Turkish Daily News
Oct 19 2006
>>From the columns
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Hot contact with the diaspora:
Zaman, Mehmet Kamýþ: The Armenian question is being brought before
Turkey at every opportunity. A group of people all over the world —
in France, America and Lebanon — hate Turkey and wish only bad
things for it. This hatred has been fostered not by those who were
deported but rather by the generations that followed. The migration
of Armenians, an Eastern Christian society, to Western countries
after World War I played a huge role in this Armenian transformation.
This is the 90th anniversary of that forced deportation. States that
were at each other’s throats only 60 years ago are today united under
one roof. Nobody feuds anymore. The significance of Turkey’s World
War I incident with the Armenians is growing on a daily basis. Each
time this problem confronts us in a different country. To manage
this, Turkey should change its policy and establish close contact
with the Armenian diaspora. Civilians, rather than the state, should
put more effort into solving this problem. We need to sit down with
them and talk a little bit about Fenerbahce. Eat sarma with them, put
jewelry on the bride at weddings. In short, we should remember that
we are similar nations emotionally; we eat the same foods and sing
the same folk songs.
–Boundary_(ID_kgEnUy/auTM5k0Ev7PlTrQ)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

United Press International
Oct 20 2006
Turks asked to boycott French media
Oct. 20, 2006 at 11:40AM
Turkey’s TV and broadcast watchdog has asked the country to boycott
French media until France drops its Armenian genocide bill.
That’s in response to the French National Assembly’s approval of
a bill earlier this month, making it a crime to deny that the mass
killings of Armenians during World War I, in the last days of the
6-century-old Ottoman empire, were genocide. The bill now goes to
the French Senate. Turkey, which has been blamed for the killings,
has always strongly opposed the genocide designation.
In the latest move, the boycott appeal came from Turkey’s Radio and
Television Higher Board, reports the Zaman newspaper. The board said
its members had unanimously agreed that Turkish television and radio
stations should avoid airing French-made programs until the genocide
bill is withdrawn.
The Zaman reported that French films, TV shows and music account for
about 10 percent of the content on Turkish radio and television.
Separately, the report said the Turkish consumers union plans to
publicize one French company or brand every week, encouraging citizens
to boycott it.

Protest action was held outside of Israel and France Embassies on Jerusalem day
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Oct 20 2006
[ 20 Oct. 2006 19:37 ]
The Religious Community of Icherishekher Juma Mosque visited Martyrs’
Alley and placed protest actions on Jerusalem day, APA reports.
The community members began their action by entering the alley and
chanting Allahu Akbar (Allah is great). Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, the chief
of the community said that this day was declared by Imam Khomeini
and is the day of solidarity of Muslims.
“Armenians can not establish a state in Garabagh, neither can Zionists
in Jerusalem. Remembering of Jerusalem is remembering of Muslim,”
he said.
Ibrahimoglu reminded of humiliation of Prophet Muhammad (s.) many
times and the attacks to Lebanon and said that it is important for
Muslims to unite. Then the participants of piquet assembled outside
of Israel Embassy holding the slogan “Israel Stop!” in their hands.
When the officers of Police station #27 demanded to leave the
territory, the head of the community said that they will end piquet
soon. The action continued without the interference of police, but
after the piquet the police forces arrested seven demonstrators and
they were taken to the Police station 37.
Though there was confrontation during the piquet outside of France
embassy, the police allowed continuing the piquet in former Malakan
Park. They chanted slogans “Shame” continuously and then Ibrahimoglu
made a speech. He condemned the law adopted by France parliament that
makes it crime to deny false Armenian genocide and considered it the
support to terrorism. At the end the resolution was presented to the
officer of embassy. /APA/

Levon Ter-Petrasiyan to nominate his candidacy in the presidential elections
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Oct 20 2006
[ 20 Oct. 2006 20:28 ]
The former president Levon Ter-Petrosiyan can nominate his candidacy
in the presidential elections in 2008, Ararat Zurabyan, administrator
of Armenian National Movement (ANM) headed by Levon Ter-Petrosian
said in the press conference, APA reports.
He thinks that the return of the first president of Armenia to the
sphere of action will change the conditions in the country.
“Levon Ter-Petrosiyan’s two words are more important than the activity
of the all political power, “he said.
Zurabyan said that if former president do not nominate his candidacy,
ANM will nominate other candidacy. Zurabyan said that the aim of
opposition is to prevent the leading of those who came to power
illegally. He said that during the reign of Foreign Minister Vardan
Oskanian and Defense Minister Serj Sarkisian Armenia stood aside from
regional projects./APA/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Turkey Bakhchasaray University prepared 1mn application forms against false Armenian genocide
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Oct 20 2006
[ 20 Oct. 2006 19:31 ]
Turkey Bakhchasaray University prepared one million application forms
against false Armenian genocide for sending European Court of Human
Rights, the University rector and famous lawyer Suheyl Batum told
APA Turkey bureau exclusively.
“Armenia tries to accuse Turkey of the genocide which was not
recognized by well-known historians of the world. The political
aim of this accusation is evident from France Interior Minister’s
suggestions. He said that France Parliament will not adopt the law if
Turkey opens the borders with Armenia, restores diplomatic relations
between the two countries and abolish Turkish Criminal Code article
301. This problem concerns Azerbaijan, too. Armenians occupied 20
percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, but they want us to recognize the
controversial historical event. France does not allow Turks to protest
against its decision. It gives us a chance to appeal to European Court
of Human Rights. We prepared application forms for this. Turkey should
solve the problem legally. Azerbaijan and Turkey will have great
chances to pressurize France and other western countries. Armenians
occupied Azerbaijan’s territories, but the world community wants us to
restore diplomatic and commercial relations with Armenia. They do not
pay attention to UN decision making Armenia aggressor. Azerbaijan would
have solved this problem if it were economically strong country. But
now we should solve the problem legally,” he said. /APA/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Oct 20 2006
Armenian Question
[COMMENTARY]
by Norman Stone
“The Armenian ‘genocide’ is an imperialist plot.” So said Dogu
Perincek, in Marxist mode, and he chose to say it in Switzerland.
Switzerland passed a law threatening prison for anyone ‘denying’ that
there had been a genocide of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915, and Mr.
Perincek was interrogated by the police.
There have been similar events in other countries and now we have the
French parliament passing a law that is harsher than the Swiss one –
a year’s prison and a heavy fine. This is a ridiculous and contemptible
business – bad history and worse politics. It is also financially very
grubby indeed. We all know how the American legal system can work:
lawyers will agree to work for nothing, in return for a share of the
profits at the end of a court case. Court cases are very expensive
and it can simply be easier for banks or firms or hospitals to agree
to make a payment without any confession of liability, just because
fighting the case would be absurdly expensive, and the outcome –
given how the American jury system works – unpredictable. A burglar,
crawling over a householder’s glass roof, fell through it, was
badly wounded, and took the householder to court: result, a million
dollars in damages. Class actions by Armenian Diaspora descendants in
California shook down the Deutsche Bank over claims dating back to 1915
and collected 17,000,000 dollars; then they attempted the same with
a French insurance company. We can be entirely certain that if Turkey
ever ‘recognizes the genocide’ then the financial claims will follow.
But if Turkey refuses to admit it, she is in fact on perfectly good
ground. The very first thing to be said is that the business of
‘genocide’ has never been proved. The evidence for it is at best
indirect and when the British were in occupation of Istanbul they never
found any direct evidence or proof at all. They kept some hundred or
so prominent Turks in captivity on Malta, hoping to find some sort
of evidence against them, and failed. They asked the Americans if
they knew anything and were told, no. The result is that the alleged
‘genocide’ has never been subjected to a properly-constituted court
of law. The British released their Turks (meanly refusing to pay for
their journeys back home from Malta).
There is a counter-claim to the effect that this happened because
the Nationalist Turks were holding British officers hostage but the
fact is that the Law Officers simply said that they did not have the
evidence to try their captives.
Diaspora Armenians claim that ‘historians’ accept the genocide case.
There is some preposterous organization called ‘association of genocide
scholars’ which does indeed endorse the Diaspora line, but who are
they and what qualifications do they have? Knowing about Rwanda or
Bosnia or even Auschwitz does not qualify them to discuss Anatolia
in 1915, and the Ottoman specialists are by no means convinced of the
‘genocide’. There is in fact an ‘A’ team of distinguished historians
who do not accept the Diaspora line at all.
In France, Gilles Veinstein, historian of Salonica and a formidable
scholar, reviewed the evidence in a famous article of 1993 in
L’Histoire. Back then the Armenian Diaspora were also jumping up and
down about something or other, and Veinstein summed up the arguments
for and against, in an admirably fair-minded way. The fact is that
there is no proof of ‘genocide’, in the sense that no document ever
appeared, indicating that the Armenians were to be exterminated.
There is forged evidence. In 1920 some documents were handed to the
British by a journalist called Andonian. She claimed that he had
been given them by an Ottoman official called Naim. The documents
have been published as a book (in English and French) and if you
take them at face value they are devastating: here is Talaat Pasha
as minister of the Interior telling the governors to exterminate the
Armenians, not to forget to exterminate the children in orphanages,
but to keep it all secret. But the documents are very obviously a
forgery – elementary mistakes as regards dates and signatures. At
the time, in 1920, the new Armenian Republic was collapsing. Kazim
Karabekir was advancing on Kars (which fell almost without resistance)
and the Turkish Nationalists were co-operating with Moscow (in effect
there was a bargain: Turkey would abandon Azerbaijan and Russia would
abandon Anatolian Armenia). The Armenians were desperate to get the
British to intervene and save them, by landing troops at Trabzon.
However, the British (and still more the French) had had enough of
the problems of Asia Minor and were in the main content to settle
with the new Turkey. Andonian’s documents belong in that context. The
chief Armenian ‘genocidist,’ V.Dadrian, still passionately defends
the authenticity of these documents but the attempt does not do much
credit to his scholarship: for instance, to the claim that the paper
on which these documents were written came from the French school
in Aleppo, he answers that there was a paper shortage (leading the
Ottoman governor to ask a French headmaster if he could use some of
his school-paper? Not very likely). The Naim-Andonian documents have
incidentally never been tested in a court. The British refused to
use them and a German court subsequently waved them aside. They have
since disappeared – not what you would have expected had they been at
all that is the sum total of the evidence as to ‘genocide’. Otherwise
you are left with what English courts call ‘circumstantial evidence’
– i.e. a witness testifying that another witness said something
to someone. Such evidence does not count. In the past three years
Armenian historians have apparently been going round archives ýn two
dozen countries to find out what they contain – the Danish archives
for instance. What they contain is what we knew already – that an
awful lot of Armenians were killed or died in the course of a wartime
deportation from many parts of Anatolia. Did the Ottoman government
intend to exterminate the race, or was it just a deportation that
went horribly wrong?
As to this, the experts are divided. A deportation gone wrong is the
verdict of many of the best qualified historians – Bernard Lewis, Heath
Lowry, Justin McCarthy, Yusuf Halacoglu. Other historians who know
the old script and the background believe that it was a premeditated
campaign of extermination, and some of these historians are Turkish
(Mete Tuncay and Selim Deringil, unless I am taking their names in
vain). There is a Turkish historian, Taner Akcam, whose book, based
on the war-crimes trials set up in the early period of the British
occupation, is obviously scholarly and who accepts the genocide thesis
(though he does stress that the process cannot be compared with what
happened in Nazi Germany to the Jews). In view of these divisions
among scholars it is simply scandalous that the French or any other
parliament should decree what the answer is. But it is worse, because
the Armenian Diaspora can be extremely vindictive. For instance,
Gilles Veinstein, as a reward for his quite dispassionate article,
faced a campaign of vilification. He had become a candidate for the
College de France, which elects the very best scholars in the country
to give seminars. The historians very much welcomed this: he is an
extremely serious scholar. But the Armenian Diaspora organized a
campaign against him, especially among the mathematicians for some
reason. One of them, a Professor Thom, was told that, on the whole,
the French historians supported Veinstein and did not like the
genocide thesis. His answer: ‘they are all Ottomanists,’ as if that
somehow disqualified them. The fact is that the Armenian Diaspora
have never taken this affair to a proper court of law. Instead,
they try to silence men such as Veinstein.
There was an extraordinary episode in American publishing two years
ago. A very well-known historian, Gunther Lewy, who was a professor at
the University of Massachusetts and author of several books still in
print on modern German history, wrote a book on the Armenian massacres
on the basis of German documents. The book is valuable because it
shows how Dadrian twisted the German evidence. He offered it to his
usual publisher, Oxford University Press (New York branch).
A report was commissioned from one Papazian – not exactly a celebrity –
who identified what he claimed were tremendous inaccuracies: they turn
out either not to be inaccuracies, or just little slips of the kind
anyone might make. On that basis Lewy’s manuscript was refused on the
grounds that he had taken up ‘Turkish denialist discourse’. He found
another publisher, the University of Utah Press. And lo and behold the
senior Armenian historian in the USA, Richard Hovannisian (University
of California) wrote in protest to the President of that University
to complain about the publication. Be it said, incidentally, that the
last two volumes of Hovannisian’s History of Independent Armenia are a
well-written and fair-minded account – in some ways, even a classic of
historical writing (the earlier two volumes are not of the same class).
Now, there is something very wrong here. If you believe that you are
right, and then you will let evidence speak for itself, and if you
face opposition you will simply expect to win the argument one way or
the other. Attempts to silence opposition, to boycott lectures by,
say, Justin McCarthy, to bully or manipulate foreign politicians –
all of that surely argues that the Armenians themselves know their
case is very far from being overwhelming. In any case it does nothing
whatsoever for Armenia. If you go to eastern Turkey and Kars, look
across the border at Armenia. It is very poor, and will continue so
if there is no commerce with Turkey. The only obvious industry is the
issue of visas for Moscow or the USSR (or for that matter Turkey,
where up to 100,000 ex-Soviet Armenians live). The place obviously
lives off Diaspora money (and the spread of American fast-food places
now means curiously enough that the inhabitants are becoming obese
in the manner of some Americans). In Soviet times Armenia had a
population approaching three million. Then came independence and the
war over Karabagh. The population dwindles and declines every year
and is now not much above 1,500,000 – of all absurdities, in other
words, independence has caused the Armenians to lose twice as many as
vanished in the supposed ‘genocide’ of 1915. There is in other words
a sickness at the heart of this whole frankly preposterous affair.
What should Turkey do? If the French law does pass then Turks must
be prepared to act, otherwise they risk being landed with enormous
bills for compensation. It will take organization. I would volunteer,
myself, to provoke some trouble in France: it would be very easy
indeed for me to give a public lecture and just to point out what is
wrong about the whole thesis of the ‘Armenian genocide’ – I might even
just read out Veinstein’s article (or another important one by the
then leading German general, Bronsart von Schellendorf). The French
government probably would be mad enough to put me in prison for a
while (this was done to a well-respected French historian of slavery,
whose crime had been to point out that many Africans were involved in
the slave trade and that some slaves volunteered for transportation
because it saved them from cannibalism). But someone has to make a
stand against the ridiculous misuse of parliamentary power and the
instructing of historians what they must say about an event nearly a
century old in a country two thousand kilometers away with a language
that very few people can now read.
–Boundary_(ID_EHHjt4Us3ORsGdHJfo7toA)–

French Armenian genocide bill makes no sense-US
Fri 20 Oct 2006 14:45:50 BST
Reuters, UK
Oct 20 2006
BRUSSELS, Oct 20 (Reuters) – A French parliamentary bill that would
make it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered genocide at the
hands of Ottoman Turks in World War One makes no sense, a senior U.S.
official said on Friday.
Daniel Fried, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs,
said he backed French President Jacques Chirac’s opposition to the
bill, which has infuriated Turkey even though it may never become law.
“I certainly share the view that this legislation criminalising
discussion doesn’t seem to make any sense,” Fried told a news briefing
in Brussels.
He said the United States and President George W. Bush had spoken out
repeatedly about the mass killings of Armenians during World War One
and did not want to minimise or deny them.
However, he added: “We as a government have never termed these events
genocide. We don’t use that word.”
Fried said the United States would like to see Turks and Armenians
address the issue honestly and some Turks were already urging their
government to do so.
“It doesn’t strike me as clear that resolutions like this in the
French parliament are going to encourage this process.”
Turkey denies claims that Armenians suffered genocide, arguing that
large numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks died in
a partisan conflict that raged as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.
Given opposition from Chirac and the French Senate, the bill is
unlikely to become law but it has infuriated Turkey, where consumer
groups have called for a boycott of French-made goods.
France, which faces presidential elections next year, is home to
Europe’s largest Armenian diaspora.

“First Dynasty Mines” Company of Canada invested US $22, 1 in gold extraction in Azerbaijan territories
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Oct 20 2006
[ 20 Oct. 2006 18:11 ]
“First Dynasty Mines” (FDM) Company of Canada invested US $22, 1 in
gold extraction in Nagorno Garabagh, occupied Azerbaijan territories.
It plans to invest US $12mn in Armenia’s gold extraction by the end of
next year,” Arif Iskenderov, the chief of Ecology and Natural Resources
Ministry Ecology and Nature Protection Policy Department told the
APA. He said that Armenian government negotiates with International
Financial Corporation of World Bank and other foreign banks. FDM
invested US $4mn in geological exploration in Armenia and occupied
Azerbaijan territories. The company plans to extract over five tones
of gold in Kelbejer, occupied Azerbaijan region. It established a lab
of US $70 00 in Soyudlu field in Kalbajar. It plans to establish the
same in Ararat gold extraction.
73 percent of Soyudlu field is situated in occupied Azerbaijan
territory. The exploitation of the field was stopped in 1992. US
specialists began geological exploration of the field in 1996.
Armenian Industry and Commerce Ministry and FDM Company signed a
contract of US $63, 3mn in 1997. Sterlite Gold Ltd owns assets of
FDM Company. The same company bought stocks of Ararat Gold Recovery
Company in 2002 and became its owner.
12 000 employees of FDM work in Armenia and occupied Azerbaijan
territories. Their average monthly salaries are US $150-160. /APA/

Is There any Strategy in Boycotting France?
By IBRAHIM OZTURK
Zaman, Turkey
Oct 20 2006
10.20.2006 Friday – ISTANBUL 22:36
As a nation, our judgment is easily clouded. It’s our Achilles heel
to win the hard way but lose easily. We still haven’t learned how
to solve possible crises by adopting long-term strategies or using
intelligence and know-how.
A fine example of this phenomenon is the French controversy, perfectly
timed just before the EU progress report on Turkey is released. It is
as if the French wanted to seek help from Turkish sentiments that can
lose control and direction easily. While France and other like-minded
countries try to provoke us, so to speak, there are “customers” who
are ready to buy this turmoil at home because their interests fit
snugly into each other. I insist that the Algerian genocide should
not be used to extract vengeance against France. This would burn
bridges, whereas our duty is to build foundations and bridges for
better dialogue and understanding.
The tension we experienced because of Italy’s stance on the PKK and
the street protests it triggered are still fresh in our memory. But
remember Italy’s full support for us to obtain an exact date for EU
full membership negotiations. International relations are determined
neither by love nor by hatred, but by national interests guided by
common sense. Can’t you see that today Japan and America are like
identical twins, despite the two atomic bombs America dropped on its
present-day ally? While discussing today’s matters, we should not ruin
future relations. In fact, France does not prefer Armenia, a country
of five million poor people, over Turkey with this action. As is well
known, Europe has had this France problem for quite some time. It is
the same country that opposed Britain’s full EU membership in the past,
and that also rejects the current EU constitution. This notorious
country is now trying to use Turkey as a scapegoat for its problems
with the EU. What Turkey has to do is try to avoid being part of the
problem, with little patience and sound strategy.
The other side of the equation is our homemade problems. Those who,
until recently, had been tormenting people in order to impose
European values on them are now pretending to be against the
European Union. Since they are in search of a strategy to change
course smoothly, they acted hastily in finding similarities between
France’s attitude and the present EU situation. Take a guess: What
is the religion of our old aunt who yelled, “Religion is becoming
lost?” As always, one of the most legal grounds is Ataturk. He said,
“We have to reach the level of contemporary civilizations, not the
European level.” He meant rationalism, didn’t he? But how can all
this be combined with economic and political unity?
Let’s not digress; I do support boycotting French products. But mine is
a well-founded embargo. If a foreign product has a Turkish equivalent
with the same quality, and if it can withstand the price competition, I
would prefer the homegrown products. A stance and preference spreading
across all parts of life with national consciousness is essential, not
feelings that are set ablaze with tensions and then burnt away. For
instance, rescuing the present volatile campaign launched against
France from its narrow bounds and turning it into a campaign using
homegrown products would be the most viable long-term strategy. On
the other hand, punishing French capital that is assisting successful
investments in our country, contributing to production and employment
by launching a boycott, will amount to sawing away at the branch
we are sitting on. Instead, not buying imported French products and
brands would be the best way to boost the boycott spirit.
France may risk losing Turkey in an economic sense because Turkey is
as good as a pill to cure an earthquake as far as French imports and
exports are concerned. That would not move a leaf in France. However,
France is our fifth-largest trading partner. More importantly,
it seems as if similar things will occur with other countries,
whether they’re EU members or non-EU members. Almost 70 percent of
Turkey’s foreign trade is with European countries. We should reduce
our dependence on Europe by expanding to new horizons, discovering
new abilities and developing new long-term strategies. Furthermore,
to increase our bargaining power we should be able to create other
power sources. Otherwise any action taken by us would seem ridiculous.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

US attacks France over EU-Turkey ‘polemics’
EUPolitix.com, Belgium
Oct 20 2006
The US has criticised the French decision to criminalise denial of
the Armenian genocide.
Speaking in Brussels on Friday, the US assistant secretary of state for
European affairs Daniel Fried hit out at French polemics on the issue.
“The US shares that view that legislation criminalising discussion
of an issue does not make sense,” Fried told reporters.
“The US has spoken out about terrible events of Ottoman empire but
we have not used the term genocide.”
Calling on Turkey to carefully consider its history, the Washington
official said every country has “parts in its history that it is not
proud of.”
Last week the French lower house approved a bill making it a crime
to deny Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks.
The move sparked outrage in Ankara where officials fear ties between
the Nato allies will be badly affected.
“This will be an unforgettable shame on France,” said Turkish foreign
minister Abdullah Gul.
“France can never describe itself as a country of freedoms again.”