Author: Emil Lazarian

A PRISM HELD TO TURKEY
Reviewed by Anne Julie Wyman
San Fransisco Chronicle
Oct 15 2006
Mystic, kaleidoscopic novel by writer often compared to Pamuk
The Gaze
By Elif Shafak; translated by Brendan Freely
MARION BOYARS BOOKS; 264 Pages; $14.95 PAPERBACK
Orhan Pamuk, some say, is writing Turkey. Writing books, too, but
mostly crafting his country’s identity right before our astonished
Western eyes.
While there’s some truth to that — Pamuk himself admits that
Turkey had few very prominent writers a generation or two ago —
he’s certainly not doing it alone. Elif Shafak, his most talented
contemporary, provides a type of insight into Turkey’s spiritual
bloodlines that Pamuk often does not. Funnily enough, Shafak, the
daughter of a Turkish diplomat, born in France and educated in Spain,
professes that she never felt quite at home in Turkey anyhow.
Like Istanbul itself, Shafak is multicultural, multivalent,
multi-ethnic. At 35, she has already lived many lives away from
Istanbul, in Germany and Jordan as well as France and Spain (currently,
she’s an assistant professor at the University of Arizona). Her
characters are Turkish, Siberian, American, Spanish, Armenian,
Jewish, young, old, ageless, Eastern, Western and sometimes none
of the above. Even her prose circles endlessly, every last syllable
tumbled against its fellows to an almost blinding shininess.
Her most recent English release, “The Gaze,” is set in Istanbul
(and Russia and France and two other centuries), but for Shafak it’s
standard issue — it’s disjointed, and it’s dazzling.
Which is not to say it’s perfect. Bedazzlement is not clarity. Nor
is it very satisfying, nor does it preclude frustration.
Good thing, then, that for the most part Shafak knows what she’s
doing. A very good thing, as “The Gaze” splits itself along two rather
convoluted lines. In one, a morbidly obese anonymous bulimic woman
lives with her lover, a dwarf named B-C. The two dress in drag every
so often and leave their apartment for the express purpose of being
seen, punishing themselves and others for looking. In the other, an
immortal faceless man recruits two women, one impossibly ugly and one
impossibly beautiful, and stages a fantastical circus in 19th century
Istanbul. His performances are for single-sex audiences, focusing
on the differences in the ways men and women see — and by seeing,
damage — themselves and each other. The lovers’ sections are further
fractured by entries from the Dictionary of Gazes, B-C’s massive
tome-in-progress of Turkish words related to sight. Also included
are extended dream sequences and flashbacks of childhood trauma,
narrated by the obese woman. The circus section includes lengthy
jaunts to 19th century France and 17th century Siberia via folklore.
Complicated enough? Shafak’s style is repetitive, supersaturated
and usually entertaining, but at times heavy-handed. “The Gaze’s”
structure is similarly complex. Its twin plots are at first so rigidly
separated that when they finally merge, it’s like witnessing a little
literary miracle of life, inspiring and confusing all at once. What
a trick she pulls — the book’s ending lays bare the beginning of its
creation. This is the way Shafak works: She piles it on and piles it
on, and then, just when you feel you’ve been buried alive, she yanks
it all away and you get to see heaven.
Shafak herself is deeply spiritual, if not religious. Her first novel,
“Pinhan,” which has not been released yet in English, received a
Turkish prize for mysticism and transcendentalism in literature.
The narrative structure of another novel, “The Flea Palace,”
corresponds to the architecture of an apartment building. It’s the most
accessible of her less linear work. “The Gaze” was published in Turkey
in 1999 and released in the United States after “The Saint of Incipient
Insanities.” “The Bastard of Istanbul” was released in Turkey in 2005
and will be published in the United States by Viking in January.
Both “The Saint of Incipient Insanities” and “The Bastard of Istanbul”
were written in English, a move perceived by many nationalist Turks as
a betrayal of what Shafak calls Turkey’s language-cleansing project, a
state-sponsored purge of tens of thousands of old or foreign words from
Turkish. As “The Gaze’s” complex Dictionary attests, Shafak pays more
attention to her terminology than almost any other writer. For example:
“ayna (mirror): The odalisques in the harem couldn’t get their fill
of looking at their unsurpassed beauty in the mirrors that had been
brought from Venice. Their greatest desire was for the Sultan to see
what the mirror showed.”
As “The Gaze” so idiosyncratically probes, a mirror’s real magic —
and its danger — is not at its surface but in the depths of the
person reflected in it. Shafak’s narrator hates how others see her,
but her shame is achingly deep, expressed through both her eating
disorder and her relationship with B-C. “Love is a corset,” she says.
“In order to understand why it lasts such a short time you have to
be exceedingly fat.”
As such piercing reflection attests, two factors, shame and honesty,
determine the crystallization or destruction of identity in “The
Gaze.” But the narrator’s search for an intact self represents a
nearly universal process. It’s one that occurs in the relationship
of self to body, in the soul, on the page, in families, marriages,
communities. The relationship of contemporary Turkish writers to
Turkey, to each other and to themselves is also one mediated by
individual honesty and collective shame. What do I admit? That the
Ottoman Empire committed acts of genocide? How much trouble will I
get in for admitting it? What does Turkey want the rest of the world
to see? Do I care? What is Turkey? Is it Eastern or Western? Can it
be both? Istanbul is a jeweled city; Istanbul is a rotting city. It
is here, between mortification and pride, where Turkish writers are
often at the mercy of their country’s more defensive instincts.
“The Bastard of Istanbul” mentions the 1915 massacre of hundreds of
thousands of Armenians by the Turks. It was for those mentions that
Shafak was recently accused of violating Article 301 of the Turkish
Penal Code, which provides grounds for as much as three years of
imprisonment for “insulting Turkishness.” In December, Pamuk was
charged under Article 301 for remarks he made about the Armenian
genocide to a Swiss magazine.
He was the keynote speaker at this year’s PEN/International World
Voices festival; according to the organization’s notes on Turkey,
dozens of Turkish writers have faced similar charges, though most
have not been jailed. Article 301 is one of the reasons Turkey has not
yet been admitted to the European Union. Imprisoning your writers —
to put it bluntly — looks pretty bad. Pamuk’s charges were dropped
in January, the week the EU began its scrutiny of the Turkish Penal
Code. Shafak’s were dropped in September, six days after the birth
of her first child.
Stylistically, the two novelists are not often compared, though both
have produced a number of intricate puzzles. In novels such as “Snow”
and “My Name Is Red,” Pamuk makes much of suspense, deception and
stories within stories.
Shafak, too, loves structural conceit, masquerades and hide-and-seek.
Pamuk’s prose is much more reserved than Shafak’s; in “Istanbul:
Memories and the City,” he admits he has a taste for monochromatics,
the exposed grays of Istanbul’s wooden palaces, the sooty cobbles,
the purity of the snow, while her “Gaze” shatters that same city and
shovels the pieces into a giant psychedelic kaleidoscope.
Still, reading Shafak and Pamuk side by side is a joyful project. For
example, in “The Gaze’s” Dictionary of Gazes, there’s an entry on
“Pamuk Prenses” — Snow White. And in “Snow,” Pamuk writes about Reat
Ekrem Kocu, the first native of Istanbul to make an encyclopedia of
the city’s spectacles.
These small pleasures — of which there are hundreds, despite Shafak
and Pamuk’s hugely different styles — signify that as a collective,
this new literary Turkey possesses an aesthetic richness to match
its sociopolitical complexities.
Pamuk lives in Istanbul, in the same apartment building in the
Nicantaci district his father and uncle built in 1951. Shafak splits
her time between Tucson and Turkey. She writes in two languages and
calls neither her mother tongue.
But in an increasingly hybrid world, it’s individual courage, not
blood, that ought to determine allegiances — and talent that ought to
subvert them all. Brave, gifted, Elif Shafak is an international gem.
Anne Julie Wyman is a writer in Palo Alto.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

IF THE PRINTED WORD IS IRRELEVANT, WHY WAS A RUSSIAN JOURNALIST ASSASSINATED?
Ian Bell
Sunday Herald, UK
Oct 15 2006
Print is dead. I read that somewhere. Text is antique, at least
according to the prophets of multiple media who can still string a word
or two together. To hear it endlessly told, fragile paper and smelly
ink are the last, stubborn obstacles to the shiny digital revolution.
There may be something in it. In a world in which its goofy founders
can flog off YouTube as an online home movie exchange for £880 million
after barely 20 months in business, and without once stooping to turn
a profit, words on paper might strike many as beside the point.
Think of all the educated people you meet who are “too busy” to read.
Think of Gore Vidal alleging that a majority of Americans are now
functionally illiterate: how, practically speaking, can you argue
with that? Print is dead and the dominant global literary form is
blog-standard: millions upon growing millions talking to themselves.
(See [email protected]).
My laptop, because it always knows better than I, just took that last
little joke to be an actual web address, and highlighted the thing
in fetching blue while offering to make the necessary connection,
without once asking if I minded. It, too, knows that print is dead.
It will still turn keystrokes into words, if I really insist, but you
can sense the meaning of its feeble little beeps. Wouldn’t I rather
click to YouTube?
Not as such. Websites and search engines never seem to grant the
complexity of information, meaning and intellectual experience I
need. Perhaps the fault is mine. But computers are a pest, most of
the time, and screens are bad for the eyes. The pretty pictures seem
to lack texture and the reporting of the world – when not derived
from one of those antediluvian printed things – is mostly facile,
superficial, untrustworthy, or some permutation of the three.
Print is dead, but I cannot function, as a grown-up, without a
newspaper or a book. Print is dead, but the useful content of the
web-world still depends, mysteriously, on those who place words on
paper. Print is dead, but not half as dead as some of its dedicated
servants.
Anna Politkovskaya did not have much time to worry about the
contemporary relevance of ink and pulped trees as a suitable medium in
the new information age. The reporter for Novaya Gazeta’s task was to
file and to stay alive. Her problem was that the former duty can make
the latter impossible in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The 48-year-old
Polit kovskaya persisted in writing about our valued ally’s slide
towards autocracy, particularly in the brutalisation of Chechnya,
and last weekend another nameless thug did the regime another favour.
Politkovskaya was the 13th Russian journalist to have been assassinated
since the fall of the USSR. Her profile, not to mention her bravery,
was more conspicuous than most, but her crime was familiar, her death
almost predictable. She failed to keep silence, despite many threats
and previous attempts on her life. Her reward – three shots to the
chest, one to the head, in a lift in her own apartment block while a
CCTV camera recorded the scene – was a murder of professional quality.
Those who plotted her death paid Politkovskaya the greatest
compliment imaginable, though the fact is unlikely to console two
bereaved children. Her words on paper were not “irrelevant to modern
needs”. Her journalism mattered more to those who run Russia than any
rebellious billionaire, opposition politician, foreign government,
or patient democracy activist.
Thanks to an abundance of oil and gas, Putin’s regime can silence
squeamish Western powers while Russia’s democracy becomes a joke.
Thanks to a flexing of Kremlin muscle, the country’s broadcast media
are tamed. But Anna Politkovskaya, refusing to shut up, was a real
threat. People read and people believed: imagine that. She was a
careful reporter: nothing more, and never less. Just words on paper.
In this trade, we expect to lose five or six dozen colleagues in what
passes for an average year. War reporting, as ever, claims more than
its share. These days, equally, naive young freelancers in search of
a byline have been adding their blood, copiously, to the harvest.
Iraq and the madcap war on terror have meanwhile inflated the
general body-count: truth as collateral damage. But the killing of
Politkovskaya is a reminder of a new twist to the old game.
Journalists are being killed or intimidated while pursuing a lawful
trade in their own countries, and for the sake of their own people.
The list is too long, and never likely to be exhaustive. Fearless
journalism is unwise in Zimbabwe or Burma or Iran. It is ill-advised
in China or Saudi, in Tibet or Indonesia. It is suicidal in North
Korea or Syria. These states, and many more, have no real fears of
foreign propaganda. As in Russia, home truths are the authentic,
emerging enemy. Happy optimists once alleged that the growth of the
internet would cause the walls of tyranny to tumble everywhere. As
it turns out, no government has yet fallen to a blogger.
Why not? Perhaps because print must focus in order to function
while the web is diffuse. Perhaps because those words-on-paper are
imprinted with a kind of cultural memory, a thing of embedded, layered
associations and meanings. Perhaps we understand the language within
the language in a way that has become almost instinctual. We read
the signs even as we read the words. Perhaps. Or perhaps the truth
is less pretentious: one clear voice is preferable to Babel.
By all accounts, Orhan Pamuk doesn’t get out much. They say he spends
long hours in an Istanbul apartment, avoiding people, smoking steadily,
and writing endlessly. He has given his primary allegiance to print
in a 30-year career that saw him win literature’s Nobel last week at a
“young” 54.
The gesture by the Swedish Academy was “political”, no doubt, as
enraged right-wing Turkish nationalists have alleged. Those who award
the prize indulge the taste, from time to time, and why not? Art’s
relationship with society, like freedom of expression, is political.
Pamuk is deeply interested in both. Last year he found himself on trial
in his homeland for “insulting Turkishness” and breaching article
301 of Turkey’s legal code. His crime was merely to mention to a
Swiss journalist that the continuing official denial of the Ottoman
genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, and of the state killing
of 30,000 Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s, was bad for the country.
Like the Nobel, his trial – won on “a technicality” – made news around
the world. That was just as well. Pamuk’s distress drew attention to
the 80-odd Turkish writers and journalists persecuted for mentioning
the unmentionable. Forty-five cases brought by nationalist lawyers
are waiting to be heard even now. All involve the simple right to
debate the truth. All depend on the peculiar potency of words on paper.
In a curious piece of timing, the national assembly of France was
passing a bill of its own last Thursday as the Swedish Academy’s
decision was being announced. If enacted – though that is unlikely –
the proposed legislation would render denial of the Armenian genocide
a crime, punishable by a year in prison .
Turkey has detected a barely hidden agenda – a desire to prevent its
accession to the EU – and threatened retaliation. Even some of the
Turkish and Armenian writers fighting for a true accounting of the
1915 slaughter have objected. Which country has told the whole truth
about its imperial past, after all? Not France. And how is freedom
advanced if anyone is muzzled?
That, of course, is Pamuk’s point. That was Politkovskaya’s point.
Journalism, so often despised, defends freedom by its very existence.
Art, so often abused or misused, illuminates the nature of that
freedom. You can end up giving comfort to the propagators of ideas
you despise: that’s the price, and the reason why a Turkish novelist
or a Russian journalist earn their honours the hard way.
If print dies, the lone, essential voices die with it. Two thousand
years of accumulated culture sink, unnoticed, into the Google swamp.
Every truth becomes relative. If print dies – and who will then
write the obituaries? – all that can remain, beautifully rendered,
technologically exquisite, open to one and all, is undifferentiated
noise. Sometimes, after all, a web is just a snare.
–Boundary_(ID_RDKjdlRd3eYYd8RgK3kTCA)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

N. MAMMADOV: “FRANCE SHOULD TRY NOT TO PUT ITS ACTIVITY IN OSCE MG UNDER SUSPICION”
Today, Azerbaijan
Oct 14 2006
“We should be patient with the measures against France Parliament’s
decision. There is no need to hurry,” Novruz Mammadov, the President’s
Office International Relations Department chief told journalists.
He said this decision can damage international relations, APA reports.
“I regret that some French parliamentarians fell under Armenian’s
influence. I cannot believe that any citizen denying the historical
event which happened 100 years ago can be punished in France,” he said.
Mammadov said that Armenians bring false genocide to a focus though
France has recognized it.
Touching upon French co-chair activity in OSCE MG Mammadov said
that France should be careful in its activity for not to its neutral
position under suspicion.
URL:
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EXPAT TURKS HAVE HIGH NUMBERS, LOW INFLUENCE
By Sezai Kalayci, Istanbul
Zaman, Turkey
Oct 14 2006
Armenians and Turks living abroad are equal in population but unequal
in influence.
Armenians have made 18 countries recognize the alleged Armenian
genocide whereas Turkey, which lacks a strong lobby, cannot defend
its own national causes.
The indifference of the Turkish state, lack of education and economic
weakness are Turkey’s main obstacles for a strong lobby.
The genocide bill passed by the French parliament has once again
underlined the importance of lobbying.
Nearly five million Armenians living in different countries can get
what they want through effective lobbying.
However, Turkey fails to bring its citizens abroad together.
Five million Turks living in 118 different countries cannot lobby as
efficiently as other nations.
The main reason for this is the lack of a common goal, authorities say.
Having conducted intensive research on the issue, Professor Tayyar
Ari complains that the Turkish state cannot form a policy on lobbying.
Ari described the organizational activities of Turks abroad as
insufficient.
German Green Party Deputy Cem Ozdemir stated the social power of the
Diaspora was more important than its numerical magnitude.
Turkish-origin deputies emphasized that artists and academics were
not close to the people.
Citizens of Turkish origin who can influence the agenda of the society
in which they live usually choose to act independently.
Another reason for inadequate lobbying is incompetence.
Low education levels and economic insufficiency make it hard for
Turks living abroad to express themselves.
Diplomatic representatives abroad are accused of not cooperating
enough with Turkish non-governmental organizations.
Turkey has a large amount of its population living abroad.
According to official figures more than five million Turks live abroad.
The number of Turks living in France is 359,000, according to data
from the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
This figure is 450,000, according to the French Interior Ministry.
However, Turks can not defend their national causes for several
reasons.
Authorities think the man reason for this that the Turks migrated to
Europe in the recent past.
Most Turks abroad are second-generation immigrants and their lack of
career advancement in economic and social terms makes it impossible
for them to influence the society in which they live.
The situation in Europe is not as bad as in the United States, but
the result is terrible when compared to the population potential.
There are over four million Turkish citizens in Europe and some of
them have already managed to take a position in the parliaments of
the countries in which they live.
Some Turks have even become members of the European Parliament.
Considering the lack of education as the biggest problem of the Turks
living in Germany, Cem Ozdemir said: “We have to bring this issue
to the agenda as frequently as possible. Turkey could be a part of
the solution.”
Associate Professor Talip Kucukcan from Foundation for Political,
Economic, and Social Research (SETA) believes minorities can be
efficient in the country they live in only by means of NGOs they
establish among themselves. Kucukcan emphasized Turks were weak in
regards to demanding their democratic rights.
Associate Professor Ahmet Kavas from Istanbul University said,
“We should first help our people to be useful for the society they
live in.” Kavas also thinks Turkey should stop the efforts to educate
Turks abroad with teachers and imams appointed from Turkey. He thinks
they should raise teachers, imams, lawyers and doctors from among
themselves.
Dutch Socialist Party Deputy Emine Bozkurt warns that if Turks
establishing associations abroad it could negatively affect their
integration into society. Bozkurt thinks this risk may be reduced to
a minimum if Turks’ are active in the society.
5 million Turks Live Abroad
According to the Foreign Ministry, the number of Turks living abroad
is 4,782,348.
The unofficial figure, however, is one million more.
The country with the largest Turkish population is Germany.
Two and a half million Turks live in Germany according to official
data.
There are 500,000 Turks in France, 351,000 in the Netherlands, 250,000
in the United States, 200,000 in Austria and 138,000 in Australia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AZERBAIJANI POLITICAL ANALYST: “OUR EUROPEAN MPS ARE THROWN MUD AT FOR DEFENDING NATIONAL INTERESTS”
Regnum, Russia
Oct 15 2006
REGNUM has received a statement made by Mubariz Ahmedoglu, Azerbaijani
political analyst, Head of the Center for Political Strategies and
Innovations (Baku). The statement contains his reaction to comment
made by David Babayan, political analyst from Nagorno Karabakh,
who spoke on reports that Azerbaijani female MPs at the PACE, as
a sign of protest against a decision by the French lower house of
parliament to introduce criminal punishment for refusal to recognize
the Armenian Genocide in 1915, called their female compatriots to
reject French-made goods and publicly refused to wear French-made
clothes. REGNUM publishes Ahmedoglu’s statement with minor abridgement.
“Motives of the attempt to throw mud at two European MPs Ganira
Pashayeva and Gyultekin Gadjyeva are evident: they both defend their
national interests from the high European rostrum and systematically
disclose lies of the official Yerevan. Pashayeva, speaking at PACE
about abandoning all French-made goods by Azerbaijani women, first
of all, meant make-up. If the fact cited in Babayan’s interview did
take place in reality, not only in the brain excited by hatred to
Azerbaijanis … let him prove his words by photo or video. I am sure,
he will not be able to do it, as well as to present his apologies.
There is a saying, ‘tell me who is your friend is, and I will tell
you who you are.’ Babayan, by his loathsome slander incompatible
with morality has once again shown the true face of chieftains of
the occupational regime in Nagorno Karabakh.”
It is worth mentioning, the law that introduces criminal punishment
for refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire
was adopted by the lower house of the French parliament on October 12.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

CHIRAC APOLOGIZED TO TURKISH PRIME MINISTER
PanARMENIAN.Net
16.10.2006 13:13 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ French President Jacques Chirac in a telephone
conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said
he felt sorry that the bill penalizing the Armenian Genocide denial
was approved and added he would try his best to prevent it from
becoming law.
According to the French leader, the adoption in 2001 of the law
recognizing the events of 1915-1917 as the Armenian Genocide was
sufficient for establishing the historical truth.
“The discussion on criminalization of the Armenian Genocide denial
is rather rhetorical than juridical,” Jacques Chirac said.
At that he asserted that the Armenian Genocide recognition should be
one of the conditions for EU accession.
Meanwhile European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso voiced
anxiety over the slow process of reform in Turkey. He told BBC that
Turkey will hardly become an EU member during earlier than in 15-20
years.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE OF ARMENIA AND TURKEY POSSIBLE
PanARMENIAN.Net
16.10.2006 13:35 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian and Turkey co-exist in peace, Armenian
Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian said in an interview with the
Armenian Public TV. “Turkey is a big country and our neighbor. We
should resign ourselves to the thought that we live next to a nation,
whose ancestors perpetrated the Genocide,” Oskanian said. In his words,
the Armenian Genocide problem should be considered not at historical
but at political level. “Taking into account the current political
situation within Turkey the proposal of Prime Minister Erdogan on
formation of a historical commission is insincere and not serious,”
the RA FM said. In his words, this proposal was made for a mere PR
purpose to show Europe that Turkey is ready to discuss the issue. “If
a commission of historians is formed nothing will change. It will
consist of Turks denying the Genocide and of Armenians pressing
for its recognition,” Oskanian underscored. “This issue cannot be
considered at historical level with Turks, who themselves politicized
the problem,” the Minister said. According to him, the response of the
Armenian President on formation of an intergovernmental commission
is more logical and corresponds to the political reality, reports
newsarmenia.ru.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TURKEY MAY BE WAITING AT EUROPE’S DOOR FOR 20 MORE YEARS
>From David Charter, in Brussels
The Times/UK
October 16, 2006
THE timetable for Turkey to join the EU appeared to slip yesterday
when José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission,
gave his most pessimistic view of the country’s progress towards
membership since formal talks began a year ago.
Senhor Barroso said that it could be up to 20 years before Turkey
joined. He was highlighting a slowdown in reforms as he prepared the
ground for a critical assessment report.
Turkey’s case has suffered blows in recent weeks, including last week’s
vote by French deputies to criminalise denial of the First World War
Armenian genocide, an event never recognised as such by Ankara.
While Senhor Barroso has made clear that this is not a criterion for
EU membership, he gave a clear signal that Turkey was failing to
meet formal demands that include guarantees for freedom of speech
and greater civilian control over the military. He told the BBC:
“We are concerned about Turkey because the pace of reforms is rather
slow from our point of view. I believe it would be great to have
Turkey if Turkey respects all the economic and political criteria.
“This is not yet the case. It is a country that comes from a different
tradition. There are efforts in the right direction but nowadays there
is news that is not encouraging in terms of them coming closer to us.”
This was a warning to expect a bleak assessment by Olli Rehn, the
EU Enlargement Commissioner, who is due to give an update on Turkish
efforts to prepare for the 35 EU entry criteria on November 8.
When formal talks began with Ankara last year, Mr Rehn spoke of
“about ten to fifteen years timeframe” before conditions would be
right. Senhor Barroso has been reluctant to put his own target on
the process but yesterday showed how much Turkey’s case had slipped
in 12 months, saying: “We cannot expect Turkey to become a member in
less than 15 to 20 years.”
His assessment will provoke fresh concern in Ankara, which is coming
under intense pressure to step up reform and, in particular, to
resolve its blockade of vessels from Cyprus.
A failure to do so before the end of the year could lead to a
suspension of the formal EU accession talks. But before a Turkish
general election next year Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister,
is said to have refused to give any further concessions while Turkish
northern Cyprus remains unrecognised by the international community.
Mr Rehn spoke in the summer of the need to avoid a “train crash”
in Turkish accession negotiations. Austria and France want to hold
national referendums on further enlargement, adding to the hurdles
that Turkey must overcome.
Speaking before Senhor Barroso’s remarks, Mr Erdogan said yesterday
that Jacques Chirac, the French President, had expressed his regret
to him over the Bill. “Because of certain narrow-minded deputies,
the France we know as a country of liberties is forced to live with
this shame,” Mr Erdogan said. The Bill, opposed by M Chirac’s party,
was approved at first reading by the National Assembly but without
government backing is unlikely to become law.
Turkish business and consumer groups have threatened to boycott
French products.
Miguel Ã~Angel Moratinos, the Spanish Foreign Minister, met his
Turkish counterpart yesterday for talks backed by the EU on resolving
the Cyprus issue.
Senhor Barroso is expected to tell Tony Blair at a meeting today that
the Commission recommends that EU states do not restrict immigration
from new members during a seven-year transition period, even though
they have the right.
Britain has said that there will be some restrictions after the
arrival of large numbers of Polish workers after Poland’s entry in
2004. Senhor Barroso said: “If you look at the past, there was a fear
that Spanish workers would be flooding all over Europe. You know
what happened? Exactly the opposite. I can tell that Poland can be
a new Spain in some years. The growth of these countries is really
impressive,” he said.
–Boundary_(ID_5nkC21aVWMtw4JdpQoZdTw)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

New York Times
Oct 14 2006
EU backs Turkey over French law
By Sebnem Arsu The New York Times
Published: October 13, 2006

ISTANBUL Senior European Union officials sided with Turkey on Friday
in a growing controversy over legislation in France that would make
it a crime to deny that the killings of Armenians in Turkey during
and after World War I constituted genocide.

A statement by José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European
Commission, coincided with satisfaction in Turkey that Orhan Pamuk,
who has been involved in controversy over the Armenia issue, had been
named the first Turkish novelist to win the Nobel Prize in
Literature.

“We don’t think that this decision at this moment is helpful in the
context of the European Union’s relations with Turkey,” The
Associated Press quoted Barroso as saying in Helsinki. “This is not
the best way to contribute to something we think is important.”

The French National Assembly approved the bill Thursday and it now
moves to the Senate for action. Turkey has denounced the legislation.

The EU commissioner for enlargement, Olli Rehn, also quoted by The
AP, said the bill, “instead of opening up the debate, would rather
close it down, and thus have a negative impact.”

“We don’t achieve real dialogue and real reconciliation by
ultimatums, but by dialogue,” Rehn continued. “Therefore, this law is
counterproductive.”

Many Turkish newspapers, meanwhile, showered Pamuk with praise, but
some also noted the irony that a writer who had faced charges of
“insulting Turkishness” for saying that “one million Armenians were
killed in Turkey” during World War I, was awarded the prize on the
day of the vote in France.

“Pamuk who is given the Nobel Prize, accepts the Armenian genocide,”
said Ozdemir Ince, a critic of the novelist. “Turkey has been put on
sale and Turkish history has been sold in an auction at the lowest
price.”

Bulent Arinc, the speaker of Parliament, praised Pamuk but called on
him to help clarify the debate surrounding his prize. “Since he is a
writer, what are his thoughts on the law in France that massacres
freedom of expression?” Arinc asked. “Not only the Turkish society
but the whole world is curious about it.”

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Pamuk in New York on
Friday to congratulate him. The writer is teaching at Columbia
University for a semester.

Turkey has denied charges that it committed genocide against the
Armenians and asserts that Armenians and Turks alike were killed in
civil unrest during World War I. The issue often results in charges
against intellectuals and writers in court: The genocide claim is
regarded as an insult to Turkish identity and is considered a crime.

Many writers voiced support for Pamuk. “We welcomed his prize with
great joy,” Vecdi Sayar, the head of PEN in Turkey, said in Milliyet
newspaper. “Various interpretations are being and will be made but I
think this prize will make serious contributions to Turkish
literature.”

Yasar Kemal, another of Turkey’s best-known novelists, who has
himself faced prosecution, congratulated Pamuk. “I trust that you
will continue writing new novels with the same passion. I have no
doubt that you will also stand by what you believe in with full
determination,” he said in a message printed in the Turkish press.

Pamuk, in a news conference in New York on Thursday declined to
respond to accusations that his selection was a political decision.

In a statement to the newspaper Radikal, he said: “I consider this
prize as one given to Turkish culture, literature and writers as a
whole. I would like my country to be proud and help me carry it.”

ISTANBUL Senior European Union officials sided with Turkey on Friday
in a growing controversy over legislation in France that would make
it a crime to deny that the killings of Armenians in Turkey during
and after World War I constituted genocide.

A statement by José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European
Commission, coincided with satisfaction in Turkey that Orhan Pamuk,
who has been involved in controversy over the Armenia issue, had been
named the first Turkish novelist to win the Nobel Prize in
Literature.

“We don’t think that this decision at this moment is helpful in the
context of the European Union’s relations with Turkey,” The
Associated Press quoted Barroso as saying in Helsinki. “This is not
the best way to contribute to something we think is important.”

The French National Assembly approved the bill Thursday and it now
moves to the Senate for action. Turkey has denounced the legislation.

The EU commissioner for enlargement, Olli Rehn, also quoted by The
AP, said the bill, “instead of opening up the debate, would rather
close it down, and thus have a negative impact.”

“We don’t achieve real dialogue and real reconciliation by
ultimatums, but by dialogue,” Rehn continued. “Therefore, this law is
counterproductive.”

Many Turkish newspapers, meanwhile, showered Pamuk with praise, but
some also noted the irony that a writer who had faced charges of
“insulting Turkishness” for saying that “one million Armenians were
killed in Turkey” during World War I, was awarded the prize on the
day of the vote in France.

“Pamuk who is given the Nobel Prize, accepts the Armenian genocide,”
said Ozdemir Ince, a critic of the novelist. “Turkey has been put on
sale and Turkish history has been sold in an auction at the lowest
price.”

Bulent Arinc, the speaker of Parliament, praised Pamuk but called on
him to help clarify the debate surrounding his prize. “Since he is a
writer, what are his thoughts on the law in France that massacres
freedom of expression?” Arinc asked. “Not only the Turkish society
but the whole world is curious about it.”

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Pamuk in New York on
Friday to congratulate him. The writer is teaching at Columbia
University for a semester.

Turkey has denied charges that it committed genocide against the
Armenians and asserts that Armenians and Turks alike were killed in
civil unrest during World War I. The issue often results in charges
against intellectuals and writers in court: The genocide claim is
regarded as an insult to Turkish identity and is considered a crime.

Many writers voiced support for Pamuk. “We welcomed his prize with
great joy,” Vecdi Sayar, the head of PEN in Turkey, said in Milliyet
newspaper. “Various interpretations are being and will be made but I
think this prize will make serious contributions to Turkish
literature.”

Yasar Kemal, another of Turkey’s best-known novelists, who has
himself faced prosecution, congratulated Pamuk. “I trust that you
will continue writing new novels with the same passion. I have no
doubt that you will also stand by what you believe in with full
determination,” he said in a message printed in the Turkish press.

Pamuk, in a news conference in New York on Thursday declined to
respond to accusations that his selection was a political decision.

In a statement to the newspaper Radikal, he said: “I consider this
prize as one given to Turkish culture, literature and writers as a
whole. I would like my country to be proud and help me carry it.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Duke University, NC
Oct 14 2006
French Bill Harms Understanding of Armenian Massacre, Says Duke
Scholar Arrested for His Research on Killings
Note to Editors: Yektan Turkyilmaz can be reached for additional
comment at [email protected].
Durham, NC — A bill passed Thursday by the French National Assembly
that labels the World War I massacre of Armenians as `genocide’ hurts
the cause of those trying to educate Turkish citizens about the
tragedy, says a Duke University graduate student.
The Strange Case of Yektan Turkyilmaz: An International Incident
International
The student, Yektan Turkyilmaz, was detained in an Armenian KGB
detention center for several weeks without charges being filed in
2005 while studying the conflict’s history. Turkyilmaz was released
after several American leaders, including former U.S. Senate Majority
Leader Bob Dole and Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, as well as Duke President Richard
Brodhead, urged Armenian officials to intervene in the matter.
`I would like to see the entire world community, including Turkey,
recognize what happened to the people in Armenia,’ said Turkyilmaz, a
graduate student in cultural anthropology at Duke. `But decisions
like this [by the French parliament] only fuel reactionaries in
Turkey, who use this as an example of Western animosity. It doesn’t
encourage discussion at all.’
Turkyilmaz, a Turkish citizen of Kurdish decent, said some Turkish
scholars are already seeking to shed light on the Ottoman killing of
Armenians, as evidenced by a conference last September on the topic.
`”People do this despite this infamous code in Turkey that penalizes
`insulting Turkishness,” he said. `We can call what happened to the
Armenians `genocide,’ `tragedy’ or `massacre;’ the point is we need
to learn what happened and educate people about it.’
The French bill `jeopardizes the position of progressive people in
Turkey,’ he said.
`I would totally understand it if it were a principled decision about
genocide everywhere, but this is more about disturbing Turkey than
learning about the Armenian tragedy,’ he said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress