FINALLY A BOOK ABOUT … AN ARCHITECT’S CULT
Maclean’s, Canada
September 11, 2006 / September 18, 2006
Frank Lloyd Wright was more than an influential architect: with his
third wife he headed an exclusive community of live-in apprentices that
behaved not unlike a cult. The Fellowship recounts how the imperious
Wright, aided by his aggressive wife and a weird Greek-Armenian mystic,
created some of his greatest buildings such as Fallingbrook and the
Guggenheim, while manipulating the romantic and even sexual lives of
his live-in apprentices.

BOOKS: MARCH OF HORRORS: TRUTH IS THE FIRST WEAPON AGAINST GENOCIDE
by Deborah E. Lipstadt, The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard
September 11, 2006 Monday
Terrible Fate
Ethnic Cleansing in the Making
of Modern Europe
by Benjamin Lieberman
Ivan R. Dee, 416 pp., $27.50
Ethnic cleansing has changed the face of Europe. In 1913 Salonika was
a multicultural city with more Jews and Muslims than Greek Orthodox
Christians. By the middle of the 20th century it was a Greek city with
virtually no Jews or Muslims. Until the beginning of the 20th century,
Macedonia had been home to both Bulgarians and Greeks. In 1916 Greeks
fled. At the beginning of the 20th century the western sectors of the
Russian empire were heavily populated by Jews, who had lived there
for centuries. Within a few decades virtually no Jews lived in these
areas, or in many other parts of Europe.
The Polish port city of Gdansk was once a German city. Little, if any,
of the German presence is felt there today. Izmir used to be home to
a substantial Greek population. It no longer is. In eastern Turkey
there are scores of towns and villages once populated by millions
of Armenians. The Turks expelled them in acts of unprecedented
intensity. In what was the Austro- Hungarian Empire an exceptionally
diverse mix of peoples once lived. Little of that diversity is still
evident.
These changes were the result not of natural population movements but
of brutal actions, now termed ethnic cleansing. This is the subject
of Benjamin Lieberman’s compelling book.
What motivates neighbor to brutally turn on neighbor? It may be
conflicting languages, religions, or national identities. Some
attackers consider it a chance for personal gain: Never underestimate
the lure of looting, or deriving perverse pleasure from driving
neighbors from their homes. There is yet another factor: history,
or more properly put, the rendition of history to which one portion
of the population has been exposed. While these stories of betrayal
and injustice may be true, others are greatly exaggerated or false.
As Lieberman demonstrates, ethnic cleansing feeds upon itself. As
the century progressed it became an increasingly familiar response to
political situations. People knew it, and considered it a legitimate
means of solving their perceived problems.
While the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust are probably the best
known of the century’s atrocities, neither is a template for ethnic
cleansing, which has generally been used by weak governments to
deflect attention from genuine problems. In contrast, the Holocaust,
the Armenian genocide, and, for that matter, Stalin’s treatment of
a host of minorities, were conducted by authoritarian regimes at the
height of their power.
The Holocaust is certainly not a template because, generally, ethnic
cleansing’s objective is the removal of a segment of the population
through deportations, population transfers, and forced migration. The
perpetrators know that the result of these actions could be death,
even on a massive scale. However, their objective is not murder. In
contrast, Nazi Germany chased down every Jew it could find in order
to murder them. They did so even when the men and materiel used for
the killing could have been better deployed elsewhere.
The new Jewish Museum in Rome contains a letter written on a crumpled
piece of paper by a Jew as he was being deported from the Italian
capital. It is dated May 20, 1944. Rome was liberated on June 4th. As
the Allied forces were on Rome’s doorstep, the Germans, rather than
throw all available resources to repelling the enemy, were deporting
Jews to Auschwitz. The letter writer never returned.
How might ethnic cleansing be repaired and prevented in the future?
Unless refugees are returned in short order to their homes, the chances
for resettlement are very poor. If they do return, there must be local
reconciliation projects, economic development, legal proceedings,
and effective guarantees of security. Those who have committed these
acts must be apprehended and tried in the appropriate legal setting.
Lieberman believes that historians from both sides of the conflict
must work together to create an accurate historical record. It may
well be research by historians–Turkish historians in particular–that
will compel Turkey to end its genocide denial. As Turkish historians
explore what their country did, it will become increasingly difficult
for the government to continue to hide behind historical fictions. But
it is not sufficient, Lieberman notes, for the historians to conduct
research. The broader public will have to accept its findings. Once
that happens, the policymakers will have no choice but to follow in
their wake.
Germany’s postwar entry into the “family of nations” was hastened by
its strategic geographic importance in the Cold War. However, that
reentry would not have been as swift or complete had Germany not openly
acknowledged and made amends for the unspeakable horrors committed by
both the Nazi leaders and millions of Germans during World War II. Its
willingness to face its past was certainly not complete. Perpetrators
were given light sentences or never prosecuted. Slave laborers found
it difficult to receive compensation. Nazi-era judges continued in
their posts. Medical doctors who participated in gassing experiments
went on to distinguished careers in Germany.
These failings notwithstanding, Germany did not shrink from
acknowledging the deeds it had committed and making some restitution
for them. This certainly facilitated the healing process.
This is a painful book to read. Many people will recoil from the
repeated tales of looting, physical persecution, and death. That
would be a mistake. The only hope for an end to this terrible march
of horrors is for people–particularly Europeans–to understand and
acknowledge it. As Lieberman notes in his conclusion, “arriving at
a new understanding of history” will not resolve all problems, but
it will increase the chances that different groups will be able to
live in peace together.
Deborah E. Lipstadt, professor of Holocaust Studies at Emory, is
the author, most recently, of History on Trial: My Day in Court with
David Irving.

JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS: THE GURDJIEFF SECT, SEXUAL POLITICS AND OTHER REVELATIONS FROM TALIESIN’S GLORY YEARS
By Ron McCrea The Capital Times
The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)
September 8, 2006 Friday
ALL EDITION
Just when you think the last word has been written about the life and
times of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, a book like “The Fellowship”
appears.
This new blockbuster cannot be good news for the senior fellows and new
arrivals now struggling to rebuild the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
and its school of architecture.
But it could help tourism.
Cultural sociologist Roger Friedland and historian-architect Harold
Zellman have packed plenty of sex and surprises into 603 pages, while
pretty much avoiding the cheap, tell-all hatchet job and settling
of scores.
This book has a lot of news.
Some of it is steamy — the chapter titled “The Sex Clubs” only begins
to describe the sexual intrigues of the community that one woman said
“made Peyton Place look like Utah.”
Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, Wright’s last wife, micromanaged the romances
and couplings of the fellowship, begun in 1932, in part to keep
everyone on the reservation.
She made some gay men marry straight women. She sent some couples
with children away and tried to pay others to have abortions. She
encouraged what came to be called the “merry wives of Taliesin”
to sleep with unattached straight men. “I had them all,” bragged one.
Olgivanna was not a stranger herself to gay love affairs, having had
one with literary editor Jane Heap, one of Armenian mystic Georgi
Gurdjieff’s “women of the rope,” a group of lesbian disciples. At
Taliesin, with not enough women to go around, Olgivanna encouraged
the young men to try gay sex, on one occasion lining up apprentices,
pairing them up, and sending them out into the Arizona desert to
experiment.
The important role of gay men in sustaining and advancing the fortunes
of Taliesin and Frank Lloyd Wright — it was Edgar Kaufman Jr. who
paved the way for Fallingwater, for example, and Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer
who established the priceless archives — is one of the major pieces
of news in “The Fellowship.” The authors give Madison’s own Jack
Holzhueter credit for helping to develop this section.
But if Wright was not homophobic, he could be racist (exploding when
he learned that Paul Robeson had been permitted to visit Taliesin)
and anti-Semitic (once suggesting that Taliesin might become known as
“Talestine”).
He also could be violent to women and neglectful of children; the
Wrights’ own daughter, Iovanna, was still unschooled and illiterate
at age 9.
But he was a great artist, and, as they say, you wouldn’t want to
live next door to Beethoven either.
The Capital Times figures prominently as a source in “The Fellowship,”
since its founder, William T. Evjue, gave the Wright community a
weekly column and also a weekly radio broadcast on WIBA, which the
paper owned.
But some news in “The Fellowship” didn’t make The Cap Times, like
the fact that four of the fellows were serving time in federal prison
for draft resistance.
And the column did not tell how Gurdjieff and his Institute for the
Harmonious Development of Man insinuated itself into Taliesin and
came to compete with its architectural mission.
Gurdjieff’s agent was Olgivanna, who underwent “voluntary suffering”
as part of her discipleship with him in Soviet Georgia. Gurdjieff’s
toughest test of her character: a demand that she send her 5-year-old
daughter Svetlana away. It broke her heart, but she complied.
Svetlana came to America.
Olgivanna idolized both Gurdjieff and Wright, considering them (and
later herself) bohdisattvas, advanced souls sent to improve the human
race. She drew many of the Taliesin fellows to Gurdjieff’s cause.
Wright’s architecture and “the work” of Gurdjieff, with its sacred
dances and movements, clashed publicly in 1953, when the Gurdjieffians
scheduled a show at Chicago’s Goodman Theater at the same time that
other Wright apprentices were feverishly preparing a major show of
Wright’s work at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Olgivanna demanded that two dancer-architects come back from New York
for practice in Chicago and tried to snag an accompanist-architect
as well. The dancers went, but the accompanist refused.
Wright admired Gurdjieff and even allowed Iovanna to study with him
in Paris. But he drew a line. “You are not going to turn this into
a Gurdjieff Institute,” he told Olgivanna. “Not while I am alive.”
Wright died on April 9, 1959, just short of his 92nd birthday.
The authors note that when her daughter Svetlana died in an auto
accident, Olgivanna was immobilized for months, but “After Frank’s
death, she hit the ground running.”
That’s “The Fellowship.” Read all about it.
FIRST SHOWING
What: Ron McCrea will host the first local showing of the new,
60-minute BBC documentary, “Frank Lloyd Wright: Murder, Myth and
Modernism.”
When and where: Thursday, Sept. 28, 7 p.m., Monona Terrace auditorium,
as part of the Frank Lloyd Wright Lecture Series. Free and open to
the public.
NOTES: E-mail: [email protected]
GRAPHIC: “The Fellowship” describes the entanglements of Armenian
mystic Georgi Gurdjieff (above) with the Taliesin architects. CARMIE
S. THOMPSON/THE CAPITAL TIMES Frank Lloyd Wright celebrates his 87th
birthday (he maintained it was his 85th) at Taliesin on June 9, 1954,
with (from left) daughter Iovanna Lloyd Wright, Katherine Lewis, Mrs.
Kenn Lockhart, Edgar Kaufman Jr. and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright.

FOR MANY LEBANESE,; WAR IS NEW REALITY: BUT WILL THEY STAY?
by Katherine Zoepf
New York Observer
September 11, 2006
AMMAN, JORDAN–By now, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan
is winding down his latest Middle East trip, a grueling 11-day tour
that has had him hop-scotching from Beirut to Tel Aviv to Tehran
to Damascus to Ankara. The trip was organized in order to shore
up regional support for a Security Council resolution that ended
the month-long conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militia,
Hezbollah, and to discuss Lebanon’s reconstruction. So far, the most
concrete result of all this diplomacy appears to be a plan, still not
yet firm, to lift Israel’s naval blockade on Lebanon later this week.
But even if Mr. Annan succeeds and the Israeli blockade is lifted,
it will still come too late for Jack Yacoubian, a Lebanese Armenian
goldsmith that I met in Amman yesterday. Mr. Yacoubian, who is in
his early 30’s, has spent his entire life in Bourj Hammoud, Beirut’s
Armenian enclave. He recently lost his job with a large Lebanese
jewelry company because the Israeli blockade has made it impossible for
his employers to ship their products to overseas customers, mainly in
the Persian Gulf countries; about 170 employees were laid off, he said.
“I have lost my work; I have lost everything,” Mr. Yacoubian said.
“Many of us Armenians are jewelers, and our business has been ruined.
Our boss tried to help us; he paid all of us out of his own pocket
for a whole month, even though he couldn’t sell anything. But after
that it was all over. He finally had to let us go.”
When I met him in Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport early
yesterday morning, Mr. Yacoubian was on his way to seek his fortune
in Bogota, Colombia, where he has friends that he believes may be
able to help him to find a new job. He doubts that he will be coming
back to Beirut any time very soon.
“I will give it two months, three months, in Colombia, and then I
will see what is the situation in Beirut again,” Mr. Yacoubian said.
“But I do not feel very hopeful now. I think that Lebanon has many
difficulties still ahead.”
Whatever promises to aid Lebanon or to support its troops near
the Israeli border that Mr. Annan succeeds in extracting from Arab
leaders this week, rebuilding Lebanon’s economy will take a very long
time. Many highly educated or specially skilled Lebanese like Mr.
Yacoubian, even including some of those who stayed throughout the
war, are now making very painful and personal choices: about whether
to stay in their country, or to seek greater stability and better
opportunities overseas.
Many Lebanese who fled during their country’s long civil war had
returned in recent years, and thanks in large part to their skills,
energies and investments, Beirut had once again become a thriving
Mediterranean capital. But many middle and upper-class Lebanese have
dual passports, and extended families abroad. They have ambitions
for themselves and their families that are not necessarily rooted in
Lebanon, and they have options.
“How many times in your life can you rebuild everything?” a middle-aged
Lebanese woman asked me the other week in Damascus. “Two times,
three times maybe? You rebuild your home, your business two or three
times. And after that maybe you say, that’s enough, and you find a
home someplace else.”
A extraordinarily cosmopolitan people, many Lebanese, particularly the
educated elite, are asking similarly agonized questions these days,
trying to figure out whether the ceasefire will last, trying to decide
whether they can bear to start all over again in the midst of such
a tenuous peace. Loving your country is all very well, they say, but
what good is patriotism in the face of domestic factionalism and the
constant threat of Israeli attack? What sort of crazy devotion would
make an educated, ambitious young person forsake other opportunities
in order to stay in such a place?
In Beirut last week, and among the groups of Lebanese who remain in
Damascus and Amman in recent days, I’ve heard these questions asked
constantly. How the majority will eventually decide to answer them
will have a huge effect on Lebanon’s prospects for a speedy recovery.
Among those Lebanese who have already resolved to stay, there is
naturally some resentment of those who are on the fence. A young
university professor that I met in Beirut last week spoke witheringly
of his privileged students, most of whom had fled to Europe or the
United States with the onset of Israeli air strikes, and some of whom
have said that they don’t plan to return.
“These kids are rich,” the professor told me bitterly. “That means
they have the chance to decide whether or not they are Lebanese.”
For parents, the questions are even more difficult. It is impossible
to spend much time in Lebanon these days without hearing a great deal
about the effects that the war has had on Lebanese children, about the
unusual tearfulness and aggression shown by even normally even-tempered
young children. A Lebanese friend, Patrick, spoke of his decision to
send his 10-year-old daughter to stay with relatives in Europe during
the worst of the fighting, and then his eventual decision to bring her
home again, despite some relatives’ urgings that he educate her abroad.
“These children, this generation, knew nothing of war,” Patrick said.
“When I was a teenager, we used to go out dancing, and we’d hear
explosions. We’d leave the club for a few minutes, pull people out
of the rubble and take them to the hospital, and then go right back
to drink and dance. We didn’t think anything of it. This was normal
life for us.
“I had really thought that for my daughter it would be different,”
Patrick continued. “I felt angry when the fighting began, and I decided
to send her abroad, so that she wouldn’t see this. But I’ve decided
to bring her home. She will start the school year here, whatever
happens. She is Lebanese, and this fighting, these bombings, are her
heritage. She is 10 years old; she is old enough to understand.”

AUDIT CHAMBER OF NKR NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
Azat Artsakh, Nagorno Karabakh Republic [NKR]
09 Sept 2006
On September 6 the chair of the NKR Audit Chamber Edward Barseghian
conducted a meeting of the chamber on the compliance of spending
of the funds for environment and natural resources in 2005 with the
legislation. The deputy chair of the Audit Chamber Alice Parseghova
reported that the Department of Environmental Protection received 16
million dram from the foreseen 18 million 300 thousand, since there
are vacancies in the department. Over the past year 39 violations of
the environmental legislation were reported, 15 were reported to the
law enforcement agencies. The estimated income against the reported
breaches is over 9 million drams. It was also mentioned that as of
January 1, 2006 26 exploiters of mines operated without a license,
including 12 without a mining license.
Press Secretary Of NKR Speaker

SELLERS OF COUNTERFEIT BANKNOTES APPREHENDED IN MOSCOW
ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 10, 2006 Sunday 04:34 PM EST
A criminal group has been detained in Moscow when trying to sell about
500,000 counterfeit rubles, a source at the city police department’s
organized crime agency told Itar-Tass on Sunday.
Plain-clothes cops got in touch with the criminals in the Moscow
region, pretending that they wanted to buy counterfeit banknotes.
“The meeting was planned on Dmitrovskoye highway, and the
intermediary – a graduate of a Moscow prestigious college – was caught
red-handed. Soon two of his accomplices, natives of Armenia and North
Ossetia and Moscow college students, were apprehended. The detained
men age 20-25 years,” the source.
The young men were selling counterfeit banknotes, which were made on
a laser printer with watermarks. “Yet the banknotes were lacking the
metallic stripe. The scoundrels were asking for 450 rubles per each
counterfeit banknote,” the source said.
A criminal case was opened. Police think that the detained men were
simply intermediaries and did not counterfeit the banknotes themselves.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

E.P. ADOPTS REPORT ON TURKEY’S PROGRESS TOWARDS ACCESSION
Turkish Press
Sept 10 2006
STRASBOURG – The Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European
Parliament (EP) adopted the report on Turkey’s progress towards
accession on Monday.
The report, prepared by Christian Democrat MEP Camiel Eurlings, was
passed by 52 votes. Six MEPs voted against it, while eight abstained.
The Committee added some paragraphs to the report which include
harsher expressions against Turkey.
By a motion adopted during the meeting, the Committee reiterated
their call to Turkey to recognize the so-called Armenian genocide
before it becomes a full member.
Before the vote, Eurlings said that Turkey has slowed down its reforms,
and noted that the EP should give a serious message to Turkey with
this report.
On the other hand, Turkey-EU Joint Parliament Committee Co-Chairman
Joost Lagendijk said that the EP should not give Turkey the message
that its negotiations can be suspended due to Cyprus problem, and
called on the EU to fulfil its commitments to Turkish Cypriots.
The report will also be voted at the Plenary Session to be held in
Strasbourg at the end of this month.

COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES: ROBBERY, ROLLOVER, RAILING: B-PLUS
By Peter Buffa
Daily Pilot, CA
Sept 10 2006
Not a great run, but a good one. I’m always paging through the
police blotter, as you know, and the last few weeks have had some
better-than-average entries.
On Sept. 1, there was yet another bank robbery, this time at the
Citibank on East 17th Street in Costa Mesa. I don’t know if NewportMesa
land is the capital of bank robberies, but we must be in the running.
I’m waiting to read about a bank robbery that happens during a bank
robbery. Has to happen sooner or later. “Yes I can read, sir, but
I’m already being robbed. Could you go to the next window? Thanks.”
This one was pretty standard – man hands teller note, teller hands
man money, man leaves. It happened in broad daylight, mid-morning,
10:45 a.m., which is also standard. Most robberies go down mid-morning
or afternoon. Bank robbers don’t like long lines any more than we do.
In the coulda-beenspectacular-sure-glad-it-wasn’t folder, there was
the accident last Thursday afternoon on Newport Coast Drive.
Ever been on Newport Coast Drive? I have. Big hill, nice and wide,
really steep. Just after 4 p.m. Thursday, a fully loaded cement truck
was making its way down the hill on Newport Coast Drive toward Pacific
Coast Highway.
Bet you already know what happens next. We’ve all been there, coasting
down a long steep hill, tapping the brake pedal, wondering, “What if
the brakes gave out? What would I do?”
Very few of us have had to find out, even fewer in a fully loaded
cement truck. The cement truck in question, which was barreling
toward Pacific Coast Highway with no brakes and with Newport Coast
Drive rapidly drawing to a close, raises an interesting question:
What is the difference between cement and concrete? Do you know?
This is interesting, assuming there’s not a lot going on in your
life. Cement is an ingredient in concrete, which is a mixture of
water, sand and rock. It’s the fine powder that forms a paste when
you add water and holds the other stuff together when it dries. Isn’t
that ironic?
It wasn’t a cement truck at all that was about to roar through the
intersection of Newport Coast Drive and PCH – it was a concrete
truck. But everyone says cement truck, so why fight it. Actually,
if you really want to get technical, it’s called a “truck-mounted
revolving drum mixer.”
Do you know who invented it? An Armenian immigrant named Stephen
Stepanian, in 1916. You don’t need to write that down. It probably
won’t come up again.
Anyway, when Thursday’s cement truck turned rocket sled reached PCH,
the driver was able to muscle it into a right turn, but the combination
of too fast and too heavy tipped the steel mammoth over and sent it
skidding across three lanes of PCH. Incredibly – no, miraculously
– not only was no one seriously hurt, but no other cars were hit,
although I’m guessing it really focused the senses of the drivers
coming in both directions.
The truck driver was cited for driving at an unsafe speed, although
his passenger, the only person injured, should have been cited for
RMVD – riding in a motor vehicle while dumb.
He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, which is understandable because there
was no passenger seat. He was sitting on a milk crate.
I also have a hunch the city of Newport Beach and Caltrans might be
looking into who can use Newport Coast Drive and who cannot, given
that Thursday’s near miss was the fourth cement truck accident on
Newport Coast Drive since July 2004.
With a fully loaded cement truck weighing in at about 66,000 pounds –
40,000 pounds of concrete and 26,000 pounds of truck – it’s easy to
see why hills, brakes and cement trucks do not care for each other.
Newport Beach Police Officer David Darling explained the problem of
trying to hold onto 33 tons of steel and concrete with the degree of
understatement that only police officers can master. “Any vehicle
that carries some significant weight is going to experience some
brake problems at the bottom” of the hill, Darling said.
Yeah, I guess that’s true.
Last but not least, although definitely the most loopy, was the call
to Costa Mesa police at 6 p.m. on August 31 about a man who was on
the Bear Street and I-405 overpass prying off pieces of guardrail.
When the police arrived to inquire further into exactly what the man
had in mind, they found Gary Lauterbach, 50, calmly dragging chunks
of guardrail down the embankment below the overpass and wrestling
them into his truck, which was parked behind Best Buy in the Metro
Pointe shopping center.
Lauterbach was taken in on suspicion of grand theft and felony
vandalism, which will cost about three grand to repair, according
to Caltrans.
Do you get it? I don’t get it. Let’s review. You park your car behind
Best Buy at Metro Pointe. You climb up an embankment to the Bear
Street overpass, which means you’re already attracting attention.
Then, in broad daylight with cars zooming by you, you start tearing
up guardrail.
First of all, how do you do that? Guardrail, whenever I’ve tried to
pry it off, is bolted on really tight with really big hardware.
Anyway, once you have enough guardrail, and I’m not sure how much
that is, you clamber back down the embankment, then clank your way
through the Metro Pointe parking lot to your truck, as if nobody has
noticed any of this.
I have read a lot of crime stories in my day, but when Lauterbach gets
out, I hope someone writes the saga of Gary and the guardrail. I would
love to know what the plan was, assuming there was one, which I doubt.
Just because crime doesn’t pay doesn’t mean it can’t entertain.
I gotta go.

TURKISH NOVELIST FACES TRIAL OVER CHARACTERS’ WORDS
By Suzan Fraser
Washington Post
Associated Press
Sept 10 2006
ISTANBUL, Sept. 9 — Elif Shafak, one of Turkey’s leading authors,
is about to have a baby — and go on trial.
The reason for this conjunction of joy and foreboding is her new novel,
which has exposed her to a charge of “insulting Turkishness” because
it touches on one of the most disputed episodes of her country’s
history — the massacres of Armenians during the final years of the
Ottoman Empire.
A professor of Near Eastern studies at the University of Arizona,
Shafak, 35, divides her time between Tucson and Istanbul. She sought
a postponement of her trial, set for Sept. 21, until after her first
child is born, but she was refused.
She could receive three years in prison, though similar trials of
other Turkish writers have often folded on technicalities.
“I think my case is very bizarre because for the first time they are
trying fictional characters,” Shafak said, referring to the words
she gave to an Armenian voice in the novel.
The case has broad ramifications, highlighting a rising wave of
Turkish nationalism and the question of whether Turkey, a Western
ally and NATO member, should be admitted to the European Union —
a move the Bush administration supports.
Turks who long for E.U. membership worry that trials of writers are
setting back their cause. But nationalists such as Kemal Kerincsiz,
one of the lawyers suing Shafak, say Turkey should not have to forsake
bedrock convictions — for instance, that there was never any Armenian
genocide — just to please Europe.
“The Easterner has to insult himself and degrade his own culture
to ingratiate himself with the West,” Kerincsiz said in a recent
interview. “Our place is in Eastern culture.”
The novel in question, “The Bastard of Istanbul,” deals with taboos —
domestic violence and incestuous rape — that are rarely discussed
in this conservative, predominantly Muslim country. But it is what
Shafak’s Armenian American characters say that has landed her in court.
For instance, this from a man worried about his niece being brought
up by a Turkish stepfather:
“What will that innocent lamb tell her friends when she grows
up? . . . [That] I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost
all their relatives to the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915, but
I myself have been brainwashed to deny the genocide because I was
raised by some Turk named Mustapha!”
Turkey insists the deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians during forced
evacuations in World War I was not a planned genocide but the result
of the bloody breakup of the Ottoman Empire.
Shafak said she does not take sides on the genocide debate but accuses
Turkey of having “collective amnesia.”
“Turks and Armenians are not speaking the same language,” she said.
“For the Turks, all the past is gone, erased from our memories.
That’s the way we Westernized: by being future-oriented. . . . The
grandchildren of the 1915 survivors tend to be very, very
past-oriented.”

`BASTARD’ PITS TURKEY AGAINST ITSELF
AP , ISTANBUL
Taipai Times, Taiwan
Sept 10 2006
Europe’s governing body is watching which way Turkish courts will
jump as author Elif Shafak is prosecuted for insulting her nation
For best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak, this month promises to
be one of joy and tribulation.
Nine months pregnant, the University of Arizona literature professor
is set to give birth to her first child. Another important date looms:
the start of her trial on charges of “insulting Turkishness” in her
novel that deals with the waning years of the Ottoman Empire.
In a quiet cafe in the backstreets of Istanbul’s historic Beyoglu
district, where Turks, Armenians and Jews once lived in harmony,
Shafak reflected on the peculiarities of a case in which it is nothing
she said herself that is being put on trial, but words she gave to
a fictitious Armenian character.
“I think my case is very bizarre, because for the first time they
are trying fictional characters,” said Shafak, a striking woman with
unruly locks of blond hair.
If convicted Shafak, who divides her time between Tucson, Arizona,
and Istanbul, could face three years in prison. Turkey has refused
her request to delay the Sept. 21 trial because of her pregnancy.
The case will be closely watched by the EU, which has repeatedly
insisted that Turkey abolish laws that limit freedom of expression if
it is to fulfill its dream of joining the elite club of nations —
which sees itself both as an economic bloc and a beacon of liberal,
democratic values.
Shafak said the law on insulting Turkishness “has been used as a
weapon to silence many people. … My case is perhaps just another
step in this long chain.”
That chain includes Turkey’s best known novelist Orhan Pamuk — a
perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature — and dozens
of other writers and intellectuals forced to defend themselves against
charges of “insulting Turkishness.”
Shafak says he has received hate mail from nationalists calling her a
“pawn of the enemies of Turkey.”
Although most of the cases have been dropped for technical reasons —
such as the case involving Pamuk — and no one has ended up in prison,
the trials have raised serious questions about whether Turkey is
ready to embrace European values.
To Shafak, the trials, brought forward by a coalition of
ultranationalist lawyers, are an attempt to resist EU-inspired changes
toward a more democratic and pluralistic Turkey that some see as
a threat to the powerful central state, which has strong ties to
the military.
Yet Shafak sees reason for hope: The surge in nationalism, she
says, is a clear sign that Turkey is truly undergoing a momentous
transformation.
“This ultranationalist movement is taking place not because nothing
is changing in Turkey, but just the opposite, because things are
changing,” Shafak said. “The bigger the transformation, the bigger
their panic.”
Shafak’s novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, touches upon the massacres
of Armenians during the final years of the Ottoman Empire, telling
the tale of a Turkish and an American-Armenian family whose lives
become intertwined.
The book also deals with other taboos — domestic violence and
incestuous rape — which are rarely discussed in this conservative,
predominantly Muslim country.
But it was fictional Armenian-American characters in the book who sent
Shafak to court. In one passage, a character is deeply concerned about
the prospect of his niece being brought up by a Turkish stepfather.
“What will that innocent lamb tell her friends when she grows up?”
the man asks. “[That] I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who
lost all their relatives to the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915,
but I myself have been brainwashed to deny the genocide because I
was raised by some Turk named Mustapha!”
Later, a radical Armenian-American blogger who goes by the name of
Lady Peacock/Siramark writes: “Do you think [the Turks] are going
to say: Oh yeah, we are sorry we massacred and deported you guys,
and then contentedly denied it all.”
Turkey insists that the mass evacuation and deaths of up to 1.5
million Armenians during World War I was not a planned genocide.
Labeling it as such can be considered a criminal offense.
The book has sold 60,000 copies since it was published — considered
a big hit in Turkey, where readership is low.
The daughter of a female diplomat who raised Shafak alone — her
father left when she was young — the novelist said that she first
became aware of the Armenian issue after Armenian militants killed
dozens of Turkish diplomats across the 1970s and 1980s.
“My very first acquaintance with the word `Armenian’ was so negative,
it just meant someone who wanted to kill my mother,” Shafak said. “I
then started to ask questions, `why so much hatred against Turkish
diplomats? What is behind this?'”
She does not take sides on the genocide debate, but criticizes Turkey
for what she calls a “collective amnesia” of the atrocities.
“Turks and Armenians are not speaking the same language,” she
explained. “For the Turks all the past is gone, erased from our
memories. That’s the way we Westernized: by being future-oriented…
The grandchildren of the 1915 survivors tend to be very, very
past-oriented.”
The English version of The Bastard of Istanbul is to be published
next year.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress