Author: Jabejian Elizabeth

MULTICULTURAL EUROPE SHOULDN’T BE HYPOCRITICAL ABOUT TURKEY
By Ronan Mullen

Irish Examiner, Ireland
Oct 5 2005

I swear this is not an urban myth. An Irishwoman I know who works
in the Netherlands had to arrange a business meeting with a Dutch
colleague recently. She rang him and suggested a date three weeks
hence.

“I can’t make it that day,” he replied. “I have to go to my uncle’s
funeral.”

“Oh, did he die abroad?” my friend sympathised.

She was greatly shocked by the response. “He’s still alive,” she was
told. “But he is being put to sleep that day.”

This conversation did not take place in a far-off country. It happened
in a state closely bound to Ireland through the EU. We share free
movement of workers and services, and thousands of regulations of
every kind with the people of that country. Yet in some moral and
social respects, they are a world away from us.

I tell that story because, last weekend, EU officials were busy trying
to break a deadlock surrounding the commencement of negotiations
with Turkey which would lead within a decade to that country’s EU
membership. While all member states, except Austria, favoured the
commencement of accession talks, poll after poll was showing the
population of Europe deeply divided, and distinctly nervous, about
the prospect.

Despite the attitude of their governments, only 35% of EU citizens want
to let Turkey in. Many are worried about the effect of incorporating
a huge, predominantly poor, and mainly Muslim country into the EU. The
issue of human rights is of particular concern.

Even as the Turks were reforming their law last year to meet the
human rights requirements of the EU in relation to policing, the
status of women, etc, the government tried to bring in a law that
would criminalise adultery for women. They eventually backed down.

Last week, the European Parliament called for Turkey to acknowledge
what is a taboo subject in the country the massacre of 1.5 million
Armenians from 1915 to 1923, the first genocide of the 20th century.

But a group of scholars who gathered in Istanbul a week ago to discuss
it were pelted with eggs and tomatoes by protesters. A Turkish novelist
is to go on trial in December for talking about it.

Sounds medieval. Yet in the light of the Dutch euthanasia experience,
it seems hypocritical to point the finger at Turkey and declare them
unfit for our European society.

The Turks don’t have a love affair with death the way Europeans do.

You wouldn’t have thousands of elderly Turks abandoned by their family
members during a heatwave, to die alone, as happened in France two
years ago. And although Turkey is a secular state, 95% of its citizens
declare their belief in God a level of faith only matched by Malta
within the EU. The Turks are reproducing too unlike Europeans.

Indeed, some commentators say that the future of Europe is to become a
vast aged-care facility staffed by Turkish nurses. On Sunday, British
MEP Daniel Hannan criticised the mentality among fellow members of the
European Parliament opposed to Turkey. “Spend a day in Strasbourg,”
he said, “and you will come across religious fundamentalists,
unapologetic Stalinists, nutty monarchist parties.

You will find fascists, indicted criminals, apologists for the IRA.

Yet these same MEPs presume to treat the Turks like half-civilised
brutes.”

Many arguments in Turkey’s favour are about trade. It has a customs
union with the EU since 1996. More than half of its trade is with the
EU. It has adopted EU rules concerning competition and intellectual
property. But the crunch issue is security. Admitting a reformed
Turkey could set an example to the Muslim world, some believe. US
President George W Bush is firmly in this camp.

“Including Turkey in the EU would prove that Europe is not the
exclusive club of a single religion, and it would expose the ‘clash
of civilisations’ as a passing myth of history,” he said in 2004.

Maybe. But what is troubling is the European fear that lurks behind the
hand of friendship idea. Javier Solana, the EU’s high representative
for foreign affairs, says that denying Turkey full integration would
pose a threat to regional stability.

GRANTING Turkey only ‘privileged partnership’ the option preferred by
Austria and the leader of the German Christian Democrats Angela Merkel
could put Turkey on the wrong side of Europe in a future Middle East
crisis, he said.

“There is a huge risk of leaving Turkey without an anchor in the
world It is better for EU citizens to have Turkey by our side than who
knows where Go forward 25 years. Imagine we said no to Turkey, that
there is a catastrophe in the Middle East, that there are huge oil
and energy problems. Perhaps we will regret not having said yes, not
having incorporated Turkey into our way of thinking, our philosophy,
our values.”

This, of course, is what we should expect from diplomats whose job,
someone once said, is to keep saying ‘nice doggie’ until they can find
a rock. But there are two particular problems with Solana’s view. It
seems that trade is his over-riding concern just as it always is at
EU level. Officials there are much less skilled at predicting social
and cultural problems, and much less interested in preventing them.

The second problem with the ‘nice doggie’ approach is that it is
perhaps too optimistic in presuming that Turkish EU membership will
guarantee Turkish sympathy to the cause of western Europe.

Turkish accession to the EU will see free access for its 69 million
citizens to the countries of the union. Its population will punch
well above its weight when you factor in the decline in Europe’s
population over the next generation.

But the attitude of Turkish people to western Europe will depend not
on the reforms they made to join the EU, but on the extent to which
they see themselves as part of a wider Muslim people and the nature
of that wider view of the world.

The EU came about because of the desire to prevent European wars
caused by aggressive, expansive nationalism. But in Turkey and other
Muslim nations, nationalism was the solution. Kemal Ataturk, founder
of secular Turkey in 1923, and Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who
made peace with Israel at Camp David in 1978, did not share the dream
of many in the Islamic world to create a universal Islamic theocracy.

But if the EU subsumes Turkey, what happens to Turkish nationalism?

Do its proponents turn to Islam to assert themselves? Should we be
afraid? Ideally, no.

It would be a poor reflection on Europe’s Christian roots if we
didn’t have confidence in the capacity of our values and traditions
to prevail on our continent. But right now, there isn’t much by way
of conviction to be found in the European soul. And that leaves a
vacuum which others will want to fill.

TURKEY MUST ACKNOWLEDGE THE ASSYRIAN GENOCIDE: LIBERAL PARTY OF SWEDEN

AINA, CA
Oct 4 2005

Folkpartiet, the Liberal Party of Sweden, held its Congress in
Gothenburg on 19-21 August. The Congress forms the policy for the
future and is Folkpartiet’s highest decicion taking body. Eight
thematic manifestos were debated and adopted, on issues such as
integration, education, justice and home affairs and globalisation.

All documentation are available (in Swedish). One of the issues were
the genocide on Armenians and Assyrians during World War One in the
Ottoman Empire. Folkpartiet decided to make following statement:

“The genocide that Armenians, Assyrians, Syriacs, Chaldeans and
Pontic Greeks were exposed to has for long time beeing viewed as a
Turkish-Armenian affair. Turkey belong to the European fellowship and
has in several respects fulfilled the requirements for membership in
EU. In short time from now negotiations are planned about when the
membership should begin. Turkey must take their responsibility and
make the truth known about the genocide on Armenians and others, and
aknowldedge the suffering of the victims. EU should bring considerable
pressure to Turkey in order for them to aknowledge the genocide on
Armenians, Assyrians, Syriacs, Chaldeans and Pontic Greeks. Turkey and
other countries should open their archives and in other ways promote
research about this dark side of the region’s history. Strong lobby
is also required to make sure that Turkey respect the Kurdish and
the Christian people’s rights.”

Folkpartiet is one the third biggest party according to the latest
election in 2002. They are expected to form the government with
the non-Socialist parties after next year’s general elections. In
Folkpartiet there are several politicians that work with Assyrian
related issues such as the EU-parliamenterian Cecilia Malmstrom,
Cecilia Wikstrom and Fredrik Malm; the president of the Liberal
Youth Federation.

Translated from Swedish by Ninos Maraha

REINSTITUTION OF TURKISH – ARMENIAN FRIENDSHIP

Zaman, Turkey
Oct 3 2005

SAHIN ALPAY

The crux of my speech at the panel on “The Armenian Problem and Turkish
Democracy” in the “Ottoman Armenians” conference was the following:
I am not a historian. As a political scientist and public commentator,
my interest is focused on the current issues and problems of Turkish
politics.

I believe that the resolution of the “Armenian problem” is
indispensable for consolidation of liberal and pluralist democracy, and
for peace culture to prevail in Turkey. Consequently, I am interested
more in the future than in the past. My problem is: What can be done to
reinstitute Turkish – Armenian friendship? There certainly are people,
among both Turks and Armenians, who want to reach conciliation and
resolve the problem. These today constitute a minority, but they may
well become the majority in the future. To this end, those who favor
a solution need to reach a consensus on some basic points.

Regarding history: What was experienced at the end of the19th and the
beginning of the 20th centuries is the story of the dissolution of
the multi-religious and multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire as a result of
conflicting religious and ethnic nationalisms backed by imperialist
European powers. It is the story of millions of people who were
subjected to ethnic cleansing, deportation and massacres. Almost all
of the ethnic and religious which made up the Ottoman Empire had their
share of this tragedy. The Union and Progress Party government decided
to put Anatolia fully under its control, and to cleanse this region
of ethnic and religious elements whose loyalty it did not trust. When
in 1915 – 16 the Unionists in order to punish Armenian separatists
who sought to establish an independent Armenia by cooperating with
the Russians deported Armenians living in all parts of the country
to Syria (Zor province), Armenians became the religious and ethnic
group which suffered most during the course of the dissolution of
the empire. Not only those living in the war zone but all Armenians,
except those living in Istanbul and Izmir were subjected to the
forced deportations. In the process hundreds of thousands of them
were killed or died as a result of famine or illness. Some escaped
deportation by converting to Islam, others managed to survive by
converting to Islam after being rescued by Muslims. Some of those who
managed to reach Syria alive settled there, while many emigrated to
France and the US. Turkish people know very little about the tragedy
of the Ottoman Armenians, and a solution to the “Armenian problem”
is not possible until they are sufficiently informed about it.

Neither is it possible to reach a consensus on the claim that Armenians
were subjected to genocide. Some will continue to insist on this claim,
while others will never accept it. It is, however, clear that this
claim hinders Turkey from discussing freely what really happened in
history. Holding all Turks then and now accountable for the crimes
committed by the Ottoman Unionist government, and using the genocide
allegation to fan racist hatred and enmity against all Turks, is surely
unacceptable. If a broad consensus on the above facts is achieved,
it is possible to move forward towards a solution.

Our tasks as those in Turkey who favor of reconciliation are obvious:
We must first of all exert our utmost efforts to ensure that our
Armenian citizens enjoy equal citizenship rights and that their
minority rights are secured. Historians should, with courage and
determination, work to shed light on what really happened and on those
who were responsible. We should try to win over the public opinion in
favor of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Turkey and
Armenia, and opening of the borders between the two countries. Ankara
can thereby even contribute to peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia. We
should also try to enhance the links and dialogue between the Turkish
and Armenian civil societies. If we can do all these, it will one day
be possible to erect a monument in Anatolia in memory of the great
suffering Ottoman Armenians lived through.

LAVOSH A CREATIVE WAY TO WRAP UP LUNCH
By Jill Wendholt Silva Knight Ridder

The Times Union (Albany, New York)
September 28, 2005 Wednesday
3 EDITION

It’s that time of year when lunchbox creativity counts the most.

Sure, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is always a reliable
back-to-school standby. Yes, a ham and cheese sandwich can break the
weekly monotony. But if it’s that elusive cool factor the kids are
looking for when they pop the lid, opt for a wrap sandwich.

These innovative wraps emerged on the food scene more than a decade
ago. Easy to make and take, popular fast-casual restaurants typically
use an extra-large tortilla to wrap. But if you haven’t tried lavosh
– an Armenian cracker bread that is sometimes studded with toasted
sesame seeds or poppy seeds – you’re in for a treat.

Also known as lahvosh, the soft, thin flatbread is made with water,
flour, yeast and salt. The simple recipe has made lavosh popular
throughout the eastern Mediterranean, Iran and the Caucasus since
ancient times, according to Wikipedia, the popular, free online
encyclopedia. The ancient bread comes in hard and soft forms. When
it’s brittle, it can be kept in the pantry, much like a cracker,
for long periods.

To make lavosh pliable, rinse under cold water and place on the
kitchen counter between two slightly damp but clean dish towels.

Thirty to 45 minutes later, you have a pliable bread to roll up into
a sandwich.

Like learning to wrap a burrito or an egg roll, working with lavosh
can have a bit of a learning curve. If you roll the sandwich and it
begins to crack or split, use a spray bottle with water to moisten
the cracker. If the lavosh seems too wet, simply allow it to dry out
slightly between the towels. A thin spread of light cream cheese over
the surface also helps to smooth any wrinkles.

To finish off the sandwich, layer thin sliced deli meats and cheeses.

Add spinach, tomatoes and any other veggies you think you can sneak
in. Roll, jellyroll style, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap.

Refrigerate the sandwich until ready to eat. Cut into pieces with a
sharp knife.

Shopping tip: Lavosh comes in several sizes. Our recipe developers
who shop in one side of the city used 5-inch rounds; on the other
side of the city, I was able to find a 14-inch pizza-size lavosh. If
your supermarket doesn’t stock lavosh, look for it at Middle Eastern
markets.

Storage tip: Unlike regular sandwich bread, lavosh has a shelf-life
of about a year. If you’re like me and run out of bread, keeping a
couple of lavosh on hand is a good way to avoid a late-night run to
the supermarket.

Pump it up: Experiment with different spreads. Try hummus or a chipotle
mayonnaise instead of cream cheese. For a vegetarian sandwich, simply
pile on more veggies.

Lavosh Lunchbox Sandwiches Makes 4 servings

4 (5-inch) large round lavosh

4 tablespoons light garden vegetable cream cheese

1 cup fresh spinach or dark green leafy lettuce

1 large tomato, thinly sliced

7 ounces deli sliced roast beef or lean turkey

Rinse each lavosh round under cold running water for several seconds.

Place between muslin or terry towels for 30 to 45 minutes, or until
pliable. Spread 1 tablespoon cream cheese on each lavosh. Divide
spinach, tomato and deli meat between the 4 lavosh. Roll each lavosh
tightly into a wrap-type sandwich. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap.

Per serving: 268 calories, 29 percent from fat; 8 grams fat; 28
milligrams cholesterol; 25 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams protein;
622 milligrams sodium; 3 grams fiber.

ARMENIA CHOOSES FRANCE’S AREVA TO BUILD NEW NUCLEAR WASTE FACILITY

Turkish Press
Oct 3 2005

YEREVAN – The Armenian government has chosen a subsidiary of France’s
energy group Areva to build a new 10-million-euro (12-million-dollar)
nuclear waste facility for the country’s controversial Metsamor
reactor, the Armenian energy ministry said on Monday.

Cogema Logistics, a unit of Areva, will build a second waste disposal
facility in three phases between 2007-2018, said a spokesperson at
the ministry, Lucin Arutyunian.

The European Union has asked Armenia to close the Metsamor reactor
because of safety concerns, but the power station, built in 1977,
accounts for about 40 percent of electricity production in the country.

EU RESUMES WAR OF NERVES ON TURKEY TALKS
By Marie-Louise Moller and Mark John

Reuters
Oct 3 2005

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – European Union foreign ministers resumed a
war of nerves over terms for the historic start of membership talks
with Turkey on Monday, hours before accession negotiations were due
to begin.

Austria has plunged the launch of the accession process for the vast,
poor, overwhelmingly Muslim country into doubt by demanding Turkey
be offered an alternative to full membership.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, arriving to chair a second day
of talks after only a couple of hours’ sleep, said he was not certain
the negotiations would begin at all on Monday.

“I cannot say for certain that we will be able to make progress,”
he told reporters.

“It’s a matter of if — if we can reach agreement in these discussions
with Austria,” he added before going into a private meeting with
Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik.

Turkish financial markets weakened on the uncertainty in Luxembourg,
with the main share index down 1.5 percent and the lira down almost
1 percent against the dollar. There was no sense of panic, though
failure of talks could deal a longer term blow to political reform
and foreign investment in Turkey.

A British official said that meeting made some progress towards
finding a formula that could win consensus among the 25 EU member
states, but there was still work to be done.

With Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul cooling his heels in Ankara
awaiting an EU agreement on the negotiating mandate, the planned 5
p.m. (1500 GMT) opening ceremony seemed likely to be delayed.

Several ministers arriving for the talks sounded gloomy. Denmark’s
Per Stig Moeller said: “It’s a big problem.”

Asked how serious the damage would be to the EU if there were
no agreement on Monday, Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot said:
“It would certainly be a bad day. But we’ve had similar crises before.

We’ve found solutions before and we’ll find one for Turkey.”

CROATIA POSTPONED

Ratcheting up pressure on Austria, Straw postponed a planned review
of Austrian neighbour Croatia’s progress towards EU entry talks until
the Turkey issue was sorted out.

“It is a frustrating situation, but I hope and pray that we may be
able to reach agreement,” Straw told a post-midnight news conference
after five hours of wrangling with Austria.

A Turkish official said nerves in Ankara were “extremely stretched
.. Every minute that passes is making things more bitter and it.

won’t be nice starting negotiations with all these bruises.”

With Austrian voters overwhelmingly hostile to Turkish entry, Plassnik
waged a lone battle on Sunday night demanding that the EU spell out
an alternative to full membership.

Diplomats said the 24 other members insisted they could not make
any change to the central principle that the shared objective of the
negotiations would be accession.

“Isolation and pressure is never going to work in politics. It’s not
going to work inside the European Union, certainly not. The Union
should have and must have a different style,” Plassnik told reporters
in the early hours of Monday.

Asked whether Austria was prepared to veto the start of talks, she
said it took all 25 member states to agree.

WALK AWAY?

Outgoing German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer warned his colleagues
that Turkey might walk away if the EU watered down the terms on offer
any further.

“If you want to open negotiations, you have to remember we have to
have someone to open them with,” a diplomat quoted him as telling
the meeting.

The EU has already irked Ankara by demanding that it recognise Cyprus
soon and open its ports and airports to traffic from the divided
Mediterranean island.

The European Parliament compounded Turkish irritation last week by
saying Turkey must recognise the 1915 killings of Armenians under
Ottoman rule as an act of genocide before it can join the wealthy
European family.

EU diplomats had hoped Austria would ease its stance after

regional elections in Styria province on Sunday. Chancellor Wolfgang
Schuessel’s People’s Party lost power there for the first time since
1945 despite his brinkmanship on Turkey.

Schuessel has informally linked the Turkish issue to a demand that
the EU open accession talks immediately with Austria’s largely Roman
Catholic neighbour, Croatia.

But those talks have been frozen until Zagreb satisfies U.N. war
crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte that it is cooperating fully in

A1+

| 15:37:20 | 30-09-2005 | Official |

PRYAKHIN AND SERGE SARGSYAN SIGNED

Today in the RA Defense Ministry Serge Sargsyan and the OSCE Yerevan office
head Ambassador Vladimir Pryakhin signed a memorandum about the «
Realization of the three phases of eliminating the rocket fuel ingredients
stores».

As a result of the realization of the program the mélange will be processed
into ecologically clean fertilizer which will be used to fertilize soils
poor in pH.

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Sept 28 2005

THE RA PRESIDENT AND A SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE EU TO THE SOUTH
CAUCASUS DISCUSS THE PROCESS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS IN ARMENIA

YEREVAN, September 29. /ARKA/. The RA President Robert Kocharyan and
a special representative, Ambassador of the EU to the South Caucasus
Heikki Talvitie discussed the process of the constitutional reforms
in Armenia. According to the President’s Press Service, the sides
evaluated the reforms as a new possibility for the development of
democracy in the country. According to the press release, in the
course of the meeting the issues of the Armenia -EU cooperation in
the framework of the New Neighborhood Program were discussed. The
sides touched upon the Karabakh conflict settlement issues and those
of regional development. A.H. -0–

ORF.at, Austria
Sept 30 2005

Talking Turkey with Orhan Pamuk

by Jill Zobel

Orhan Pamuk: One of the most popular and controversial people in
Turkey today, the best-selling author of “My Name is Red” and “Snow”
is this year’s winner of the German Booksellers Federation’s Peace
Prize which will be presented on October 23rd at the Frankfurt Book
Fair. Born in Istanbul in 1952, Pamuk dreamed of being a poet but
went on to study architecture.
He started writing at the age of 22 and ever since he’s worked hard
to explain his vast country and the Turkish soul to his own people
and the world at-large. Aggressively pro-Europe, Pamuk passionately
believes that Turkey belongs in the EU. He also believes that those
against Turkey’s joining are anti-Turk and just a little bit racist
at heart. He knows his country isn’t perfect but publicly and in his
books challenges his nation to keep moving in the right direction.

Snow
A year ago I read a book called “Snow”. Still now I can’t get the
story out of my mind. Basically it’s a novel about a Turkish guy
living in Frankfurt, Germany for the past 12 years named Ka. He’s a
poet with writer’s block. He hasn’t been able to write anything in
years.
The novel opens with his return to Istanbul so as to attend his
mother’s funeral. While there he learns that an old girlfriend named
Ipek is now divorced so he decides to hang around for a while to get
to know his country again and, most importantly, to track down Ipek
who he’s told is living in a shabby hotel in Kars, a really poor
Anatolian town close to the Georgian border.
A newspaper friend just so happens to need a reporter to go to Kars
and find out about reports that school girls are committing suicide
because they’ve been forced by their schools to remove their
headscarves. So killing 2 birds with 1 stone – Ka travels to Kars in
a snowstorm, reports on the suicides, falls back in love with Ipek,
gets back in touch with her ex-husband who now is a prominent
Islamist politician very supportive of the school girl suicides and
gets involved with Kurdish nationalists, leftist securlar publishers
and actors, spies for the military police and common people all
suspicious of him if only because of his snazzy German overcoat. And,
it never stops snowing the whole time he’s there…in this poorest,
decaying remnant of the former Ottoman empire.

Orhan Pamuk

Essential reading
“When the book was published three years ago in Turkey I was
attacked. Some people were confused because I did not make hardline
statements about nationalists, political Islamists or military. In
fact the joy of writing this novel was to let everyone talk freely as
they are.”

Even before reading “Snow”, I’d read a New York Times book review
which said: “This seventh novel from Turkish writer Orhan Pamiuk is
not only an engrossing feat of tale-spinning, but essential reading
for our times.” Margaret Atwood, NYT, August 15,2004

Then I read it and wept when it was all over. It was/is the most
exciting, interesting, frustrating and stimulating book I’ve read in
years. But, it didn’t solve my dillemma: Was I for or against
Turkey’s joining the EU? What it did do for me was it sent me back to
the bookstore for more Pamuk books, it made me passionately want to
visit Turkey (especially Kars) and got me thinking that whichever way
it goes (Turkey in or out) I could live with it either way. But,
never did I dream after reading it that I would get to interview
Orhan Pamuk.

“They don’t like poor people”
Actually, I didn’t get to personally meet him but I did get to ask
all my questions and have them answered in full … like how does he
explain anti-Turkish feelings in the EU or those who don’t want his
country to join: “They don’t like Turks. They don’t like poor people.
They don’t like people with different cultural and religious
backgrounds and they don’t want their governments to treat Turks as
if they are equal human beings, unfortunately.”

You see, a couple of months after I finished “Snow” I was sitting
with a journalist friend named Radovan Grahovac who himself had just
finished the book. We started talking about it and Pamuk and he said:
I’m going to Turkey and do a Tönspuren program about him for Ö1. I
said “great and if you go promise you’ll interview him for me.” Well,
Radovan met Pamuk in Istanbul early September and asked him my big,
long list of questions.” His Tonspuren program, by the way, can be
heard tonight (Friday, September 30th and will be repeated on Sunday
night) on Ö1 at 22:15.

The same day Radovan was getting ready to leave I read on APA (the
Austrian press Agency wire service) that an Istanbul public
prosecutor ordered Pamuk to appear in court on December 16th. He was
charging him with insulting the Turkish national identity. If found
guilty, Orhan Pamuk could spend 3 years in a Turkish jail.
So, why would a nation that usually is very proud of ist famous
people charge someone like Pamuk with insulting the state. Well, in
February Pamuk gave an interview to a Swiss newspaper magazine about
the 90th anniversary of the mass killings of Armebnians and Kurds …
an event which despite the testimony of many historians the Turkish
government has always refused to take blame for. What Pamuk said in
the interview was: “30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed
in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.”

Confused?
This is what he said to me (via Radovan) about the court case:
“This is a very controversial issue about which I tried to open up a
bit, talk a bit and then there’s this case opened up by the public
prosector of my neighbourhood in Istanbul saying I have insulted the
Turkish identity because lots of Armenians were killed 90 years ago
and since so much energy is spent to silence me of course I am not
going to shut up but at least the Turkish nation is starting to talk
about it a bit.”

Now, noone really believes the court in December will find Orhan
Pamuk guilty or send him to jail but for me it’s still so
unbelieveable that they would even take him to trial.

By the time the trial begins Turkey will have probably been
negotiating with the EU for two months. So, after all is said and
done…interview made, books read I’ve had plenty of time to think
about it. What do you think should happen? Shoudl Turkey be allowed
to join this mostly Christian club?

If you also are confused all I can say is read Orhan Pamuk’s books
or, even better, listen to this Saturday’s Reality Check, october 1st
at 12 noon with Steve Crilley.

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT GUARANTEES BUSINESS

Azat Artsakh, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh
Sept 28 2005

In two or three years after the maintenance of the ceasefire the
NKR government launched the loan programme for the treatment of the
paralyzed economy through the funds of Artsakhinvest Foundation. That
was absolutely the right thing to choose. The wrong thing about it was
that the people in charge of loan repayment relied on the conscience
of borrowers. There was no mechanism of loan repayment.

The consequence of this is that the bulk of over 2 billion drams of
loan has not been repaid yet. Carrying on with this “guarantee free”
loan programme would mean dissipation of government funds. The year
2003 can be considered as the second stage of the loan programme.

This time the executive’s attitude was more cautious, warrants were
replaced by collateral of real and personal property. In order
to coordinate the programmes of development of small and medium
size business the Foundation for Small and Medium-Size Business
Development was set up, which was restructured into the Arstakh
Development Agency in 2005. From 2003 to 2005 over 1 billion 62
million drams from government funds was lent to businesses operating
in NKR. The year 2005 is distinguished by the scope and amount of
soft loans. In 2005 about 800 million drams was lent from government
funds. 200 million drams was provided for wine growing and orchards,
cattle farming, manufacturing and purchase of agricultural machines
each. Besides, food processing, IT and other branches were also
funded in the framework of loan programmes. In order for the money to
reach the addressees (i.e. regions mainly) the Artsakh Development
Agency set limits on the number of applications for loans from each
region. This policy is obviously effective. If in 2003 the loans
granted for wine growing in Askeran region totaled only 9.8 million,
in 2005 they mounted to 49 million. In the region of Hadrut the loan
sums totaled 7.4 million and 30 million, in Martakert 6.0 and 35
million respectively. Two businesses received 100 million drams each
for purchase of agricultural machines. The two pools of agricultural
machines will offer agricultural services to farmers at comparatively
low prices. Summing up the indices describing the dynamic of small
businesses and government funding, we may say that small business is
going along successfully despite the problem of collateral.