Author: Madatian Greg

Kurdistan Observer, MI
Oct 30, 2004

Turkey and European Union

By: Amed Demirhan

Oct 30, 2004

In recent months there have been an on going serious debate about
Turkey’s membership application to European Union. In principle, I
always have been supporter of Turkeys membership to European Union (EU)
and North Atlantics treaty (NATO) because I believe this two
organizations are gate ways to Western civilization and it’s in Kurdish
national interest as well. However, in current condition, instead of
Turkey adapting to the EU, it seems EU is willing to grants Turkey
specially statues and accommodating to its racist, anti-Semitics, and
xenophobic regime with out any change. This is very dangerous for every
one. Turkish history is the best witness for this; therefore European
should not repeat Arab-Muslim mistakes.

History records that Arab and Muslim greatly contributed to the global
civilization from 7th century to the 13th century in many areas like:
Mathematics, physic, astronomy, medicine, poetry, literature,
architecture, philosophy by translating classical Greeks, and Roman’s
literatures. After Turkish Memluks (States Slaves: Children of the
state with Turkish origins) and Ottomans tribes took over Muslim
countries, the Muslim civilization rapidly declined and become symbols
of dictatorship and brutality in three continents. One cannot find a
trace of civilization from Muslim world from 14th century to today
because of Turkish dominance, therefore one wouldn’t want EU and
Western civilizations become another victims of the Turkish regimes and
state culture (Not Turkish people).

When one looks to Turkish media, which strongly controlled by the
state, still insist on one language, one religion, and one race idea of
the state. It strongly oppose to the EU classification of the Kurds and
Alavis (a radically different sect of Islam, by some it considered
unorthodox) as minority. Interestingly both Alavis and Kurds rejects
they are minorities. Kurds are majority in Kurdistan areas of the
country that consist of one third of the country’s’ geography and they
are about 20-30 % of population. The Alevis are about 20-30 % of the
population and consist among different ethnics groups but majority are
Kurdish, and they like to be treated as equal with the Sunni majority
however, not as minority.

On the other hand the Kemalist and Fundamentalist Turks argue that
Turkey only recognized the non-Muslims as minorities: Jewish, Armenian,
and Greeks in accordance of July 24, 1923 Lausanne Treaty. However, no
one is or willing to say in Turkish press why these three groups were
considered minorities and not Muslims? The answer is simple because
these three groups during the Ottoman- Ittihat Teraki regime were
subject to genocides and so called Muslim in theory and in accordance
with Muslim laws considered equal citizens. This was Turkish
representatives defense about Muslims in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1924.
However, one should remember the Turkish government still hasn’t
implemented Lausanne treaty. Contrary to the treaty it has prohibited
Kurdish Language and has many restrictions on Greeks and Armenian
cultures, properties, and still refuse it committed genocide against
Greek, Armenians, and Kurds.

One of the basic requirements for EU membership is the acceptance of
the so-called Copenhagen criteria of 1993,
) and Turkey is
far away from implementing this treaty. The most important thing is
that Turkey should become an European country, but Europe shouldn’t
become a `Turkey’. All public surveys show people in both EU and
Turkey are favoring that Turkey should become European by adopting the
EU standard not other way around.

Amed Demirhan

Kevorkian Loses Supreme Court Appeal

Monday November 1, 2004 3:31 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) – Assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian lost a
Supreme Court appeal on Monday in his bid to win freedom after five
years in prison.

Justices, without comment, turned back an appeal in which Kevorkian
claimed he had an ineffective attorney when he was convicted of
second-degree murder in the 1998 poisoning of Thomas Youk. Youk had
Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Kevorkian called it a mercy killing. The
death was videotaped and shown on national television.

The Supreme Court had also turned back an appeal from Kevorkian two
years ago that claimed his prosecution was unconstitutional.

Kevorkian has said he assisted in at least 130 deaths, but has
promised in affidavits that he will not aid in more suicides if he is
released. He could be eligible for parole in 2007.

The case is Kevorkian v. Warren, 04-380.

Armenia trying to ‘increase’ population in Upper Garabagh

AzerNews, Azerbaijan
28 Oct. 2004

Armenia is trying to pursue a policy of increasing the number of
Armenian population in Upper Garabagh, Azerbaijan’s region under
Armenian occupation, through internal migration and by granting
privileges to families with many children.

A program on granting privileges to families with three and more
children in the self-proclaimed Upper Garabagh republic was adopted
in 2002.

The ‘statistics committee of Upper Garabagh’ has recently issued a
report saying that the number of families with five and more children
has reached 241 (1,329 children) in Upper Garabagh over the last
nine months.

The “Artsakhbank” has opened 128 accounts holding $115.400 for families
with more than three children.

According to the report, 1,412 babies were born in the self-proclaimed
republic in January-September, or 2.2% over 2003, mostly in Shusha
and Khojavand districts.

Marriage rate increased 24.4%, while divorce rate dropped 18.7%
after the mentioned program was passed, the committee said.

Samvel Dadaian, a department head of the social security ministry in
the self-proclaimed republic said the program on families with many
children requires less money than relocation of population to Upper
Garabagh from other regions.

Interfaith leaders issue plea for mutual respect
by Abigail Radoszkowicz

The Jerusalem Post
October 27, 2004, Wednesday

At a reconciliation meeting with heads of Christian churches in Israel,
Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger called for the establishment of
a religious United Nations in Jerusalem.

The meeting at the Chief Rabbinate was called by Metzger in the wake
of the recent highly publicized incident two weeks ago in which
a yeshiva student was arresting for spitting at a Sunday morning
religious procession through the Old City headed by the Armenian
Archbishop of Jerusalem, Nourhan Manougian.

Manougian’s representative, Bishop Aris Shirvanian, was among the 14
high-ranking clergymen who accepted Metz- ger’s invitation.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of the International Fellowship of Christians
and Jews, who initiated the meeting, seconded Metzger’s proposal.

However, one informed observer pointed out that Metz- ger had
proposed the idea several times before. He added that it was unlikely
that anything would come of it, both due to contesting claims for
representation among the religions themselves.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Metzger vigorously condemned disrespect to
members of other faiths, noting that they were “not rivals but
brothers.” He said that he would call on rabbis, especially those
in the Old City where interfaith friction was most acute, to educate
their congregations to show tolerance to other religions.

Bishop Shirvanian emphasized that the spitting incident two weeks
was not an isolated one, with two occurring since. He reported that
religious Jews often spit as he walks by, especially when he wears
his religious medallion of the Virgin Mother and the Baby Jesus.

Shirvanian did note that the majority of their Jewish neighbors
treated the Armenian clergymen with respect. As for those who did not,
he suggested that the police impose stiff fines as deterrents.

Father Elias Michael Chacour praised Metzger for his courage in
acknowledging misdeeds perpetuated by his people. He said that the
whole world looked to Jerusalem for a sign, as it was home to three
different religions, quipping they all “belonged to the family of an
Iraqi citizen named Abraham.”

Greek Orthodox Archbishop Aristarchos, speaking in Hebrew, declared
the meeting “an important and joyful event.”

The church representatives signed a declaration that as leaders
of the Jewish and Christian religions they called on followers to
“increase their tolerance, respect, and understanding for members of
different faiths.”

GRAPHIC: Photo: ASHKENAZI CHIEF Rabbi Yona Metzger chats with Rabbi
Yechiel Eckstein, Russian Orthodox Archimandrite Eliasey, and Father
Elias Michael Chacour after yesterday’s reconciliation meeting with
heads of Christian churches at the Chief Rabbinate in Jerusalem.
(Credit: Flash 90)

Israel’s chief rabbi meets Christian leaders to ease tensions
By LAURIE COPANS

AP Worldstream
Oct 26, 2004

An Israeli chief rabbi held an unprecedented meeting Tuesday with
Christian clergy in Jerusalem in an effort to ease tensions after
an Orthodox Jew spat at an Armenian bishop near a holy site in the
Old City.

Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, who sat at the head of a table surrounded
by clerics with gold crosses, black robes and silver staffs, denounced
any attacks on religious clergy in Israel.

“As sons of Abraham, we are brothers,” Metzger said. “We denounce
any act that is meant to degrade religious people.”

The meeting was called after the Oct. 10 incident in which a Jewish
seminary student spit on an Armenian archbishop carrying a cross in
Jerusalem, sparking a fist fight that damaged the cleric’s medallion.

Many of the 14 church representatives at the meeting Tuesday complained
that the incident was just one of dozens of similar attacks every year.

“Unfortunately this incident was not an isolated incident,” Armenian
Bishop Aris Shirvanian said. “Quite frequently we suffer some kind
of indignity … at least once a week.”

Shirvanian said Israeli rabbis needed to do a better job of educating
their followers not to participate in such attacks.

Metzger promised to ask rabbis in the Old City to give sermons on
religious tolerance. An Interior Ministry official said Jerusalem
police understood the importance of cracking down on anti-Christian
behavior among Orthodox Jews.

Although officially relations between Jewish and Christian clergy
are good in Jerusalem, tensions sometimes escalate over what church
leaders say are a disregard by Israel for their interests.

In a sign of the seriousness of the spitting incident, Tuesday’s
meeting was the first time in years a chief rabbi had met with so
many Christian clergy, said Efrat Orbach, a spokeswoman for Metzger.

In a sign of their excitement over the meeting, many church
representatives took pictures throughout. The gathering was initiated
by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which was
founded by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who moved to Israel from Chicago
in 2001.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
October 21, 2004 Thursday 2:23 AM Eastern Time

Armenia president to pay official visit to Georgia

By Tigran Liloyan

YEREVAN

Prospects of good-neighbourliness and cooperation between Armenia and
Georgia will be in the focus of attention of a three-day official
visit of Armenian President Robert Kocharayan to Tbilisi. An Armenian
delegation will leave for Georgia by cars on Thursday. A solemn
ceremony of its meeting will be held on the border.

Robert Kocharyan will hold talks with President Mikhail Saakashvili
and other leaders of Georgia. He will also visit head of the Georgian
Orthodox Church Catholicos-Patriarch of All-Georgia Ilia the Second.

An Armenian-Georgian business-forum will be held in Tbilisi on
October 24. Robert Kocharayan will meet leaders of the Armenian
community in Georgia numbering, according to unofficial data, up to
400,000 people. He will also take part in the city holiday
“Tbilisoba.”

“Maintaining and development of traditionally friendly relations with
Georgia stems from long-term strategic interests of Armenia and is
one of the priorities of the republic’s foreign policy,”
representatives of the presidential apparatus of Armenia told
Itar-Tass. Good-neighbourliness with Georgia is considered here to be
“the most important component of regional stability.”

“Armenia considers Georgia as a road ensuring the communication with
the external world and its uninterrupted operation is of extremely
great importance from the point of view of economic security,”
representatives of the presidential apparatus said.

“From the very beginning Armenian-Georgian relations embrace a wide
range of cooperation and have a rather dynamic characher with regular
contacts at the highest level,” representatives of the presidential
apparatus noted.

ArmenPress
Oct 19 2004

AUSTRIAN, GERMAN EXPERTS TO LEARN PROSPECTS FOR INTRODUCING NEW
CREDITING SYSTEM IN ARMENIA

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 19, ARMENPRESS: G. Wagner, G. Biernach and F.
Boyek, three representatives of the Austrian KSV and German SCHUFA
credit bureaus have arrived today in Armenia at the invitation of the
Armenian ACRA credit bureau. ACRA has been cooperating with them for
several months already. The agreement on their visit to Armenia was
reached during a world gathering of senior executives of credit
bureaus in Beijing, when ACRA applied for membership to influential
credit organizations.
The goal of the Austrian and German experts is to assess
preconditions of the establishment of the institution of Armenian
credit bureau and to offer to ACRA and local commercial banks an
efficient system of cooperation that has been tested successfully in
many developed and developing European countries. The system supposes
the most precise evaluation of risk factors.
Application of that system in Armenia will allow Armenian lenders
to make their financial responsibility a guarantee for receiving
privileged credits.
Austrian and German experts will discuss the issue of introduction
of that system with senior officials of the Central Bank, World Bank
Yerevan office and other lending organizations and commercial banks.

Associated Press Worldstream
October 19, 2004 Tuesday 9:37 AM Eastern Time

Vatican-Jewish commission condemns vandalism and disrespect for
religious people in Jerusalem

VATICAN CITY

A joint Jewish-Vatican commission on Tuesday condemned acts of
vandalism and disrespect for religious people in Jerusalem, citing
the recent assault on an Armenian archbishop by a Jewish seminary
student.

“Jerusalem has a sacred character for all the children of Abraham,”
said the statement issued during a meeting of the Holy See’s
Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and the Chief
Rabbinate of Israel.

“We call on all relevant authorities to respect this character and to
prevent actions which offend the sensibilities of religious
communities that reside in Jerusalem and hold her dear,” the
statement said.

A leader of the Armenian church in Jerusalem said Monday the church
would not press charges against an Israeli who spat at clergy during
a Christian procession last week.

In the Oct. 17 incident, a Jewish seminary student spat at Armenian
Archbishop Nourhan Manougian as he carried a cross in a procession
through the Old City. A fist-fight broke out, and the archbishop’s
medallion of office was damaged. The student was arrested but
released shortly afterward.

Tensions are often high in the walled Old City, divided among
Christians, Jews and Muslims. The Old City contains important holy
sites of all three religions, and some are contested among competing
religions and denominations.

The Vatican-Jewish commission, which has been meeting this week in
Grottaferrata, near Rome, urged religious authorities to protest
publicly when disrespectful acts are committed.

“We call on them to educate their communities to behave with respect
and dignity toward people and toward their attachment to their
faith,” the commission said.

House Passes Bill Repealing 1916 Dumping Law WTO Ruled Illegal

Normal trade relations for Armenia, Laos among hundreds of provisions

Washington File
12 October 2004

By Bruce Odessey, Washington File Staff Writer

Washington — The House of Representatives has given final passage to a bill
that would repeal a dumping law that was ruled illegal by the World Trade
Organization (WTO) and would extend permanent normal trade relations to
Armenia and Laos.

To become law the bill would have to be passed by the Senate and signed by
the president. Whether the Senate will consider the bill when Congress
returns November 16 from its election recess is not known.

Most of the 299-page bill, passed by the House late October 8 without
debate, comprises hundreds of tariff suspensions on imports of goods not
produced domestically and traded in small volumes.

Repeal of the 1916 antidumping law was slipped into the final version of the
miscellaneous tariffs bill by House and Senate negotiators even though
neither chamber had earlier passed such a provision.

The House Judiciary Committee had approved the provision, however, and U.S.
Trade Representative Robert Zoellick had urged its passage.

The WTO had ruled against the 1916 antidumping law, which was challenged by
the European Union (EU) and Japan. Under the law, never actually used from
1916 until the 1990s, U.S. companies can sue foreign producers for triple
damages for dumping goods on the U.S. market with the intent of injuring
U.S. industry.

To date no plaintiff has ever collected damages under the 1916 law. In May,
however, a U.S. federal court upheld a jury verdict ordering a Japanese
newspaper press manufacturer to pay its U.S. rival more than $30 million,
triple the damages from dumping as calculated by the jury. That case remains
under appeal.

The provision in the miscellaneous tariffs bill would repeal the 1916 law
but would not overturn any case already decided or pending under the law.
Whether Japan or the EU would accept such a nonretroactive change is not
known.

The WTO had already authorized retaliation by the EU against any final
judgment ordered under the law against an EU company.

Another provision of the miscellaneous tariffs bill would grant permanent
normal trade relations for Armenia. Normal trade relations (NTR), otherwise
known as most-favored-nation treatment, prohibit discrimination among a
country’s trading partners. Armenia has had temporary NTR, approved year to
year by the president.

The bill would also extend NTR to Laos, bringing into force a 1997 U.S.-Laos
trade agreement. Laos remains one of only four countries worldwide and the
only least-developed country to which the United States does not extend NTR.

Miscellaneous tariff bills typically pass each session of Congress
routinely, but this one was held up over a succession of issues for three
years. One senator from a southern textile-producing state delayed Senate
action, for example, until he achieved a change requiring clearer
country-of-origin labeling for socks.

Following are some other provisions of the bill:

— A provision that would correct a mistake in the Trade Act of 2002 that
inadvertently raised duties on Andean handbags, luggage, flat goods, work
gloves and leather wearing apparel under the Andean Trade Preferences Act
(ATPA).

— A provision that would clarify the African Growth and Opportunity Act
(AGOA), extending retroactively to October 2000 duty-free treatment for
collars and cuffs.

— A provision that would temporarily prohibit U.S. imports of
archaeological, cultural and other rare items from Iraq to prevent illegal
shipment of such antiquities.

— In line with a 2001 international agreement to eliminate testing of wine
for reasons other than health and safety, a provision that would amend U.S.
regulatory law concerning cellar treatment for both domestic and imported
natural wine.

The EU has refused to accept U.S. wine-making practices and has waived its
rules to allow wine imported from the United States but only through 2005.
Congressional negotiators have indicated they intended this provision as
leverage in U.S.-EU negotiations, which have achieved no agreement so far.

— A provision that would require the U.S. customs agency in the Department
of Homeland Security to establish integrated border inspection areas along
the U.S.-Canadian border. In these areas U.S. customs officers could inspect
vehicles before they entered the United States from Canada, and Canadian
customs officials could inspect vehicles before they entered Canada from the
United States.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information
Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: )

Turkey not worthy of EU integration: Armenian FM

EU Business
11 October 2004

Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian on Monday said Turkey should
not be allowed at this time to open accession talks with the European
Union, a statement reflecting the lingering poisonous atmosphere
between the two countries over the issue of the 1915 genocide of
Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.

“At this time Turkey is not worthy of being authorised to begin
negotiations for entry into the European Union,” Oskanian said at a
press conference in the Armenian capital, citing Ankara’s refusal to
recognize the genocide of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during
World War I.

The massacres of Armenians during World War I is one of the most
controversial episodes in Turkish history.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen were killed in
massacres or deportations between 1915 and 1917.

Turkey categorically rejects claims of genocide and says that between
250,000 and 500,000 Armenians were killed in civil strife when the
Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers.

Armenia’s foreign minister also said he was worried that by accepting
Turkey as a member, the EU would close its eyes to the fact that
Ankara has kept its border with Armenia closed since 1993.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia to support Baku in its war
against Yerevan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, a mainly
Armenian-populated region of Azerbaijan.

A close ally of Azerbaijan, Turkey has declined to establish diplomatic
ties with Armenia and remains bitter at the country’s efforts to
secure international condemnation of the early 20th century killings
of Armenians as “genocide”.

The European Commission has given a conditional green light to launch
Turkey’s EU membership negotiations but will make a final decision
about a starting date at a summit on December 17.