Author: Toganian Liana

UN NOUVEL ECRIVAIN TURC POURSUIVI POUR DES ECRITS SUR LA QUESTION ARMENIENNE
Avant-Papier

Agence France Presse
19 septembre 2006 mardi 7:33 AM GMT

La romancière turque Elif Shafak comparaîtra jeudi devant un tribunal
d’Istanbul pour un livre sur les massacres d’Armeniens sous l’empire
ottoman, un procès qui soulève des doutes sur la democratisation de
la Turquie a une periode cruciale de son processus d’adhesion a l’UE.

Elif Shafak, 35 ans, est la dernière en date d’une serie
d’intellectuels poursuivis au titre d’un article controverse du code
penal turc, portant sur le "denigrement de l’identite nationale" et
dont l’Union europeenne reclame la modification de facon a respecter
la liberte d’expression.

L’affaire a suscite d’autant plus de critiques que la romancière
risque jusqu’a trois ans de prison, non pas en raison de prises de
position publiques, mais pour les propos de personnages fictifs de
son dernier roman, "Baba ve Pic" ("Le Père et le Bâtard"), publie en
mars 2006 en Turquie.

L’article 301 du code penal a deja servi de base a l’ouverture de
poursuites, finalement abandonnees, contre le celèbre ecrivain Orhan
Pamuk et conduit a la condamnation du journaliste armenien de Turquie
Hrant Dink a six mois de prison avec sursis.

Personne n’a encore ete emprisonne en raison de cet article, mais
des dizaines d’autres affaires sont en attente, ce qui a pousse
le commissaire europeen a l’Elargissement Olli Rehn a reclamer en
juillet que la disposition soit amendee "pour garantir la liberte
d’expression".

Le ministre des Affaires etrangères Abdullah Gul a recemment laisse
entendre que l’article pourrait etre modifie dans le cadre de reformes
democratiques que le gouvernement entend presenter au Parlement
avant la publication par la Commission europeenne, le 24 octobre,
d’un rapport crucial sur les progrès de la Turquie sur la voie de
l’adhesion au bloc europeen.

Les negociations d’adhesion entre la Turquie et l’UE sont deja en peril
en raison du refus d’Ankara d’ouvrir les ports et aeroports turcs aux
navires et avions chypriotes grecs, pourtant membres du bloc europeen.

La procedure contre Mme Shafak a ete lancee a la suite d’une plainte
de Kemal Kerincsiz, un avocat nationaliste qui s’est acquis une
certaine notoriete pour sa "traque" infatigable des intellectuels
questionnant la position officielle sur les massacres d’Armeniens
commis en Anatolie entre 1915 et 1917.

La question de ces massacres est très sensible en Turquie, qui juge
inapproprie le terme -adopte par plusieurs pays dans le monde- de
"genocide" pour les qualifier.

Les Armeniens estiment que jusqu’a 1,5 million des leurs ont peri
dans un genocide, Ankara affirme que des massacres ont ete commis de
part et d’autre.

La presence de Mme Shafak a son procès etait peu probable, la jeune
femme ayant accouche samedi d’une petite fille.

"Baba ve Pic", situe a Istanbul et San Francisco, raconte les histoires
entremelees de quatre generations de femmes turques et d’une famille
armenienne americaine ayant survecu aux massacres.

Fille de diplomate, Elif Shafak est nee en France et a passe son
adolescence a l’etranger. Elle ecrit en anglais et en turc.

Elle est professeur associee a l’universite de l’Arizona et partage
son temps entre la Turquie et les Etats-Unis.

–Boundary_(ID_ZpRItAWWZhBQKgdKBksTlw )–

GENOCIDE: WAC RECOMMENDS ARMENIA TO APPEAL TO UN INTERNATIONAL COURT

PanARMENIAN.Net
19.09.2006 14:00 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "I would like to indicate the steps that should
be taken in our opinion to solve the problem of recognition of the
Armenian Genocide," President of the Union of Armenians of Russia
(UAR) and the World Armenian Congress (WAC) Ara Abrahamyan stated
during the Armenia-Diaspora Third All-Armenian Forum. It is evident
that the only opportunity to attain international and legal conclusion
on responsibility for the crime is a decision of an international
competent forum or international court.

Protracting the solution of that issue is not in line with interests
of Armenia, Turkey or superpowers, Abrahamyan noted.

In his words, the expert group at WAC has recommended that the
Government of Armenia appeal to the UN International Court on the
basis of article IX of the Convention of Preventing Genocide Crime
and Punishment for It. The appeal to the International Court cannot
be considered as hostile action and cannot entail negative political
consequences for Armenia, Ara Abrahamyan stated. To the contrary,
it can put an end to the past, which darkened relations with Turkey
for decades. "Unfortunately, we did not get a response to our proposal
up to now. The issue is to all appearance under consideration by the
MFA still," the UAR President said.

ANS TV, Baku, in Azeri
16 Sep 06

ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER REFUSES TO MEET AZERI COUNTERPART – AZERI TV

Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan has refused to meet his
Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov.

In an interview with reporters, Oskanyan said the two ministers were
not planning to meet. The Armenian foreign minister said he viewed
individual meetings with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs in the future
as more realistic.

Oskanyan said his failure to meet Mammadyarov was due to the UN
General Assembly putting frozen conflicts in GUAM [a regional
alliance of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova] member states
on its agenda at the request of GUAM.

But Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry has said Baku has no information
about this.

Mammadyarov and Oskanyan were scheduled to meet on 24-25 September.

Houston Chronicle, United States

Sept. 15, 2006, 1:45PM

Russia fears increase in ethnic violence

By STEVE GUTTERMAN Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

MOSCOW – Fighting involving ethnic Armenians and others in a Volga
River town left one person dead and at least three injured this week,
officials and news reports said Friday, fueling fears of a rise of
ethnic violence across Russia.

The violence came about a week after clashes and rioting targeting
Chechens in the northern town of Kondopoga left two people dead and
underlined the potentially explosive tension between ethnic Russians
and often darker-skinned people from the Caucasus and Central Asia, in
some cases migrants.

One ethnic Russian man was killed and three were injured in a brawl
with ethnic Armenians at a cafe in the town of Volsk early Sunday,
said Alexei Yegorov, police spokesman in the Saratov region, where the
town is located.

Yegorov said the fight was not motivated by ethnic bias, but Ekho
Moskvy radio reported that it was followed Monday by an attack on
ethnic Armenian students at a technical college in the town that left
one student with a knife wound.

Yegorov denied the attack took place and also denied what Ekho Moskvy
reported was further ethnic tension early Friday in the town some 700
kilometers (450 miles) southeast of Moscow. He said two ethnic
Armenians had fled the town following Sunday’s fight and were being
sought by police.

Ekho Moskvy said that in addition to the three Russians injured in the
cafe fight, one ethnic Armenian was also injured. It said the man who
was killed was a 25-year-old former paratrooper who had served in the
conflict in Chechnya.

While authorities sought to downplay the ethnic element in the
violence, it has raised fears that similar rampages could spread to
other Russian cities where increasingly aggressive nationalist groups
bristle at people from Russia’s Caucasus provinces and neighboring
ex-Soviet nations.

Russia has seen a marked rise in xenophobia and racist attacks in
recent years and rights groups say authorities do little or nothing to
combat xenophobia, often treating hate crimes as hooliganism.

Asked about the violence in Volsk, Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander
Buksman said his office is gathering information about such incidents
around the country to try to determine whether there is a common
cause, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported.

Dozens of nationalists demonstrated Thursday in Moscow, demanding
tighter controls over migrants from the Caucasus living in university
dormitories and the cancellation of provisions encouraging students
from other ex-Soviet nations to study in Russia.

About 150 were detained and some were fined for minor infractions, the
Interfax news agency quoted Moscow police spokesman Yevgeny Gildyev as
saying, but several dozen were allowed to hold a rally _ a soft
approach by the Russian authorities who usually move quickly to
disperse unsanctioned demonstrations.

The pro-tolerance group SOVA said 11 young people were sentenced in
the western city of Belgorod this week to prison terms ranging from 1
1/2 to 5 years for attacking a Roma family with knives and metal rods,
seriously injuring two people.

SOVA said it was just the fourth time that a Russian court has ruled
that defendants organized and participated in an extremist
organization. Court officials in Belgorod could not immediately be
reached for comment.

CBC Nova Scotia, Canada

British artist charged in Turkey for insulting the PM

Last Updated Fri, 15 Sep 2006 12:13:49 EDT
CBC Arts

A British artist living in Turkey is facing up to three years in
prison after being charged with insulting the Turkish prime minister’s
dignity with a work of art he created.

Michael Dickinson, who has lived in Turkey for 20 years, was arrested
outside a courthouse in Istanbul on Tuesday where he was protesting at
another freedom of speech trial.

He refused to put away a poster with a collage showing Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a dog attached to a Stars and Stripes leash.

"I wasn’t even planning to open it up," said Dickinson in a telephone
interview with the Guardian newspaper.

"But then I said ‘in for a penny in for a pound’ – if I’m here at all,
it’s about freedom of speech."

Dickinson, an English-language teacher as well as a writer and artist,
was at the courts in support of anti-war activist Erkan Kara. Kara was
in court because he displayed one of Dickinson’s works depicting the
U.S. president pinning an award rosette on Erdogan at a dog show.

Another author to be tried on insult charge

Freedom of speech has become an explosive issue in Turkey recently.

In a highly-publicized trial, the government took one of the country’s
best-known authors, Orhan Pamuk, to court for "insulting" the Turkish
identity.

The charges stemmed from an interview Pamuk gave in 2005 to a Swiss
newspaper in which he criticized the Turkish government for refusing
to recognize the Armenian genocide.

After intense pressure from the European Union and other countries,
the government dropped charges against the best-selling author of Snow
and My Name is Red.

Erdogan has been criticized for abusing a clause in Turkish law to
attack anyone who criticizes him. In March 2005, he sued a cartoonist
for portraying him as a cat tangled in a ball of wool.

Article 301 makes it an offence to insult the "Turkish identity" or
state institutions, including the armed forces.

Reports say the prime minister has earned as much as 115,000 ($163,000
Cdn) in damages from insult cases.

Next week, another Turkish novelist goes on trial in a freedom of
speech case. Elif Shafak is accused of "insulting Turkishness" in her
new novel The Bastard of Istanbul.

The Armenian characters in Shafak’s book make disparaging comments
about Turks and refer to a genocide of Armenians during the last years
of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey denies allegations that 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a
systematic genocide from 1915 to 1917.

IRANIAN PARLIAMENT SPEAKER LAYS WREATH TO MEMORIAL COMPLEX TO ARMENIAN GENOCIDE VICTIMS

Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
Sept 11 2006

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 11, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. The delegation
headed by Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, the Majlis Speaker of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, which pays an official visit to Armenia, by RA
National Assembly Speaker Tigran Torosian’s invitation, visited
Tsitsernakabert on September 11 and laid a wreath to the memorial
complex to Armenian Genocide victims. Lavrenti Barseghian, the
Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute mentioned that
a small part of the Armenian people found refuge in 1915-1918 in
Persia, so the Persian people knows very well what consequences the
Genocide had for the Armenians. It is not accidental that 4 years ago,
Armenian members of the Iranian Parliament arose at the Parliament the
issue of condemning and recognizing the Armenian Genocide," Lavrenti
Barseghian emphasized and expressed confidence that time would come
when the Iranian Parliament would recognize the Armenian Genocide.

FRANCE CALLS FOR SUSPENSION OF EU-TURKEY TALKS

Yerkir
11.09.2006 12:10

YEREVAN (YERKIR) – French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy on Friday
called for the suspension of EU membership talks with Turkey unless
Ankara changes its stance on Cyprus. Sarkozy, a front-runner ahead
of next year’s French presidential election, specifically called for
a break in accession talks while Turkey persists with its embargo
against Cypriot ships using its ports.

Turkey signed in July 2005 a protocol extending its customs accord with
the EU to the 10 new states that joined in 2004, including the island
of Cyprus, which Ankara refuses to recognize. But its Parliament has
yet to ratify the document and Ankara continues to block the access
of Cypriot ships.

"I call for the suspension of opening new adhesion chapters with
Turkey while it has not ratified and clearly has not implemented the
Ankara protocol (customs agreement)," he said in a speech.

"The geographical and political map of the EU" should be fixed, with
the bloc open to states which are "clearly part of the continent of
Europe" he said, citing Switzerland, Norway and the Balkan states,
reported Agenece France Presse.

ARMENIANS IN LEBANON PROTEST TURKISH FORCE

Peninsula On-line, Qatar
Sept 8 2006

BURJ HAMMUD, Lebanon ~U Lebanon’s Armenians, who have not forgotten
the massacres their people suffered under Ottoman rule, demonstrated
yesterday against Turkish troops set to take part in a UN peacekeeping
mission.

Waving Lebanese flags and banners denouncing Turkey as a murderous
state, several hundred gathered in the Beirut suburb of Burj Hammud,
heavily populated by Armenians, and appealed to the United Nations to
reconsider Turkey’s participation in an expanded UN force in Lebanon.

"Genocide, massacre, deportation: Turkey’s definition of peace,"
read one banner. "No to the participation of Turkish forces among UN
troops coming to Lebanon," read another.

"We had 1.5 million of our people slaughtered under the Turks and
you expect us to welcome them?" asked Arous Ghougassian, the owner
of a home furnishing business.

"I can assure you that I won’t sell them anything if they come into
my shop," she said.

Hagop, an employee at the Basterma Mano food store, raised his fists
in anger when asked about the Turkish UN force.

"Look at my arms, I get goose bumps when you refer to them," he said.

"If they dare come into our neighbourhoods we’ll deal with them."

Garo Hovsipian, a shopkeeper, said he could not put to rest the
massacre of his uncle and grandparents by the Turks in 1915.

"I somehow become a fanatic when I hear the word Turkey," he said,
drawing on a cigar. "It brings back memories of my ancestors, our
history, the massacres.

"Still if I encounter any soldiers I will treat them as guests because
we are more civilised than them."

Lebanon’s minority Armenian community, which numbers about 140,000
people, has objected to Turkey taking part in the UN force because
of mass killings of Armenians by Turks in 1915.

"Turkey, which carried out horrible crimes against humanity, cannot
take part in any peace process until it recognizes the massacre of
the Armenian people," Jacques Choukhadarian, a former MP and minister,
told yesterday’s gathering.

Representatives of the community have sent letters to UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan and to Western embassies in Beirut urging them
to reject Turkish participation in the UN Interim Force in Lebanon
(Unifil) set to number 15,000 troops from various countries.

Religious leaders has also issued a statement calling the Turkish
participation in Unifil "morally unacceptable".

The Turkish parliament voted after fierce debate at an extraordinary
session Tuesday to authorize the government to send troops to take part
in the UN force to monitor the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has said the number of soldiers
is not likely to exceed 1,000.

Under the old Ottoman empire, an estimated 1.5 million Armenians are
said to have been killed or died after being forcibly driven from
their homes in Turkey between 1915 and 1917.

Ankara rejects all accusations of genocide, estimating the number of
Armenian deaths at 300,000 and arguing they were not a consequence
of deliberate extermination but a combination of war, disease, famine
and ethnic conflict.

PRESIDENT GHUKASSIAN CONGRATULATED THE CREW OF THE CILICIA

Azat Artsakh, Nagorno Karabakh Republic [NKR]
09 Sept 2006

On August 5 NKR President Arkady Ghukassian congratulated the crew
of the Armenian sailing ship Cilicia, which finished its voyage. In
his telegram the president of NKR pointed out that thanks to the
patriotic mission of the crew the Old World got a better idea of the
ideas and values we uphold, as well as the truth about the struggle
for liberation in Artsakh. The president also emphasized the symbolic
coincidence of the end of the voyage and the 15th anniversary of
Nagorno Karabakh Republic.

ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER RECEIVES U.S. AMBASSADOR IN CONNECTION WITH
COMPLETION OF HIS DIPLOMATIC MISSION

Arka News Agency, Armenia
Sept 7 2006

YEREVAN, September 7. /ARKA/. Armenian Foreign Minister received
Wednesday U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Evans in connection with
the completion of his diplomatic mission.

The foreign ministry’s press service reported that they pointed out
that over the two years of Evans’ work in Armenia, a tangible progress
in the Armenian-American relations has been observed.

At the same time, Oskanyan and Evans expressed confidence that new
initiatives and spheres will be further included in the agenda of
the bilateral cooperation of the two countries.

The foreign minister thanked the ambassador for his contribution
to the Armenian-American relations, and wished Evans luck in this
further activity. R.O. -0–