EAST MEETS WEST
by Louisa Ermelino

Publishers Weekly
December 4, 2006

Istanbul, January 2006. I’m at dinner with Turkish novelist Elif Shafak
in Sultanhamet, the old part of the city that figures so prominently
in her fiction. The table is covered with meze, and Shafak and her
husband, journalist Eyup Can, have chosen this restaurant, Giritli,
for its a mix of the cuisines of Istanbul: Turkish, Ottoman, Jewish,
Kurdish.

Soft spoken, thoughtful and intellectual, beautiful enough to have
her face on billboards, Shafak, 35, contrasts her delicate blonde
looks with exotic jewelry, a small gold nose ring, a bracelet that
fans out across her hand to end in rings on every finger. Patrons
come to the table to hold her hand in theirs and compliment her
writing. Shafak’s husband says to me, "Everyone loves Elif, but wait
until her new novel is published."

Indeed, when The Bastard of Istanbul, Shafak’s sixth novel, her
second written in English, is published in Turkey two months later,
the reaction is more extreme than even he and Shafak anticipated.

Because an Armenian character in the novel claims, "I am the
grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives at
the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915," Shafak faced up to three
years in prison. For invoking the "g-word," and therefore "insulting
Turkishness," she was prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish
penal code. Although no one has yet served any jail time, Article
301 has been used to prosecute more than 60 journalists, writers,
publishers, cartoonists and scholars, including Nobel prize winner
Orhan Pamuk. The Armenian question is a loaded one, especially now,
with Turkey’s application to join the European Union compromised
by the Turkish government’s refusal to acknowledge that there ever
was a genocide. In Shafak’s case, it was the first time Article 301
involved a fictional character. It was, she says, "surreal."

The reception to the book’s publication in Turkey, Shafak says, was
more positive than she expected. "Many people from all different
walks of life embraced the novel and it immediately became a
bestseller. Then, three months later, my Turkish publisher and I were
told we would be interrogated. But the bigger shock was that after
the case was dropped, it was appealed to a higher court and actually
went to trial." To complicate the situation, throughout all this,
Shafak was pregnant with her first child.

Shafak wanted to attend the trial on September 21, but had
delivered the baby only three days before-a girl, named Sehrazat
(for Scheherazade of the 1001 nights) and Zelda (for Zelda Fitzgerald).

>>From her hospital bed, with her daughter in her arms, Shafak watched
the scene outside the courtroom unfold on television. The nationalists
held up a huge poster with the word baba (father in Turkish) next to
a flag of the European Union and The Bastard, the name of the novel
in Turkish, over her picture.

"They were saying I was a bastard of the Europeans and not a true
Turk, not a child of my own country, and I watched the poster go up
in flames," she recalls.

Shafak is the daughter of many cultures and languages, "a nomad" as she
puts it. Born in France, raised by a single mother who was a diplomat,
she was a child in Ankara and a teenager in Spain before settling in
Istanbul where she received degrees in women’s studies and political
science. She’s lived and taught in the U.S., in Boston, Michigan and
Arizona, where she’s an assistant professor in the department of Near
Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

But for all her European and American sojourns, Elif Shafak is very
much a Turkish writer, and a bold one. The Bastard of Istanbul-about
four generations of women in two families, one Turkish in Istanbul
and the other Armenian in San Francisco-while high spirited, tackles
serious issues. In Istanbul, Asya, the teenaged illegitimate daughter
of a clairvoyant, headstrong mother, becomes fast friends with
Armanoush, the Armenian-American stepchild of the Turkish family’s
only living male relation. When Armanoush comes from San Francisco
to trace her heritage, the question of the Armenian genocide of 1915
becomes a focal point of the relationship.

Shafak did not set out with "grandiose claims" to write The Bastard
of Istanbul. Her starting point was simple: "If the past is gloomy,
if it’s sad, is it worth knowing more? Probing it further? Or is it
better to let bygones be bygones and be more future oriented? My
country has a collective amnesia and that was the basic thought:
memory and amnesia."

With the uproar The Bastard of Istanbul precipitated in Turkey, and
the coverage in the international press thrusting Shafak into the
limelight, Penguin has moved up publication here from March 2007 to
January. The Bastard of Istanbul has sold more than 70,000 copies
in Turkey, and rights have sold to France, Italy, the Netherlands
and Germany.

Shafak, however, has been a literary force in Turkey since, at 27,
she published her first novel, Pinhan, about a hermaphrodite mystic.

And she’s used to arousing controversy with her work because of her use
of Arabic and Persian words that were part of the Ottoman lexicon but
purged from Turkish when the country became a republic in the 1920s.

Clearly, Shafak loves language, and says she enjoys writing equally
in both languages. "I love the immensity of English’s vocabulary, its
precision. For me, Turkish is more emotional. If I’m writing humor,
I prefer to do that in English; if it’s sorrow, I would rather do
that in Turkish."

While there will be a next novel, she compares her writing life to the
movement of a pendulum. "I’m not an author who writes with the same
pace every day. When I’m done with a book, I become a more normal,
more social person. And then the pendulum goes to the other side and
I begin a very intense period of writing once again."

She’s scheduled to tour in the U.S. in February and she hopes to
continue to spend time here. But ultimately, Shafak says, "I can
never be completely detached from Istanbul. The city is a character
to me, almost always a female character. I am very much in love with
this city but she also has an amazing potential to suffocate you, so
every now and then, I need to take a break. I have always traveled,
a free spirit, but always, I will always come back."

WHO LOST TURKEY?
By Owen Matthews; With Sami Kohen in Istanbul

Newsweek
December 11, 2006
International Edition

It’s a slow-motion ‘train wreck,’ and the imminent crash of Ankara’s
EU bid is a disaster for everyone.

Benedict XVI stood, shoeless, side by side with the Mufti of Istanbul
beneath the cavernous great dome of onetime Constantinople’s famed
Blue Mosque, palms upraised in the traditional Muslim gesture of
peace and supplication. What precisely the pope prayed for is a
matter between himself and his maker–but surely it involved healing
between Christians and Muslims, an issue that has come to define his
pontificate and his era.

When prayer becomes a geopolitical strategy, there’s a problem. The
most immediate: an imminent breakdown of relations between Turkey
and the European Union. Not so long ago, it seemed that Europe would
overcome prejudice and define itself as an ideology rather than a
geography, a way of being in the world rather than a mere agglomeration
of nation-states. But that chance is now lost. "Turkey will never be a
full member of the EU," predicts British M.E.P. Daniel Hannan. "There’s
a dawning realization of that reality on all sides."

This is a tragedy–a catastrophe, potentially–of epochal
proportions. Europe’s engagement with Turkey was a chance to show
the world that the West is not incompatible with the East, that
a democratic Muslim nation can be just as modern and European as
a Christian one. As Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
said recently, what’s at stake is nothing less than "world peace,
fighting global terror and the clash of civilizations." A European
Turkey could have been a model for the rest of the Muslim world,
too, playing "constructively the role the Ottoman Empire once played
destructively–a bridge between the East and West," argues Egyptian
political thinker Abdel Monem Said Aly. Accepting Turkey might well
have helped Europe cope with its own issues of Muslim integration and
identity. And for Turkey itself the lure of EU membership was a force
for social transformation. The nation has come far in recent years;
but it still has far to go in jettisoning its authoritarian legacy
and creating a democracy that reaches broader and more deeply among
its culturally and ethnically diverse peoples.

Now come the recriminations, with fingers pointing this way and that.

Indeed, a glittery cast of geopolitical notables gathered just last
week in Brussels for a symposium aptly titled, "Who Lost Turkey?" EU
Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has worked hard to avoid what he
has called a "train wreck," long seen coming but difficult to stop.

The proximate causes are numerous as they are petty, from bickering
over Cyprus to a vote by the French Parliament criminalizing denial
of Armenian "genocide" at the hands of the Turks in 1915. The rift
isn’t formal yet, as the EU will likely opt for only a face-saving
partial suspension of negotiations after a deadlock on Cyprus failed
to be resolved last week. But it takes no special reading between the
lines to see that a fundamental tipping point has been reached. Late
last week Cyprus threatened to "veto" Turkey’s entire bid. French
presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, kicking off his campaign,
also called for the suspension of further talks. "Turkey’s place is
not in the EU," said he.

Officially, politicians in Ankara insist that they will plod on
regardless. "There is no Plan B," says Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.

"Our goal is to continue on the same road" toward EU membership. Yet
in truth, with the EU as a guiding light, Turkey now risks careering
off on an entirely different geopolitical trajectory, the direction
and consequences of which can only be guessed at. Indeed, attitudes
are already changing. A recent poll in the newspaper Milliyet shows
support for joining the EU has fallen to just one third, down from 67
percent in 2004. If they don’t want us, the prevailing sentiment goes,
we don’t want them. Europeans, meanwhile, are doing some devaluing
of their own. Said Rehn last week: "Turkey’s strategic importance
should not be exaggerated."

Now what? Gul and others may speak of "business as usual," but
European pressure has been the catalyst of a host of vital reforms
in recent years that no internal Turkish political force could ever
have accomplished. They range from reducing the role of the military
in politics to granting cultural rights to the country’s 14 million
Kurds. Without the gravitational pull of EU membership, will these
changes continue? Or will the ethnic, religious and cultural wars
that have long raged beneath the surface of the Turkish republic
finally erupt in earnest?

The visit of the pope, a deeply controversial figure in the Islamic
world, has exposed the deepest of these: tension between secular
Turks and Islam. Ever since the founding of the Turkish republic
on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire by Gen. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
Turkey’s rulers have looked to the secular West rather than the more
religious East. With the election of the mildly Islamist government
of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AK Party in 2002, however, that line
has been blurred.

A recent study by Bosporus University found that more Turks are
defining themselves by their religion these days than by their
nationality; 45 percent said they were "Muslims first" (up from
36 percent in 1999) and 19 percent said they were "Turkish first"
(down from 21 percent). Erdogan has taken pains not to push overtly
Islamist policies–for instance, he’s studiously avoided repealing
Turkey’s draconian law banning Islamic headscarves from government
offices, schools and universities. But he sent his daughters to be
educated abroad, in the United States, rather than have them remove
their headscarves at a Turkish university, and in 2004 tried (but
failed) to introduce a controversial law prohibiting adultery.

Erdogan’s engagement with the Middle East is no less worrying for
Turkey’s secular elite, particularly the generals who see themselves
as the guardians of Ataturk’s modernizing (read: antireligious)
values. He is the first Turkish leader in years who’s deliberately
looked East as well as West, making reform in the wider Islamic world
almost as much a priority as Turkey’s EU project. A devout Muslim–he
recently passed out in his car during October’s Ramadan fast because of
low blood sugar–Erdogan has campaigned for global Islam to reinvent
itself. In 2004 Ankara helped to wrest control of the Organization of
the Islamic Conference from conservative Islamists and backed a worldly
Turk, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, as secretary-general. Last week Erdogan
told an OIC session in Istanbul that women are "the most productive
part of society," and that they were discriminated against in Islamic
societies because of "traditions portrayed as religious rules."

That’s revolutionary stuff, at least within the traditionally
conservative Muslim world. But back home, Erdogan’s crusading rhetoric
has played into the hands of potential enemies, many of whom suspect
him of being a crypto-fundamentalist and aim to use the failure of his
EU bid to stop both him and his reform programs. As support for the EU
wanes, so Turkish ultranationalismrises. According to a confidential
AK Party poll earlier this year, more than 20 percent of first-time
voters support the chauvinist Nationalist Action Party, or MHP. Its
leader, Devlet Bahceli, complained last week that "the EU project is a
treacherous plan designed to weaken, divide and disintegrate Turkey,"
and he vowed to undo "anti-Turkish" human-rights legislation (such
as freedom of speech) pushed by Brussels.

A nationalist backlash could prove especially ugly at a time when the
aspirations of Turkey’s 14 million Kurds have been raised by half
a decade of rapid (though still incomplete) liberalization. Recent
unrest flaring in Turkey’s southeast saw a score of towns and villages
across the region wrecked in riots that brought hundreds of thousands
onto the streets. And the consequences for Cyprus would be nasty,
too. Already there has been talk from the opposition of absorbing the
Turkish northern part of the island into Turkey itself, which would
put an end to efforts to reunite the island for generations–and,
of course, deliver a death blow to Turkey’s lingering EU aspirations.

Perhaps most dangerous of all, Turkey’s generals–the "pashas"–are
becoming more vocal after years of relative silence. This year
they’ve blasted Brussels for promoting dangerously liberal reforms
from broadcasting in Kurdish to the right to nonmilitary national
service. (Though, in truth, their real concern is undoubtedly the
EU’s insistence that the military stay out of politics.) "The Turkish
armed forces will never turn a blind eye to the basic values of
the Turkish republic for the sake of the EU," stormed naval forces
commander Adm. Yener Karahanoglu in September. Meanwhile, there is
evidence of an unholy alliance between ultranationalists and anti-EU
elements in the Army, some of whose members have been implicated in
attempted extrajudicial killings of Kurdish activists.

The stage is set for a showdown between the military and Erdogan next
May as the AK-dominated Parliament selects Turkey’s new president.

The choice is entirely Erdogan’s, thanks to his control of the
legislature. Some speculate he will take the post himself–a move
likely to infuriate Turkey’s secularist bureaucracy, judiciary and
military, who suspect him of harboring a hidden Islamist agenda
and cannot forgive him his past as a leader of the radical Islamist
Welfare Party, banned in 1997. Erdogan himself was jailed four months
for sedition as recently as 1999.

Perhaps things are not as bleak as they appear. The collapse of
Turkey’s EU bid may sharpen the country’s internal ethnic, religious
and political divides–but that does not necessarily mean they will
erupt into open conflict of the sort that, most recently in 1997,
prompted the country’s military to step in. And while the mutual
disillusionment between Turkey and Europe may be deep, Turkey remains
more Western, in terms of culture and economics, than it has ever been
before. From this it will not retreat. "Turkey’s place is in Europe;
any talk of ‘alternatives’ is just talk," says former ambassador
Ozdem Sanberk. And yes, Turks may be turning more religious. But
those same polls from Bosporus University also show that support for
purely religion-based political parties has fallen, from 41 percent to
25 percent, over the past seven years. In other words: religion yes,
but religion-based politics, no. Meanwhile, another sign of the times:
while more people now favor scrapping the longstanding ban on wearing
headscarves in schools and public offices, the number of Turkish
women actually wearing them has dropped from 16 to 11 percent over
the past seven years.

Whatever the outcome, Turkey’s struggle is going to have serious
repercussions. Europe’s alienated and angry Muslim minorities, for
instance, will hardly be encouraged to come to terms with Western
culture if Europe sends a clear signal that Turks cannot be full
Europeans. And in the wider Middle East, Turkey’s growing role as a
model will be undermined by a break with Brussels. "Middle Easterners’
disillusionment with the failures of Arab nationalism and the extremism
of fundamental Islam is making them reassess the Turkish route,"
says Hugh Pope, a writer on regional affairs. "More and more opinion
leaders see hope in what appears to be Turkey’s successful synthesis
of Islam and modernity." Will that leadership evaporate if Turkey
fails to join the European club?

Many strategists in Washington–and not just neoconservatives–fear
that an EU-Turkey split will resonate through the Muslim world as a
major geopolitical defeat for Western values. "Turkey is to the West
what Germany was in the cold war … a frontline state," former U.S.

ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke told EU Commissioner Rehn at
the "Who Lost Turkey?" symposium. Turkey’s progress "is keenly watched"
by its neighbors, acknowledges Foreign Minister Gul. "We have been
a rare beacon of stability in an inherently turbulent region."

Will that beacon flicker and die without the EU? "The government
can’t turn its back to the EU," says one Erdogan foreign-policy
adviser, who is not authorized to speak on the record. "And the
EU cannot turn its back on Turkey." The two sides have too much in
common to split completely. Rather, there’s the makings, long term,
of an entente. Europeans already talk of a special partnership,
short of membership. Turkey has said it will never settle for that,
but we’d best hope for some accommodation. Everyone is poorer for the
failure of vision that has scuppered one of the great civilizational
projects of our times.

BENEDICT MEETS BARTHOLOMEW: THE REAL REASON FOR THE POPE’S VISIT TO TURKEY
Joseph Bottum, The Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard
December 11, 2006 Monday
ARTICLES Vol. 12 No. 13

As communism was to Pope John Paul II, so radical Islam is to Pope
Benedict XVI–the most pressing geopolitical problem of his time,
of course, but also something more: a test of whether Catholicism
is going to buttress the moral, political, and intellectual struggle
against a violent and tyrannical ideology, or whether the Church is
going to go squishy.

At first glance, the pope’s four-day trip to Turkey last week makes
the answer look like squish. Newspapers around the globe announced that
the pope had barely gotten off the plane in Ankara before he told Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he now considers Islam "a religion
of peace." What’s more, he is reported to have said that the Vatican
will no longer oppose the admission of Turkey to the European Union.

Off he then went to a lecture hall, sitting quietly and apparently
undisturbed while Ali Bardakoglu, the head of the Turkish government’s
religious-affairs office, introduced him by denouncing those who
did not understand the "vast tolerance of Islam"–a tolerance that
wears dangerously thin, Bardakoglu warned, when people attempt to
"demonstrate the superiority of their own beliefs" with discussions of
"the theology of religions" or claim that Islam "was spread over the
world by swords."

Bardakoglu’s words were widely understood to be what, in fact, they
were: an open continuation of the attack on Benedict XVI for his
negative depiction of Islam in his September 12 lecture at Regensburg,
Germany. "Pope, don’t make a mistake, don’t wear out our patience,"
Islamic activists shouted when they occupied the Haghia Sophia to
protest Benedict’s visit. And in response to Bardakoglu’s undiplomatic
ambush, the pope read a diplomatic speech, all about how Christians
and Muslims are brothers who "believe and confess to one God, even
if in different ways." Indeed, he added, Turkey "is very kind to
Christians," and he quoted John Paul II on the need for Christians
and Muslims to "develop the spiritual bonds that unite them."

By the time he was photographed praying in a mosque and waving a
Turkish flag, Benedict seemed to have managed little but to make nice
and surrender on every point–all to undo the damage done when his
Regensburg address was followed by anti-Catholic and anti-Western riots
across the Islamic world. "Pope Visit Eclipses Image of Anti-Turk
Islamophobe," ran a typical headline as the papal trip to Turkey
wound down to its dull conclusion.

Well, maybe. It’s difficult to say what else Benedict should have
done. The journey to Turkey was intended to be about Eastern Orthodoxy,
not Islam. From the genocidal destruction of the Armenians by the
Turks during World War I, to the enforced atheism of the Soviets, and
down to the rise of Islamic nationalism, the last hundred years have
been brutal to Christianity in the East. The ecumenical patriarch
of Constantinople–Bartholomew I, bishop of the highest and most
famous see in the Orthodox Church–has only 3,000 people left in his
diocese. His seminary has been padlocked by the government since 1971,
his few converts are subject to prosecution under Article 301 of the
penal code that prohibits "insulting Turkishness," and his flock
has been squeezed into a small corner of Istanbul by the official
secularism of the Turkish government on one side and radical Islam
on the other.

Still, Bartholomew represents the world’s Orthodox in a way no one
else can, and it was primarily to advance the dialogue between Eastern
Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism that the pope arranged his visit
to Turkey. And then Islam got in the way.

Benedict’s Regensburg talk and the Muslim reaction massively changed
how the long-scheduled trip would be perceived. Given the change,
Benedict could hardly do more than make diplomatic noises to his
hosts about Islam and go on to his meetings with Bartholomew.

Besides, he actually believes most of what he said–except, perhaps,
the part about Turkey being "very kind to Christians": It was
in Turkey, after all, that a Catholic priest was murdered last
February for the crime of being Christian, and during one of his
public appearances with Bartholomew, Benedict referred to the 1915
slaughter of the Armenian Christians (even to call it genocide is a
crime under Turkish law).

In fact, the pope seems genuinely to think that some "spiritual bonds"
might unite Christians and Muslims. John Paul II was, by training,
a philosopher, while Benedict is, at root, a theologian.

And for Christian theologians, the question of Islam is a knotty
one: Is it a Christian heresy, as the last Church Father, John
of Damascus, thought? Is it an entirely separate religion, like
Hinduism? Or a related one, like Judaism? Still, despite their very
different understandings of human dignity and the role of free will
and rationality in God’s plan, pious and serious Muslims manifestly
seek the divine. For Benedict XVI, Islam itself is not the problem.

Even the terrorism and political tyranny of radical Islam may not
be the problem, in the pope’s view. After the riots and protests
and endless editorials denouncing Benedict, we can forget that the
reference to the violent history of Islam constituted only a small
portion of what he said at Regensburg. Through most of the lecture,
he spoke instead of European history and his worries about the decline
of belief in reason throughout Western culture.

This is a well-worn theme for Benedict: In his first papal address,
he warned against the relativism and nihilism that has seized much
of the modern world. Not the existence of violent Islamic political
movements, perhaps, but certainly the success of those movements is
an effect of something deeper happening outside the Muslim world. The
pope’s analysis seems to come down to this: Radical Islam ascendant
is a symptom. Western hollowness is the disease.

Can this be right? In many ways, it looks implausible. Inheriting the
rhetoric of twentieth-century anti colonialism, figures from Iran’s
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden condemn the West
precisely for its arrogant confidence, from the Crusades to British
imperialism and on to American economic and military might. How would
they hate us less if we grew more certain of ourselves?

And yet, in other ways, Benedict XVI’s analysis has real power. Just
as the collapse of European birthrates allowed and even required
the immigration of huge numbers of Islamic workers, so nihilism and
self-hatred provided an opportunity for radical Islamic political
movements to push hard against the West. The moral and intellectual
weakness of Western culture encouraged tyrannical governments to
flourish in the Middle East, backward cultures to be affirmed as
authentic by Western intellectuals, and terrorists to believe that
victory was possible.

In that context, the pope’s work in Turkey–calling Muslims to
share a commitment to peace, drawing together the remnants of the
ancient Christian communities, refusing to repeat the Regensburg
provocation–looks quite different from what it appears at first
glance. It may be the boldest proposal any figure on the geopolitical
stage has yet made. In any event, it’s a long way from squishy.

Joseph Bottum, a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is editor
of First Things.

CONQUEST VS. CONCESSION
by Raymond Ibrahim

National Review
December 5, 2006 Tuesday

Previous to Pope Benedict XVI’s November 30 visit to the Hagia Sophia
complex in Constantinople, Muslims and Turks variously expressed
apprehension and rage. Turkey’s independent paper Vatan put it thus:
"The risk is that Benedict will send Turkey’s Muslims and much of the
Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that
the Pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to
Muslims." A sign of the cross, apparently, would be interpreted as
a signal for a crusade.

Built in Constantinople in the sixth century, the Hagia Sophia —
Greek for "Holy Wisdom" — was Christendom’s greatest and most
celebrated church. After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts from
Arabs, Constantinople was finally sacked by Turks in the jihad of
1453. Its crosses desecrated and icons defaced, this millennium-old
church — as well as thousands of other churches in the then Byzantine
Empire — was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets
of Islam surrounding it in triumph. As part of Ataturk’s reforms
aimed at modernizing Turkey, the Hagia Sophia was secularized and
transformed into a museum in 1935.

In protestation of Benedict’s visit, a gang of Turks stormed and
occupied Hagia Sophia on November 22, exclaiming "Allahu Akbar!" and
warning "Pope! don’t make a mistake; don’t wear out our patience." On
the day of the pope’s visit, another throng of Islamists waved
banners saying "Pope get out of Turkey" while chanting "Aya Sofya
[Hagia Sophia] is Turkish and will remain Turkish." And of course,
al Qaeda in Iraq got in on the action by denouncing Benedict’s visit
in an Internet statement. One of the pope’s expressed purposes for
visiting Turkey was to promote inter-religious dialogue and denounce
violence in the name of God.

To the intolerance of Muslims, the West responds with tolerance.

Consider, for instance, the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The Muslim site,
annexed by Israel after its victory in the 1967 war, was not defaced by
the Jews or converted into a Jewish synagogue or temple — even though
the mosque is deliberately built atop the remains of the Temple Mount,
the most important site in Judaeo-Christian eschatology. Moreover,
since reclaiming the Temple Mount, Israel has granted Muslims control
over the complex (except during times of crises). And under Muslim
control, Christians and Jews are barred from freely worshipping there.

Despite such concessions, jihad has been declared on Israel, while
Muslims worldwide are simultaneously demanding "justice" from the
international community. It is an illustration of the privileged
status many Muslims have come to expect for themselves in the
international arena: When Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories,
such as Constantinople — through fire and steel, with all the
attendant human suffering and misery — those whom they conquer are
not to expect any "apologies," let alone political or territorial
concessions. Indeed, Turkey has yet even to recognize its genocide
against its Armenian population in 1917. Yet Muslims constantly
demand and expect apologies and concessions from the West — and they
receive them.

When Islamists wage jihad — past, present, and future — conquering
and consolidating non-Muslim territories and centers in the name of
Islam, never once considering ceding them back to their rightful
owners, they demonstrate that they live by the age-old adage that
"might makes right." Yet, if we live in a world where the strong
rule and the weak submit, why is it that whenever Muslim regions are
conquered, such as in the case of Palestine, the same Islamists who
would never concede one inch of Islam’s conquests resort to the United
Nations demanding "justice," "restitutions," "rights," and so forth?

What such actions lack in intellectual consistency, they make up
for in practical success. Muslims cannot be blamed for expecting
special treatment for themselves, as well as believing that jihad is
righteous and decreed by the Almighty. The West constantly goes out
of its way to confirm such convictions. By incessantly criticizing
itself, apologizing, and offering concessions — things the Islamic
world has yet to do — the West reaffirms that Islam has a privileged
status in the world.

It is obvious enough that some Muslims wish to wage eternal jihad until
Islam dominates the globe. But why should those who divide the world
into two warring camps — Islam and Infidelity, or, in Islamic terms,
the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War — expect any concessions from
the international community? It is impossible to meet with toleration
the demands of those who reject the principles upon which the Western
value of tolerance is based; attempts at doing so are nothing more
than the appeasement of aggressors.

When the pope visited Hagia Sophia, he refrained from any gesture
that could be misconstrued as Christian worship. And therein is the
final lesson. Muslim zeal for their holy places and lands is not
intrinsically blameworthy. Indeed, there’s something to be said about
being passionate about and protective of one’s faith and heritage.

Here the secular West — Christendom’s prodigal son and true usurper
— can learn something from Islam. For whenever and wherever the West
concedes — ideologically, politically, and especially spiritually
— Islam will be sure to conquer. Where might does not make right,
zeal apparently does.

— Raymond Ibrahim is editor of the upcoming The Al Qaeda Reader.

YOUNG ARMENIAN SINGER BECAME WINNER OF BBC CONTEST

PanARMENIAN.Net
09.12.2006 15:51 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ 17-year-old Silvia became the winner of the
musical contest Next Big Thing. Silvia could overcome 6 groups
of singers from Great Britain, Ghana, Malawi and USA. Her sing ‘I
like’, written by her brother, the judges called ‘fresh and new’
the performance-unsurpassed. One of jury members, producer William
Orbit said, that Silivia was just excellent.

The goal of contest, carried out in the framework of Generation Next
project, is to decide the best musicians from a number of countries,
where the programs of BBC World Service are being broadcast.

Only performers not more than 18 years old could take part in the
contest. The jury consisted of famous musicians, experts, critics and
journalists. Among those were legendary producer William Orbit, the
founder of the independent label Rough Trade, African Star Angelica
Kidjo and the drummer of Dirty Pretty Things Harry Pauell, reports
BBC Russian Service.

NAGORNO KARABAKH PEOPLE VOTED FOR ADOPTION OF CONSTITUTION

PanARMENIAN.Net
11.12.2006 13:26 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ 98,58% of the voters backed the Constitution of the
Nagorno Karabakh Republic. Head of the Electoral Committee Sergey
Nasibyan announced the preliminary outcomes of the referendum held
on Sunday.

0.7% voted against the draft Constitution. 87.02% of Karabakhi
citizens took part in the referendum. The According to the NKR law
"On Referendum" adopted in March 2005, the final results are announced
three days after completion of voting.

In the opinion of NKR President Arkady Ghukasian, ‘the adoption of the
Constitution will have a positive impact on the Karabakh settlement
process.’ The constitutional referendum fully meets the logic of the
negotiation process, he said, reports ITAR-TASS.

The draft Constitution represents Nagorno Karabakh Republic as a
sovereign democratic state.

International observers and journalists watched the voting process.

EU SHOULD URGE TURKEY TO MEET COMMITMENTS

PanARMENIAN.Net
11.12.2006 13:39 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The European Union should urge Turkey to meet
the commitments set as regards the Cypriot issue, EU Enlargement
Commissioner Gunter Verheugen told Deutschlandfunk. The Turkish
government should fulfill the obligations it has undertaken and
open its ports and harbors for Cypriot vessels. Mr Verheugen made
the statement before the meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers, who
will consider partial suspension of accession talks over Ankara’s
unwillingness to comply the EU’s demands. Turkey has agreed to open
one airport for Cyprus so far, reports Deutsche Welle.

ZHIRAYR SEFILYAN WAS TO ORGANIZE COUP D’ETAT?

A1+
[01:27 pm] 11 December, 2006

Zhirayr Sefilyan, coordinator of the initiative "Protection of
Liberated Lands" and leader of NGO "Union of Armenian Volunteer",
was arrested yesterday.

According to the press center of the National Security Service, they
have information that the so-called initiative "Union of Armenian
Volunteer" with citizen of Lebanon Zhirayr Sefilyan and some of his
friends at the head, aimed at interfering with the coming political
processes in Armenia, particularly the 2007 elections, without even
being registered in Armenia.

According to the statement, on December 2, 2006, during the closed
session if the Yerevan State Dance College, several of the heads of the
structure called on those present to resort of force in order to take
power. According to the press center of the National Security Service,
they announced that the only way to get rid of the authorities is
through armed rebellion.

They have also introduced action plans.

"The majority of the people included in the "Union of Armenian
Volunteer" was unaware of the real aims of foreign citizen Zhirayr
Sefilyan and his friends to destabilize the inner political situation
in Armenia.

The leaders of the organized financed by foreign sources intended
to urge the opposition to political disobedience and collisions,
exercising pressure upon the political oppositional parties, in
order to take up illegal actions against the RA authorities", said
the statement of the press center of the NSS.

A criminal case has been in initiated. Zhirayr Sefilyan and Vardan
Malkhasyan were arrested yesterday. They were carrying illegal weaponry
which was confiscated.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

DEPUTY DIED

A1+
[01:33 pm] 11 December, 2006

RA NA deputy Yerem Karapetyan has died today. Yerem H. Karapetyan was
born on May 1, 1933, in the village of Shahoumyan, region of Ararat.

In 1953 he graduated from the Yerevan state medical college with the
qualification of dentist. In 1954-1956 he served in the Soviet army. In
1956-1996 he worked as a dentist. In 1996-1999 he was community head
of the village of Shahoumyan.

Since 1999 he was deputy of the RA NA. He was member of the NA Standing
Committee on Financial-Credit, Budgetary and Economic Affairs.

He was married with three children.

Yerem Karapetyan’s requiem will take place on December 12, at 06:00
in Shahoumyan. He will be buried the following day, at 02:00 p.m.

The A1+ staff condoles with the family and friends of the deceased.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FARAUN IS LEAVING

A1+
[01:57 pm] 11 December, 2006

RA NA Speaker Tigran Torosyan received Mukhlis Faraun, temporary charge
d’affaires of the Syrian Arab Republic to Armenia, in connection with
fulfilling his diplomatic mission.

Mr. Faraun expressed regret for leaving Armenia and mentioned that he
was happy to work in our country where the executive and legislative
powers supported in his work. He underlined that it sit he duty of the
Ambassador to fulfill his mission and to leave. "I sincerely wish my
successor to achieve all the aims I did not", said Mr. Faraun thanking
the NA Speaker for efficient cooperation and voicing hope to see him
in Syria.

NA Speaker Tigran Torosyan wished him good luck in his future
activity. He found the balanced attitude of Syria towards the regional
processes important and mentioned that although the two nations have
different religions, they have common interests and human values.