Author: Kanayan Tamar

LE PREMIER MINISTRE VISITE LE CHANTIER DE CONSTRUCTION DU CENTRE DE CANCEROLOGIE

ARMENIE

Le Premier ministre armenien Tigran Sarkissian a visite le
chantier de construction du centre de diagnostics moleculaires et
des radioisotopes qui fait parti d’un projet visant a construire un
centre de cancerologie moderne en Armenie.

Il a declare que le directeur executif de la Fondation nationale
pour la competitivite, Arman Khatchatourian, a donne des precisions
au Premier ministre sur le rythme de la construction.

Le bâtiment ultra-moderne est en cours de construction dans le district
administratif Achapnyak a Erevan. Il s’agit d’un projet conjoint du
secteur public et prive.

L’objectif principal du centre est de repondre aux besoins dans le
diagnostic et le traitement du cancer, conformement aux normes et la
creation d’infrastructures internationales qui vont le transformer
en un centre regional.

Le programme sera mis en ~uvre en trois phases : a court terme,
a moyen terme (jusqu’a 3 ans) et long terme (jusqu’a 5 ans). Dans la
première phase, un laboratoire pour la production de radio-isotopes et
de la pharmacie nucleaire sera cree, ainsi qu’un centre ultra-moderne
pour le diagnostic moleculaire.

La phase a moyen terme implique la creation du centre de diagnostic
ambulatoire, la chimiotherapie, la radiotherapie et les services non
chirurgicaux. La phase a long terme appelle a la creation de services
chirurgicaux pour 200 lits.

Le centre de cancerologie est une initiative de la Fondation nationale
pour la competitivite d’Armenie dans le cadre du protocole d’accord
signe entre la Fondation et la societe belge Global Solutions
medicales.

Selon les statistiques, chaque annee, 2700 personnes en Armenie
decèdent a la suite de maladies cancereuses, causant 75 millions de
drams de dommages a l’economie. Actuellement, quelque 32000 personnes
atteintes de cancer sont traites dans les cliniques locales. En 1995,
il y avait 125 cas de cancer pour 100000 habitants, maintenant ce
chiffre a bondi a 235 cas.

mercredi 24 juillet 2013, Stephane ©armenews.com

THE FATHER OF GENOCIDE

Wall Street Journal, NY
July 23 2013

Outraged by the Ottomans’ massacres of Armenians, a young Polish
lawyer pushed to have the crime of genocide enshrined in law.

By YASCHA MOUNK

Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Rapgael Lemkin By Raphael
Lemkin, edited by Donna-Lee Frieze (Yale, 293 pages, $35)

During World War I, Soghomon Tehlirian, an Armenian civilian, looked
on helplessly as Ottoman troops shot his mother, raped his sisters
and hacked his brother to death. Six years later, on a Berlin street,
Tehlirian approached Talaat Pasha, a grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire
who had coordinated the killing of Armenians. “This is for my mother,”
he told Pasha as he shot him dead.

The press hailed Tehlirian as a hero. But legally his situation was
a disaster. Whereas Pasha never had to face a court, Tehlirian was
put on trial as a common murderer. In the event, he was set free,
but only because a Berlin court was willing to pretend that he had
acted under “psychological compulsion.”

Raphael Lemkin, then a young law student at the University of Lwow,
wasn’t satisfied with that subterfuge. He was revolted that somebody
who had “upheld the moral order of mankind” should be “classified as
insane.” And so Lemkin set out to persuade the world to adopt a law
against the kind of “racial or religious murder” that had claimed
the lives of Tehlirian’s relatives.

Against the odds, he succeeded.

“Totally Unofficial,” Lemkin’s posthumous autobiography, tells the
story of his remarkable achievements. Born in 1900 to Polish-Jewish
parents of modest means in a remote corner of Western Ukraine, his
rise was meteoric. In short succession, he established himself as
a prominent lawyer in Warsaw, escaped the Nazi invasion of Poland,
coined the term “genocide,” served as an adviser to the U.S. War
Department and became a law professor at Yale.

Thanks to Lemkin’s efforts, on Nov. 9, 1948, the 10th anniversary
of Kristallnacht , the United Nations General Assembly unanimously
adopted a “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide.” Cleaving closely to his proposal, it described genocide
as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

The horrors of the Holocaust had helped sway world opinion in favor
of Lemkin’s cause. And yet he emphasized that-from Nero’s persecution
of the Christians to the Mongols’ massacres of Eastern Europeans
in the 13th century-genocide had occurred many times throughout
history. It was at his insistence that the U.N.’s definition covered
all cases-past, present or future-in which an ethnic or religious
group was marked out for destruction.

Thanks to this adaptability, the term has gained lasting political as
well as legal relevance. In the decades since Lemkin died of a heart
attack in 1959, the term he invented has become the focus of a strange
tug of war: Activists hope that the powerful label of genocide might
move reluctant publics to stop atrocities; politicians fear that it
could force them into costly foreign adventures or preclude negotiated
settlements. In cases like Darfur, the question of whether given
atrocities amount to “genocide” now plays a key role in determining
how the international community will act.

Unfinished at his death, and published now for the first time,
Lemkin’s autobiography gives a detailed account of his tireless
advocacy. It will prove useful to generations of historians. But,
like most autobiographies by historical figures, it also aims to cast
its protagonist in a flattering light. By that metric, it is at best
a mixed success.

“Totally Unofficial” suffers from big chronological jumps and uneven
prose. While Lemkin is candid in parts, he just as frequently veers
into the smug or self-righteous. Most of his contemporaries at the
U.N. respected him; few found him winning. His autobiography makes
it easy to see why.

In recent years, Lemkin has been lionized as a lone fighter who managed
to make the world a better place. (The best example is “A Problem From
Hell,” the 2002 best seller that launched the career of Samantha Power,
President Barack Obama’s nominee for the U.S.

ambassadorship to the U.N.) This is very much the reading Lemkin
himself encourages, promising to show his readers “how a private
individual almost single-handedly can succeed in imposing a moral
law on the world.”

The truth is more complicated. Lemkin was clearly a man of rare
talents and single-minded devotion. To further the “lifesaving idea”
for which, he believed, providence had chosen him as a “messenger boy,”
he remained single, gave up a lucrative legal career and literally
worked himself to death. Down to the details-like his poverty and
his lifelong impatience with small talk-he makes for an excellent
secular saint.

And yet his influence may not have been as transformative as he
thought. The genocide convention would never have passed if it hadn’t
been conformable to the interests of contemporary superpowers. Locked
in a battle for ideological supremacy, the U.S. and the Soviet Union
had strong reasons of their own to play to world opinion by condemning
genocide. That also explains why Lemkin’s star quickly faded when
he began to advocate for an international court to prosecute state
officials for war crimes. While the great powers were happy to pay
lip service to his lofty ideals, they were unwilling to compromise
their sovereignty.

In the end, then, Lemkin doesn’t quite fit the role of the
extraordinary individual bending history to his will. His life is
interesting in an altogether different way: It is emblematic of both
the ample promise and the real disappointment of international law.

In Lemkin’s own words, the point of the genocide convention had been
nothing less than to be “a starting point for a new conscience.” Over
time, he hoped, “a combination of punishment and prevention” would
help to avert atrocities. Today, well-funded NGOs raise the alarm as
soon as genocide looms in any part of the globe. Under Mr. Obama, the
White House has even instituted an Atrocities Prevention Board. (Its
first head: Samantha Power.)

But atrocities persist. Plenty of mass murderers remain at large. In
recent years, a number of countries have agreed for the International
Criminal Court to prosecute their citizens for war crimes, including
genocide. But in reality only the genocidal leaders of small powers
need to fear justice. Were Tehlirian alive today, he would have as
much reason to become a murderer as he did in 1921.

Mr. Mounk’s “Stranger in My Own Country: A Jewish Family in Modern
Germany” will be published in January.

YEREVAN’S RESIDENTS PROTEST AGAINST INCREASE OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT TARIFFS

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
July 23 2013

23 July 2013 – 6:18pm
Residents of the Armenian capital of Yerevan held a rally today in
order to protest against the increase of public transport tariffs
in the city. Some of the protesters approached the City Hall as the
police failed to push them away.

The protesters demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Tigran
Sarkisyan and the whole cabinet. Four activists were detained, but
freed soon afterwards.

WOMAN’S ROBE BLOW TO ARMENIA-RUSSIA RELATIONS

YEREVAN, July 23. /ARKA/. Since the beginning of the week Armenia
has been disturbed by the scandal over the events after detention
of Armenian citizen Hrachya Harutiunyan who is suspected of a dead
crush killing 18 bus passengers near Podolsk, Russia.

Armenian society was indignant at the fact that Harutiunyan was doped
with drugs, then taken out of a medically induced coma and driven to
the court straight from the hospital, in a parti-colored woman’s robe.

People were also outraged by the coverage of the events in a number of
Russian mass media outlets, including the state-owned, where reporters,
having completely forgotten journalists’ code of ethics and Russian
Federation laws, had widely used unacceptable formulations like a
driver-Armenian, an inarticulate driver, and etc.

Russian “Vesti” TV program even blockaded broadcasting of its TV spot
about Harutiunyan in Armenia, instead of giving proper response to
their reporter Olga Skabeyeva’s actions.

The rising protests against Russian police and the court, as well as
the hospital, which, whether intentionally or not, put Harutiunyan
on public humiliation, were more and more turning into anti-Russian
protests.

Some said it was a purposeful action, along with the increase in
Russian gas price and the sale of weapons to Azerbaijan, aimed at
preventing Armenia from signing Armenia-EU association agreement in
Vilnius in November.

Protests were held near the Russian embassy building for several days.

Protesters were attempting to hand letters and … woman’s robes to
the Russian ambassador to Armenia.

The migrants’ problem probably has had certain effect on the coverage
of the accident in Podolsk. The poll conducted by Levada-Center in
early July showed 55% of Moscow residents consider huge number of
migrants from former Soviet Caucasus and Middle Asia regions the main
problem of the Russian capital.

Acting Mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin included the counter-action
against excessive immigration and as one of the main points of his
election campaign.

“Ethnical crimes are one of the main problems in the capital… There
are about 300,000 illegal migrants in the city. If crimes committed
by entrants are taken away, Moscow will be the most law-abiding city
in the world”, Sobyanin said.

After the deadly crush in Podolsk Sobyanin instructed to inspect
road haulers and suggested deporting foreigner drivers from Russia
for violations. Yet, the Moscow Mayor forgot to ask why the traffic
lights were installed on the crossroad only after the tragedy,
despite reoccurrence of crushes there.

Or why could some strange commercial organizations assembling trucks
from worn-out spare parts easily operate in his city?

The statement of Russian ministry of interior rep Yelena Molotilkina
that “investigators should carry out investigatory actions, instead
of dressing him or changing his clothes” confirms once again that
Russian state bodies do not like admitting their faults.

According to well-known advocate and head of Russian Public Chamber
commission on security of citizens Anatoly Kucherena, Harutiunyan
was taken to the court in a woman’s robe not intentionally.

“It is difficult to say why his advocate did not come and did not
bring him his clothes. But before taking Harutiunyan to the court,
means should be found to dress him in a man’s, not woman’s clothes”,
Kucherena said.

Many Russians expressed their indignation over the event in social
networks and said that Russian state bodies disgraced themselves. A
comment has stuck in my mind reading “it is not the poor driver who
is in the cage in a robe; it is Russia that is in the cage and looks
like a robe and slippers”.

The question also is why the Armenian embassy got interested in Hrachya
Harutiunyan’s case only after indignation broke out in the Armenian
mass media and social networks. The scandal could be avoided if the
embassy reps had visited Harutiunyan in the prison Sunday.

Only a few mass media and bloggers brought up the main issue the
case revealed – why a Karabakh war veteran, who went as a volunteer
to defend his homeland, had to leave Armenia to earn money for his
dead son’s tombstone. What was his life in the home country like, if
had to leave for Moscow and agree to drive a bush-league overloaded
truck against a payment that none of locals would agree to.

Yet, Armenian mass media and human rights activists would better
not repeat mistakes of Russian colleagues and not label all Russians
while defending their countryman. The tragedy should not give rise
to international strife.

Surprisingly, the most adequate approach toward the problem was shown
by Harutiunyan’s daughter. She said, “I, first of all, would like
to deliver my condolences to the families of the killed and bow down
before them. I wish them strength and will to overcome the pain. Me
and my father, we know what that pain feels like. But I ask and
demand all officials who can help my father within their competence,
to do so. When the state needed my father’s help, he went; he risked
his life and defended us. Now it is him who needs the help”. -0-

– See more at:

CAUCASIAN LEOPARD CAUGHT ON CAMERA IN ARMENIA

15:13 23.07.2013

The landmark recording was made in July in the Caucasus
Wildlife Refuge, which is supported by World Land Trust (WLT) and
IUCN-Netherlands. The Caucasus Wildlife Refuge is managed by WLT’s
conservation partner in Armenia, the Foundation for the Preservation
of Wildlife and Cultural Assets (FPWC), wildlifeextra.com writes.

Manuk Manukyan, FPWC’s Coordinator of Conservation Projects, is one
of the few people to have seen a Caucasian Leopard in the wild, being
lucky enough to catch sight of one nearly a decade ago. He told WLT:
“The leopard is no longer a ghost. We know he (or she) is there and
that the habitat is suitable. It is very quiet and there is plenty
of prey. We will adjust the cameras and sooner or later we will get
pictures of the entire animal.”

Since the reserve was created in 2010, FPWC staff – some of them
funded by WLT’s Keepers of the Wild programme – have diligently
recorded leopard tracks and signs and used this information to locate
camera-traps provided by WLT near to where the leopards are thought to
roam. At the same time, FPWC staff have made every effort to protect
the Caucasian Leopard’s habitat and prey, in particular Bezoar Goats,
wild boars and Armenian mouflon.

Mary McEvoy, WLT’s Conservation Programmes Manager (Asia and Africa
Regions) said: “At last, the efforts of FPWC staff have paid off. The
whole WLT office was very excited to see the footage so I can only
imagine how elated all at FPWC must be feeling. This is a great moment
for wildlife conservation in Armenia.”

According to World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Armenia, there are just
3 – 5 individuals recorded in Armenia (some of them are migratory).

Each leopard needs habitat of some 44,500 – 60,000 acres (18,000 –
25,000 hectares), and their populations have been decimated by hunting
and poaching, and degradation of habitat caused by livestock grazing,
plant gathering and deforestation.

The Caucasian Leopard has only been photographed in the wild in Armenia
on two occasions, in 2005 and 2007. Those leopards had entered Armenia
from Iran in territory much further south of the CWR.

The leopard’s stronghold within Armenia is the rugged and cliffy
landscape of Khosrov State Reserve and surrounds. The Caucasus
Wildlife Refuge is located on land adjoining the Khosrov State Reserve,
south-east of the capital Yerevan on the south-western slopes of the
Geghama mountains.

PREPARLIAMENT: RULING REGIME IS APPLYING NEW METHODS TO ROB AND SUPPRESS ITS PEOPLE
by Alexander Avanesov

Monday, July 22, 12:02

The ruling regime sees that its treacherous rule is coming to an end
and is applying new methods to snatch as much as possible from its
people and country, the Preparliament opposition movement says in its
comment on the recent rise in gas, electricity and public transport
tariffs in Armenia.

Concerning the rise in the public transport fare in Yerevan, the
movement says: “We are glad to see that some of our citizens are
trying to oppose the regime’s decision by refusing to pay the new
fare and that despite suffering losses, some drivers are showing
support for their actions.”

“Our people are overcoming the despair of having no real leaders and
are attempting to become the masters of their own destiny. We are
glad to see that our youth are actively struggling for their rights
and are urging all passengers and drivers to show solidarity and to
join this struggle. This will help us to increase our pressure on
the regime and to achieve our goal – the victory of our people over
their suppressors,” the Preparliament says.

To remind, the public transport fair in Yerevan has been raised by
50 AMD and will be 150 AMD for buses and minibuses and 100 AMD for
trolleybuses.

LE GOUVERNEMENT ARMENIEN EN APPELLE A UNE SOCIETE AMERICAINE POUR DEVELOPPER L’AVIATION CIVILE

ARMENIE

Alors que la faillite recente de la principale compagnie aerienne
d’Armenie, Armavia, a souligne les failles de l’aviation civile
armenienne, le gouvernement armenien a choisi d’appeler a l’aide une
compagnie americaine specialisee dans ce secteur pour le conseiller
dans ses projets visant a ouvrir davantage le ciel armenien et a
developper les liaisons aeriennes interieures et internationales.

Au nom du gouvernement armenien, la Fondation en charge de
la competitivite nationale a signe un accord en ce sens avec
McKinsey & Company a Erevan le 18 juillet. En vertu de cet accord,
McKinsey accompagnera le gouvernement armenien dans le processus de ”
liberalisation progressive” de ce secteur qu’il avait annoncee en juin
dernier, après la faillite retentissante d’Armavia. La grande compagnie
aerienne privee croulait sous le poids de ses dettes aux aeroports, aux
fournisseurs de carburant et autres, et ce alors qu’elle avait benefice
pendant presque une decennie, de la jouissance de droits exclusifs pour
les liaisons internationales en partance et a destination de l’Armenie.

Le plan de liberalisation presente par le Departement de l’aviation
civile d’Armenie et approuve par le gouvernement de Tigrane Sarkissian
en juin dernier prevoit le remplacement a terme d’Armavia par trois
autres compagnies aeriennes armeniennes dont les noms seront bientôt
devoiles. Des responsables en charge du dossier avaient annonce le 6
juin que le gouvernement devait lancer un appel d’offres en ce sens
dans un delai d’un mois. Le chef du Departement, Artyom Movsesian, a
indique que cet appel avait ete reporte après examen des propositions
concrètes presentees par McKinsey concernant les reformes du secteur de
l’aviation civile. Il a precise que ce report avait ete suggere par ces
nouveaux consultants etrangers appeles par le gouvernement armenien.

Par ailleurs, M. Movsesian a laisse entendre qu’a ce jour, une
seule compagnie aurait depose une demande pour des droits de vols
commerciaux. Cette compagnie, Air Armenia, assure actuellement
exclusivement du transport aerien de fret. Andre Andonian, l’un des
responsables del’agence McKinsey qui a signe l’accord de cooperation
avec le gouvernement armenien, a indique pour sa part que l’agence
americaine de conseils etudiera l’experience en matière d’aviation des
voisins directs de l’Armenie ainsi que celle de pays d’Amerique latine,
comme le Chili et le Perou. “Nous consulterons tous les partenaires
possible en Armenie et a l’etranger de telle sorte que notre approche
soit equilibree et nos choix les meilleurs”, a-t-il declare lors de la
ceremonie de signature de l’accord, a laquelle assistait M. Sarkissian.

Plusieurs compagnies europeennes, russes et d’autres pays ont augmente
le nombre de leurs vols desservant l’Armenie après qu’Armavia eut
mis un terme a ses liaisons avec l’Europe, les pays de l’ex-URSS et
du Moyen-Orient le 1er avril. La societe argentine qui administer
l’aeroport Zvartnots de Erevan, auprès duquel Armavia avait accumule
des dettes, a salue cette evolution en mai, en exprimant l’espoir que
cette concurrence pourra provoquer une diminution du coût des billets
d’avion a destination de l’Armenie, qui restent relativement eleves.

Une concurrence qui est le point faible du secteur aerien armenien,
comme l’a souligne M. Andonian.

mardi 23 juillet 2013, Gari ©armenews.com

ZORYAN INSTITUTE: REFLECTIONS ON YAIR AURON’S BANALITY OF INDIFFERENCE

Monday, July 22nd, 2013

The Banality of Indifference by Yair Auron

The Zoryan Institute welcomes the Armenian translation of Prof. Yair
Auron’s book titled The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the
Armenian Genocide, an important book in the effort to combat denial.

The book, published originally in Hebrew in 1995, is a groundbreaking
record of the reaction of the Jewish community in Palestine before
the founding of the State of Israel to the Armenian Genocide. Seeing
the importance of this pioneering work of comparative history, the
Zoryan Institute invited Auron to Yerevan in 1995 to participate in
the International Conference on “Problems of Genocide,” the first on
genocide held in independent Armenia.

While the official Jewish reaction to the Genocide was muted and
largely self-interested, Auron documents instances of support. The
Nili Group, for example, an underground intelligence organization,
actively sought to aid the Armenian victims. Chaim Weizmann, a Zionist
leader and later the first President of the State of Israel, and
Nahum Sokolov, a Zionist leader and a pioneer of Hebrew journalism,
publicly condemned the killings. Zionist writers and journalists
expressed outraged identification with the Armenians and tried to
arouse the conscience of the world. This book was made available to
the English reading public by a Zoryan sponsoring its translation,
editing and publication.

The Institute commissioned a new study by Auron, which was published
in 2003 as The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide.

It dealt with the official policies of the State of Israel regarding
the Armenian Genocide, which Auron decried as denial. We hope that
the Banality of Denial will also be made available to Armenian readers
before the centennial of the Armenian Genocide.

Prof. Auron, a long-time member of the Zoryan Institute’s Academic
Board of Directors, has been a strong advocate of raising awareness
of the Armenian Genocide in Israel. Auron was an early supporter and
participant in Zoryan’s Genocide and Human Rights University Program
and has gone on to be a leading educator in Israel and abroad on
genocide, as well as the Armenian Genocide in particular. He has
developed a curriculum that is used in Israel and has been adopted
in other countries and has published a series of books in Hebrew and
English on the various major cases of genocide, including one on the
Armenian Genocide earlier this year.

Prof. Yair Auron is a scholar of great originality, a strong advocate
of universal human rights, and a soldier in the fight against denial.

It is very gratifying that his work is being acknowledged and
appreciated by the Armenian Writers Union and government officials.

The Zoryan Institute and its subsidiary, the International Institute
for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, is the first non-profit,
international center devoted to the research and documentation of
contemporary issues with a focus on Genocide, Diaspora and Armenia.

A Cue On Eurasia

In Russia the Eurasian idea as a political doctrine is an old
tradition. It is known that the ideologists and apostles of Eurasia
enjoyed the favor of all the governments, be it the Russian empire,
Bolshevists or current moderate liberals because any other political
doctrine is organically hostile to government.For different peoples
Eurasia is associated with different impressions from the past. For
the Ukrainians, for example, it is first of all Cumans and Tatars of
Crimea. What is Eurasia to the Russians? Eurasia is where oil, gas and
money is. Here is the ideology.

I have met and worked with Russian Eurasianists because it was thought
to be important to learn how to play in the rival’s `field’ though
interpersonal relations were always honest and sincere. Once I was
attending a meeting of Eurasianists of different directions and
styles, academists and professors, as well as those marginal ones with
doctoral degrees, about 100 people. The meeting was presided by
Alexander Dugin.

During the break people were smoking, drinking coffee and discussing
their problems in the library hall. Standing beside the large map of
Eurasia on the wall, I asked a question loudly, addressing all the
participants: `Gentlemen, who can show me the borders of Eurasia?’ The
first reaction was irony – asking such a thing to the coryphaeus of
Eurasian direction. The second reaction had a shade of concern, and
finally a discussion started.

Eventually, none of the academists and marginals was able to show the
borders of their favorite Eurasia (the majority saw it only through
the windows of their offices). At last, in order to end the
meaningless discussion, Professor A. Dubinin known for his sense of
humor said: `What different does it make? We will not be able to reach
these borders anyway.’

Igor Muradyan
15:41 20/07/2013
Story from Lragir.am News:

Hurriyet, Turkey
July 21 2013

The Rojava, the PYD, and the state’s ‘chronic Kurdish allergy’

by Cengiz Candar

[Translated from Turkish]

Who has contributed more to Kurdish music than [Armenian-origin
folksinger] Aram Tigran[yan], I wonder? It is true that he was born in
Al-Qamishli, the biggest Kurdish town in Syria, in 1934, but he was
the child of a family from Diyarbakir that had fled the genocide in
1915 and migrated to there. During his life, he put out 11 albums. He
sang 230 songs in Kurmanji, 150 in Arabic, and 10 in Assyrian
(Aramaic). He was a true child of Mesopotamia. His origins were as a
Diyarbakir Armenian and a Syrian Kurd. He was an immortal figure in
the Kurdish culture of Turkey.

Why, when he died in 2009, the state did not permit him to be buried
in Diyarbakir, is incomprehensible. But even if he has no grave in
Diyarbakir, he today has a statue in Silvan.

[Armenian-origin folksinger] Karapete Xaco[yan] was born in a village
of Batman at the very beginning of the 1900s. In 1915, thanks to
someone who spared his life, he found himself as a child in
Al-Qamishli. He lived in Syria until 1946, and afterwards, until his
death in 2005, in Yerevan. He worked on the Kurdish radio station. He
was a great voice and collector of dengbej [traditional Kurdish bard]
music. The overwhelming majority of Kurds consider him to be a Kurd.

[Kurdish rock singer] Ciwan Haco is known directly as a Syrian Kurd.
He was born in Al-Qamishli in 1957. He is an extraordinarily popular
voice in Kurdish rock music. He has come to Turkey numerous times, and
the earth virtually shook in the Kurdish regions. He is a Kurd, a
citizen of Syria, born in Al-Qamishli, but his roots are in Mardin. He
is the child of a Kurdish family that had fled following the Shaykh
Said rebellion. After all, where is Al-Qamishli? It is just next door
to the Nusaybin district of Mardin province. Between them is a
railroad invented as the border line between Turkey and Syria by the
French following the First World War.

The same railroad separates Karkamis from Jarablus, the Mursitpinar
border gate of Suruc from Kobani [Ayn al-Arab], Akcakale from Til
Abyad, and Ceylanpinar from Serekaniye [Ra’s al-Ayn]. Amudah is
visible from Mardin. Whether Derbesiye [Al-Darbasiyah] is closer to
Kiziltepe or to Senyurt is debatable. Just a short distance from Cizre
is Derik [Al-Malikiyah].

There is a border formed by a railroad, and there are two countries
given two different names, but it is the same people living on both
sides of the border. For this reason, the language of the Kurds living
along the border in Turkey does not refer to Syria, nor does that of
the Kurds in Syria refer to Turkey. They speak of the other side
either as “bin xat” [Kurdish: “below the line”] or as “ser xat”
[“above the line”]. “Below the line” or “above the line.” The “line”
is the railroad line. The situation that [poet] Ahmet Arif described
in Hasretinden Prangalar Eskittim [“Fetters Worn Out by Longing”],
saying “we never became reconciled to passports,” was in terms of
“below and above the line.”

So now, when a “Kurdish flag” has been seen on a macaroni processing
plant in Serekaniye, just a stone’s throw from Ceylanpinar, what is
all this commotion?

Why does the Prime Ministerial Adviser and Ankara Parliamentary Deputy
[Yalcin Akdogan] (who has, in general, spent a major portion of his
political career in making statements threatening the Kurds)
immediately feel the need to leap to his pen and make a statement that
“the PYD [Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party] is playing with
fire”?

According to Yalcin Akdogan, “the developments on the Syrian border
have gradually begun to constitute a different national security
problem for Turkey,” and Turkey cannot simply ignore this situation.

What would it supposedly do? That, he does not say. But the language
is very openly the “language of threat.” Directed against whom?
Against the Syrian Kurds, naturally. Against the Syrian Kurds, who
have their roots in Turkey. Let no one say “no, not against them, but
against the PYD.” In the environment of violence in Syria, is there
any other “representative” authority other than the PYD (or the
Kurdish High Council, which it dominates) that protects the Kurds and
provides “self-administration” in the Kurdish towns?

He also declares Turkey’s “principle” with regard to Syria: “Turkey
defends the rights of all the groups in Syria, including the Kurds.
Movements that disregard the other groups and seek to establish
domination over them destroy this basis of rights.”

Very nice. Well, then, when “Salafist-Islamist” forces like Al-Nusrah,
which is a derivative of Al-Qa’idah, or the Liwa al-Faruq, or the
Ahrar al-Sham, attacked Serekaniye on numerous occasions since last
year, did Yalcin Akdogan make statements expressing such concerns even
once?

He did not. The issue, it is plainly clear, pertains to the Kurds’
establishing administrations in the Kurdish regions.

Also, why did Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, when the PYD
administration was established in Kobani on 19 July last year, rush
off to Arbil a week after the agreement signed among the Syrian Kurds
in Arbil under the aegis of [Iraqi Kurdistan Regional President]
Mas’ud Barzani, and even though he met with various Kurdish
personalities in Arbil, why did he refuse to meet with PYD
[Co-]Chairman Salih Muslim?

Why does the same Ahmet Davutoglu, on the first anniversary of the
“Rojava [Kurdish for “west”, referring to West, i.e., Syrian,
Kurdistan] Revolution,” ring the alarm bells now that the Al-Nusrah
forces have been expelled from Serekaniye (Ra’s al-Ayn] and feel the
need to speak as follows?:

“Henceforth, the most efficacious methods will be taken against every
sort of threat to our border security, no matter from what group or
with what rationale it might come, and there will be immediate
responsea¦ Indeed, there is an extremely fractious and high-tension
state of war in Syria. The effort to create any new fait accompli or
de facto situation would increase this fragility, and would cause even
more negative consequences to come about.”

Sentences that, on paper, appear quite true. Well, then, why was the
same sensitivity never evidenced or expressed when Islamist armed
organizations of the Al-Qa’idah type, such as Al-Nusrah, seized some
border points in “the north of Syria”?

PYD Co-chairman Salih Muslim, in the interview published in
yesterday’s Taraf, after telling [journalist] Amberin Zaman that
“there is no impression that Turkey is currently supporting
Al-Nusrah,” said the following:

“But some border crossings are still under their control. Such as the
Akcakale and Karkamis border gates. Turkey is happy with this.”

If this is the case, and if when the Syrian Kurds hoist a flag in a
border town that belongs to them, even though we have not heard any
“declaration of dissatisfaction” on this issue from any official
spokesman, we try to get all of Turkey up in arms, and as if that were
not enough the UN Security Council as well, then it means the Turkish
state’s “Kurdish allergy” continues.

The following, from a statement to ANF [Firat News Agency] by KCK
[Assembly of Communities of Kurdistan] Executive Council member Sahin
Cilo on the occasion of the “19 July Revolution,” drew my attention:

“It is a question of an administration that has been forming for the
past year in the Rojava, and this can be assessed as the most
democratic administration in the Middle East. This system and
administration have succeeded in protecting the Rojava as the safest
area in the region. With destruction taking place in Syria, there is a
secure environment here. This, in and of itself, constitutes a model
for the peoples of Syria. But the regional and international forces
are implementing their policies of slander against this, and at the
same time are engaging in attacks against it.”

The same situation, and the exact same process, also obtained starting
in the 1990s and during the first 9 years of the 2000s in “the north
of Iraq,” that is, South Kurdistan. Now, the behaviour shown during
that period towards the Iraqi Kurds is being shown towards the
“Rojava”, that is, the “West.”

As a strange twist of fate, the Iraqi Kurds are these days Ankara’s
closest friends. And the Syrian Kurds as well – which in comparison to
the Iraqi Kurds are more intimately connected to the Kurds of Turkey –
will in the future be such close friends as well.

Let us not forget that the PYD and the Kurdish political movement in
Turkey (the PKK [Kurdistan People’s Congress, KGK] and the BDP [Peace
and Democracy Party]) are like two sides of the same coin. When BDP
mayors are seen as normal in various sections of Turkey, there should
be nothing in Syrian Kurdish towns’ coming under the administration of
the PYD that would upset Turkey.

Moreover, for Ankara to have positive and confident relations with the
PYD would be one of the greatest guarantees of Turkey’s “Peace and
Solution Process” reaching its goal.

[Translated from Turkish]