey about this very issue. So
we know, you’ve got our attention and we’ve got to do something or
else you’ll have zero patience and we won’t have to deal just with
journalists but with the TGS —

Question: — about this question. I had an interview with General
Ralston two weeks ago. He was complaining about, he complained about
the comments of some people in Washington about PKK. Who are they?

Because they are saying, we agree with Turkish government an
[inaudible]? Who are they? What’s the problem?

Mr. Bryza: Obviously I don’t know exactly to whom General Ralston
was referring to in your conversation. But to try to put it in a
different way without naming names, of course, I can’t name names.

But the challenge of dealing with Iraq is bigger than obviously
anything this government is dealing with right now. And there are
endless tasks and in bureaucracies, and the US government is the
biggest bureaucracy in the world, it’s the most powerful organization
in the world, it’s got so many directions, so many moving parts,
people moving in all different directions and accomplishing what they
see as their discreet tasks.

If you are let’s say in charge of economic reconstruction in our
embassy in Baghdad, that’s what you focus on. If you’re in charge of
security at our embassy in Baghdad you worry about the quieting the
overall security situation with that burning house that I was talking
about before. If you’re in Washington dealing with Turkey, the top
priority is US-Turkish relations and worrying about what the impact
would be if there were what Yasamin was talking about, if there were
a Turkish incursion into Northern Iraq and how destabilizing that
could be for the whole region potentially. Somebody’s got to pull
all these pieces together and somebody has got to make sure there’s
a proper balance and a proper focus in our government, and then in
the Iraqi government as well which has all of its priorities. But
Ralston was talking about the US government.

So to integrate all that we have the Deputies Committee, the Principals
Committee, and on top of that all the President just to pull it all
together. The challenge is to make sure that when we’re working on
this problem over here, whatever it may be on the economics of Iraq,
we’re also spending enough time and devoting enough resources and
focusing enough effort on in this case the PKK problem. Getting the
huge, enormous, monstrous machine of the US government to stay focused
on the right problems at the right time requires a huge amount of
work and that’s what General Ralston is talking about.

What I was getting at before is that he is very effective at doing
that. He has such credibility, is so well regarded in the military
that he can get our folks on the ground in Iraq to say this is
urgent. You’ve got to go push the Iraqi government to drop what
they’re doing over here and focus on the PKK. That’s what he’s doing.

Question: You are encouraging Turkey to get into some cooperation
with Iraqi Kurds as well as Americans and the [inaudible] too.

Mr. Bryza: With the Iraqi government.

Question: Yeah. The thing is, I have heard many military or Turkish
military officials say that the PKK and Barzani are one and the same.

You say in some cases you pursue PKK terrorists, but you got some
leads but when your troops were there they were not there. And the
weapons surge in [inaudible]. Apparently the PKK people there had
been warned in advance and they kind of fled or whatever and the
weapons were cached or whatever. Who is doing that? Iraqi Kurds
apparently. Are they cooperating in the first place? Why don’t you
urge the Iraqi Kurds to cooperate with Turkey in the first place?

It’s their job as Iraqis to do that. Why don’t you push them in
[inaudible] this way.

Mr. Bryza: What makes you think we don’t?

Question: The results are clear.

Mr. Bryza: No. The fact that they don’t produce results doesn’t mean
we’re not pushing them, right?

Question: Okay, so that means you have no leverage on them.

Mr. Bryza: It doesn’t mean no leverage, it means we’ve got to keep
on pushing them and so far we haven’t been able to convince them to
do what they have to do. I agree with you, they need to do that and
we’ve been pushing them and we need to keep pushing them and push
them harder and get them to do it. I agree with you.

Question: The other thing is that unfortunately many people we talked
to including some officials don’t share your enthusiasm about General
Ralston’s performance. There are even some rumors that Turkey might
cancel its part of the mechanism. Many people have lost their faith
in trilateral. Do you think that can happen?

Mr. Bryza: Who cares what I think about that? You know Turkey. You
tell me.

Question: Well what happens if that happens? Is it hypothetical?

Mr. Bryza: It’s pretty hypothetical, yeah. I don’t think we’re going to
get to that. We better not, right? Look, if we don’t produce concrete
results, loss of faith in us overall is a natural consequence so we
have to produce the results. I don’t know what else to tell you. But
I don’t want to predict, I don’t want anyone to write about the US
official predicts that General Ralston is going to lose confidence
of Turkish officials. I don’t think that’s going to happen because
he’s so capable, but I take your point.

Question: You have been asked several times about this 50/50 issue,
[inaudible] and you [inaudible]. But I want to ask a question that
[inaudible] problem that Turkish society might become totally
anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Iraqi, anti-everything. The last
issue when we [inaudible] of the [inaudible] this reaction, all of this
discussion, et cetera. Do you think that this American and European
[inaudible] a position about [inaudible] of the issue like PKK or
[inaudible], et cetera, are not helping this kind of anti-Westernism or
anti-democracy approach [inaudible]? Is that [inaudible] for Turkey? Is
that [inaudible] for Turkey? The kind of civil coups defeat in Turkey,
against democracy, against Europe, against United States, against
everything? Is there some kind of fear or —

Mr. Bryza: No fear that there will be some kind of overturning of
Turkish democracy. No. No fear of that. Turkish democracy is strong.

It’s really strong, and it’s complicated and difficult as a democracy
is supposed to be, but no, there’s no fear that the fundamental
secular democracy that is a cornerstone of the Turkish republic,
that that’s going to go away? No. Absolutely no concern about that.

Question: But I’m not asking for your [inaudible], I’m asking
a societal issue. If people are becoming really anti-Western,
anti-democratic, you cannot protect the democracy without people. And
we have so many examples like this in Europe —

Mr. Bryza: You mean a revolution? You’re talking about a revolution?

Question: I’m talking about [inaudible] crisis, or a kind of crisis.

I am not talking a coup de’tat or some [inaudible]. I’m talking about
society preference, society’s choice, that there is the target of
[inaudible]. Hitler came to power through elections.

Mr. Bryza: He sure did. But no, I don’t see that historical analogy
having any currency in today’s Turkey. But of course we remember
what happened earlier with Gray Wolves and right wing parties and
the violence previously. Yeah, we’re aware of that. But maybe we’re
naïve, maybe we’re not seeing the full picture, but I don’t see that
level of social tension being present yet in Turkey. We still see
the most popular political party being the [AKP] party. You can argue
over how much popularity it has. Is it 25, 35, 40 percent? Probably
not 40 percent, but has it lost some of its support since the last
election? People debate that. And [MHP] which is not a violent party
but it’s on the far right, yes, it’s increasing in strength. But
nowhere near where the [AKP] party is at this point. So in terms of
society, I don’t see that happening. Maybe I’m wrong. Tell me. You
are much more astute observers of Turkish society than I am. You know
infinitely more than I do. I don’t see it.

But do we see a sharpening of the mood and the attitudes and
a hardening of approaches toward the US or toward Europe? Yeah,
we sure do and that’s worrisome. The one common political concept
across the political spectrum in Turkey is nationalism. Nationalism
can be a good thing if it rallies a country to achieve greatness;
and nationalism can become a bad thing if it leads to chauvinism.

In Turkey I don’t think it’s a worrisome trend at all, nationalism. I
think it’s positive. I think the [AKP] party’s election was a
reflection of a positive form of Turkish nationalism which is embracing
Turkey’s traditions. Islam and democracy are core traditions of Turkish
political society. Great. That’s what we would like to interpret the
[AKP] party’s election having been about. But the [AKP] party isn’t
going to govern alone, either. This next election will have other
parties coming into the parliament most likely.

Question: Don’t you think that you contribute a little bit the
anti-Western [inaudible], your position, —

Mr. Bryza: Sure.

Question: — that only the PKK [inaudible]. The PKK, I am against this
[inaudible] solution. I don’t think there is a need for [inaudible]
personally, but as a journalist I know that people are really, really
[inaudible] and really are becoming more and more anti-American,
anti-Western because PKK is surviving in northern Iraq occupied by
United States.

So this is the question. So —

Mr. Bryza: I agree with you.

Question: Previously when the Turkish government had talks with
Damascus you had some concern. Now at the ISG [inaudible] advice to
the President to have dialogue with Damascus, also Tehran, but the
President doesn’t seem to be liking the idea. Turkey still goes on
dialogue with Syria and [inaudible].

What is your feel of it now? Do you feel that Turkey has a leverage
to bring some communication via Damascus or Tehran? What does that
mean to you? Are you as irritated as you were or you have a different
take on it now?

Mr. Bryza: I wouldn’t say we’re irritated. We know Turkey has
an important role to play in its neighborhood. For God’s sake,
Turkey is a NATO ally that borders Syria, Iraq and Iran. Wow. That’s
astounding. So it’s important for us to stay very closely coordinated
with Turkey as Turkey conducts diplomacy in its neighborhood.

You’re right there was some dissonance or a difference of approach
to Syria back a couple of, well, a year ago when the international
community had decided it was going to push very hard to isolate Assad,
right? As the whole Hariri murder was unfolding and the report was
coming due. Things have changed a bit. We don’t need to go into the
history of what all that is. We still of course are not in favor of
embracing the Assad regime.

That said, we did see a positive contribution that Secretary Rice
recognized during Foreign Minister Gul’s last visit here when Ahmet
Davutoglu paid his visit to Damascus and had consultations in this case
with Hamas. It was a useful intervention. I don’t know how much of that
intervention of Ahmet Bey (Davutoglu) had to do with the government
in Damascus, but our approach is more complicated than saying never
talk to Syria. It’s more complicated than that. And as long as we’re
coordinating with the Turkish government and doing whatever we need
to do or what Turkey needs to do with Syria as a neighbor in a way
that we all are comfortable with, then there’s no problem.

When it comes to Iran, again the situation has moved a little
bit. I think the US and Turkey are on the same page in terms of
the goals in Iran. We’re not talking about regime change in the
US government, we’re talking about a change in the behavior of the
Iranian government. Turkey agrees with that.

We’re talking about Iran —

Question: Regime change is the US policy.

Mr. Bryza: Not in Iran. No, it’s not. It’s not the administration’
s policy. The administration’ s policy is behavioral change. It’s not
regime change. It’s changed behavior. Maybe some people in Congress may
have different views, but the US Constitution says the President makes
foreign policy. So our view is it’s behavioral change that we seek.

On weapons of mass destruction or on the nuclear program I think
Turkey and the United States are on the same page completely. And I
guess just in the last couple of days Iran has suggested that maybe
some of the neighbors of Iraq get together to discuss security, and
we’re not against that actually. We’re not against that. If something
positive can come out of it, okay. It’s important that Turkey play
a role in that.

Question: The Syrian Prime Minister was in Ankara. He talked to Foreign
Minister Gul and Gul is visiting to Washington. So each time prior to
the Washington visit we have these regional cooperation or whatever,
and then there is always the talk that oh, are they going to carry
a message from Damascus to Washington.

I don’t know about the message, but in the broader term do you see
Turkey is playing a role or Turkey has been asked to play a role by
Washington to have a dialogue with those two countries?

Mr. Bryza: Turkey doesn’t need to be asked by Washington do anything.

Turkey is a NATO ally, a sovereign country with a proud history of
being an important actor in this region and in regions beyond its
immediate neighborhood, so we’re not asking Turkey to do anything
but we welcome Turkey when it does the sorts of things I talked about
already, be it the visit of [Davutoglu?? ?] or Foreign Minister Gul’s
speech a couple of years ago in Tehran, right? When he talked about
reform. He said if we don’t advance reform, reform will overtake us.

Those sorts of interactions are great. That’s very helpful. That’s
valuable.

Question: To follow up on [inaudible]’ s question, would it in
your view be a good step if the Turkish President invited his Iraqi
counterpart to Turkey for a visit?

Mr. Bryza: Sure, it would be wonderful. It would be great.

Question: Which [inaudible]?

Mr. Bryza: [Laughter]. You provocateur. Sezer and President Talibani?

Of course that would be a wonderful step. We want Turkey and Iraq to
have the closest possible relationship and we’ve got a lot to learn
from Turkey with regard to Iraq and vice versa.

Question: Maybe he will visit as [inaudible].

Mr. Bryza: I hope not.

Question: [Inaudible] is going to next Prime Minister of Turkey.

Mr. Bryza: What do you think?

Question: I don’t know.

Mr. Bryza: It all depends on who the next President of Turkey is,
huh? I don’t know what’s going to happen. It seems just reading what
you guys write and talking to people in your society, it seems like
maybe Turkish politics are moving in that direction, but who knows?

Question: Do you have the time for the meeting?

Mr. Bryza: I honestly don’t know what time it is, but it will be a
meeting and a lunch, so probably they’ll meet just before lunch time.

I would guess around 11:00 or 12:00, depending on if they eat lunch
at noon or at one. Unfortunately, I don’t get to go.

mp;id=7677

–Boundary_(ID_E6yn8lRirJRrKic/7mojow) —

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINSTER, OSCE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY CHAIRMAN MEET IN YEREVAN

Arka News Agency, Armenia
Feb 7 2007

YEREVAN, February 7. /ARKA/. Armenian Foreign Minster Vardan Oskanyan
met OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Chairman Goran Lennmarker on Monday
in Yerevan, Armenian Foreign Ministry’s press office reports.

Discussing preparation for parliamentary elections with Oskanyan,
Lennmarker expressed hope that they will be held in due course.

The Armenian and European officials also discussed the issues related
to Karabakh conflict settlement.

In this connection, Lennmarker pointed out the necessity of creating
atmosphere of trust and said that inclusion of both Armenia and
Azerbaijan in EU’s News Neighborhood program will contribute to it.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

U.S. PRESSING FOR TURKISH-ARMENIAN RAPPROCHEMENT
By Emil Danielyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Feb 7 2007

The United States is pressing Turkey to use a rare opportunity
to normalize relations with Armenia that arose after the shock
assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, a senior
U.S. official indicated on Wednesday.

"The issue of trying to use the tragedy of Hrant Dink’s murder to
improve relations with Armenia is a major focus of our relationship
with Turkey right now," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew
Bryza told RFE/RL.

Bryza said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who met
her Turkish counterpart in Washington on Tuesday, is personally
"encouraging" a Turkish-Armenian "reconciliation process" that would
address the mass killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire. He said the issue will also be high on the agenda of his
visit to Turkey that begins on Thursday.

Official Yerevan appears to be pessimistic about the success of those
efforts, however. In an article published by "The Los Angeles Times" on
Wednesday, Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian complained that Ankara is
refusing drop its preconditions for establishing diplomatic relations
with Yerevan and opening the Turkish-Armenian border.

"Ankara has let a rare moment pass," Oskanian wrote. "Three weeks after
the assassination of acclaimed Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink,
it appears the Turkish authorities have grasped neither the message
of Hrant’s life nor the significance of his death."

"We all hoped that the gravity of this slaying and the breadth of the
reaction would have compelled Turkey’s leaders to seize the moment and
make a radical shift in the policies that sustain today’s dead-end
situation," continued Oskanian. "However, after those initial hints
at conciliation, the message out of Ankara has already changed.

"Last week, according to the Turkish media, Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said there can be no rapprochement with Armenians
because Armenians still insist on talking about the genocide."

Dink’s January 19 shooting, widely attributed to his outspoken views
on the Armenian tragedy, was universally condemned in and outside
Turkey. Tens of thousands of Turks took to the streets of Istanbul
for the funeral procession for the slain editor of the bilingual
"Agos" weekly, one of the biggest public events in the country’s
recent history. The massive outpouring of grief and anger led many
Turkish commentators to urge a softening of the long-standing Turkish
policy towards Armenia.

However, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul made it clear late last month
that his government will not reconsider that policy unless Armenia and
its worldwide Diaspora stop campaigning for international recognition
of the Armenian genocide. A high-ranking Turkish Foreign Ministry
official reportedly reaffirmed this line at a meeting with Oskanian’s
deputy Arman Kirakosian, who flew Istanbul to attend Dink’s funeral.

Still, Bryza insisted that the opportunity to improve Turkish-Armenian
ties in the wake of Dink’s murder "most definitely is not lost." "We
want a real discussion so no one can deny what happened [in Ottoman
Turkey,] while at the same time improving bilateral relations between
Armenia and Turkey," he said in a phone interview. "All of that should
happen without preconditions by anybody."

Ankara specifically wants Yerevan to accept Erdogan’s calls for the
creation of a Turkish-Armenian commission of historians that would
look into the tragic events of 1915-1918. Armenian leaders regard the
idea as a Turkish ploy designed to scuttle the increasingly successful
genocide recognition campaign.

Oskanian asserted in his article that genocide recognition is "no
longer a historical issue in Turkey, it’s a political one." "The
[Turkish] prime minister is right," he said. "Armenians do insist
on talking about the genocide. It’s a history-changing event that
ought not, indeed cannot, be forgotten. However, we also advocate a
rapprochement. And one is not a precondition for the other."

"If Turkey can’t seize the moment, it should not be surprised when
others do," he added, referring to a U.S. congressional resolution that
recognizes the slaughter of more than one million Ottoman Armenians
as genocide.

The draft resolution, co-sponsored by more than 140 legislators,
was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last week. It
calls on President George W. Bush to "accurately characterize the
systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as
genocide." Bush has declined to use the politically sensitive term
in his annual messages to the influential Armenian-American community.

Bryza stressed that this should not be construed as a policy of
genocide denial. "We do not deny the mass killings and forced exile
of up to 1.5 million Armenians," he said. "There is no denial of
that. All we say is that how we refer to those horrible events should
be determined not by a political decision, but by very thoughtful
people who have a candid and maybe painful exploration of their
shared past."

"We can’t block it," Bryza said, referring to the genocide
resolution. "All we can do is to have a discussion with the
congressional leadership and explain our position. We are going to
do everything we can to make our case."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MR. STALLONE, DON’T FORGET THE ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE
Basna Beth Yuhanon

Assyrian International News Agency
Feb 7 2007

Guest Editorial

(AINA) — Editor’s note: Sylvester Stallone is making a film about
the Turkish genocide of Armenians in World War One. The film does
not include Assyrians and Greeks, who were also massacred in the
same genocide.

Dear Mr. Stallone:

Please allow me to write you this letter to ask for your support for
the oppressed Assyrian people.

I have read that you are going to produce a film based on Franz
Werfel’s novel "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" which deals with the
Armenian Genocide. I would like to thank you sincerely for taking
this step to make the plight of the victims of this genocide known to
the whole world so that justice may finally be done, but also I would
like to bring to your attention that during World War I there was not
only a Genocide against the Armenians but also against the Assyrian
people and other Christians such as the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire.

The Assyrians, with a history spanning 7000 years, are the indigenous
people of Mesopotamia (Assyria). They are Christians and builders of
a great civilization in Mesopotamia. They were the first to accept
Christianity and spread with their strenuous and passionate spirit
the Gospel of love and salvation to other nations and places. The
Assyrians speak a semitic language, Assyrian, also called Aramaic
and Syriac, which was spoken by Jesus Christ and which was for many
centuries the lingua franca in Middle East.

Unfortunately, this glorious part is also marred by centuries of
persecutions and atrocities at the hands of Moslems, in particular
of Arabs, Turks and Kurds, who invaded and occupied their land over
the centuries till this day. One of these horrible calamities that
befell the Assyrian nation was the Genocide of 1915. Over 750,000
Assyrians – two third of the Assyrian population – were murdered by
Young Turks and their henchmen, the Kurds. The Assyrian people were
systematically subjected to massacres, deportations, expropriation,
torture, pillage and starvation, concurrently with their Armenian and
Greek brethren. Assyrian recruits in the Ottoman Army were reduced
to forced labor battalions and worked under conditions of torture,
hunger and thirst equalling slavery. Women, girls and children were
victims of horrible abuses and abasement.

The following statement from a report of an Assyrian eyewitness
describes the barbarous methods used by Turks and Kurds to slaughter
Assyrian children:

"One day the Moslems assembled all the children of from six to fifteen
years and carried them off to the headquarters of the police.

There they led the poor little things to the top of a mountain known
as Ras-el Hadjar and cut their throats one by one, throwing their
bodies into an abyss." (Joseph Naayem, Shall This Nation Die?)

In the years after World War I Assyrians were subjected to further
massacres, expulsion and destruction. The persecution and oppression
of the Assyrian Christians by the different Islamic groups, Kurds,
Turks and Arabs, continues till this day. As a consequence of these
atrocious and destructive experiences the Assyrian people continue
to carry pain and unhealed wounds with them.

The purpose of my letter is to appeal to you Mr. Stallone to mention
in your new film also the Genocide perpetrated against the Assyrian
people. By doing this, you would help to create awareness for the
unmentioned plight and sufferings of the Assyrian Christians. Since
the Genocides against the Assyrians and Armenians were carried out
at the same time, it would be a sin not to include the sufferings of
the Assyrians in your film.

The Assyrian people, organizations and friends would give you all
their support to let your film become more successful and should you
require access to any material, such as the book quoted above, to gain
a deeper insight into the Assyrian Genocide, please do not hesitate
to contact me and I will be more than happy to be of assistance.

We hope for your solidarity and sense of justice.

Thank you for your help and efforts and I wish you every success for
your new film.

Basna Beth Yuhanon is an Assyrian living in Germany. She has a Masters
in History, as well as minors in Political Science and Italian.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress