OSCE ORGANIZES ARMENIAN OMBUDSMAN VISIT TO LITHUANIA
Panorama.am
13:35 30/10/06
The Armenian Ombudsman, Armen Harutyunyan, today wrapped up a five-day
visit to the Ombudsman institution of Lithuania’s Parliament (Seimas),
which was organized by the OSCE.
The visit aimed at strengthening the co-operation between the two
institutions. Mr Harutyunyan talked to his Lithuanian counterparts
about the investigation of individual human rights complaints, staff
selection, and public relations matters.
He also visited a penitentiary institution and met the Lithuanian
Minister of Justice Mr. Betras Baguska, the Deputy Speaker of Seimas
Mr. Ceflovas Jursenas and a representative of the Committee on
Human Rights.
“This trip was beneficial and very useful because it allowed us to
exchange our experience and approaches on the effective functioning
of Ombudsman institutions,” Mr Harutyunyan said.
Lars Gerold, Rule of Law expert with the OSCE Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights, which together with the OSCE Office
in Yerevan organized Mr Harutyunyan’s visit, said:
“National human rights institutions play a key role in the protection
of human rights. The co-operation between these two Ombudsman
institutions is an excellent example of sharing experience and best
practices, which will no doubt benefit both.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

HUSEYN BAGIROV: “CITES’S BAN ON STURGEON AND BLACK CAVIAR EXPORT HAS POLITICAL AIM AND NO LOSS FOR AZERBAIJAN”
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Oct 30 2006
“The place where the Volga joins the Caspian constitutes 75-80%
of the Sea pollution”
APA interviews Ecology and Natural Resources Minister Huseyn Baghirov
– What activities will be implemented under Presidential decree on
improvement of ecological situation?
– The environment is that which is affected by any human activities
in industry, household and lands. A number of documents have been
approved for improvement of the situation. 5 national and state
programs were approved by Presidents- Heydar Aliyev and Ilham Aliyev.
The first problems appear in Absheron because of oil pollution.
Azerbaijan has been producing oil for over 160 years industrially.
90% of the world oil had been produced in Azerbaijan in primitive
methods. 15 000 hectares of land have been left completely polluted
with oil and 30 000 hectares partially. Besides oil, industrial
development also caused complex ecological situation in Absheron. The
Caspian now has a number of over-polluted hotspots. The most polluted
zone is the junction of the Volga with the Caspian which is 75-80%
of the totally polluted territories. The second over-polluted zone is
the Iranian shore. The third is junction of the Kyur with the Caspian
which comes through Armenia and Georgia. Mingechevir Reservoir is not
in capacity to completely prevent the pollution. The fourth zone is
Absheron peninsula.
All these problems are planned to be removed. Waste water let to the
Caspian will be completely prevented by 2010. Much of the oil-polluted
territories will be purified and special organization will be set up
to implement these activities.
– Ecology and natural Resources Ministry experience the pressure of
state Organizations and officials while fighting the damage to the
environment. What measures will be taken to prevent these cases?
– This problem doesn’t only apply to the state organizations. For
example, a shepherd damages the nature. 3-4 sheep should be grazed in
a hectare. But, it is not so in reality. Which shepherd observes this
rule? On the other hand, it should be engraved in the mind of every
enterprise that they can’t work with purification equipment. The
State can do nothing by chasing 8m people. The Ministry therefore
increases awareness.
– What amendments will be made to the law in order to be able to
prevent nature damage? Some articles will be included in the Criminal
Code, I think….
– Monetary penalties of 556m were imposed on the culprits a year by
2001. this Figure reached 33bn in 2005. Penalties of 55-60bn manats
were imposed but only 10% has to date been paid. Besides tightening
the punishment and penalties, people’s approach to the nature should
be changed. It should be known as a guilt or sin to damage the nature.
– International organizations, in particular foreign oil companies
operating in Azerbaijan also harm the nature. Most companies don’t
pay the penalties. What is your view?
– These companies use high-tech equipment but their approach to the
Nature is different. We demand them to approach the nature as they do
in their country. A lawsuit was brought against Salyan Oil for the
penalties of AZN 111 650 because of oil pollution. Garadagh Cement
has twice been brought to the court for penalties of AZN 64 503 and
AZN 69 850. Gobustan Operating Company was fined AZN 143 935, Caspian
Specialist Service AZN 1980. Karasu Operating Company was brought
to the court for AZN 96 162 and the company cleaned the polluted
territories. Shirvan Oil was fined AZN 55 and a claim of AZN 8531
against this company in trial.
– CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
of Wild Fauna and Flora) kept effective the ban on black caviar and
Caspian sturgeon. This ban is applicable for the Caspian States except
Iran. What is your view on the problem?
– CITES’s decision is illogical. US support for this ban is very
incredible. On the other side, what is the meaning of this decision
is not clear. It is not loss for Azerbaijan. We would understand the
decision if it had banned all littoral states to export black caviar
and sturgeon. This decision has political aims and no connection to
the damage to the nature.
– Azerbaijan has only 10% of the water reserves of the South
Caucasus. 2/3 of the world population will be faced water shortage
in 2025. What about Azerbaijan?
– Ecology and natural Resources Ministry submitted a number of
proposals to the Cabinet. We see water as strategic resource.
Azerbaijani population should be ready for re-purification of the
used water. World countries use this method. Israel uses this method
too. But, the purification technology should meet the standards
of the World Health Organization. 30-32% of Azerbaijan’s water
reserves is in rivers, of which 28% in the Kyur. Azerbaijan is not
expected to experience water shortage by 2050. But, we should use
water economically.
– Foreign Companies are tapping gold deposits in Azerbaijani lands
under occupation by Armenia. What measures will be taken?
– Armenia is an aggressor. It killed thousands, evicted millions of
people. Azerbaijan authorized Canadian R.V. Investment to tap the
gold deposits in these territories. This Company has to prevent the
illegal tapping of the gold deposits and bring them to international
court. Canadian First Dynasty Mines (FDM) company is tapping the
gold deposits illegally in these lands. R.V. Investment can solve
the problem in accordance with the law of their country.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

COMSTAR BUYS 75 PCT OF ARMENIAN TELECOMMUNICATIONS GROUPS CALLNET, CORNET
Hemscott, UK
Oct 30 2006
LONDON (AFX) – Comstar United TeleSystems, which provides
telecommunication services in Russia and the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS), said it has bought 75 pct of CallNet and
its subsidiary Cornet in the Republic of Armenia.
‘This is the first transaction in a pipeline of new acquisitions which
we announced in October 2006 to make use of IPO proceeds in order to
implement our investment programme in the regions,’ said Eric Franke,
CEO of Comstar.
CallNet and Cornet together comprise the second largest alternative
telecommunications group in the Republic of Armenia. Cornet services
76 pct of the banking sector in Armenia.
Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Comstar has
an option to buy out the remaining shares in CallNet.
/item.do?newsId=37142877208879
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA’S PRESIDENT DUE IN MOSCOW
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
Oct 30 2006
(RBC) – RBC, 30.10.2006, Moscow 10:26:59.Armenia’s President Robert
Kocharian is expected in Russia for an official visit on October
30-31, 2006. In Moscow, President Kocharian will have talks with his
Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The two presidents are scheduled
to consider the most urgent cooperation issues and the performance of
top-level agreements with regards to enhancing the Russian-Armenian
interaction, specifically, in fuel and energy and transportation
spheres, as well as direct economic ties between various regions of
Russia and Armenia, reports Trend.
The two heads of states will also share their views concerning
the intensification of interaction in the context of the Collective
Security Treaty Organization. Efforts for the recovery in the Caucasus
as well as for the fostering of confidence and cooperation will also
be in the focus.
As reported earlier, 2005 was the Year of Russia in Armenia, and the
year 2006 will be celebrated in Russia as the Year of Armenia.

‘TURKISH ACCESSION DANGER FOR EUROPE, ILLUSION FOR TURKEY’
Fulya Ozerkan
Turkish Daily News
Oct 30 2006
Jacques Toubon, French member of the European Parliament, voiced
strong opposition to Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, defending
privileged partnership for Ankara instead of full membership.
“Our position is to be against full accession of Turkey into the
EU and in favor of privileged partnership. We think Europe will no
longer be Europe we want if Turkey becomes a full member of the bloc,”
Toubon, a Christian Democrat, former French minister of budget and
spokesperson of President Jacques Chirac’s government, told a group
of Turkish reporters here.
The European parliamentarian argued that Turkey was not European in any
sense and accused one of the Turkish reporters of being provocative
when they asked if Turkey and Greek Cyprus were located on the same
longitude, how was it possible to say that Turkey did not belong to
Europe geographically, while the latter did.
“In Turkey this EU issue is a fantasy… The EU accession is not
[your] only destiny. You have a good future without the EU. Turkey’s
accession is a danger for Europe and an illusion for Turkey,” he said.
“Why is Article 301 already on the penal code? It is a question of
national sovereignty. Are you ready to abandon your sovereignty? Are
you ready to get rid of your principals?” he asked.
Toubon also criticized the French bill penalizing any denial of the
alleged Armenian genocide, saying: “I’m strongly against it. History
is not made by law. History is made by facts. If we want to discuss
[history] we have to avoid provocation.”
He also stressed the EU was not a Christian club and said if Turkey
remained as regional power and privileged partner of the EU, the bloc
would then have a strong ally “in this crucial region of the world.”

A FRIEND’S BLOW TO ORHAN PAMUK
Turkish Daily News
Turkish Press Yesterday
Oct 30 2006
Major headlines from Turkish newspapers and their summaries on
Oct. 29, 2006
Sabah yesterday reported that Taner Akcam, a Turkish academic who
maintains that mass killings of Armenians in 1915 were part of an
organized campaign tantamount to genocide, is set to publish a book
on the alleged genocide in the United States. The report referred
to academic Taner Akcam as a “writer of the books accusing Turkey of
genocide of Armenians.”The book, titled “A Shameful Act,” includes a
letter from Orhan Pamuk, controversial Turkish winner of the Nobel
Prize in Literature this year. After Pamuk’s award was announced,
he was criticized at home for having “sold out” his country to clinch
the Nobel. Pamuk had previously said that Turks killed 30,000 Kurds
and 1,000,000 Armenians, subjects about which the Turkish people are
very sensitive. Some Turks felt that his political statements were the
major reason he was awarded the Nobel. In its report, Sabah recalled
that, following reactions to his words and his Nobel, Pamuk had toned
down his stance on the Armenian genocide allegations.
However, his letter in Akcam’s book says, “This book is a perfect
retrospective on the organized destruction of Ottoman Armenians written
by a daring Turkish academic who has dedicated his life to record
historical realities.”Sabah said these expressions would be likely
to give Pamuk a difficult time when he was in the midst of making an
effort to deaden the Armenian controversy surrounding his Nobel.

RAMIL SAFAROV’S SENTENCE LIKELY TO BE DECLARED
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Oct 30 2006
On November 17 Hungarian court will hold court hearings on prison
officers’ claim against Ramil Safarov, Azerbaijani army officer, who
was sentenced to life in prison for murdering Armenian lieutenant
Gurgen Markarian in Hungary, Safarov’s lawyer Ikram Shirinov told
the APA.
Safarov’s family members and lawyers Ikram Shirinoiv and Elmar Kerimov
will participate in the hearings. Shirinov said that they will visit
Hungary on the first 10day of November. The lawyers said that Safarov
is expected to be sentenced on November 17. Hungarian lawyer Clara
Fisher will defend his rights on the case. The Azerbaijani lawyers
will meet with Safarov and Clara Fisher during the visit.
While being held in Hungarian prison in 2004, jailers wanted telephone
card from Ramil. But Ramil could not understand Hungarian which led
an incident between them. Eight police officers tied his hands and
used force. Though lawyers for the Azerbaijani lieutenant appealed to
court related to this matter, the court dismissed the appeal saying
there was no evidence. Then the opposite side claimed that Ramil
resisted officials.

DEAD RECKONING: THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND THE POLITICS OF SILENCE
By Elizabeth Kolbert
The New Yorker, USA
Oct 30 2006
On September 14, 2000, Representatives George Radanovich, Republican
of California, and David Bonior, Democrat of Michigan, introduced a
House resolution-later to be known as H.R. 596-on the slaughter of
the Armenians. The measure urged the President, in dealing with the
matter, to demonstrate “appropriate understanding and sensitivity.”
It further instructed him on how to phrase his annual message on
the Armenian Day of Remembrance: the President should refer to the
atrocities as “genocide.” The bill was sent to the International
Relations Committee and immediately came under attack. State Department
officials reminded the committee that it was U.S. policy to “respect
the Turkish government’s assertions that, although many ethnic
Armenians died during World War I, no genocide took place.”
Expanding on this theme, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, in a
letter to Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, wrote that while
he in no way wanted to “downplay the Armenian tragedy . . . passing
judgment on this history through legislation could have a negative
impact on Turkish-Armenian relations and on our security interests in
the region.” After committee members voted, on October 3rd, to send
H.R. 596 to the floor, Turkish officials warned that negotiations
with an American defense contractor, Bell Textron, over four and a
half billion dollars’ worth of attack helicopters were in jeopardy.
On October 5th, the leaders of all five parties in the Turkish
parliament issued a joint statement threatening to deny the U.S. access
to an airbase in Incirlik, which it was using to patrol northern
Iraq. Finally, on October 19th, just a few hours before H.R. 596
was scheduled to be debated in the House, Hastert pulled it from
the agenda. He had, he said, been informed by President Clinton that
passage of the resolution could “risk the lives of Americans.”
The defeat of H.R. 596 is a small but fairly typical episode in a
great campaign of forgetting. Like President Clinton, President Bush
continues to “respect the Turkish government’s assertions” and to issue
Armenian Remembrance Day proclamations each year without ever quite
acknowledging what it is that’s being remembered. If in Washington
it’s politically awkward to refer to the genocide, it is positively
dangerous to do so in Istanbul. Last year, Turkey’s leading author,
Orhan Pamuk, was prosecuted merely for having brought up the subject
in a press interview. “A million Armenians were killed and nobody but
me dares to talk about it, ” he told the Sunday magazine of the Swiss
newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. Pamuk, now a recipient of the Nobel Prize in
Literature, was accused of having violated Section 301 of the Turkish
penal code, which outlaws “insulting Turkishness.” (The charge was
eventually dropped, on a technicality.) A few months later, another
prominent Turkish novelist, Elif Shafak, was charged with the same
offense, for having a character in her most recent novel, “The Bastard
of Istanbul,” declare, “I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who
lost all their relatives at the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915,
but I myself have been brainwashed to deny the genocide.” The charges
were dropped after Shafak argued that the statement of a fictional
person could not be used to prosecute a real one, then reinstated by
a higher court, and then dropped again.
It is in this context that Taner Akcam’s new history, “A Shameful Act:
The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility”
(Metropolitan; $30), must be considered. The book is dryly written
and awkwardly translated, but nevertheless moving.
Akcam grew up in far northeastern Turkey and was educated at Ankara’s
Middle East Technical University, where he became the editor of a
leftist journal. In 1976, he was arrested and sentenced to ten years
in prison for spreading propaganda. Using a stove leg to dig a tunnel,
he managed to escape after a year, and fled to Germany. Akcam is one
of the first Turkish historians to treat the Armenian genocide as
genocide-he now lives in exile in Minnesota-and in “A Shameful Act”
he tries to grapple both with the enormity of the crime and with the
logic of its repression.
Any writer who takes on genocide as his topic accepts obligations
that, if not exactly contradictory, are clearly in tension. The
first is to describe the event in a way that is adequate to its
exceptionality. (The original U.N. resolution on the subject, approved
in 1946, describes genocide as an act that “shocks the conscience
of mankind.”) The second is to make sense of it, which is to say,
to produce an account of the unspeakable that anyone can understand.
Akcam begins his history in the nineteenth century, when roughly
two million Armenians were living in the Ottoman Empire, some in
major cities like Istanbul and Izmir, and the rest in the provinces
of central and eastern Anatolia. Already, the Armenians were in
a peculiarly vulnerable position: Christians living in the heart
of a Muslim empire, they were subject by law to special taxes and
restrictions, and by tradition to extortion and harassment. As the
century wore on, the so-called Sick Man of Europe kept shedding
territory: first Greece, in the Greek War of Independence; and then,
following the Russo-Turkish War, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, and
Bosnia and Herzegovina. These humiliating defeats eroded the Ottomans’
confidence, which, in turn, Akcam argues, “resulted in the loss of
their tolerance.” Muslim assaults on Christians increased throughout
the empire, and the ancient prejudices against the Armenians hardened
into something uglier.
In 1876, Sultan Abdulhamid II came to power. Abdulhamid, who ruled
the empire for thirty-three of its last forty-six years, was a deeply
anxious man, perhaps paranoid. He maintained a vast network of spies;
turned Yildiz Palace, overlooking the Bosporus, into a ramshackle fort;
and demanded that each dish be tasted by his chief chamberlain before
being served. Abdulhamid soon took anti-Armenianism to new heights. (It
was rumored that the Sultan’s own mother, a former dancing girl, was
Armenian, but he always denied this.) He shut down Armenian schools,
threw Armenian teachers in jail, prohibited the use of the word
“Armenia” in newspapers and textbooks, and formed special Kurdish
regiments, known as the Hamidiye, whose raison d’etre appears to
have been to harass Armenian farmers. Encouraged by American and
European missionaries, the Armenians turned to the outside world for
help. The English, the French, and the Russians repeatedly demanded
that Istanbul institute “reforms” on the Armenians’ behalf.
Officially, the Sultan acceded to these demands, only to turn around
and repress the Armenians that much more vigorously. “By taking away
Greece and Romania, Europe has cut off the feet of the Turkish state,”
Abdulhamid complained. “Now, by means of this Armenian agitation, they
want to get at our most vital places and tear out our very guts. This
would be the beginning of totally annihilating us, and we must fight
against it with all the strength we possess.”
In the mid-eighteen-nineties, tens of thousands of Armenians were
murdered. The slaughter began in Sasun, in eastern Anatolia, where
Armenians had refused to pay taxes on the ground that the government
had failed to protect them from Kurdish extortion. The killings in
Sasun provoked an international outcry, which was answered with the
Sultan’s usual promises of reform, and then with a string of even
bloodier massacres in the provinces of Erzurum, Ankara, Sivas, Trabzon,
and Harput. In the wake of the killings, William Gladstone, the former
British Prime Minister, labelled Abdulhamid “the great assassin.”
Finally, in 1909, Abdulhamid was pushed aside. The coup was engineered
by a group composed, for the most part, of discontented Army
officers-the original Young Turks. The Young Turks spoke loftily of
progress and brotherhood-on the eve of the revolt, one of their leaders
is said to have declared, “Under the blue sky we are all equal”-and
the empire’s remaining Christians celebrated their ascendancy. But
the logic of slaughtering the Armenians had by this point been too
well established.
When the First World War broke out, the Young Turks rushed to join the
conflict. “That day of revenge, which has been awaited for centuries
by the nation’s young and old, by its martyrs and by its living,
has finally arrived,” the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies asserted in
a letter to the armed forces. By 1914, the empire was being led
by a troika-nicknamed the Three Pashas-composed of the Minister of
the Interior, the Minister of the Navy, and the Minister of War. In
December, the War Minister, Ismail Enver, decided to lead the Third
Army in an attack against the Russians on the Caucasian front. Enver
planned to press all the way east to Baku, in present-day Azerbaijan,
where he hoped to incite the local Muslims to join the Ottomans’ cause,
and, as a first step, he ordered his forces to divide up and follow
different routes to Sarikamish, a Russian military outpost. The idea
was for all the troops to arrive at the same time and surprise the
enemy with their strength; instead, they straggled in over a period
of several days, with devastating results.
The Ottomans lost about seventy-five thousand men at Sarikamish, out
of a total force of ninety thousand. A German officer attached to the
Third Army described the defeat as “a disaster which for rapidity and
completeness is without parallel in military history.” The Russians
had encouraged the Armenians to form volunteer regiments to fight
against the Ottomans, and some (though not many) had heeded this
call. The Armenians’ role in the disaster became one of the pretexts
for the genocide.
On April 24, 1915, some two hundred and fifty prominent
Armenians-poets, doctors, bankers, and even a member of the Ottoman
parliament-were arrested in Istanbul. They were split up into groups,
loaded onto trains, shipped off to remote prisons, and eventually
killed. (The Armenian Day of Remembrance is marked each year on the
anniversary of these arrests.) Around the same time, orders were
issued to begin rounding up Armenians wholesale and deporting them.
“Some regional variations notwithstanding,” Akcam reports, the
deportations “proceeded in the same manner everywhere.” Armenians
would be given a few days or, in some cases, just a few hours to
leave their homes. The men were separated from the women and children,
led beyond the town, and either tortured or murdered outright. Their
families were then herded to concentration camps in the Syrian desert,
often bound by ropes or chains. Along the way, they were frequently
set upon by Kurdish tribesmen, who had been given license to loot
and rape, or by the very gendarmes who were supposed to be guarding
them. A Greek witness wrote of watching a column of deportees being
led through the Kemakh Gorge, on the upper Euphrates. The guards
“withdrew to the mountainside” and “began a hail of rifle fire,”
he wrote. “A few days later there was a mopping-up operation: since
many little children were still alive and wandering about beside
their dead parents.” In areas where ammunition was in short supply,
the killing squads relied on whatever weapons were at hand-axes,
cleavers, even shovels. Adults were hacked to pieces, and infants
dashed against the rocks. In the Black Sea region, Armenians were
loaded onto boats and thrown overboard. In the area around Lake Hazar,
they were tossed over cliffs.
At the time of the deportations, the U.S. had not yet entered the
war. It maintained an extensive network of diplomats in the region,
and many of these provided detailed chronicles of what they had seen,
which Henry Morgenthau, the United States Ambassador in Istanbul,
urgently forwarded to Washington. (Other eyewitness accounts came from
German Army officers, Danish missionaries, and Armenian survivors.) In
a dispatch sent to the State Department on November 1, 1915, the
U.S. consul in Aleppo wrote:
It is extremely rare to find a family intact that has come any
considerable distance, invariably all having lost members from disease
and fatigue, young girls and boys carried off by hostile tribesmen,
and about all the men having been separated from the families and
suffered fates that had best be left unmentioned, many being done
away with in atrocious manners before the eyes of their relatives
and friends. So severe has been the treatment that careful estimates
place the number of survivors at only 15 percent of those originally
deported. On this basis the number surviving even this far being less
than 150,000 . . . there seems to have been about 1,000,000 persons
lost up to this date.
An American businessman who made a tour of the lower Euphrates the
next year reported having encountered “all along the road from Meskene
to Der-i-Zor graves containing the remains of unfortunate Armenians
abandoned and dead in atrocious suffering. It is by the hundreds
that these mounds are numbered where sleep anonymously in their last
sleep these outcasts of existence, these victims of barbary without
qualification.” Morgenthau repeatedly confronted the Ottoman Interior
Minister, Mehmed Talât, with the contents of these dispatches, telling
him that the Americans would “never forget these massacres.” But the
warnings made no impression. During one session, Morgenthau later
recalled in a memoir, Talât turned to him and asked if he could
obtain a list of Armenians who had purchased life-insurance policies
with American firms. “They are practically all dead now, and have no
heirs left to collect the money,” the Interior Minister reasoned, and
therefore the unclaimed benefits rightfully belonged to the government.
The official explanation for the Armenian deportations was that
they were necessary for security reasons, and this is still the
account provided by state-sanctioned histories today. “Facts on
the Relocation of Armenians (1914-1918),” a volume produced by the
Turkish Historical Society, was published in English in 2002. It
begins with an epigram from John F. Kennedy (“For the great enemy
of the truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived, and
dishonest-but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic”)
and the reassurance that it is “not a propaganda document.” The book
argues that Russia and its allies had “sown the seeds of intrigue and
mischief among the Armenians, who in turn had been doing everything in
their power to make life difficult for Ottoman armies.” Deciding that
“fundamental precautions” were needed, the Ottoman authorities took
steps to “relocate” the Armenians away from the front. They worked to
insure that the transfer would be effected “as humanely as possible”;
if this goal was not always realized, it was because of disease-so
difficult to control during wartime-or rogue bands of “tribal people”
who sometimes attacked Armenian convoys. “Whenever the government
realized that some untoward incidents had taken place . . . the
government acted very promptly and warned the local authorities.” In
support of this “Arbeit Macht Frei” version of events, “Facts on the
Relocation of Armenians” cites the very Ottoman officials who oversaw
the slaughter. Turkish officials, in turn, now cite works like “Facts”
to support their claim that the period’s history remains contested. In
March, 2005, just before the commemoration of the ninetieth anniversary
of the Day of Remembrance, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, called for an “impartial study” to look into what had really
happened to the Armenians. The International Association of Genocide
Scholars responded that such a call could only be regarded as still
more propaganda. “The Armenian Genocide is abundantly documented
by thousands of official records . . . by eyewitness accounts of
missionaries and diplomats, by the testimony of survivors, and by
decades of historical scholarship,” the association’s directors wrote
in a letter explaining their refusal to participate. An academic
conference on the massacres planned for later that spring in Istanbul
was banned by a court order. (After much maneuvering, it was held at
a private university amid raucous protests.)
The Ottomans formally surrendered to the Allies on October 30, 1918.
The Paris Peace Conference opened the following year, and it took
another year for the Allies to agree on how to dispose of the empire.
The pact that finally emerged-the Treaty of Sèvres-awarded Palestine,
Transjordan, and Mesopotamia to the English, Syria and Lebanon to
the French, Rhodes and a chunk of southern Anatolia to the Italians,
and Izmir and western Anatolia to the Greeks. Eastern Anatolia, with
a prize stretch of Black Sea coast, was to go to the Armenians. The
Bosporus and the Dardanelles were to be demilitarized and placed under
international control. From an imperial power the Turks were thus
transformed into something very close to a subject people. This was
the final disgrace and, as it turned out, also the start of a revival.
As the rulers of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks had been fighting
against history; they had spent more than a century trying-often
unsuccessfully-to fend off nationalist movements in the regions
they controlled. Now, in defeat, they adopted the cause as their
own. In the spring of 1920, the Turkish Nationalists, led by Mustafa
Kemal-later to be known as Ataturk-established a new government in
Ankara. (The government’s founding is celebrated every April 23rd,
one day before the Armenian Day of Remembrance.) During the next
three years, the Nationalists fought a series of brutal battles,
which eventually forced the Allies to abandon Sèvres. A new treaty
was drawn up, the Treaty of Lausanne, and the Republic of Turkey
was created. The big losers in this process were, once again, the
Armenians: Lausanne returned all of Anatolia to Turkish control.
In Akcam’s view, what happened between 1920 and 1923 is the key to
understanding the Turks’ refusal to discuss what happened in 1915.
The Armenian genocide was what today would be called a campaign of
ethnic cleansing, and as such it was highly effective. It changed
the demographics of eastern Anatolia; then, on the basis of these
changed demographics, the Turks used the logic of self-determination
to deprive of a home the very people they had decimated. Although
the genocide was not committed by the Nationalists, without it the
nationalist project wouldn’t have made much sense. Meanwhile, the
Nationalists made sure that the perpetrators were never punished.
Immediately after the end of the war, the Three Pashas fled the
country. (The Interior Minister, Talât, was assassinated in Berlin
by an Armenian who had been left for dead in a pile of corpses.) In
an attempt to mollify the Allies, the Ottomans arrested scores of
lower-ranking officials and put some of them on trial, but, when the
Nationalists came to power, they suspended these proceedings and freed
the suspects. A separate prosecution effort by the British, who were
keeping dozens of Ottoman officers locked up in Malta, similarly came
to nothing, and eventually the officers were sent home as part of
a prisoner-of-war exchange. Several went on to become high-ranking
members of Mustafa Kemal’s government. For the Turks to acknowledge
the genocide would thus mean admitting that their country was founded
by war criminals and that its existence depended on their crimes.
This, in Akcam’s words, “would call into question the state’s very
identity.” And so the Turks prefer to insist, as “Facts on the
Relocation of Armenians” puts it, that the genocide is a “legend.”
It is, of course, possible to question Akcam’s highly psychologized
account. Turkey has long sought to join the European Union, and,
while a history of genocide is clearly no barrier to membership,
denying it may be; several European governments have indicated that
they will oppose the country’s bid unless it acknowledges the crimes
committed against the Armenians. Are the Turks really willing to risk
their country’s economic future merely in order to hide-or pretend
to hide-an ugly fact about its origins? To believe this seems to
require a view of Turkish ethnic pride that gets dangerously close to
a national stereotype. In fact, many Turkish nationalists oppose E.U.
membership; from their perspective, denying the Armenian genocide
serves an eminently practical political purpose.
That being said, Akcam clearly has a point, and one that Americans, in
particular, ought to be able to appreciate. Before the arrival of the
first Europeans, there were, it is estimated, at least forty million
indigenous people living in the Americas; by 1650, fewer than ten
million were left. The decline was the result of casual cruelty on the
one hand-diseases unwittingly spread-and systematic slaughter on the
other. Every November, when American schoolchildren are taught about
Thanksgiving, they are insistently told the story of how the Pilgrims,
in their gratitude, entertained the kindly Wampanoag. We now know
that the comity of that original Thanksgiving was entirely atypical,
and that, by 1621, the Wampanoag were already a dying nation. While it
was cowardly of Congress to pull H.R. 596, passing it would, in its own
way, also have been problematic. We may side with the Armenians, but,
historically speaking, we probably have more in common with the Turks.
icles/061106crbo_books2
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AZERBAIJANI PRESIDENT REMARKS SUCCESS OF AZERBAIJAN-RUSSIA COOPERATION
Author: P. Kesamanski
TREND Information, Azerbaijan
Oct 30 2006
The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, stated in his interview with
the foreign media accredited in Russia that the Government of Russia
takes steps for the peaceable resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani
conflict, Trend reports.
The President stated that Russia is a neighbor of Azerbaijan, whereas
Armenia does not border with Russia. In addition, Russia is also a
co-chair of the OSCE Minks Group, which is involved in the resolution
of the [Armenian-Azerbaijani] Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. “We hold
positive work experience with Russian officials and the Russian
policy in the settlement of the conflict. We succeeded to eliminate
all unsolved problems. Presently, the country has achieved great
successes in the economic, political and cultural spheres,” the head
of the sate reiterated.
Mr. Aliyev ruled out that good bonds between Russia and Armenia
impede Moscow’s bilateral relationships with Azerbaijan. ‘If to
compare Azerbaijan and Armenia, one can easily see which country
represents more importance. From the aspect of partnership, energy,
geographic situation, political situation, of course, Azerbaijan can
not be compared with Armenia,’ the President said.

ARMENIA’S PRESIDENT DUE IN MOSCOW
RosBusinessConsulting, Russia
Oct 30 2006
RBC, 30.10.2006, Moscow 10:26:59.Armenia’s President Robert
Kocharian is expected in Russia for an official visit on October
30-31, 2006. In Moscow, President Kocharian will have talks with his
Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The two presidents are scheduled
to consider the most urgent cooperation issues and the performance of
top-level agreements with regards to enhancing the Russian-Armenian
interaction, specifically, in fuel and energy and transportation
spheres, as well as direct economic ties between various regions of
Russia and Armenia. The two heads of states will also share their
views concerning the intensification of interaction in the context
of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Efforts for the
recovery in the Caucasus as well as for the fostering of confidence
and cooperation will also be in the focus.
As reported earlier, 2005 was the Year of Russia in Armenia, and the
year 2006 will be celebrated in Russia as the Year of Armenia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress