TURKISH ACADEMIC, 92, CLEARED IN HEADSCARF TRIAL
by Nicolas Cheviron
Agence France Presse — English
November 1, 2006 Wednesday 12:19 PM GMT
An Istanbul court on Wednesday cleared an eminent Turkish academic
of charges of insulting people over their religious beliefs in a
paper linking the first use of headscarves by women to pre-Islamic
sexual rites.
The judge acquitted 92-year-old Muazzez Ilmiye Cig at the first
hearing of her trial that lasted only about half an hour.
She was the latest in a string of intellectuals to stand trial in
Turkey amid mounting European Union criticism that failure to ensure
freedom of expression is casting a pall on the country’s membership
bid.
Some 30 supporters inside the courtroom and another 200 outside
applauded the diminutive Cig as she emerged smiling from the courtroom.
Cig is an expert on the Sumerians, a Mesopotamian urban civilization
dating back to 5,000 BC and credited with inventing writing.
She drew the anger of Islamists when she wrote in a book published
last year that the headscarf was first worn by Sumerian priestesses
initiating young men to sex, but without prostituting themselves.
She also criticized, in quite a provocative style, a widespread
practice among conservative Turks to marry in a religious ceremony
performed by an imam, or Muslim preacher, which the law does not
recognize.
An Izmir lawyer took offense and filed a complaint, resulting in a
prosecutor charging her and her publisher with “insulting a certain
group of people on the basis of religion” under penal code provisions
carrying up to 18 months in jail.
The judge ruled Wednesday that the offense mentioned in the indictment
had not taken place and stressed that Cig’s remarks had posed no
danger to public order.
Publisher Ismet Ogutucu was also acquitted.
“I never meant to discriminate between people,” Cig said at the
hearing.
“I am a child of the Kemalist revolution,” she added, referring to
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey on the ashes of the
Ottoman Empire in 1923 and enforced a wave of sweeping reforms to
westernize the mainly Muslim nation.
Cig, a staunch defender of Turkey’s strictly secular system, wrote
recently to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s wife, Emine,
calling on her to avoid wearing her Islamic headcsarf in public to
set an example to young people.
“She can wear whatever she wants at home,” Cig said in a newspaper
interview last month. “But as the wife of the prime minister, she
cannot wear a headscarf — or a cross for that matter.”
The Muslim headscarf is viewed by secular Turks as a symbol of
political Islam and is banned by law in government offices and
universities.
The issue has polarized Turkish society, particularly since Erdogan’s
Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002
with an end to the headscarf ban high on its list of electoral promises
— one it has so far been unable to keep.
Despite EU warnings, dozens of Turkish intellectuals, among them 2006
Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk, have been put on trial over
the past year, mostly over remarks contesting the official line on
the controversial massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.

AZERI FOREIGN MINISTER, EUROPEAN REPS DISCUSS KARABAKH
Day.az , Azerbaijan
1 Nov 2006
Baku, 1 November: The settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict
is the most topical issue in Azerbaijan’s foreign policy. Azerbaijani
Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has told a meeting with the
PACE co-rapporteurs on Azerbaijan, Andres Herkel and Tony Lloyd,
the ministry’s press service reports.
“Being a member of such an authoritative organization like the Council
of Europe, Armenia has violated all international legal norms and
principles by occupying part of Azerbaijan’s territory. As a result,
over one million of Azerbaijanis have become refugees and displaced
persons,” Mammadyarov said.
He said that the world community should make it clear to Armenia which
aspires to be part of Europe that it is necessary to withdraw troops
from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.
The co-rapporteurs stressed the importance of speedy resolution of
the conflict and voiced the hope that the peace process would continue.
[APA news agency, in Azeri 1154 gmt 1 Nov 06 reported that the
co-rapporteurs met the Azerbaijani election chief, Mazahir Panahov,
to collect information about elections held in the country.]
[Bakililar.az in Russian 0505 gmt 1 Nov 06 reported that leaders of
the opposition parties Musavat and People’s Front of Azerbaijan, Isa
Qambar and Ali Karimli, informed the co-rapporteurs about the freedom
of speech problem and vote rigging in the country. The co-rapporteurs
also met of MP Camil Hasanli, head of the committee to protect the
rights of jailed ex-economic development minister Farhad Aliyev.]

ARMENIA WOOS GEORGIA AHEAD OF UN DISCUSSION OF FROZEN CONFLICTS IN CIS
Mediamax News Agency, Armenia
Nov 1 2006
Yerevan, 1 November: The Armenian and Georgian foreign ministers,
Vardan Oskanyan and Gela Bezhuashvili, today met in Moscow on the
sidelines of a session of the council of foreign ministers of the
Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organizations’ member countries.
The foreign ministers of the two counties “discussed issues of
bilateral relations, the influence of the Russian-Georgian relations
on the region and the possibilities of softening the current tension,”
the press service of the Armenian Foreign Ministry told Mediamax today.
Oskanyan and Bezhuashvili also discussed the issue of signing the
action plans by Armenia and Georgia within the framework of the
European Union’s Neighbourhood Policy scheduled for 14 November. The
ministers said that the beginning of implementation of the action
plans will deepen cooperation between Armenia and Georgia towards
the European integration.
“The sides also exchanged views on issues of settling regional
conflicts, and in this context, they discussed eliminating possible
consequences of the initiatives [on the frozen conflicts] by GUAM
[regional alliance of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova]
member countries in the UN”, the press service of the Armenian Foreign
Ministry said.

SKYLARK FARM
Kirkus Reviews
November 1, 2006
One family’s heartbreaking experience during the 1915 Armenian
genocide.
In a small Anatolian hill town, Turks and Armenians live together
in relative harmony for generations. But when, in 1915, the Ottoman
Empire allies itself with Germany in the brewing world war, Turkish
citizens are forced to take sides. Sempad Arslanian, however, remains
oblivious to political change.
Head of his large, wealthy clan and benefactor to his neighbors —
Turk, Greek and Armenian alike — he spends the Spring of 1915
joyfully preparing for a reunion with his brother Yerwant, who,
at 13, left Skylark Farm, the family’s country estate, to study in
Italy. Preparations by both brothers rival ceremonial planning for
royal visits: Sempad orders stained glass windows from England and
levels a pasture for a tennis court; Yerwant outfits a red Isotta
Fraschini for his road trip south, his monogram in silver on the
doors, and stocks it with a great number of small gold and silver
gifts to give away on his arrival. On May 24, days before Yerwant is
to leave, Italy closes its borders and joins the War. And in Sempad’s
village, as throughout the Empire, all Armenian heads of household
are arrested. Sempad flees from his house in town to Skylark Farm.
What happens there — later that night the freshly dug tennis court is
used as a mass grave for all the Arslanian men — is only the first
of countless horrors the Arslanian women (and one boy disguised as
a girl) endure on their forced death-march across the Syrian desert,
where they are raided periodically by the Kurds, raped by their Young
Turk “guides” and starved. The story of survival that follows is the
unexpected solace of this fearless tale.
An Armenian Schindler’s List.
Publication Date: 1/24/2007 0:00:00 Publisher: Knopf Stage: Adult Star:
1 ISBN: 1-4000-4435-9 Price: $23.95 Author: Arslan, Antonia
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL
Kirkus Reviews
November 1, 2006
An astonishingly rich and lively story of an Istanbul family whose
mixed up heritage mirrors the complexity of Turkish society.
Shafak (The Gaze, 2006), whom the Turkish government has put on trial
for “denigrating Turkishness,” writes here about the 1915 massacre of
Armenians. The four Kazanci sisters live together with their mother
and paternal grandmother in Istanbul, their bother Mustafa having
been sent to Arizona as a young man to avoid the Kazanci curse: The
men of the family tend to die by age 41. When the youngest sister,
rebellious Zeliha, has a daughter out of wedlock, she refuses to
name the father. Calling Zeliha auntie although she knows their
relationship, Aysa grows up in this household of women.
Zeliha runs a tattoo parlor; her sisters include a devout Muslim
seer, a nationalistic history teacher and a batty feminist. To escape
her doting aunts and grandmothers, Aysa hangs out with coffeehouse
intellectuals, including a cartoonist indicted by the government
for cartoons mocking the prime minister. Defensive about her lack
of a father, Aysa takes an existential view of life that denies the
importance of the past. Meanwhile in America, Armanoush is born to
an Armenian father and American mother. After her parents divorce,
Armanoush’s mother marries Mustafa, who barely acknowledges his Turkish
roots. Armanoush spends large chunks of her childhood with her father’s
loving Armenian family, which clings to history and long simmering
bitterness against the Turks. Increasingly drawn to her Armenian
roots, Armanoush travels to Istanbul (without telling her parents)
to learn more of her family history. She stays with the Kazancis, who
are astounded when she tells them what Turks did to Armenians. As Asya
and Armanoush become friends, myths — ethnic, familial and personal
— explode. Despite a misstep into melodrama concerning Mustafa,
Shafak handles her large cast of characters and plotting with finesse.
A hugely ambitious exploration of complex historical realities handled
with an enchantingly light touch.
Publication Date: 1/22/2007 0:00:00 Publisher: Viking Stage: Adult
Star: 1 ISBN: 0-670-03834-2 Price: $24.95 Author: Shafak, Elif

POWER, FAITH, AND FANTASY: AMERICA IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1776 TO THE PRESENT
Kirkus Reviews
November 1, 2006
American involvement in Middle Eastern affairs is hardly new — and,
writes historian Oren (Six Days of War, 2001, etc.), mostly “graced
with good intentions.”
The Middle East — a term, Oren notes, coined by an American admiral a
century ago — was a subject of intense interest across the waters in
the early days of the Republic, thanks in good measure to the work of
Mediterranean privateers who pressed American sailors into slavery. Add
to that the natural strangeness of the Arab world, and, writes Oren,
for Thomas Jefferson the region was “a bastion of infidel-hating
pirates as well as a realm of exotic wonders.” Thus it would remain,
at least until the piracy problem was attended to. The slavery problem
was another matter, and Oren takes up a rewarding theme by examining
the uses to which it was put in American abolitionist circles. In
decades to come, fast ships would carry Americans across the sea in
great numbers. Some made the heart of the Middle East part of the
Grand Tour, some made the Holy Land an object of pilgrimage and its
inhabitants one of proselytism; and some saw in the region a source of
commerce and wealth, even before the discovery of oil. Interestingly,
as Oren explores in detail, many travelers of all stripes tended
to be anti-imperialist, regarding British designs on the region as
a problem, even if Harper’s magazine did opine that “Civilization
gains whenever any misgoverned country passes under the control of
a European race.” That proto-neoconservative declaration is one of
many parallels that the reader can reasonably draw between then and
now. Oren suggests that much American activity in the Middle East,
from Red Cross founder Clara Barton’s intercession on behalf of
besieged Armenians to the work of hydrologists and agronomists in
making Palestine fertile ground, was benign. When it was not, it had
unpleasant consequences, as with the machinations of one anti-Semitic
ambassador and the present messy stage of what Oren calls the “thirty
years war” following the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran.
Of considerable interest in that difficult time: well argued, and
full of telling moments.
Publication Date: 1/15/2007 0:00:00 Publisher: Norton Stage: Adult
ISBN: 0-393-05826-3 Price: $29.95 Author: Oren, Michael B.

TURKISH-DUTCH LOBBYISTS TRY TO PUNISH POLITICAL PARTIES OVER ARMENIAN QUESTION
By Toby Sterling, Associated Press Writer
Associated Press Worldstream
October 31, 2006 Tuesday 3:22 PM GMT
Amsterdam Netherlands
A lobby group began a campaign Tuesday to urge Dutch voters of Turkish
ancestry to boycott any party that labels the 1915 mass killing of
Armenians in Turkey genocide.
The campaign three weeks before Nov. 22 national elections is a
setback for both major parties, the governing Christian Democrats
and the Labor Party, which have struck ethnic Turk candidates off
their rolls for refusing to use the term “genocide” to describe the
killing of Armenians during World War I.
Events that took place far beyond Dutch borders nearly a century ago
have became a surprise campaign issue in elections otherwise focused
on bread-and-butter economics.
The lobby group, which calls itself Turks Forum, distributed posters
urging voters to write in a candidate of the small centrist D-66
Party in the elections. D-66 is the only mainstream party that doesn’t
refer to the slaughter as genocide in its stated positions.
The European Parliament has said Turkey should be required to
recognize the killings as genocide before it is considered for EU
membership. The French parliament voted for a bill that, if enacted,
would make denying the genocide a crime.
“Who should the Turkish community’s votes go to? Let’s use the voting
ballot to teach a lesson to those who want to limit our democratic
rights!” said the Turks Forum poster. It is being distributed in
the country’s largest cities, where ethnic Turkish populations are
concentrated.
The poster carries pictures of ethnic Turk candidates with a red
cross and the words “definitely not” in Turkish next to the names of
parties that say the killings constituted genocide. At the top of the
list is a photo of a candidate for the D-66 party, Fatma Koser Kaya,
with the word “evet,” Turkish for yes.
Koser Kaya wrote on her Web site that allowing open debate on the
matter was a matter of free speech. “Many hundreds of thousands of
Armenians were slaughtered” in 1915, she wrote.
“Definitely, there can be no doubt about it. There needs to be,
in Turkey, too, an adult and scientific debate over what exactly
happened during the fall of the Ottoman Empire, who is responsible,
and how those events should be described.”
“But the point is … why are Dutch candidates of Turkish descent
being pilloried and forced to confess a ‘genocide’ standpoint?”
D-66, which has been in a decade-long decline, was forecast to
disappear entirely during this election. But the Turkish issue has
helped it recover slightly, and recent polls show it holding two
seats in the 150-seat Dutch parliament.
Meanwhile, Labor, which led in most polls a month ago, has now fallen
slightly behind the incumbent Christian Democrats. Immigrant voters
traditionally have supported Labor or other left-leaning parties.
In an apparent attempt to limit political fallout, Labor’s National
Party Chairman Michiel van Hulten wrote to local party offices in
The Hague and Rotterdam instructing them not to use the issue as a
litmus test for Turkish-Dutch candidates, newspaper Trouw reported.
The killings of 1 million or more Armenians starting in 1915 has
been the subject of academic and political debate across Europe,
especially in view of Turkey’s application for EU membership.
Most European governments consider it a genocide. Turkey denies the
deaths resulted from systematic slaughter, saying estimates of 1.5
million dead are wildly inflated and that both Armenians and Turks
were killed in fighting during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
The U.S. government does not use “genocide” to define the killings.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PUTIN HOPES RF INCREASES INVESTMENTS INTO ARMENIA’S ECONOMY
by Mikhail Petrov
ITAR-TASS, Russia
Oct 30 2006
President Vladimir Putin said he is hopeful that Russian companies
will increase investments into Armenia’s economy.
Opening his meeting with Armenian President Robert Kocharyan on
Monday, President Putin said, “Shame of us but Russia ranks third on
investments into Armenia’s economy. I say shame of us because it is
rather strange when Russia does not rank first on investments into
the economy of its strategic partner.”
At the same time, the Russian president said trade and economic
relations are developing. “Trade is growing although absolute figures
are not so high for Russia – the growth reaches 60 percent in the
eight months,” he added.

ARMENIAN FEST 2006
Turn to 10.com, RI
Nov 1 2006
On November 11-12, the Armenian Fest of 2006 will be held at Rhodes
on The Pawtuxet on Broad St. Cranston.
This fabulous event will include great food, Armenian delicacies,
live music of which you can dance to, arts and crafts and there are
grand prizes available!
Armenian children’s dance group will perform on Saturday at 5PM and
on Sunday at 4PM.
Armenian food and pastry will be available on Saturday, 1-10PM and
Sunday, 12-8PM.
Do no worry about admission and parking because they are both free.
For more information about the Armenian Fest 2006, call (401) 831-6399
or visit

ARMENIA: VIOLATION OF FISHING BAN THREATENS LAKE SEVAN
Marianna Grigoryan
EurasiaNet, NY
Nov 1 2006
Armenian scientists are charging that violation of a ban on fishing for
whitefish poses a severe challenge to the eco-system of Armenia’s Lake
Sevan, the largest alpine lake in the Caucasus and one of Armenia’s
best-known natural landmarks. In response, the government has pledged
to tighten the ban as of mid-November, but local villagers remain
skeptical, saying that their livelihoods depend on the fish.
Lake Sevan’s famous whitefish, or sig, helped Armenians overcome
food shortages during the energy crisis of the early 1990s, but have
since become threatened with extinction from over-fishing. Unclear
environmental policies on the fish and a lack of economic alternatives
for local fishermen have further complicated matters.
In 2005, the National Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Hydroecology
and Ichthyology and a group of Russian scientists determined that the
number of Lake Sevan whitefish had decreased by 17 times compared
with 1983 levels. While in the mid-1980s the lake contained more
than 11,000 tons of whitefish, supply now stands at only 625 tons,
according to the findings.
To correct the problem, the Ministry of Environmental Protection
introduced a year-long ban on commercial fishing of whitefish in
February 2006, but little attention has been paid to it, fishermen
and scientists say. Blame is placed on the hard-scrabble economic
conditions in the villages surrounding the 1,360-square-kilomter lake.
“Let them give people jobs and we will not fish,” said Garik Avetisyan,
a middle-aged fisherman. “What shall we do? Die or what?
If there’re no fish, [our] families will die.”
Scientists, many of who favor a long-term ban on fishing for whitefish,
say that the difficult living conditions will only grow worse if the
whitefish population does not increase. In that case, large-scale
commercial fishing may soon become impossible, too. The period from
November through December, when the whitefish spawn, is particularly
critical, they say.
“Only one generation of whitefish remains in the lake today, instead
of several generations in the past,” said Boris Gabrielyan, deputy
director of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia’s Institute
of Hydroecology and Ichthyology. “The whitefish is not given time to
spawn and propagate. It is not allowed to do that.”
“Our ongoing research this year shows that the situation has become
worse as compared to last year,” Gabrielyan continued. “If poaching
continues at the same pace, whitefish will vanish as a commercial
fish type. Whitefish resources have been exploited to an inadmissible
degree.”
Meanwhile, as the whitefish population declines, the lake’s eco-system
is beginning to change. Gabrieylan charges that the increased presence
of organic materials on which the fish feed is turning the lake into
a swamp.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection has dismissed the claim,
however.
“There can be no discussion about swamps. There is no such thing,”
Artashes Ziroyan, head of the ministry’s Bio-Resources Management
Agency, said. “True, the amount of whitefish in the lake is not
considered sufficient, but together with colleagues from the interior
ministry and other departments, we will manage to preserve the
whitefish [population] during the period of the fishing ban.”
Despite the ban, whitefish and its caviar can still be found in
markets and shops.
In Yerevan, which is the largest market for whitefish, prices for
the fish have risen by at least several hundred percent in the last
few years. Whitefish now sell for between 300-500 drams, or roughly
$0.68 – $1.14, per fish in the capital’s markets, and rank among
shoppers as one of the most popular fish.
“The fish is a very useful product,” Amalia, a seller at one of
Yerevan’s markets, explained to her customers. Although formerly
whitefish was affordable for nearly everyone, she continued, that
situation has changed within the past few years. “It is in short
supply. That’s why prices for it have gone up.”
Commenting on the situation this summer, Minister of Environmental
Protection Vardan Ayvazyan argued that the declining whitefish
population is not “an environmental problem,” and suggested that
the ministry can do little in the face of persistent fishing by
economically deprived residents.
“In many cases, our orders are not obeyed, and no minister can say
that during his time in office the control of fishing at Lake Sevan
was good,” Ayvazyan told reporters at a press conference. “In reality,
there is a great problem of poverty [there]. Don’t you pity these
people [who live there]?”
Ministry officials say that they will work with the interior ministry
to monitor the lake regularly and watch for whitefish fishermen.
Illegal catches are usually seized, with a report then issued to
the media.
But along the lake itself, some fishermen show little concern about
the ministry’s promises. “There is no ban,” they say, smiling. “There
is a way around everything.”
Nonetheless, young fishermen pushing a metal boat out onto the sky-blue
lake say that they know the whitefish is under threat.
“When we fished whitefish three or five years ago, we pulled 300-400
kilograms of it with just two sweep-nets,” said 24-year-old Garik
Stepanyan, who has been fishing Lake Sevan for six years. “Now I have
11 sweep nets and if I catch 100 whitefish a day, I will consider
that a good day.”
Even with stricter enforcement of the ban, local fishermen say that
they will continue to fish. Other options for economic survival
are few.
“We know that it is not allowed to fish whitefish,” commented
43-year-old Tigran Khugoyan, a fisherman from the village of Noratus
on the lake’s western shore. “But if your child is hungry and there
is no job, the lake and fishing remain your only hope.”
Editor’s Note: Marianna Grigoryan is a reporter for the Armenianow.com
weekly in Yerevan.