ARKADI GHUKASYAN: SOONER OR LATER EVERYBODY WILL COME TO A CONCLUSION
THAT KARABAKH PEACE PROCESS IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT NAGORNO-KARABAKH’S
PARTICIPATION
ARMINFO News Agency
September 20, 2006 Wednesday
Today, during his visit to the Yerablur Memorial Complex in Yerevan,
Nagorno-Karabakh President Arkadi Ghukasyan told the journalists that
sooner or later everybody will come to a conclusion that the Karabakh
peace process is impossible without Nagorno-Karabakh’s participation.
“Today, our region dictates the formula: if you want peace, be ready
for war. We should naturally be attentive to the issues of security
and our army should always be efficient. But now the war is going
on in other spheres: economy, politics, culture. The war wasn’t our
choice, we were forced to fight. We won but life proved that war is
not a good way to solve problems, and we should find a political way
of the conflict settlement”, he said. Expressing his attitude to the
GUAM’s initiative for putting the question of the “frozen conflicts”
for consideration of the UN General Assembly, the NKR President said
that in this case Azerbaijan and the GUAM countries pursue the goal
of propaganda. Answering the question how to return the process of
negotiations to the proper course, he noted that the process has
been out of course for a long time as the OSCE Minsk Group isn’t
active enough. The meetings of Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents
and Foreign Ministers are not enough as the MG, which is commissioned
to negotiate with all the sides of the conflict, fails carrying out
its functions. I think we’ll probably have a real chance as soon as
the process returns to its proper course with the full-fledged format
of negotiations”, he pointed out. Ghukassyan said that the Karabakh
side meets with the co-chairmen regularly. “There is no need in a
special initiative from Karabakh as every time there is a subject
for discussion the co-chairmen themselves initiate meetings with
the leadership of all the three sides of the conflict, particularly,
with the NKR leadership”, he noted.

LEADER OF UNION CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT RESIGNS AND LEAVES BIG POLITICS
ARMINFO News Agency
September 20, 2006 Wednesday
Leader of the Union Constitutional Right (UCR) party, Hrant
Khachatryan, is among those few politicians who are able to keep
their word. H. Khachatryan fulfilled his promise and declared about
his resignation from the post of UCR Chairman and about his leave
from big politics at a press conference, Wednesday.
Qualifying the recent events inside the party as an internal coup
through a plot, H. Khachatryan said his leave from the big politics
will not be a big loss for Armenia as there are no irreplaceable
people. “My leave from the big politics is not a self-sacrifice. It
will allow me to return to my favorite radiophysics.” At the same time,
H. Khachatryan has no intention to refuse from his deputy mandate until
it expires in order to protect the interests of the party and the party
body, Iravunk newspaper, although he is not longer a member of the UCR.
At the same time, he said he will not run for the parliament during
the upcoming elections. He will not return to big politics even if his
ultimatum to stop the membership of UCR Vice Chairman Hayk Babukhanyan
is fulfilled. H. Khachatryan said he has no serious disagreements
with H. Babukhanyan and the financial misappropriations by the
latter played no key role in their relations. At the same time,
H. Khachatryan complained that he has no access to the documents,
video and audio records of the 17th Congress of UCR. He added that
his leave will not be approved by the members of UCR Board, that is
why he did not informed them of his intention.
However, H. Khachatryan demanded the members of and leadership of the
party to do their best to preserve the party and the office. He thinks
that the party has been practically split up and it needs neither
good nor bad leader. He also demanded that a new editorial council of
“Iravunk” newspaper is elected and the journalists are not dismissed
for their political views. He demanded the editor Hovhanness Galajyan
not to settle organizational issues for lack of such abilities. He
insisted that Vigen Hakopyan, one of the editors of the newspaper,
is appointed the editor-in-chief.
As regards the conflict of “Iravunk” and Defense Minister Serge
Sargsyan, H. Khachatryan said he was among the first to criticize the
acts of the minister in public. “So, the H. Babukhanyan’s statement
that I fulfilled the order of Serge Sargsyan demanding the stoppage
of his membership because he is the head of Iravunk editorial council
is just senseless,” he said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA ESPECIALLY INTERESTING FOR NETHERLANDS
ARMINFO News Agency
September 20, 2006 Wednesday
The Netherlands take a special interest in Armenia, said Ambassador
of the Netherlands to Armenia Onno Elderenbofch during his meeting
with Armenian Parliamentary Speaker Tigran Torosyan, Wednesday.
The diplomat said the program of Armenia’s acts under the EU policy
of New Neighborhood will expand the cooperation opportunities for the
two states. Ambassador Elderenbofch expressed readiness to contribute
to organizing mutual visits of politicians after the parliamentary
elections in the Netherlands.
In his turn, T. Torosyan said that integration into Europe is one
of the prior directions of Yerevan’s foreign political course. In
this way, the exchange of experience of the two states is of great
importance, the speaker said. As regards the situation in the region,
T. Torosyan said Armenia is ready to cooperate with all the countries
of the region without any preconditions. However, Turkey and Azerbaijan
are not ready for this. Moreover, Azerbaijan wages an anti-Armenian
propagandist policy preventing the settlement of the Karabakh conflict
and contradicting to PACE requirements. The settlement of Karabakh
conflict is not conditioned by oil dollars like Azerbaijan believes
it to be. It is not accidental that EU is concerned over the increase
of Azerbaijan’s military budget and the militarist statements by
official Baku, he said. As a counterbalance to the relations with
Turkey and Azerbaijan, the relations with Iran develop on the basis
of mutual respect, the speaker said. The construction of a second
branch-line of Iran-Armenia gas pipeline was discussed during the
recent visit of Iranian speaker to Armenia. In his turn, Ambassador
Elderenbofch stressed the importance of energy independence of the
region for establishment of peace and stability.
The sides also discussed the parliamentary elections of 2007 in
Armenia. The speaker said that OSCE, PACE and other delegations will
observe the elections in Armenia. If the elections meet international
standards, the CE monitoring of Armenia will stop as all the laws
included in the country’s commitments to the CE will be adopted by
that time. As regards international conventions, Armenia has already
ratified them, the speaker said.

Spain withdraws Armenian genocide bill after talks with Turkish embassy
Anatolia news agency, Ankara,
19 Sep 06
Madrid, 19 September: A resolution on the so-called Armenian genocide
submitted earlier to the Spanish parliament has been withdrawn after
the Turkish embassy in Madrid held talks with Spanish officials.
The resolution was submitted to the Spanish parliament by two deputies
of the Republican Left of Catalonia Party (ERC) last June.
Turkish Ambassador in Madrid Volkan Vural got in touch with authorities
in the Spanish Foreign Ministry and Parliament and also sent letters
to the two ERC deputies and Chairman of the Parliamentary Foreign
Affairs Commission Josep Antoni Duran Lleida.
In his letters sent to Spanish officials, Volkan emphasized how
wrong such an initiative is and that the resolution would harm
Turkish-Spanish relations if adopted at the parliament.
Ambassador Vural held a tete-a-tete meeting with ERC deputy Maria
Bonas and convinced her to withdraw the resolution on the so-called
Armenian genocide.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Highlights from Turkish Islamist Press 20 Sep 06
BBC Monitoring
Sept 20 2006
Bugun
In a 1.600-word article entitled “Are There Any Threats to Turkey
Within Lebanon?” on page 10, Bugun columnist Cengiz Candar asserts
that Sunni, Druze, and Christian groups have no objections to Turkish
troops coming to Lebanon as part of the UN peacekeeping force. He
also claims that any attacks on Turkish soldiers by Armenian groups in
Lebanon could not take place independently of the “political position
of the Iranian-Syrian axis,” and that no assaults are likely in the
foreseeable future.

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
September 20, 2006 Wednesday
UN-IZATION OF POST-SOVIET CONFLICTS
by: Arkady Dubnov
THE UN WILL DISCUSS SUSPENDED CONFLICTS IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION;
The UN will discuss latent conflicts of the post-Soviet zone.
Moldova with its GUAM allies (Georgia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan)
scored a major diplomatic victory on the eve of the referendum in the
Trans-Dniester region. General Committee of the UN General Assembly
supported the bloc’s idea to put the matter of suspended conflicts on
the CIS territory on the agenda. Moscow had killed this discussion at
the UN level in 2005.
The UN did try – more or less – to tackle the Karabakh conflict. As
for the Trans-Dniester region, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, this is
the first time they are about to be in the focus of attention of the
international community. Internationalization of interest in the
post-Soviet zone which Russia views as its own sphere of influence
will have little effect on conflict resolution. Solutions of the UN
General Assembly are recommendations at best. A UN resolution adopted
on a GUAM initiative will put a powerful propagandistic weapon in the
hands of Kishinev, Baku, and Tbilisi.
Armenia was the first to react to the forthcoming involvement of the
UN. Official Yerevan said there would be no talks with Baku for the
time being. That was how Armenia kept its word to suspend
negotiations with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian Foreign
Minister Vardan Oskanjan said at his meeting with his Azerbaijani
opposite number Elmar Mamedjarov that the meeting initiated by OSCE
Minsk Group chairmen would never take place in New York on September
24 as scheduled. Oskanjan believes in the meantime that discussion of
the Karabakh conflict by the UN may “slow down” the Minsk process
where “prospects of positive progress are already undeniable.”
Since “the process of resolution is shifting to the UN that comprises
191 countries some of which do not even know what the conflict is
about, Nagorno-Karabakh itself must be involved in the process,”
Oskanjan said. “If it is the UN rules that we will play by, then
Azerbaijan should begin negotiations with Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Source: Vremya Novosti, September 18, 2006, p. 5

PLANS OF WITHDRAWAL OF RUSSIAN BASES IN 2006 IMPLEMENTED 100%
Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
September 20, 2006 Wednesday
According to Major General Andrei Popov, Commander of the Russian
Army Group in the Caucasus, the plans of withdrawal of Russian
military bases from Georgia were fully implemented.
“The plan of withdrawal from Georgia is implemented 100% this year.
Everything was sent back home by the schedule. All military hardware
and whatever withdrawn from Georgia is already in Russia and Armenia.
The last echelon is leaving the station of Tsalka for Russia on
September 19. All military hardware from Georgia will be distributed
among units in Russia by September 25,” Popov said. “After September
19, the 62nd Base in Akhalkalaki will only contain the vehicles that
are needed to maintain everyday activity of the base until 2007 when
it will be closed for good.”
“Phase one of the withdrawal is over. The bases will continue
functioning in the withdrawal mode until the end of 2008,” Popov
added.
All in all, 727 vehicles and 2,626.6 tons of materiel were withdrawn
from the 12th and 62nd bases in Batumi and Akhalkalaki. Six railroad
echelons went to Armenia from the 12th Base and 19 to Russia from the
62nd. Sixteen convoys with munitions were dispatched to the military
base in Gyumri (Armenia), not to mention 12 convoys of military
hardware (25 railroad echelons and 28 vehicles). Along with that, 358
vehicles and 1,671.2 tons of materiel including 1,178.7 tons of
munitions were sent to Russia via Azerbaijan.
According to Popov, “transfer to the Georgian army of the objects the
Russian Army Group in the Caucasus is not using is also planned for
2006.”
Source: RIA-Novosti news agency, September 18, 2006,
Translated by A. Ignatkin

Fictional characters in dock
The Australian (Australia)
September 20, 2006 Wednesday
All-round Country Edition
TURKEY: Uncle Dikran, Grandma Shushan and Auntie Zeliha may be
figments of the novelist Elif Shafak’s imagination but they will be
in the dock this week in a bizarre trial that has become a test for
Turkey’s European ambitions and commitment to freedom of speech.
Shafak, 34, has been charged under Article 301 of the penal code
with “insulting Turkishness” through the fictional dialogue in
her bestselling novel The Bastard of Istanbul, which is about the
intertwined history of a Turkish and an Armenian-American family.
The European Union, with which Turkey began accession talks last year,
has been a strong critic of the law and is expected to condemn curbs
on freedom ofexpression in a report on October 24.
Turkey’s parliament is holding an emergency meeting this week on
further EU-related legal reform, but the Government has failed to
act on Article 301 — which was also used to put Orhan Pamuk, the
country’s most famous novelist, on trial — pointing out that cases
end in acquittal anyway. That is not the point, Shafak says.
“I think the biggest worry regarding Article 301 is not that it puts
people in prison but it silences them,” she said.
Even the briefest of Article 301 court cases has proved a platform for
harassment of top writers but for Shafak it is even worse. She gave
birth to a baby girl last Saturday and, since the court refused her
request for the hearing to be postponed, she must now excuse herself
through a medical report or leave a five-day-old baby to go to court
on Thursday.
Charging fictional characters is a new step, Shafak said.
“It means they are now trying to control art, and this is very alarming
because in Turkey — a country that witnessed three military takeovers
— art and literature had always been autonomous.”
The crime committed by her characters is to refer to the taboo subject
of mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915. The Armenians
call it genocide, Turks say large-scale wartime deaths. The fictional
Uncle Dikran speaks of “Turkish butchers”, others talk about being
“slaughtered like sheep” and claim all Turks are either nationalist
or ignorant. More absurdly, some Turkish characters are charged over
routine gripes about the country.
The accusations demonstrate a wilful misreading of the book, in
which the families are so mixed up it is hard to take sides. Shafak,
describing how many contemporary Turks are descended from minorities
in a multicultural Ottoman Empire, is critical both of Turks’ amnesia
about events before the country became a republic in 1923 and of the
Armenian diaspora’s apparent obsession with history.
This trial is not just about her book, she says. The case is part
of a political effort by extreme nationalists to hamper Turkey’s EU
aspiration by demonstrating how un-European it is.
“We are seeing a clash between those who wholeheartedly support the EU
process, and others who want to turn this society into a xenophobic,
isolationist country,” she said.
Kemal Kerincsiz, the lawyer who brought the case against Shafak,
is behind several other such cases. He insists EU membership would
be a disaster for Turkey, and that it was not Shafak but some shady
imperialists who penned her novel as part of a plot to destroy Turkey.

LIBERALS AND NATIONALISTS IN TURKEY FACE OFF AGAIN OVER FREEDOM OF SPEECH
by: Nicolas Birch
Eurasianet
September 19, 2006
A prize-winning Turkish novelist is scheduled to stand trial September
21 on charges of belittling Turkishness. The case is the latest in a
string of prosecutions pitting liberals against nationalists in this
European Union candidate country.
Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul has topped Turkish
bestseller lists since it was published in March, winning critical
praise for its portrait of the friendship between two girls, an
Armenian-American and a Turk. But the work’s direct treatment of
the mass murder of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 has also attracted the
attention of Kemal Kerincsiz, the nationalist lawyer whose rise to
prominence as an opponent of free speech has paralleled Turkey’s EU
accession process. Kerincsiz has figured prominently in a number
of high-profile free speech cases, including the prosecution last
December of Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s best-known author. [For background
see the Eurasia Insight archive].
In Shafak’s case, Kerincsiz’s gripe is not with something she said, but
with comments made by characters in her book. Sitting in his cramped
central Istanbul law office, the soft-spoken Kerincsiz doesn’t take
long to find one of the passages that offended him.
“I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives
at the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915,” he reads, quoting Dikran
Stamboulian, a minor Armenian character. “There’s plenty more where
this came from,” he adds. Turkey and Armenia have long disputed the
tragic events of 1915, when over one million Armenians perished amid
the upheaval of World War I. Armenians insist that the actions of
Ottoman Turkish forces constituted genocide.
Turkish leaders steadfastly deny this. [For additional information
see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Shafak is being prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal
Code. Facing a possible sentence of three years if convicted, she
is fully aware of the seriousness of her situation. “Until recently,
I took comfort in the fact that nobody had ever been convicted under
[Article] 301,” she said. “Then, in June, a higher court confirmed
[the Turkish-Armenian journalist] Hrant Dink’s six-month suspended
sentence. That’s terrible news for him, and it could constitute a
precedent for me.”
Shafak gave birth to her first child on September 16 and has yet to
decide whether to attend her trial. “She wants to be there to defend
herself against these ridiculous charges,” her husband, Eyup Can, said
on the phone from the Istanbul hospital where his wife is recovering
from a caesarean section. “The doctors are opposed, and so am I,
to be honest.”
He hasn’t forgotten the scenes outside the Istanbul courthouse
where Orhan Pamuk was tried last December. Nationalists smashed the
novelist’s car windshield and attacked his supporters as the police
looked on.
A similar welcome could be in store for Shafak. For weeks, a website
belonging to Kerincsiz’s nationalist group has called on “patriots” to
turn out in opposition to the “newly-chosen princess of capitulationist
intellectuals.”
“I oppose all violence,” Kerincsiz said, “but if you call somebody’s
grandfather a butcher, there is no telling what reactions will be.”
“It’s an invitation to a lynching,” ripostes newspaper editor Ismet
Berkan, another victim of the nationalist lawyer’s attention. “Let’s
hope the police are prepared.”
If the language in the debate over Shafak’s novel is violent, it’s
ultimately because this trial is symbolic of a much deeper struggle
going on in Turkey. For nationalists like Kemal Kerincsiz, the clash
of civilizations is real, and Turkey, a Muslim country, belongs with
the East. What the European Union is trying to do, he claims, is
“strip away our Muslim and Turkish identity.”
Those like Shafak who support Turkey’s integration into Western
economic and security structures, Kerincsiz says derisively, are
“world citizens, half-Turks.”
Though intended as an insult, Kerincsiz’s comment doesn’t seem to
offend the Strasbourg-born Shafak, who has spent much of her life
outside Turkey. Both in her life and her work, she is an enemy of
easy categorizations. “My ideal is cosmopolitanism, refusing to
belong to either side in this polarized world,” she says in her
perfect English. This attitude helped prompt her to agree to serve
as a columnist for a religious newspaper, a move that generated
considerable criticism.
“Too many people see the world in black and white, us and them.
That’s wrong. Ambiguity, synthesis: these are the things that
compose Turkish society, and that is not something to be ashamed of,”
Shafak said.
It remains to be seen which side will win the debate. Few take
Kerincsiz’s claim as the voice of the Turkish people seriously –
even the country’s ultra-nationalist political party has been put
off by the violent actions of his supporters.
But nationalism has traditionally proven a powerful force in Turkish
politics. And a growing sense among Turks that Brussels is just
playing with Ankara over the accession issue has played into the
hands of people like Kerincsiz.
“Turkey has been changing rapidly over the past five years, but it
hasn’t yet reached the point of no return,” says political analyst
Umut Ozkirimli. “These are critical times.”
NOTES: Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the Middle East.

Turkish parliament fails to pass resolution to reopen Orthodox seminary
By SELCAN HACAOGLU, Associated Press Writer
Associated Press Worldstream
September 20, 2006 Wednesday 9:48 PM GMT
ANKARA Turkey — Turkey’s parliament on Wednesday failed to pass a
resolution to move forward with a European Union-requested reform
that could have allowed a Greek Orthodox theology school closed 35
years ago to reopen.
The parliament first voted in favor the resolution, but then stopped
short of giving final approval amid strong opposition. The ruling
Justice and Development Party was expected to step back and withdraw
the change on Thursday, in a sign of internal opposition to the highly
unpopular move.
Lawmakers from the ruling party voted by a show of hands to allow
foreign students to attend minority schools in Turkey upon a last
minute request from the Foreign Ministry.
But legislators from the opposition Republican People’s Party opposed
the reform, arguing that it would reopen the Halki Theological School,
on an island near Istanbul, which was closed in 1971 under a law that
put religious education under state control.
The opposition party said the school was shut down because of lack of
students and that the motion would allow it to reopen. The opposition
party forced the parliament to give a one-hour break during which
some members of the ruling party reportedly complained about the
measure as well.
The ruling party has a majority in the 550-member parliament and was
expected to take back the change Thursday before finalizing other
amendments regarding minority schools such as providing electricity
and water at discount rates as well.
If it had been approved, the reopening of Halki would have appeased
the European Union and the United States.
EU officials and Washington have repeatedly called on Turkey to open up
the religious seminary that has trained generations of Orthodox leaders
and restore property to minority Christian groups that were seized
by the state due to a decline in the size of their congregations.
The parliament is expected to address the property issue in the
coming days too. Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said reforms would
address the problems of minority religious groups such as Greeks and
Armenians but was not clear if they would allow the groups to reclaim
property that has since been sold to other people.
The Halki school trained generations of church leaders, including
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, and Orthodox officials say the
school’s reopening is important for educating future leaders.
The patriarchate in Istanbul dates from the 1,100-year-old Orthodox
Greek Byzantine Empire, which collapsed when the Muslim Ottoman Turks
conquered Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, in 1453.
Istanbul-based Bartholomew I is the leader of the world’s Orthodox
Christians, although only a few thousand Greeks now live in Turkey.
He also directly controls several Greek Orthodox churches around the
world, including the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.
But Turkey has long refused to accept any international role for the
patriarch, a Turkish citizen and ethnic Greek, and rejects his use
of the title “ecumenical,” or universal. It argues the patriarch is
merely the spiritual leader of Istanbul’s dwindling Orthodox community.
Turkey’s desire to contain Bartholomew’s influence to Istanbul stems
from a deep mistrust many Turks feel toward the patriarchate because of
its traditional ties with Greece, Turkey’s historical regional rival.
Bartholomew has been actively lobbying for the reopening of Halki.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress