Kurdish Aspect, CO
June 3 2006
Return of the Turkish `State of Exception’
Kerem Öktem
MIDDLE EAST REPORT ONLINE
June 3, 2006
(Kerem Öktem is a research associate at St Antony’s College,
University of Oxford.)
Diyarbakýr, the political and cultural center of Turkey’s
predominantly Kurdish southeastern provinces, displays its beauty in
springtime. The surrounding plains and mountains, dusty and barren
during the summer months, shine in shades of green and the rainbow
colors of alpine flowers and herbs. Around the walls of the old city,
parks bustle with schoolchildren, unemployed young men and refugees
who were uprooted from their villages during the Kurdish insurgency
in the 1990s. The walls, neglected for decades, have been renovated
by Diyarbakýr’s mayor, Osman Baydemir of the Democratic Society
Party, successor to a series of parties representing Kurdish
interests.
Although Baydemir has restored that major symbol of local pride and
Kurdish identity, the state has not yet addressed the underlying
problems of the city, whose population is believed to have topped one
million, and its environs. Unemployment in Diyarbakýr is estimated at
around 40 percent. The infrastructure is poor. A brief rainstorm can
inundate even the relatively upscale shopping district of Ofis in the
twinkling of an eye, transforming its streets into unpassable moats
of muddy water. Refugees, squatting in buildings clinging to the
hills or residing in the informal high-rise suburb of Baðlar, cram
the busy streets and squares. Children of all ages and both sexes
escape the constraints of their makeshift homes to hawk facial
tissues, pens and erasers, or offer their services as shoeshine boys
and porters. Even more youngsters, many in shabby school uniforms,
others excluded from education for one reason or another, simply hang
out, wary of the ubiquitous police with their machine guns.
`KURDISH PROBLEM’
Such Kurdish youth have become the Turkish mainstream media’s new
face for the `Kurdish problem,’ especially after Prime Minister Recep
Tayyýp Erdoðan declared that the `security forces will intervene
against the pawns of terrorism, even if they are children or women.
Everyone should realize that.’ Erdoðan’s comments came in the wake of
a week of rioting in Diyarbakýr and other southeastern towns in late
March and early April 2006, in protest of the killing of 14
combatants of the `People’s Defense Forces,’ a group linked to the
rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK/Kongra-Gel), whose latest
ceasefire with the government broke down in the fall of 2005. The
April unrest left dead at least 14 other people in the southeastern
provinces of Diyarbakýr, Batman and Mardin. In Diyarbakýr, 12
protesters, most of them young men, were shot dead by security
forces, though three children, aged three to seven, and a man of 78
were also killed. Conservative estimates mention 400 wounded in
Diyarbakýr alone, with more than 500 detained for interrogation. The
violence spread to Istanbul, where three women passing by a
demonstration in a mostly Kurdish-populated suburb were killed by
petrol bombs cast by rioters.
Human rights organizations in Diyarbakýr speak of at least 200
children taken into police custody and severely beaten after the
riots. The Diyarbakýr Bar Association says that 80 children between
12 and 18 years of age remain behind bars, accused of `aiding and
abetting’ the PKK, a charge carrying a maximum jail sentence of 24
years.
Whether the protests were spontaneous or planned by the high command
of the PKK/Kongra-Gel, as the Turkish government claims, is hard to
establish. The fact that Internet and media outlets close to the
PKK/Kongra-Gel immediately circulated the dead militants’ portraits
and personal details, together with the highly inflammatory
allegation that Turkish security forces had used chemical weapons,
suggests some degree of planning. In any event, the ensuing riots in
late March and early April reminded Diyarbakýr residents and the
country’s Kurdish population of the darkest days of the undeclared
war in the southeast in the 1990s.
Following the riots, the government hardened its rhetoric toward the
Democratic Society Party mayors of Kurdish-populated cities, and
dozens of local party chairmen and members in the southeast were
taken into custody and charged with `aiding and abetting terrorists.’
A draconian draft Law for the Fight Against Terrorism is now being
discussed in the relevant committee of Parliament. Once again, it
appears, Turkey’s Kurdish question is framed as a national security
issue, seemingly interrupting the government’s cautious attempts,
under pressure to meet conditions for eventual membership in the
European Union, to resolve Kurds’ political grievances. How have
matters deteriorated so rapidly, less than two years after lawmakers,
promising a `Kurdish spring,’ paved the way for Kurdish-language TV
and radio programs, even if limited and controlled? Is Turkey no
longer a prime example of the moderating effects of the EU’s soft
power?
LETHAL COCKTAIL
Turkey’s mainstream media, along with many independent analysts,
hailed the EU’s October 3, 2005 decision to start membership talks
with Turkey as a historic turning point. The window of opportunity
was opened by the commitment of the governing Justice and Development
Party (in Turkish, Adalet ve Kalkýnma Partisi, or the AKP) to legal
reform and political liberalization in order to strengthen the
democratic system and protections for human rights. Backing for the
European project ran at a high 70 percent in Turkey. The emotive
drive for a `clean’ Turkey was powerfully unifying, allowing the
`moderate Islamists’ of the AKP, secularists, Kurdish nationalists
and, haltingly, the military establishment to join in the chorus of
support for the prospect of EU membership. Even if this convergence
was a single-issue alliance rather than an ideological realignment,
the gradual withdrawal of the military from the sphere of politics
and a more inclusive state policy towards ethnic and religious
minorities seemed to be at hand.
Within less than a year, however, this coincidence of positions
regarding the country’s EU orientation has eroded. This erosion is
due to a lethal cocktail of mutually reinforcing trends, each of
which the AKP government has failed to contain. An aggressive
nationalist discourse, steeped in anti-imperialist and anti-European
sentiment, as well as barely veiled xenophobia, has reemerged. The
set of actors and practices popularly known as the `deep state’
(derin devlet) has reared its head. Finally, turmoil in Turkey’s
Middle Eastern backyard has added yet more tension to the precarious
domestic situation.
RETRO-NATIONALISM
In the last few years, taboos about national history have been lifted
in Turkey. Topics that once could not be openly discussed, such as
the destruction of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian communities in 1915,
the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey, and the waves of
discriminatory state policies toward non-Muslim minorities, are now
in the public eye. There are myriads of new publications on the
Armenian genocide, the persecution of Kurds and other minority
groups, and a number of conferences and public discussions have been
convened, leading portions of the public to rethink Turkish identity
and the history of the Republic.
Almost simultaneously, a reactionary brand of Turkish nationalism,
infused with Islamist, secularist and/or socialist themes, reinvaded
the public sphere. Such a position had been propagated by the
maverick ex-Communist leader Doðu Perinçek and his Workers’ Party for
several years. More recently, however, this brand of nationalism has
become acceptable in the mainstream media and in the public debate.
Like most extreme nationalist discourses, it is based on the dual
pathology of excessive regard for the `self’ and hatred of the
resulting multiple `others.’ If, in this reading, the EU is reduced
to a `club of Christian nations’ trying to dismember the territorial
unity of Turkey, Kurds appear as the most significant internal
`other,’ overshadowed only by what is usually referred to as the
`Armenian diaspora.’ In the new nationalist identity politics, denial
of the destruction of Ottoman Armenians, in addition to the suspicion
of Kurdish `separatists,’ has become one of the central
crystallization points of a reaction to the European project and the
source of conspiratorial scenarios pertaining to the `dismemberment
of the unitary republic.’ An April survey conducted by Umut Özkirimli
of Istanbul’s Bilgi University, and published in the Tempo weekly,
shows that a majority of the public now shares the view that the EU
process constitutes a threat to the country’s territorial integrity.
Paradoxically, a majority — about 63 percent — also remains
supportive of the distant goal of EU membership.
The nationalist-conspiratorial mindset is reproduced in a growing
body of semi-factual bestsellers and films that celebrate the history
of the Turkish people as a fight for survival against malignant
European powers and the neo-colonial United States. Sales of such
books easily reach 100,000 copies or more, with Turgut Özakman’s
These Mad Turks, depicting the 1919-1923 Turkish war of independence
as a heroic, almost supernatural struggle of good against evil,
selling more than 700,000 official, and probably as many pirated,
copies. If this retrospective response to current developments
attempts to repair a `humiliated national pride’ with reference to
the `golden age’ of the War of Independence, the box office hit
Valley of the Wolves in Iraq deals with a much more immediate theme.
The film, loosely based on a real story, follows a Turkish avenger on
his mission to restore national pride after the humiliation of
Turkish soldiers by US occupying forces. The protagonist operates
outside the law, backed not by state agencies, but by patronage
extending from mafia-like organizations, extreme nationalists and
`patriotic’ individuals within the state apparatus. The stress on
`madness’ in many of these publications is disconcerting, if not
surprising — as is their celebration of violence and illegality as
long as it defends the honor of `Turkishness.’
These pop culture manifestations of national pride and suspicion of
the outside world might be read as indicators of a public disoriented
by the `free market of ideas,’ and frustrated by rejectionist and
essentialist discourses on Turkey in Europe. The remedy proposed by
these books, TV series and movies is the safe haven of familiar
nationalist narratives of a past splendor waiting to be restored. As
such, their extreme success might be explained, to some extent, by
the workings of market forces.
Some commentators, however, argue that there is a concerted effort of
`psychological warfare’ behind this `retro-nationalist’ cultural
production. There once was a National Security Council organ actually
named the Center for Psychological Warfare, responsible for spreading
information and disinformation during the Kurdish insurgency. The
center was officially disbanded, yet its structure and political
objectives have been taken over by at least one office within the
Interior Ministry, the Department for Public Relations. An
undisclosed number of agencies within the military and security
establishment, along with ultra-nationalist networks, are believed
still to be operating in this field. According to an April 4 report
in the Islamist newspaper Zaman, the Interior Ministry is concerned
to instill in Kurdish schoolchildren a sense of ethnic and religious
unity with the Turkish nation through the celebration of `collective
victories’ in World War I and the war of independence, hence
discouraging identification with a `Kurdish cause.’
Many members of the AKP government might be sympathetic to some of
this chauvinist rhetoric, especially after their hopes of lifting the
headscarf ban in Turkish universities were crushed by the European
Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Yet the party’s current
inability to set the tone of the debate, and its complete passivity
regarding the outbreak of violence in the Kurdish provinces, evokes a
more serious transformation: a reshuffling of the actors in the
political sphere and their capabilities. There appears to be a
creeping transfer of power from the democratically elected government
back to the military and security establishments and their formal,
semi-formal and extralegal extremities — in short, the `deep state.’
RETURN OF THE DEEP STATE?
Signs of renewed PKK operations and clandestine counter-terrorist
activities in the southeast have multiplied since November 2005, when
a bomb exploded in a bookstore in Þemdinli, a town in the province of
Hakkari, close to the Iraqi border. Locals witnessing the attack
identified the culprits as three plainclothes gendarmerie
intelligence officers. The incident evoked the series of
counter-insurgency plots from the 1990s, when the state sought to
contain PKK terror with extrajudicial killings carried out by
semi-legal anti-terrorism units, the Kurdish Hizballah and
paramilitary `village guards’ on the state payroll. Although the AKP
government promised a transparent investigation of the Þemdinli
bombing, regional discontent soon descended into violence, most
probably steered by the PKK/Kongra-Gel command. The riots resulted in
several protesters being shot dead by security forces.
In a bold move, the chief prosecutor of the province of Van, Ferhat
Sarýkaya, drafted an indictment that alluded to relations between the
General Command of the Armed Forces and PKK informants, and to the
involvement of gendarmerie officers in the Þemdinli incident. The
indictment reached the press before court proceedings started,
suggesting a political motive of exposing the army’s dealings. In
spite of the seriousness of the allegations, the prosecutor was
neutralized after the chief of the general staff, Gen. Hilmi Özkök,
reportedly contacted Prime Minister Erdoðan and asked for `necessary
steps to be taken,’ as members of the military were accused. In due
course, the Higher Council for Judges and Prosecutors dismissed
Sarýkaya from his post and barred him from the legal profession, on
the grounds that the indictment might lead to accusations against the
army and other state offices. This move was met with widespread
dismay from the country’s bar associations and even some senior
judges, who declared it a disproportionate intervention at best, and
a most serious breach of the judiciary’s independence at worst. Among
many Kurds, Sarýkaya’s dismissal was understood as a lack of
commitment to accountability for those in the state apparatus who act
in a clearly provocative fashion to fuel tensions between Kurds and
the state.
Tensions in southeastern towns and migrant quarters of western cities
were left to simmer, even if Erdoðan attempted to diffuse anger by
acknowledging the `Kurdish problem’ and insisting on a
`constitutional citizenship’ uniting all inhabitants of the country,
regardless of ethnic and religious background. With the rising
numbers of PKK fighters and soldiers being killed in combat, however,
a renewed eruption in the southeast seemed unavoidable, and in April,
it occurred.
As a number of commentators put it, this descent into violence
resembles comparable instances of social unrest in the late 1970s
before the coup of September 12, 1980, and the decade of the Kurdish
insurgency that reached its peak in the 1990s and triggered passage
of the infamous Anti-Terrorism Law of 1991. The immediate response of
the government to the April riots, in the form of the draft Law for
the Fight Against Terrorism, evokes the limitations on human rights
and personal freedoms facilitated by the 1991 law and administered
brutally during the state of emergency in the southeast.
In its current version, the new draft law threatens to make obsolete
most liberalizing reforms of the penal code undertaken in the last
few years. The draft outlaws not only the `propagation of terrorist
groups,’ but also the `propagation of the goals of terrorist groups,’
an ambiguous formulation that could be applied to penalize legitimate
requests such as education in Kurdish, on the grounds that these
demands are also advocated by the PKK. The new draft brings back
prison sentences of one to three years for the publication of views
that are deemed supportive of terrorist groups. In addition, the
chief prosecutor of any province would be able to suspend
publications, an action hitherto only possible with a court order.
Many critics of this draft point to the extensive scope of the
definition of terror, which could be used to charge independent
journalists and Kurds engaging in legal politics. Furthermore,
membership in organizations that advocate changing the constitutional
order would be punished with heavy jail sentences, even if violence
or incitement to violence is not on the group’s agenda.
THE MIDDLE EASTERN FRONT
Developments on Turkey’s Middle Eastern front are further stirring
the pot of recrudescent nationalism and assertiveness by the `deep
state.’ Northern Iraq, or Iraqi Kurdistan, closer than ever to formal
independence, is a base for PKK units that continue to infiltrate
Turkey across uncontrollable mountainous borders. Some analysts argue
that most of the recent incidents would not have been possible
without the logistical infrastructure supplied by the leaders of the
Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq. The unwillingness of US
occupying forces to contain the movements of PKK units into Turkish
territory is easy to comprehend, as the Kurdish entity in northern
Iraq and its leaders remain Washington’s only reliable allies in
Iraq. Turkish decision makers, however, are increasingly upset.
Along with PKK infiltration from Iraq, mounting tensions over Iran’s
nuclear program and rumors of airstrikes have induced the Turkish
military to deploy large army contingents to the Iraqi and Iranian
borders and to the urban centers of the southeast. While army sources
consistently deny allegations that the deployment is linked to
imminent extra-territorial movements of army units, recent incursions
into northern Iraq with the aim of targeting PKK positions suggest
otherwise. (Websites close to the PKK/Kongra-Gel have documented a
few of these raids.) Nevertheless, the relocation of army units to
the Kurdish provinces almost certainly has the additional corollary
of reestablishing a semi-state of emergency in those provinces, which
had just begun to be demilitarized a few years ago.
THE AKP’S LOW PROFILE
In State of Exception, Giorgio Agamben refers to President George W.
Bush after September 11, 2001 as attempting to produce a `situation
in which the emergency becomes the rule, and the very distinction
between peace and war (and between foreign and civil war) becomes
impossible.’ Reviewing the brief history of Turkish democracy since
the 1950s, one could safely argue that the notion of `emergency as a
rule’ has been a structural determinant of Turkish politics, and even
more so, the governance of the mostly Kurdish southeast. The hope
that the AKP government would use the EU-induced reform process to
extirpate the extralegal networks tying the security establishment to
the international mafia and extreme nationalists appears to have been
unfounded. Recent developments suggest that these networks have
remained in place, and can now benefit from the interplay of rising
Turkish nationalism, mounting inter-ethnic violence and a comeback of
the armed forces to the sphere of politics. All of these phenomena
reignite the Sèvres syndrome, the sense of a beleaguered Turkish
nation on the verge of extinction, which in turn justifies the
politics of exception, namely the suspension of human rights and
individual liberties in the fight against `Kurdish terrorism.’
Under these conditions, the EU’s soft power will encounter further
roadblocks in Turkey. Should Turkish units make regular sorties into
Iraq, and persist in enforcing heavy-handed security measures to
quell Kurdish protest in the southeast, Turkish-EU relations are
likely to sour. With no PKK ceasefire on the horizon and the ongoing
ostracism of elected Kurdish leaders on the one side, and growing
inter-ethnic alienation and the threat of a new Kurdish insurgency on
the other, the prospects for continuation of the government’s reform
course seem bleak. This predicament of the AKP is aggravated by the
fact that almost all opposition parties, including the centrist
Republican People’s Party of Deniz Baykal, have chosen to attack the
government from the right, reverting to the emotive language of an
even more hawkish nationalist position. Baykal caused an uproar in
Parliament when he alleged that the government intends to pardon the
jailed leader of the PKK/Kongra-Gel, Abdullah Öcalan.
Trapped in the power play of multi-party politics, the AKP appears to
have chosen to keep a low profile until the presidential elections
and possible early elections for Parliament in 2007. Party
strategists may believe that mounting tensions over the erosion of
the principle of secularism will ultimately strengthen the party’s
appeal to its pious core constituents, and help its reelection.
Yet that strategy entails obvious risks, as seen in the aftermath of
the May 18 shooting of a senior judge by an Islamist youth angered by
the court’s ruling banning the headscarf for public-sector employees
and university students. Demonstrators blamed the AKP (which bitterly
criticized the court’s ruling) for the shooting, some going so far as
to call Erdoðan `a murderer.’ If the AKP merely leaves the field to
their political opponents, such tensions could intensify, and there
could also be a vacuum in policy toward northern Iraq and probably
Cyprus, as well as in the southeastern provinces. The security
establishment would soon fill such a vacuum, prone as it is to
extralegal action in domestic matters and brusqueness in
international politics. Should this occur, EU accession talks would
be in jeopardy, as would social and economic stability.
An alternative scenario would be possible if the governing AKP
regained the political initiative by reestablishing an EU-oriented
reformist consensus. Regaining the initiative would mean addressing
Kurdish grievances, softening the requirement that parties win 10
percent of the national vote to be seated in Parliament, a rule that
effectively excludes Kurdish parties, engaging the Cyprus question in
good faith, and resuscitating the process of legal reform. Another
important step would be to withdraw or substantially revise the
anti-terrorism bill, which in its current iteration is likely to be
overruled by the Constitutional Court. This scenario would, however,
also require the EU to reach out to Turkey on issues such as Cyprus,
which currently appears rather farfetched.
GRIM PROGNOSTICATIONS
Angry young men and children in the streets of Diyarbakýr say they do
not desire to return to the undeclared war of the 1990s, which left
more than 35,000 dead, thousands of villages burned and destroyed,
and more than a million people displaced from their villages into the
packed cities of the southeast as well as metropolises in the west.
They also affirm, however, that if `nothing changes,’ a `civil war
will break out’ for which they believe themselves to be
`well-prepared.’ In the absence of job opportunities, decent living
conditions, parliamentary representation for parties sensitive to
Kurdish concerns and government recognition of Kurdish grievances,
these grim prognostications deserve to be taken seriously.
What can be said with some degree of certainty is that the great
expectations vested in the AKP government and in the dream of a
shortcut to EU membership were illusory indeed. The government would
take a considerable political risk if it committed itself sincerely
to clearing the swamp of extralegal ultra-nationalist and mafia
organizations, nurtured during the decade of violent conflict in the
1990s, and their mentors in the state apparatus. Without such
resolve, a further escalation of violence in the southeast and an
increase in hostility between Turkish and Kurdish communities is
inescapable. What may happen even in the worst-case scenario is a
more realistic evaluation of Turkey’s capacity for and interest in
joining the EU. In the words of Philip Robins, Turkey is a
`double-gravity state,’ condemned by geography and history to exist
between and within the state systems of the Middle East and Europe.
In any case, before spring turns into summer in Diyarbakýr and the
rest of Turkey, there will be many cold days.

Washington Post, DC
June 3 2006
The Roots of Rage
An angry reporter blames a region’s turmoil on local despots and
Western meddling.
Reviewed by Stephen Humphreys
Sunday, June 4, 2006; Page BW06
THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION
The Conquest of the Middle East
By Robert Fisk
Knopf. 1,107 pp. $40
This is first of all a book about war — in particular, the wars that
have scarred the Middle East, from Afghanistan to Algeria, throughout
the author’s long career as a correspondent for the London Times and
then the Independent. It switches back and forth across the 20th
century in a way that seems driven more by stream of consciousness
than by any linear design, and, as befits its topic, it is a book of
almost unremitting violence. The author presents himself both as
unflinching witness and implacable judge of the events he recounts,
for he believes that he is telling a story of unrelenting perfidy and
betrayal — in part a story of Middle Easterners being betrayed by
themselves and their leaders, but mostly one of the Middle East being
betrayed by the power, greed and arrogance of the West.
Fisk has thrown himself into the fiery pit time after time, often at
grave personal risk — Afghanistan at the beginning of the long
struggle against the Soviets, the bloodbath of the 1980s Iran-Iraq
War, the civil war in Algeria after 1991, the second Palestinian
intifada since the fall of 2000. When he is not personally in the
midst of conflict and destruction, he evokes them, as in his lengthy
discussion of the Armenian deportations and massacres of World War I
or (in a different register) his treatment of the shah of Iran’s
prisons and torture chambers.
However Fisk regards himself, he is at bottom a war correspondent,
and the fabric of his book is woven largely from his battlefield
reporting. Fisk’s writing on war is vivid, graphic, intense and very
personal. Readers will encounter no “collateral damage” here, only
homes destroyed and bodies torn to shreds. At times, as one horror is
heaped upon another, it all seems too much to absorb or bear.
That intensity is both the book’s great strength and one of its
principal weaknesses. After reading it, no one can hide from the
immense human costs of the decisions made by generals and
politicians, Middle Eastern or otherwise. But Fisk portrays the
Middle East as a place of such unrelieved violence that the reader
can hardly imagine that anyone has enjoyed a single ordinary day
there over the past quarter-century. That picture is a serious
distortion. Life in the region is far from easy, but in spite of
endemic anxiety and frustration, most Middle Easterners, most of the
time, are able to get on tolerably well. Fisk says little about more
abstract, less violent issues such as economic stagnation, the
complexities of political Islam or the status of women. This gap is
not a weakness in itself — Fisk is writing about different themes —
but readers need to be aware that, despite its staggering length,
this book is not The Complete Middle East.
It may well be The Complete Robert Fisk, however. It is full of
autobiographical reminiscences about the author’s troubled but
intense relationship with his father, Bill; indeed, that relationship
provides the book’s title. The elder Fisk had been awarded a campaign
medal for his service in France in 1918, and the medal (which he
bequeathed to his son) was inscribed with the motto “The Great War
for Civilisation.” The bitter irony of that motto is underscored by
another gift, this one from the author’s grandmother to his father —
a boy’s novel, Tom Graham, V.C. , which recounts the adventures of a
young British soldier in Afghanistan in the late 19th century. For
the author, both the medal and the novel symbolize the West’s
arrogant and destructive intrusion in the Middle East throughout the
last century.
If this is a book about war, it is equally a book about the hypocrisy
and indifference of those in power. Fisk is an angry man and more
than a little self-righteous. No national leader comes off with a
scrap of credit here; he regards the lot of them with contempt, if
not loathing. Among the men in charge — whether Arab, Iranian,
Turkish, Israeli, British or American — there are no heroes and
precious few honorable people doing their inadequate best in
difficult situations. Jimmy Carter is lucky to escape with
condescension, King Hussein of Jordan with a bit better than that.
Fisk is not fond of the media either (though he grants some
exceptions); CNN and the New York Times are particular targets of his
scorn for what he sees as their abject failure to challenge the lies,
distortions and cover-ups of U.S. policymakers. Only among ordinary
people, entangled in a web of forces beyond their control, does Fisk
find a human mixture of courage, cowardice, charity and cruelty.
Given the present state of things in the Middle East, one is tempted
to agree with him. The mendacity and bland pomposity of the suits and
talking heads, both Western and Middle Eastern, are infuriating to
anyone who has any direct knowledge of what is going on there. Again,
however, there is a problem: Fisk excoriates politicians for the
awful suffering they have imposed on the peoples of the Middle East,
but he never seriously asks why they make the decisions they do or
what real alternatives they might have. It is all very well to flog
Western and Middle Eastern leaders for their ignorance, moral
blindness, lust for power, etc. That might instill shame and guilt
(though it rarely does), but it provides no serious principles or
criteria that serious policymakers might use to develop something
better.
In short, The Great War for Civilisation is a book of unquestionable
importance, given Fisk’s unmatched experience of war and its impact
in the contemporary Middle East and his capacity to convey that
experience in concrete, passionate language. Still, novices will find
themselves both overwhelmed by the book’s exhaustive detail and hard
put to follow the author’s leaps across countries and decades. The
Great War for Civilisation is also a deeply troubling book; it may
well confirm the conviction of many that the Middle East is incurably
sunk in violence and depravity and that only a fool would imagine it
could ever be redeemed. As tragic as the last three decades have
been, there are different lessons to be learned — one must hope so,
at least. ·
Stephen Humphreys is a professor of Middle Eastern history and
Islamic studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and
the author of “Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a
Troubled Age.”

Ottawa Citizen, Canada
June 3, 2006 Saturday
Final Edition
Armenia in lead in Turin
by Dave Willis, The Ottawa Citizen
The 37th Chess Olympiad in Turin, Italy, ends tomorrow. The young
Canadian team has had difficulty finding their stride, but the last
third of the event is the most important for final placings — Canada
will need some strong results in the final few rounds to improve
their standing.
After nine of 14 rounds, the current leaders are 1. Armenia (26.5
points from 36), 2. China (25.5), and 3. France (24). Pre-tournament
favourites, Russia, are tied for 4th with Ukraine and the U.S., all
with 23.5 points each. Canada has 18.5 points.
– – –
GM Ivan Sokolov (Netherlands) —
GM Levon Aronian (Armenia): Nimzo-Indian Defence
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 d5 5.cxd5 exd5 6.Bg5 c5!?
Black’s sharpest and rarest option in this position. As chess
journalists at the Olympiad website point out, England’s GM Nigel
Short scored a wild draw with this line against former World Champion
Garry Kasparov in 1993.
7.dxc5 h6 8.Bh4 g5 9.Bg3 Ne4 10.Bxb8?!
10.e3! is known, and leads to complex but balanced play. The text is
new, but may not be tried again after this game.
10…Qf6! 11.Bg3 Nxc3 12.a3 Bf5 13.Qd2 Ba5 14.b4?
This appears the real culprit, and again 14.e3!? is the only chance.
Black’s initiative is dangerous, but nothing is absolutely clear.
More to the point, White desperately needs to get his K-side pieces
out of the corral, and 14.e3 would at least be a step in this
direction.
14…Ne4 15.Qc1 Rc8!
A devastatingly simple move in hindsight. White is busted.
16.Ra2 Rxc5 17.Qa1 Qc6!! 18.Qe5+ Kd8!
It is OK to lose the rook with check, but not the bishop on f5!
19.Qxh8+ Kd7 White Resigns
A brilliant win by the young Armenian who is leading their on-form
team to a likely medal in these games.

The Daily Telegraph (LONDON)
June 3, 2006 Saturday
Armenia in the ascendant
by Malcolm Pein
ARMENIA look unstoppable now after a 10th round win over their
nearest rivals, China, at the 37th Chess Olympiad in Turin. Armenia
increased their lead to two points with three matches to play.
The holders, Ukraine, saw their chances of gold medals disappear
after a 1-3 loss to Russia. Peter Svidler and Evgeny Bareev won.
The United States and France drew 2-2 after Etienne Bacrot defeated
Gata Kamsky, but Laurent Fressinet, the French hero against Russia,
let Hikaru Nakamura escape with a draw in a lost endgame two pawns
down.
Scotland had a good result in defeating Australia 2.5-1.5, although
John Shaw lost his unbeaten record and their reward was an 11th round
match against England. That is not the only all-British tie in the
next round because Guernsey are playing Jersey.
England lost 1.5-2.5 to Belarus. Danny Gormally was beaten again
after outplaying his highly rated opponent with black, but going
wrong near move 40. He has lost his last three and is flying home
early.
With the Fide presidential election imminent, both “The Right Move”
ticket, led by Bessel Kok, and the incumbent, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov,
were campaigning hard. There have been allegations of irregularities
already, with the Afghanistan delegation being replaced at the start
of the event.
The supermodel Carmen Kass, who is president of the Estonian
federation, jetted in, apparently to replace her Fide delegate, who
it was thought was going to vote for Ilyumzhinov.
Leaders: 1 Armenia 29; 2 China 27; 3-4 Russia, Czech Republic 26.5; 5
France 26; 6 US 25.5; 39 England 22.5; 47 Scotland 22; 53 Ireland
21.5; 92 Wales 19; 133 Guernsey 15; 135 Jersey 15; 148 teams.
P Svidler – A Volokitin
37th Olympiad, Turin (10)
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Nxc6 bxc6 7.Bd3 d5
8.0-0 Nf6 9.Qe2 Be7 10.b3 0-0 11.Bb2 c5 12.Rad1 Bb7 13.Na4 (Odd, but
it avoids any possible pawn d5-d4 with tempo followed by e6-e5 and
prepares to play pawn c2-c4. Also the Bb2 is opened up) 13…Qc7
(13…c4!? 14.bxc4 Qa5 15.e5 Nd7 16.Nc3 d4 17.Ne4 Nxe5 18.Bxd4 is
good for White) 14.exd5 Nxd5 (14…exd5 15.Rfe1 is annoying because
if 15…Rfe8 16.Bxf6 forces gxf6 because of the bank rank. If
14…Bxd5 15.Be5 Qc6 16.f3 threatens c2-c4 trapping the bishop and if
16…Qb7 17.Qe3 intending Bxf6 and c2-c4 with an edge) 15.Be5! Qc6
(15…Bd6 16.Bxd6 Qxd6 17.c4 Nf4 18.Bxh7+ Kh8 19.Qe3 Nxg2 20.Rxd6
Nxe3 21.fxe3 Kxh7 22.Nxc5 with total domination, 22…Rab8 23.Rb6)
16.Be4 f6 (16…Nf4 17.Qg4! wins) 17.c4! Rfd8 (17…fxe5 18.cxd5 and
Black cannot recapture; or 17…Nf4 18.Bxf4 Qxe4 19.Qxe4 Bxe4 20.Bd6
wins a pawn) 18.Qh5! fxe5 (18…g6 19.Bxg6 hxg6 20.Qxg6+ Kh8 21.Rd3)
19.Qxh7+ Kf8 20.cxd5 exd5 21.f4! exf4 (21…dxe4 22.fxe5+ wins)
22.Bg6 (Threat Qh8 mate) 22…Qe6 23.Qh8+ Qg8 24.Rxf4+ Bf6 25.Rxf6+!
1-0
Volokitin
Svidler
Final position after 25.Rxf6+! and if 25…gxf6 26.Qxf6+ Qf7 27.Qxf7
mate

Canberra Times (Australia)
June 3, 2006 Saturday
Final Edition
On the right tack
EXCITING news that Canberra artist Elefteria Vlavianos has a solo
show of new paintings, at the Hawthorn Town Hall in Melbourne until
June 24. The title, Metaphor for Longing, hints at the artist’s
concerns with memory and cultural heritage in the formation of
individual identity. A recurring device is a short, fine line which
she calls a “tack”, the stitch used in textile construction and
repairs, which she relates to heritage items and keepsakes – objects
important to her own identity as the daughter of a Greek father and
an Armenian mother. I saw several of her paintings hanging in the
residence of a high commissioner in Deakin recently, and many readers
may recognise her work from the recent ANU painting alumni
exhibition, which is travelling to the Sydney College of the Arts and
to the Victorian College of the Arts in the next few months.
While we’re on fabulous Canberra artists, I caught up with Robert
Boynes’s show In Real Time at the Manly Art Gallery and Museum last
weekend. What an amazing setting. You almost mistake the view through
the windows for the works on the walls. The work in this show is
largely in Boynes’s present-day idiom -screenprints of photographs
later worked in paint to give the impression of human figures moving
in the urban landscape. The show runs until June 18.
That powerhouse of artistic activity, the Tuggeranong Arts Centre, is
launching a film- society season tomorrow at 4pm, with a screening of
The Year My Voice Broke (PG).
There will be a discussion and tea and coffee after each film, which
will screen on Sundays until October 15. The season of 15 films costs
$35. Phone 62931443.
A jam-packed function at Teatro Vivaldi restaurant in the ANU Arts
Centre on Tuesday celebrated two years of operation. Not only has
Vivaldi become a hub of fine eating and, as the owners Mark Santos
and Anthony Hill say, “a less intimidating point of contact between
town and gown”, but it has filled the gap in Canberra’s cabaret
entertainment, with top shows and good local artists.
The National Institute of Dramatic Art has announced the world
premiere of a new play by Timothy Daly, to open in late June. Beach:
A Theatrical Fantasia covers nearly 250 years of our country’s
history, as seen from the “national arena” of the beach. With more
than 140 roles, it is claimed to be the largest-scale Australian play
to be seen on our stages in recent years. From Governor Phillip to
Gallipoli, from beach cricket to shark attacks, from legal arrivals
to illegal drop-offs, from the death of a Prime Minister to the
murder of innocent children, Beach is billed as a national journey.
Directed by NIDA’s acting tutor Kevin Jackson, it will be performed
by third-year graduating acting students, with production by
full-time technical production, scenery construction, design and
production students. If you’re at NIDA’s open day today, you can pick
up tickets for Beach at the box office at the discounted price of
$15/$10. The play will be at 215 Anzac Parade, Kensington, from June
22 to July 1.
Bookings on 132849 or

Herald Sun (Australia)
June 3, 2006 Saturday
FIRST Edition
All eyes on Aussie Vic
by BARRY MICHAEL
THE world boxing spotlight will be on Vic ”Raging Bull” Darchinyan
when he defends his IBF/IBO flyweight title in Las Vegas tomorrow.
Darchinyan, Australia’s only reigning world boxing champion, will get
huge international exposure when he makes his fourth title defence,
against Mexican Luis Maldonado.
This fight is the main supporting bout to the third battle between
Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo for the WBC lightweight title
at the Thomas and Mack Centre.
Darchinyan is at the peak of his career. The 30-year-old is
undefeated in 25 fights.
Darchinyan is a powerhouse for this weight division, a southpaw who
throws punches with bad intentions from the first bell.
He faces tough opposition here with Maldonado bringing to the ring an
impressive record of 33 wins, one draw and no losses with 25 of his
wins by knockout.
It looms as a great fight between two undefeated warriors who will
wage war from the first bell.
I believe Darchinyan is the strongest flyweight in the world at the
moment and I would be surprised if Maldonado is around to hear the
final bell.
Darchinyan is Armenian-born but now a proud Australian having stayed
in Australia since the 2000 Olympics where Jeff Fenech convinced him
to join his team.
In the fight for the WBC lightweight title, I believe Jose Luis
Castillo will repeat his effort from their last bout by knocking out
Diego Corrales again.
Their first fight saw Corrales out on his feet before clawing his way
back to stop Castillo.
Their second encounter was controversial as Castillo didn’t make the
weight but went on to score a crushing knockout.

Weekend Australian
June 3, 2006 Saturday
All-round Country Edition
Chess
MATP
by Phil Viner
A SMALL country with a big chess tradition, Armenia, defeated a big
country with a shorter tradition in the international form of the
game, China, by 2.5 points to 1.5, to establish a clear lead after
the 10th round of the 37th Chess Olympiad in Turin, Italy.
The main contenders, with three rounds to play, are Armenia on 29
points (from 40 games), China on 27, Russia and the Czech Republic on
26.5.
Vladimir Kramnik, due to play Veselin Topalov later this year for the
reunified world title, is doing well as anchor man for the Russian
team, but this is not proving sufficient.
Here is the Russian’s fifth-round win over his Armenian opponent, a
positional masterpiece.
White: Kramnik. Black: Levon Aronian. 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 b6 3.g3 c5 4.Bg2
Bb7 5.0-0 g6 6.d4 cxd4 7.Qxd4 Bg7 8.Nc3 d6 9.Rd1 Nbd7 10.Be3 Rc8
11.Rac1 a6 12.b3 0-0 13.Qh4 Rc7 14.Bh3 Qb8 15.Bg5 (A novelty.) Bxf3?!
(Surrenders the light squares.) 16.exf3 b5 17.Bxd7 Rxd7 18.Nd5! Nxd5
19.cxd5 Rc7 20.Rc6! Rxc6 21.dxc6 Rc8 22.Rc1! e6 23.Bd2 Qc7 24.a4! d5
25.axb5 axb5 26.Qb4 Rb8 27.Qa3 Bd4 28.Qa6 Be5 29.f4 Bd6 30.Ba5 Qc8
31.Qa7 Ra8 32.Qb6 Rb8 33.Qd4! b4 34.c7! Ra8 35.Qb6 Bf8 36.Bxb4 Bxb4
37.Qxb4 Qe8. Black resigned.
Australia has scored 21 points. Individual results: Ian Rogers 2.5/5,
David Smerdon 5/8, Zong-Yuan Zhao 5/8, Gary Lane 2/7, Aleks Wohl 6/7,
Nick Speck 1/6. Further match results: round five, v South Africa,
3.5-0.5; round six, Albania, 1.5-2.5; round seven, Luxembourg,
2.5-1.5; round eight, Qatar, 2.5-1.5; round nine, Egypt, 1.5-2.5;
round 10, Scotland, 1.5-2.5.
In the women’s Olympiad being played concurrently, Ukraine holds a
slender lead with 23/30 over Russia on 22.5 and China on 20.5.
The Australian women’s team has 14 points: Irina Berezina 4.5/9,
Laura Moylan 2.5/7, Arianne Caoili 3/7, Ngan Phan-Koshnitsky 4/7.
Further match results: round five, v Slovenia, 0-3; round six,
Algeria, 3-0; round seven, Vietnam, 0-3; round eight, Kyrgyzstan,
0-3; round nine, Guatemala, 2.5-0.5; round 10, Moldova, 0.5-2.5.
The massive oval at Lingotto, Turin, the site of ice-skating events
at the Winter Olympics, provides ample space for the players and
spectators as well as for ancillary events. It is linked to the
Olympic village by a long, hi-tech walkway over railway lines. The
village is a large administrative and residential complex, with
nearly 40 apartment buildings, most six storeys, housing the players
and officials.
The next Olympiad will be in Dresden, Germany, in 2008. So far there
have been four bids for the following event in 2010: from Latvia
(Riga), Montenegro (Budva), Poland (Posnan) and a now autonomous
Siberian region, Khanty-Mansyisk, which staged last year’s World Cup.
At the eleventh hour, Garry Kasparov has issued an open letter
supporting Bessel Kok’s bid for the presidency of FIDE, the
International Chess Federation. It is likely, however, that the minds
of most national federations have been made up.
The starting dates of forthcoming Myer Tan Grand Prix weekend
tournaments are: Foundation Day Open in Perth, today; Victorian Open
in Melbourne, NSW Open in Sydney, Tasmanian Open in Hobart and the
Queen’s Birthday Weekender in South Australia, all June 10.
* Last week’s solutions: (1) 1.Rb7 Kc8 2.Rb5 c1=Q 3.Rc5 Qxc5
stalemate. (2) Key 1.b8=N. If 1…Bxb8 2.Qc8 mate, Bd8/Kf8 Qf7X, Rf8
Qd7X, Rh5 Qg8X.

Weekend Australian
June 3, 2006 Saturday
NSW Country Edition
Moldovan enclave wants independence
by Jeremy Page, Richard Beeston
MOST people would struggle to point out Pridnestrovskaya Moldavskaya
Respublika on a map, let alone pronounce it.
Those who can, know it as a hotbed of smuggling, the site of a vast
Soviet-era weapons dump, or perhaps the home of Sheriff Tiraspol
football club.
However, this tiny sliver of land, known in English as Transdniestr,
is the latest European enclave to make a bid for independence
following Montenegro’s decision to declare statehood last month.
Igor Smirnov, Transdniestr’s ”President”, has announced that its
550,000 people will vote in a referendum in September on whether to
seek formal independence from Moldova.
”The recent example of Montenegro proves that a referendum is
becoming a norm for solving conflicts,” said Mr Smirnov, 64, a
former metalworker.
In the unlikely event that Transdniestr wins independence, it would
become Europe’s 19th new country since the collapse of communism in
1989.
Montenegro’s example has kindled hopes that even tiny enclaves in
Europe’s forgotten corners can still become viable states. The fear
is that declarations of independence by mini-states could spark fresh
instability in unstable regions.
In the Balkans, Montenegro’s independence drive is likely to be
followed by Kosovo, a predominantly ethnic Albanian province of
Serbia. That could spark moves by the ethnic Serb Republika Srpska to
break away from Bosnia, and Herceg-Bosna’s Croats to join Croatia.
In the Caucasus, Russia is still struggling to contain the separatist
rebellion in Chechnya. Georgia is split by breakaway regions in
Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There is still no resolution to
Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed enclave in Azerbaijan that is controlled
by Armenia.
Transdniestr broke away from Moldova in 1990 and the two sides fought
a war in 1992 that left more than 1500 people dead. Although never
recognised internationally, it has close ties to Russia, which helped
the ethnic Russians in the war and has maintained 1500 troops there.
Officially, they are there to keep the peace and guard a stockpile of
40,000 tonnes of weapons stored there in case of a NATO invasion. In
reality, this remains Moscow’s westernmost strategic outpost — a
bulwark against the expanding European Union and NATO.
It is also a haven for money-laundering, smuggling and illegal
weapons sales.
Mr Smirnov runs it as a personal fiefdom, financed by local oligarchs
and propped up by nostalgia for the Soviet Union. It has its own
currency based on the old Soviet rouble, uses the old Soviet Moldovan
flag and stages annual Soviet-style military parades. Shop windows
display tawdry goods from the 1970s and 1980s. The only redeeming
feature is Moldova’s only FIFA-approved football stadium, home to the
country’s top football club, Sheriff Tiraspol.
Peace talks, mediated by the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe, have stalled over Transdniestr’s refusal to
accept autonomy within a Moldovan state. Russia has backed the
referendum.
Karel De Gucht, the Belgian Foreign Minister and OSCE chairman, has
said there is no legal basis for a referendum and urged both sides to
negotiate.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
June 2, 2006 Friday 04:42 PM EST
A-320 flight recorders handed over to forensics
Investigators from the Prosecutor General’s Office have transferred
to experts the flight recorders of a A-320 jet of Armenian Airlines,
which crashed near Sochi on May 3.
“Forensic experts and specialists from the Interstate Aviation
Committee are studying the flight recorders,” a source at the
Prosecutor General’s Office said on Friday. “The DNA tests of bodily
fragments are underway.”
Transport Minister Igor Levitin said earlier that it would take 1.5-2
months to decipher information form the flight recorders. The
commission will have to analyze about 300 parameters. Armenian
experts will take part in the investigation, as the crew spoke
Armenian.
The crash killed 113 people, and over 100 aggrieved parties have been
named in the case. The investigation is being done in close
cooperation with Armenians.

ANSA Notiziario Generale in Italiano
2/6/ 2006
SCACCHI: OLIMPIADI; ARMENIA A UN PASSO DAL TITOLO
TORINO
(ANSA) – TORINO, 2 GIU – L’ Armenia e’ ormai a un passo dall’
aggiudicarsi le Olimpiadi di scacchi, in corso a Torino. Oggi l’
incontenibile compagine caucasica ha mietuto l’ ennesima
vittoria – un 3-1 a spese della Repubblica Ceca – e, a due turni
dalla conclusione, ha aumentato il suo distacco sulle
inseguitrici.

Adesso solo un crollo nel finale puo’ impedire alla squadra
trascinata dal ventitreenne Levon Aronian di vincere – e sarebbe
la prima volta nella storia degli scacchi – la medaglia d’ oro.
La classifica del torneo generale (cui partecipano 158 squadre)
vede al comando l’ Armenia con 32 punti, poi Cina e Francia a
28.5. Fra i risultati spicca la vittoria della Francia sulla
Cina (2.5- 1.5) e la sconfitta della Russia, grande favorita
della vigilia, per 1.5-2.5 ad opera degli Stati Uniti (i quali
pero’ hanno schierato tre ex sovietici).

Le italiane navigano a meta’ classifica. Oggi si e’ visto il
derby fra Italia A e Italia B, terminato 2-2. Italia C/Provincia
di Torino e’ stata opposta allo Zambia e ha perso 1.5-2.5, anche
se la sconfitta non ha sorpreso gli osservatori. Gli africani,
infatti, hanno dimostrato un’ abilita’ non comune: arrivati a
Torino in ritardo, sono stati inseriti nel torneo solo a partire
dal terzo turno (il regolamento lo consente) ma sono riusciti a
rimontare posizioni su posizioni, battendo anche squadre piu
titolate.

Le azzurre del “femminile” hanno pareggiato (1.5-1.5):
Italia A con la Finlandia e Italia B con la Scozia. (ANSA).