Author: Emil Lazarian

Senator Schummer calls on president to withdraw Hoagland nomination

yerkir.am
January 19, 2007

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), a long-time friend of New York’s
Armenian community and senior member of the Senate leadership, has
joined Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senator Robert Menendez
(D-NJ) in urging President George W. Bush to withdraw the controversial
nomination of Richard Hoagland to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Armenia,
reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

Citing the nominee’s denial of the Armenian Genocide, Senator Schumer,
who serves as Vice-Chairman of the Democratic Caucus, noted, a January
17th letter to the President, that the nominee’s confirmation would
undermine diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Armenia, and
offend the Armenian-American community.

The Empire State Senator has been sharply critical of the
Administration’s policy on the Armenian Genocide and its premature
replacement of the previous Ambassador, John M. Evans, after he spoke
truthfully in characterizing this crime as a genocide in speeches
last year to Armenian American civic groups.

"Genocide can not be neatly swept under the carpet. Armenian Americans
are justifiably up in arms over the potential nomination of Richard
Hoagland as the U.S. Ambassador to their native country," said
Senator Schumer.

"Hoagland’s reluctance to classify the Armenian Genocide as the 20th
century’s first genocide is a travesty, which leaves us to believe
that he will march lock and step with the administration’s politically
motivated stance of denial."

He added that, "In order for justice to prevail, for progress to be
realized and genuine reconciliation to be possible, there must first
be recognition of the facts of history. That must start with a simple,
unequivocal declaration that the Ottoman’s actions during the period
in question were tantamount to genocide.

I cannot support Mr. Hoagland, because, regrettably, he has not met
that standard." "We join with Armenians from New York and across
the nation in expressing our appreciation to Senator Schumer for his
principled stand against the Hoagland nomination," said ANCA Executive
Director Aram Hamparian.

"For more than three decades – going back to his early years in the
New York State Assembly, as a member of the U.S. House, and now as a
leader of the Senate – Chuck Schumer has always been a powerful voice
for justice and a great friend to the Armenian American community."

The Senate’s confirmation of the Hoagland nomination has been
the subject of growing Congressional controversy and Armenian
American community outrage, culminating in two "holds" placed on his
confirmation by Senator Robert Menendez – initially in September of
last year, during the 109th Congress, and again in the 110th Congress
after the President re-nominated him earlier this month.

The New Jersey legislator’s second hold came just two days after
the Bush Administration re-nominated Hoagland on January 9th. His
first hold was placed after the Ambassador-designate, in response
to questions posed to him during his confirmation hearing, went
far beyond the bounds of the Administration’s already deeply flawed
policy, actually calling into question the Armenian Genocide as a
historical fact.

Citing the opposition of the Armenian American community and the
growing controversy within Congress surrounding the nomination, Senator
Menendez was joined on December 1st by incoming Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid (D-NV) in calling on President George W. Bush to withdraw
the Hoagland nomination and propose a new candidate to serve in this
important diplomatic post.

They stressed that, in light of the broad-based concerns within
Congress, the extensive media coverage this issue has received,
and the strong stand of the Armenian American community against the
nomination, "it would serve neither our national interests nor the
U.S.-Armenia relationship to expect Ambassador-designate Hoagland to
carry out his duties under these highly contentious and profoundly
troubling circumstances."

A recent poll of Armenian Americans found that 97% opposed the Hoagland
nomination. Ninety-four percent of the respondents said that they
"strongly agreed" with the Senate’s opposition to his nomination.

An additional 3% noted that they "somewhat agreed" with this
opposition. One percent reported that they "somewhat disagreed" with
opposing Hoagland, and 2% indicated that they "strongly disagreed"
with the opposition to his confirmation.

More than half of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and
more than 60 U.S. Representatives have raised concerns about the
Hoagland nomination and the State Department’s refusal to explain
the controversial firing of his predecessor, John Marshall Evans,
for speaking truthfully about the Armenian Genocide.

The Department of State has also failed to offer any meaningful
explanation of the role that the Turkish government played in the
dismissal of Ambassador Evans, a diplomat with over thirty years of
service at the Department of State.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Agence France Presse — English
January 20, 2007 Saturday

Hrant Dink, an Armenian who loved Turkey and the truth

by: Nicolas Cheviron

Hated by Turkish nationalists, at times misunderstood by his kinsmen,
Hrant Dink, the Turkish journalist of Armenian origin who was
murdered on Friday was also admired by many for his commitment to
dialogue between the two communities.

"Because he sought reconciliation through truth, he was hated by
hardliners on both sides. He was a target," said an editorial in
Saturday’s edition of the English-language daily Today’s Zaman.

Dink, the53-year-old editor of bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly
Agos, which he founded 10 years ago, was shot three times in the head
and neck outside the newspaper’s office in central Istanbul.

He had drawn the ire of the extreme-right in Turkey for his position
on the World War I killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire,
which preceded the Turkish republic.

In his public speeches, which were often intensely emotional, he
never refrained from using the word "genocide", a term fiercely
rejected by Turkey, to describe the 1915-1917 massacres.

Such statements led to several legal cases being brought against Dink
and a six-month suspended jail term for insulting Turkishness.
Hearings sometimes became a free-for-all during which nationalist
lawyers threw insults at him.

The journalist, who was shy in private, also disappointed the
Armenian diaspora by criticising a Frecnh parliamentary bill that
makes it a jailable offence to deny that Armenians were the victims
of a genocide.

"This is idiocy," he said in remarks to the liberal daily Radikal in
October 2006. "It only shows that those who restrict freedom of
expression in Turkey and those who try to restrict it in France are
of the same mentality."

Dink risked further attacks by defending in court other people who
faced prosecution for expressing their opinions, notably Nobel
Literature Prize laureate Orhan Pamuk and novelist Perihan Magden.

"You came to my trial," Magden wrote in Saturday’s Radikal. "When you
saw the lynch mob at the entrance you did not go in, so as not to
give the opportunity for provocation … and you apologised
afterwards for not being at my side."

Magden hailed Dink as "a true patriot" and "a man with a big heart".

Born into a modest family in Malatya, eastern Turkey, Dink moved with
his parents to Istanbul at the age of seven. When they split up, he
entered an Armenian orphanage with his two brothers.

He studied philosophy and zoology and took various jobs, including
with the Armenian Church, running a children’s holiday camp and a
bookshop, before founding Agos in 1996.

Dink was married and had three children.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

History News Network, WA
Jan 21 2007

The Death of Iraq’s Middle Class

By Keith David Watenpaugh

Mr. Watenpaugh is a historian and Associate Professor of Modern
Islam, Human Rights and Peace. He is author, most recently of Being
Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and
the Middle Class in the Arab Eastern Mediterranean (1908-1946)
Princeton: 2006. He is one of the only American academics to have
conducted research in Iraq both before and after the 2003 US-led
invasion and occupation.

On a blistering June afternoon in 2003 I sat in the Baghdad office of
the president of al-Mustansiriyya University, the historian Taher
al-Bakaa.

I was there as part of group of Middle East historians to assess the
condition of Baghdad’s universities and libraries in the wake of the
war. Outside, students were celebrating graduation. Inside, huddled
around a fan, we talked about past dictators and tyrants, and how he
would now revitalize his campus, which had been looted and burned
just after the fall of the city two months before.

There was an infectious confidence in him and others whom I met that
Iraq’s universities would play a positive role in the rebuilding of
the country and reestablishing links with the West.

Today, Al-Bakaa lives in Boston as one of more than 1.5 million
refugees who have fled the civil war in Iraq. Back in Baghdad this
week his campus was bombed and at least 60 students waiting for
minibuses to take them home were killed.

The New Refugees

This new refugee crisis dwarfs earlier Middle-Eastern crises
including that of the Armenians in 1915 and the Palestinians in 1948
and 1967. Beyond the basic numbers, what makes this crisis such a
fundamental challenge is that a large portion of the refuges are
drawn from Iraq’s commercial and professional middle class.

And just as those earlier crises sent shock waves throughout the Arab
world – and continue to do so in the case of the Palestinians – this
refugee crisis will have an impact on the stability and viability of
Iraq and the surrounding countries for decades to come.

Our normal image of the refugee – malnourished, languishing in dusty
camps – doesn’t apply here. Iraq’s middle-class refugees are its
teachers, doctors, college professors, scientists, bureaucrats,
technicians and entrepreneurs, the very people upon whom the future
of that country depends.

They are leaving for multiple reasons, but chiefly because of the
violence, which the UN estimates claimed more than 34,000 lives last
year, and the rational fear that the new Iraq will be run by
religious demagogues intent on turning back the clock on issues of
religious equality, their daughters’ access to education and
professional lives, and freedom of thought and expression.

In the old Iraq mixed middle-class marriages of Sunnis and Shia were
common; now these are deadly. The sectarian designation of one’s
coworkers at the office or of fellow students on campus was rarely a
topic of polite conversation or had much relevance, and now has
become the touchstone for most forms of social interaction.

Iraq’s middle class is fleeing at such rapid rate that over 40
percent has left since 2003. Add this to torrent a slow trickle of
Iraq’s educated classes from the 1970s forward and we’ve reached a
point where virtually everyone who could leave has left or fled to
Kurdistan. For all intents and purposes, Iraq’s middle class is near
death and what is left is just a pale shadow of its former self. It
has ceased to be a relevant feature of Iraqi society.

In Iraq, the loss of this class means the loss of the basis of civil
society and the disappearance of those Iraqis who would be committed
to a non-sectarian form of politics.

Welcomed … for Now

In the greater Middle East, at least for the moment, these new
middle-class refugees have been welcomed. A good example is the
recently established Syrian International University for Sciences and
Technology, which has filled its teaching staff with Iraqi scientists
and professors. These refugees have also pumped the equivalent of
billions of dollars into the stagnant even moribund economies of
their neighbors as they buy homes and businesses or invest. But every
course taught in Syria by an Iraqi professor means little to an Iraqi
student sitting in an empty classroom; every dinar spent in one of
Amman’s upscale shopping malls is one less to pay for goods or
services in Baghdad.

On the other side of the equation, these refugees constitute a
volatile addition to already unstable societies. Iraqi refugees are
treated either as tourists or illegal aliens in their neighboring
host countries. It is assumed that their residence is temporary. Past
refugee crisises suggest that most refugees, especially those from
the middle class, never go home. Disenfranchised and stateless they
will be increasingly resented by their hosts as competitors for
resources, jobs and political power. Iraq’s middle class refugees
will then become the raw material for a new generation of extremists,
angry and intent on violence directed not just against enemies in
Iraq and the Middle East, but also against those of us in the West
whose actions made them refugees in the first place.

US Responsibility?

The US government has an obvious moral and legal responsibility for
Iraq’s refugees. This is already recognized in special programs
established to aid those Iraqis, primarily interpreters and others
whose service to the US (what others would call collaboration) would
endanger their lives, come to America.

However, only a tiny fraction of those needing refugee status have
been admitted to the US under this plan. While publicly officials
cite concerns about national security, another explanation for this
resistance is that expanding this program would be interpreted as an
admission of failure in Iraq.

Nevertheless, key to any solution is creating conditions that will
allow Iraqis safety, but not preclude options to return. In the near
term, the US should offer unlimited extensions of temporary visas to
Iraqis. In the long term, the US should be prepared to absorb a large
portion of this refugee population.

The central irony of the middle class refugee applies here as well.
They make their homelands poorer by leaving, but make our societies
richer in coming.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Ermordung von Hrant Dink: Kommentar: Täter TürkeiDie Welt 22.01.2007

4968.html

Ermordung von Hrant Dink

Kommentar: Täter Türkei

Von Boris Kalnoky

Die tödlichen Kugeln auf den türkisch-armenischen Publizisten Hrant Dink
wurden "gegen die Türkei" abgefeuert, sagte Ministerpräsident Erdogan. Von
Generalstabschef Büyükanit bis zu den Medien wurde dieses Schlagwort in der
gesamten türkischen Gesellschaft wiederholt. Es besagt, dass der oder die
Mörder eigentlich keine Türken sind, sondern Verräter, die dem Lande schaden
wollen. Die Türkei selbst ist das Opfer.
In Wirklichkeit ist es umgekehrt. Es war die türkische Gesellschaft, die
Dink zum Opfer machte, sie war es, die die Kugeln abfeuerte. Über die
zahlreichen Prozesse gegen Dink hatten die Medien berichteten. So wurde er
zum Verräter abgestempelt. Weil er Dinge sagte, die man in der Türkei nicht
sagen darf: Dass Staatsgründer Atatürk ein armenisches Waisenmädchen
adoptierte (Dink war selbst Waise) und dass es einen Völkermord an den
Armeniern gab. Dink war einer der wenigen verbliebenen Armenier in der
Türkei und fast der einzige, der öffentlich die Stimme erhob. Diese letzte
Stimme ist nun erloschen.
Mit verantwortlich sind Gesetze aus dem Arsenal von Polizeistaaten.
"Beleidigung des Türkentums", ein Hochverrats-Tatbestand, von dem niemand
außer türkischen Staatsanwälten und Militärs weiß, was er überhaupt bedeuten
soll. Der entsprechende Strafparagraf 301, Instrument des Rufmords an
Intellektuellen, sollte auf Drängen der EU abgeschafft werden, die Regierung
versprach "Änderungen". Das gilt nicht mehr – der mörderische Paragraf
bleibt bestehen, weil das Militär es so will.
In Internetforen war der Mann bereits tot, bevor er starb. Beim Istanbuler
Vizegouverneur Dündür wurde ihm gedroht. Die Polizei schützte ihn nicht,
obwohl ihm Gefahr drohte. Er wollte wohl selbst keinen Personenschutz, aber
allen muss klar gewesen sein, dass es eine Katastrophe für die Türkei und
ihr Ansehen im Ausland sein würde, wenn ihm etwas zustieße. Wer das bei den
türkischen Sicherheitsbehörden nicht erkannt hat, hat versagt.
Nun wollen alle "Hrant Dink" heißen, die ihn zuvor in die Enge trieben:
Politiker, Bürokraten und Meinungsmacher. Keiner von ihnen wird jemals
selbst erleben, was es bedeutet, von der türkischen Gesellschaft gejagt zu
werden. Daher wird sich nichts ändern.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Teenager admits to killing writer, but has ‘no regrets’
By Peter Popham

The Independent/UK
22 January 2007

Turkish police have arrested a 17-year-old on suspicion of murdering
Hrant Dink, Turkey’s most prominent citizen of Armenian descent, who
was shot dead in cold blood outside his newspaper office on Friday.

Ogun Samast, from the Black Sea town of Trabzon, told police: "I read
on the internet that he [Dink] said, ‘I am from Turkey but Turkish
blood is dirty’ and I decided to kill him … I do not regret this."

The youth, who was arrested on Saturday in the Black Sea port of
Samsun as he was travelling home by bus, became the chief suspect
after his father told police that he recognised him from footage
captured by a security camera. Police said he was still carrying the
murder weapon.

Hrant Dink, 53, founded Agos, a weekly newspaper for Turkey’s Armenian
community, in 1996 and had edited it ever since. He was the best-known
face of the Armenian community in Turkey, and his murder immediately
provoked demonstrations. Shocked and emotional protesters stood
outside his office chanting: "We are all Armenians, we are all Hrant
Dink."

Far from being a simple-minded Armenian nationalist, Dink had attacked
those who tried to politicise Turkish-Armenian antagonism, and
emphasised his solidarity with the Turks among whom he lived.

When France passed a law making it a criminal offence to deny that
Turkey had committed genocide on the Armenians, Dink said he would go
to France and deny it. But it was the Armenian genocide and Dink’s
insistence that Turks face up to their guilt that led to his
conviction last year on a charge of "insulting Turkishness", to the
hundreds of threats to his life that subsequently flooded his office,
and ultimately, it appears, to his murder.

And Dink saw it all coming. In an article published in his newspaper
the day before he died, he wrote: "In the corridors of the law courts,
fascists were attacking me with racist curses. Hundreds of threats via
phone calls, e-mails and letters were pouring down, increasing in
number day by day … It is obvious that those wishing to single me
out and render me weak and defenceless have achieved their goal. My
computer is full of messages full of rage and threats."

Yet he dared to hope that he would face them down. "I may see myself
as frightened as a pigeon," he wrote, "but I know that in this country
people do not touch pigeons. Pigeons can live in cities, even in
crowds. A little scared, perhaps, but free…"

The bitter irony is that the Dink never said "Turkish blood is
dirty". In the article for which he was convicted, he had exhorted
Armenians to "purify their blood of hatred for the Turks". In court
Dink maintained that it was "a call for peace", but nationalists bent
on punishing him for his prominence insisted that he was guilty. The
garbling of his words in the media made his personal situation, in a
country which, despite its size and growing wealth, remains morbidly
sensitive to humiliation, increasingly perilous.

Six other suspects were arrested at the same time as Mr Samast and
were being questioned in Istanbul yesterday. Minors are often employed
as hit-men in Turkey because they are interrogated by public
prosecutors instead of police and minors’ courts tend to hand out
milder sentences.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Prime Minister, condemned Dink’s
murder, saying "a bullet has been fired at Turkish democracy". After
the arrests, he said: "We’re going to continue investigations with the
same determination."

But it was Mr Erdogan’s government that passed the law making
"insulting Turkishness" a criminal offence, and it has yet to repeal
it despite vowing to do so. Dozens of writers and intellectuals have
been accused under the law, including the Nobel Prize-winning novelist
Orhan Pamuk, but Dink was the only person to have been convicted.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Hunted killer seized on bus after his father turns him in
Suna Erdem in Istanbul

The Times/UK
January 22, 2007

A school dropout has confessed to murdering Hrant Dink, a prominent
Turkish-Armenian journalist.
Ogun Samast, 17, who was caught while asleep on a bus to Turkey’s
eastern border, said that he wanted to kill Mr Dink after reading his
work. `I read on the internet that he said, `I am from Turkey but
Turkish blood is dirty’, and I decided to kill him. I have no
regrets,’ he was quoted as telling police.

Mr Dink, who was shot dead on Friday outside his office in central
Istanbul, had been controversially convicted of `insulting Turkish
identity’ in his writings.

Mr Samast was named as a suspect in the killing after his father
recognised him in video footage of the crime that police aired on
television.

A bus company worker noticed Mr Samast’s name on the passenger list
for a bus destined for Turkey’s border with Russia. The driver,
alerted by mobile telephone, told his steward to check the passenger
in seat 21. When the face seemed to fit, he turned into a bus station
in the city of Samsun, where police were waiting.

Police said that Mr Samast confessed immediately. Six other suspects
are also being questioned. Many Turkish commentators believe that the
teenager is no more than a hitman for a state-backed nationalist
grouping. `They got a child to shoot Dink,’ said the liberal Radikal
daily.

Mr Samast played briefly for a football side in Trabzon and spent most
of his time in internet cafés. Newspapers say that he was
linked to a local nationalist organisation. One of his alleged
accomplices had been jailed for bombing a branch of McDonald’s in
Trabzon.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, hailed the arrest `in the
name of democracy and the struggle for freedom’. He said that the
police would also look into any possible links between this
assassination and the murder of a priest in Trabzon last year, for
which another teenager has been jailed.

Mr Dink, the editor of Agos, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper, was the
highest-profile figure to be convicted under Turkey’s controversial
Article 301 of the penal code, which the European Union wants
changed. He was criticised by right-wing Turks for describing the mass
killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide.

International Herald Tribune

Wider involvement suspected in Hrant Dink’s assassination
By Sebnem Arsu

Sunday, January 21, 2007

ISTANBUL

Ogun Samast, the 17-year- old youth who was arrested in connection
with the slaying of a leading Turkish journalist, probably would never
have imagined setting foot on a private plane in his life before he
was flown to Istanbul early Sunday to be charged.

Described as a quiet but courageous boy by his uncle, Faik Samast, the
youth dropped out of secondary school before graduation. He was
unemployed and came from a lower middle class family from Trabzon, a
Black Sea port town.

Why he would want to murder Hrant Dink, an internationally respected
intellectual, remains unclear since Samast had no obvious ties to
militant organizations. People who know him have speculated that he
was put up to the assassination by others who took advantage of his
young age.

Named after the Turkish soccer star Ogun Temizkanoglu, the young
Samast aspired to become a soccer player but failed after managers of
the Yenipelitlispor club, listed in the second amateurs’ league,
expelled him from the team in 2005 because of his undisciplined
behavior, newspapers wrote.

"His father hoped that soccer could make his son more disciplined,"
Hayri Kuk, a team official told NTV. "He refused to accept defeat, but
at the same was totally open to manipulation. He couldn’t have done
this alone." Faik Samast, speaking in an interview on NTV Saturday
night, said: "He was a very quiet boy. Some people must have exploited
him."

Samast’s age and origins in Trabzon are reminiscent of the killing
last year of Andrea Santaro, a Catholic priest, also in Trabzon, by a
16-year-old youth.

Kazim Kolcuoglu, head of the Istanbul Bar Association, said that young
people are sometimes used as assassins because they face lower
penalties than adults convicted of the same crime.

In addition to Samast, six other men have been detained as suspected
collaborators in the killing, and the police are working to decipher
the links between them.

One of the suspects, Yasin Hayal, an alleged Islamic militant who
learned to make bombs from Chechen militants at a camp in Azerbaijan
and who served 11 months in jail for the bombing of a McDonalds
restaurant in Trabzon in 2004, is suspected of masterminding the
attacks on both Dink and Father Santaro.

Although early reports suggested that Samast was affiliated with an
ultranationalist group called Nizam-i Alem, or World Order, the
Istanbul head prosecutor said the teenager had no ties with any known
militant organization.

The center right Vatan newspaper reported that the teenager had
visited Istanbul five times in 15 days and was accompanied by two
people in his last trip a few days ago.

Hurriyet, another center-right paper, quoted his family saying that
Ogun brought lots of cash from Istanbul after a trip more than a week
ago.

A nationwide manhunt for the youth had begun when the boy’s father
identified his son as the one in the videos.

Dressed in the same jean jacket, dark leather shoes and white beret
that he was seen wearing in a surveillance camera video taken just
before the shooting Friday in the Sisli district of Istanbul, Samast
was arrested on a passenger bus as it was leaving the town of Samsun
on the way back to his hometown.

Samast confessed to the killing shortly after his arrest, Samsun’s
chief prosecutor, Ahmet Gokcinar, told the state-run Anatolian news
agency.

He was quoted by the semi-official AA news agency that after he was
unable to meet with Dink at the newspaper, he "went to Friday
prayers. After prayers, I went to the newspaper. At that moment, Hrant
Dink went into a bank. After the bank he went back to the
newspaper. He got startled when he saw me. Ten minutes later, he left
the newspaper. I approached him from behind and shot him from one
meter away. I’m not sorry."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Ogun Samast confesses to have killed Hrant Dink

ArmRadio.am
21.01.2007 20:08

Turkish prosecutors say the teenager suspected of murdering Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink has confessed.

Ogun Samast was arrested after he was identified by his father from CCTV
images taken near the scene of Friday’s killing in Istanbul.

Prosecutors say he confessed after being detained in the Black Sea port of
Samsun, before he was returned to Istanbul for further questioning, reports
the BBC.

Istanbul governor Muammer Guler announced the details of the capture in a
live television broadcast late on Saturday.

He said police captured Ogun Samast, aged 16 or 17, late on Saturday on a
bus in Samsun still carrying the gun allegedly used in the murder.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

WNBC, NY
Jan 21 2007

NYC Armenian Church Holds Requiem For Slain Journalist

NEW YORK — The archbishop of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of
America presided over a requiem service Sunday for an Armenian
journalist slain in Turkey.

The Archbishop Khajag Barsamian also called on all Armenian churches
in the diocese to observe a requiem service for Hrant Dink.

Dink was the 52-year-old editor of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper
Agos. He was gunned down in Turkey outside his newspaper’s office on
Friday.

Turkish police arrested Ogun Samast Saturday and were holding him in
the slaying. Samast is throught to be 16 or 17 years old.

Dink had caused controversy in Turkey for saying the Turks’ had
committed genocide when they killed ethnic Armenians in the early
20th century. It has been official Turkish government policy since
then to deny such an event took place.

It remains unclear whether Dink’s views led Samast to gun him down.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AGBU Press Office
55 East 59th Street
New York, NY 10022-1112
Phone: 212.319.6383, x118
Fax: 212.319.6507
Email: [email protected]
Website:

PRESS RELEASE

Friday, January 19, 2006

Three-Volume Series of Contemporary Armenian Literature in English
Sponsored by AGBU

The presentation of a three-volume anthology of contemporary Armenian
literature in English translation took place on December 14, 2006, at
the Business Center of the American University of Armenia, at the
invitation of the Writers Union of Armenia and AGBU.

The preparation of the three volumes – drama, prose and poetry – took
two years, and their publication by the Writers Union was made
possible by a generous grant from AGBU.

Chairman of Armenia’s Writers Union, Levon Ananian, stated that, in
his opinion, this series includes the best works of Armenian
playwrights, poets and prose writers of Armenia, "With this
unprecedented attempt, we have proved that Armenian literature is
continuing its best traditions in the period of independence and today
we have high-quality literary works."

The volume of Armenian Drama contains the works of eleven modern
Armenian dramatists, including Perch Zeytuntsian, David Muradian,
Samvel Khalatyan, and others. Its editor is American Armenian
playwright, poet and director, Herand Markarian, who wrote a
comprehensive overview of the history of Armenian drama as an
introduction to the volume.

The book of Armenian Prose consists of works of nineteen Armenian
writers, including Hrach Matevossyan, Alvard Petrosyan, Mikayel
Abadjian. Its editor is Armenian Canadian writer and translator Agop
Hacikyan.

The volume of Armenian Poetry contains the works of 49 of the nation’s
premier poets, such as the late Silva Kaputikian, Rosa Petrosian, Yuri
Sahakian, Hrachya Tamrazian, Hovik Hoveyan, Artashes Ghazarian and
Narine Avetian, and includes several poems by Writers’ Union chairman
Levon Ananian himself. The editor of this volume is Armenian American
poet and translator Diana Der Hovanessian.

According to Ananian, this three-volume series is part of a larger
project that envisions additional publications of Armenian literature
in foreign languages, including several publications in Persian
(Farsi) and Russian, which are slated to go to press. Work is in
progress on volumes in the Arabic, Georgian and Spanish languages.

Representatives from the Writers’ Union and AGBU, as well as a number
of other creative unions, museums, higher educational institutions and
government ministries participated in the presentation. The event
began with the blessing and introductory remarks by Archbishop
Navasard Ktchoyan, Primate of the Araratian Patriarchal Diocese, and
included speeches by Alexander Bojko, Ambassador of the Ukraine to
Armenia; Karine Khodikyan, Deputy Minister of Culture of the Republic
of Armenia; Azat Eghiazarian, Director of the Armenian Institute of
Literature; S. Peter Cowe, Narekatsi Chair and Professor of Armenian
Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Edward
Militonian, State Publishing Agency head. Each speaker not only
welcomed the publications, but also addressed the value of developing
the art of translation and presenting Armenian literature to foreign
readers.

Established in 1906, AGBU () is the world’s largest
non-profit Armenian organization. Headquartered in New York City with
an annual budget of $36 million, AGBU preserves and promotes the
Armenian identity and heritage through educational, cultural and
humanitarian programs, annually serving some 400,000 Armenians in 35
countries.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress