ANDRE IS THE EIGHTH: FRIENDSHIP WON
Lragir.am
21 May 06
The final of Eurovision took place in Athens. On first participation,
Andre, Armenia, got 129 points and took the eighth place. The rock
band from Finland won, and next year the song contest will be held in
Finland. Russia was the second, Bosnia & Herzegovina was the third.
Romania, Belgium, Lithuania, Cyprus, Netherlands, Ukraine, Russia,
Poland, France, Belarus, Germany, Spain, Moldova, Israel, Greece,
Bulgaria and Turkey gave points to Andre. Belgium and Russia have 12
points. For its part, Armenia gave 12 points to the Russian singer
Dima Bilan.
The Eurovision vote resembled a `regional cooperation’ and certain
tendencies could be figured out. First, one could feel the solidarity
of neighboring countries to vote for one another. For instance, the
Balkan states, Scandinavia, Northern Europe, the Baltic States and the
three Slavonic states ` exchanged’ the highest points. The next
important peculiarity is that these courtiers usually have political
problems, such as the Baltic States with Russia, the former
Yugoslavian countries with one another, and such a vote was intended
to mollify political confrontations. In this context, Turkey did give
a surprise to the Armenians, giving 10 points to Andre.

Russia favored Armenia at the Eurovision Song Contest
12:08 05/21/2006
Russia and Armenia exchanged a maximum score of 12 points at the
Eurovision-2006 Song Contest. Notably, the CIS countries that
participated in the contest showed a measure of solidarity. Ukraine
generously granted Russia 12 points, whereas Russians scored a
Ukrainian singer 10 (second highest point). Byelorussia scored
Armenia 8 (third highest), Ukraine 10, and Russia the maximum 12
points. It is noteworthy that Armenian singer received 10 points from
Turkish pop music fans.

The 52nd Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Finland in 2007, The
Finnish Lordi group won the 51st contest that ended last night in
Athens. Their song `Hard Rock Hallelujah’ received the total score of
297 points. Dima Bilan from Russia was voted second best by receiving
243 points. The Khara Mata Khari group from Bosnia that presented the
`Leila’ song ranked third. Ukraine was the seventh with 145
points. Armenian pop-artist André ranked eighth.

24 countries took part in the contest. Out of that total, 14 had been
included automatically and 10 were rated by the TV audience during the
semifinal vote. The contest final was staged in an indoor stadium in
Athens. 14, 000 people were watching the show inside the stadium, and
millions around the world saw it live on TV.

Ruling parties gain in Cyprus parliament elections
e/printpage.php?url=3Dhttp://www.financialmirror.c om/more_news.php?id=3D3898&type=3Dst
21/05/200 6
AKEL, DISY get 18 seats each, DIKO has 10
Most of the parties comprising the ruling coalition administration
gained ground in the Cyprus parliamentary elections Sunday, but the
island=80=99s two main rival parties lost seats and a smaller party
chief resigned after he failed to enter the House of Representatives.
In all, 487 candidates challenged the 56 seats in parliament, a mainly
legislative and non-executive body, while the island-state’s president
is elected directly by the people.
The main coalition partner, the communist AKEL, shed 3.4 percentage
points from its voters and polled 31.2% of the votes, entering
parliament with 18 deputies, two less than in the previous assembly.
`AKEL, has been and will remain the first party of Cyprus, a
democratic communist party unlike any other in Europe,’ declared party
Secretary General and parliament president Demetris Christofias.
Despite earlier projection by exit polls that it would be the largest
party in parliament, Cyprus=80=98 opposition Democratic Rally (DISY)
won 30.3% of the votes, shedding 3.7 percentage points losing a seat
and will now have 18 deputies in the House.
`We were attacked on all fronts, even from inside, but those who
abandoned us failed to break up the party,’ said DISY president and
member of the European People’s Party executive council, Nicos
Anastassiades.
The clear winner in these elections is the Democratic Party (DIKO) of
President Tassos Papadopoulos that raised its voter strength by three
percentage points to 17.9% and gained a new seat, rising to 10
deputies.
One of the newcomers is the president’s son, Nicholas Papadopoulos.
Speaking before exit poll reports, Papadopoulos said that the
elections were finished and that democracy does not have any winners
or losers: “The only winners is democracy and our country, which shows
a political and cultural maturity.”
Political analysts say that this outcome will also boost
Papadopoulos=80=98 party which will have enough public support to seek
a second term in office in 2008, while coalition partner AKEL, though
still the biggest party, has now lesser chances of putting forward its
own candidate for president.
The social-democrat EDEK, which has two ministers in
Papadopoulos=80=98present cabinet, also improved despite earlier
predictions of a loss, earning 8.9%of the votes and five seats,
gaining one new deputy.
“We are happy because we have increased out parliamentary presence,”
said honorary party president Vasos Lyssarides.
The European Party (Evroko) – created by four deputies who left DISY
two years ago and merged with the nationalist New Horizons and the
single-seatADIK – recorded a marginal gain to 5.7% with four seats in
the new parliament.
The Green Party/Ecologist Movement made no gains, ending the day with
1.9% of the vote and just one seat, while the party had been hopeful
it would get a second deputy.
The United Democrats (EDI) of former president George Vassiliou was
the biggest loser of the day, failing to reach the threshold of 1.8%
in order to enter the House of Representatives.
The party’s present president, Michalis Papapetrou, handed in his
resignation and called for an early party congress in June to elect a
new leadership.
`It’s a shame that our policies were not accepted by the public,’
Papapetrou said, referring to EDI’s open support of the United Nations
peace plan, dubbed the `Annan Plan’, that was rejected by the
majorityof the Greek Cypriot community in April 2004.
Meanwhile, the island’s three ethnic and religious minorities alsowent
to the polls to elect a representative in parliament.
Newcomer Vartkes Mahdessian won the seat for the Armenians, incumbent
Antonis Hadjiroussos won a second term for the Maronites and Benito
Mantovani won a third successive term for the Latin community.

Vatican official calls on Azerbaijan, Armenia to compromise over Karabakh

ANS TV, Baku
21 May 06
[Presenter] The settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh problem depends on
both sides. The sides should make some compromises, the Vatican’s
Secretary for Relations with States Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, has
said. He wants displaced people to return to their homeland.
[Correspondent] The Vatican wants the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict to be
resolved soon and displaced people to return to their homeland,
Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, who is in Baku on a visit, has said. He
said that the settlement of any conflict required compromises from the
sides.
[Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, speaking in English with Azeri
voice-over] The Catholic Church feels sorry for people forced to leave
their homes and property. This is very dramatic for them [as heard].
We cannot say which way is the best to resolve the conflict. This is
up to the responsible people, to Azerbaijani and Armenian politicians
to decide. However, compromises and even s acrifices by both sides
are vital for the settlement of the conflict.
[Correspondent] Lajolo highly valued the fact that Muslims and
Christians live in conditions of religious tolerance in Azerbaijan and
said he would visit the site of a new Catholic church to be
constructed in Baku.
He did not forget Catholic Christians living in Azerbaijan and
attended a service at the Roman Catholic Church in Baku.
[Passage omitted: itinerary of Lajolo’s visit to Baku]

Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
May 22 2006
What! Ten points for Armenia?
21 May 2006, Sunday
JTW Ankara
This week was such a mess and yesterday night was the crème of the
whole week. Eurovision song contest 2006 was a near-tragedy for
Turkey. Honestly, it was a tragedy. But there is a good news and a
bad one. Good news is we just gave 4 points to Greece and they gave a
miserable 3 points to us. That means we are still enemies, so my
columnist career can survive.
Bad news is, and it is really bad, we gave 10 points to Armenia. Read
it: Turkey has given 10 points to Armenia. What is happening? You
lazy Turkish viewers, learn something from the holy Armenians, don’t
you! No points to Turkey. That is the enemy spirit. Well done boys!
So how come Turks have given 10 points to their troublemaker
neighbors? Before analyzing that, I will try to find out the reasons.
First theory is, there are lots of Armenians living in Turkey, but
there are no Turks living in Armenia. In the past, two Turks to save
Armenian allegations have visited Armenia. One of them attacked, the
other one jailed. Actually they were secret Turkish agents to
manipulate the voting in Armenia. Our grand national strategy was to
accommodate them in Yerivan and let them vote for Turkey during this
year’s Eurovision final. But our plan has been disrupted by clever
and drunk Armenians.
Second one is, Armenian cell phone users can use Turkish mobile
operators, but Turkish cell phone users can not use Armenian
operators. Hmm, I have no idea about this theory, but this is the
beauty of being a journalist. If you have a reliable source, it
becomes news, if you do not have, it becomes newsiction
(news+fiction)
The third and the least likely one is, we love Armenians but they
hate us. Actually this is the opposite. Armenians need their
compassionate love for Turks to unite in the Diasporas or to
brainwash their kids with their unilateral view of the history. But
we do not need Armenians for defining our national identity. But,
they love us such that they build monuments around the world with
both our nations name on it: `Armenians & Turks’…. Not reaaally a
love…. we only have problems with the verbs on these monuments!
So, what made Turks vote for Armenia! If this was a question in the
Turkish secondary schools entrance exam, the likely answers will be :
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 1st and 3rd, none of them, all of them. The answer is
none of them.
Before writing some more nonsense about the Armenian entry, I would
like to say a few words about our song. `Superstar’, the Turkish
entry, was not really bad. But it was missing what Sebnem Paker and
Sertab Erener’s songs achieved. And that is something about Turkish
culture!. I do not expect doner&kebap and baklava there, but at least
there should be something related to Turkish music culture. We have a
rich culture and we should have made the best out of it.
Now back to subject. This year’s Armenian song and last year’s Greek
song were having more Anatolian sounds than the Turkish songs of
these years. Last year, the Greek song was popular in Turkey even
months after the Eurovision final. Don’t get surprised, if Armenian
song repeats that.
Nevertheless, there may be a political voting effect as well. In the
last three years (or more) Turkey has given at least one of its big
points to Orthodox world. The other one has gone to culturally close
friends. (Like Bosnia this year-12 points). But the
Anatolian-familiar sound was the dominant effect, I guess.
It is this familiar sound and Turkish people’s good intention -which
I lack because I was sleeping during the contest- that awarded 10
points to Armenia. Now reverse the previous sentence and it explains
the 0 points that Armenia generously gave to Turkey.
As a result, I am proud of my fellow citizens and not very proud but
fine with the Turkish song. Turks has something that most of the
world needs now. As (lazy) Turkish viewers demonstrated last night,
Turks have the positive attitude and constructive efforts that is
nearly extinct in this world. Maybe Turks are not good song writers
or performers, but still Turkish people have better intentions to
build a peaceful future for the next generations. That is what I was
proud of, this morning.

San Francisco Chronicle, CA
May 21 2006
History proves me right, says Saudi’s maverick prince
Son of kingdom’s founder still fights for social reform
Anthony Shadid, Washington Post
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — The coffee was served, then the dates. And at
that, Prince Talal, the son of Saudi Arabia’s founder and long the
ruling family’s bete noire, smiled wryly. “This is what we used to
live on,” he said, “dates and camel’s milk.”
It was his way of saying: To look ahead, sometimes we need to look
back.
Talal is 75 now, still tall and formidable, with a glimmer of
defiance as he smoked a cigarette, cautiously doled out by an aide.
But humbled by back pain, he is a shadow of the man once known as
Saudi Arabia’s “Red Prince.” The color represented his politics, a
leftist bent that as a young man turned him against the ruling Saud
family, shook the kingdom and led him into exile in Lebanon and
Egypt.
His voice is softer these days, mellowed perhaps by failure, but the
words about his family remain remarkably the same.
“Here, the family is the master and the ruler,” he said of his
brothers and cousins, as he sat at Fakhariya Palace. “This style
can’t continue the same way. There has to be change in the nature of
authority, if things are going to change in the kingdom itself.”
Talal is many things: for 50 years, the most liberal figure in a
family that remains the most conservative and traditional of the
Persian Gulf’s monarchies and tribal dynasties; a philanthropist who
brings a ruthlessness to business that he once saved for politics; a
glimmer of light for the kingdom’s liberals, many of whom acknowledge
that change in Saudi Arabia will probably only come under the
auspices of religion and its modernization, not through the secular
talk of civil society and individual rights.
Perhaps most compelling, though, is that Talal takes a debate about
democratic reform in the Arab world, defined lately by the Bush
administration, and illustrates a broader, more enduring context, one
that speaks to experience rather than promise. His calls for change
are little different from those in the 1950s and ’60s, when he was
dismissed as a communist sympathizer; he remains a critic of U.S.
policy, citing Iraq’s trauma as the latest example. To Talal, the
battle itself is not new, only the players.
“The world has changed, not me,” he said. “History has proved the
rightness of what I was talking about.
“Some of the members of the family were against those ideas,” he
said. “Now they’re talking about them.”
These days, Talal advocates a constitution that would bind an
absolute monarchy by law, “a social contract between the ruler and
those who are ruled.” The parliament, now an appointed, relatively
toothless body known as the Consultative Council, would be at least
partially elected, with the right to oversee the budget, monitor the
government and question ministers, he said.
Women? “Right now, we have more than 2 million female students,” he
said, shaking his head. “When they graduate, where are they going to
go? Either you close the schools and leave them to illiteracy or you
grant them an opportunity to work.”
He laughed. “Can you imagine, can anyone imagine, that women cannot
drive in Saudi Arabia?” he said.
His list went on: Progress is impeded by “the opposition of religious
extremists.” The religious establishment, long the allies of his
family, should stand aside as the country forges a division of power
— judicial, executive and legislative. Along the way, the kingdom,
he said, must determine the mechanism of passing the monarchy from
the aging sons of the country’s founder to their grandsons before
simmering rivalries between the branches of the House of Saud flare
into the open.
“The goal remains the same,” he said, “the participation of people in
forming opinions and making decisions.”
The same words, a different era: “Now we’re freed from the notion of
the Red Prince, the name the Americans gave me.”
Talal was reputed to be the favorite son of Abdel-Aziz ibn Saud, the
desert warrior who became king in 1932, eventually siring Talal and
35 other recognized heirs, the descendants of an array of marriages
that cemented his connections with the country’s fractious tribes.
Talal’s mother was a servant — some say of Circassian origins,
others Armenian — who, it is said, eventually became his favorite
wife.
Talal was among the savvier of the children, spending time in Beirut,
where he married Mona al-Solh, the daughter of Lebanon’s first
post-independence prime minister. (One of their children, Walid bin
Talal, is a billionaire Saudi investor.) It was an introduction to
the pan-Arab aspirations of the leading al-Solh family and a taste of
the cosmopolitanism that Beirut was forging.
The years after Abdel-Aziz’s death in 1953 were unsettled. Power was
inherited by his eldest son, Saud, a spendthrift more adept at
showering largesse on the tribes than administering the country. His
brothers soon contested his rule, and Talal navigated the rivalries
for influence. Early on, the present Saudi king, Abdullah, was an
ally, and in time as a minister, Talal began pushing for reform — a
constitution, elections, a parliament and free press. Together, he
and his allies became known as the “Free Princes,” a name taken from
the Free Officers who overthrew Egypt’s monarchy in 1952 and were
eventually led by Gamal Abdel-Nasser.
He admits now to moving too fast.
“We were too young,” he said. “We wanted 100 percent, but if we took
50, even 60 percent, we would have been blessed.”
King Saud rejected the idea of a constitution, and Talal bitterly
criticized the decision in statements to Egyptian and Lebanese
newspapers. When Talal went for vacation in Beirut in 1961, the king
moved against him, declaring him persona non grata.
He recalled the confrontation at the Saudi Embassy in Beirut as the
ambassador asked him and his brothers to turn over their travel
documents: “I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘I don’t have reasons, it’s the
order of King Saud.’ I said, ‘If the passport is the property of
Saud, go ahead. If the passport is the property of the kingdom, then
I have every right to keep it.’ And I gave him the passport.”
Talal and four brothers sought help in 1962 from Nasser, who had
electrified a generation with promises of Arab unity, the liberation
of Palestine and denunciations of regimes he deemed regressive, Saudi
Arabia among them. Unlike most of the Saudi royal family, Talal was
enamored with the Egyptian president as a leader — he feels the same
today, he said — but he feared being exploited.
“I said to Nasser, we came here just for the passports because we
want to go Lebanon. I didn’t want to stay with him. I knew his
policy. I knew his way of thinking,” Talal said. “He told me, ‘I’ll
give you 500 passports.’ ”
The passports didn’t come for two months. In the meantime, Talal
spoke on the Voice of the Arabs, a Cairo-based radio station that
often carried Nasser’s stentorian voice. The speeches — denouncing
Saudi Arabia’s rulers and calling for democratic reform — solidified
his reputation as the Red Prince.
It was another two years before he mended fences and returned to
Saudi Arabia.
For years, Talal remained silent, amassing a fortune and running a
philanthropy. But in recent years, he has begun pressing the issue of
reform again, often from Fakhariya Palace. To him, the family can
bring about change by redefining its role.
“In the 21st century, the king should be the guardian of the law, but
the laws and legislation should come from the people, and the people
should elect the members of the parliament,” Talal said, sitting next
to a rendering of the family tree.
He retains his suspicion of U.S. intentions. He traveled last week to
Egypt, speaking at the American University of Cairo. He was relaxed,
in a crisp, dark suit and maroon tie. At one point, he urged women in
the audience to ask questions. As he did 45 years ago, he tried to
distance his country’s needs for reform from U.S. policy in the
region.
“Does America want direct and transparent elections that allow the
people to make their own decisions in choosing who will be in power?”
Talal said, in reference to the success of Islamic activists in
recent elections in Egypt and the Palestinian territories. “Or are we
tailoring elections to the United States that serve American
interests?”
In the mercurial politics of the House of Saud, Talal’s role is
debated. He is a member of the family council, a body of 18
influential members drawn from Abdel-Aziz’s son and grandsons and
other branches. Some say he has the ear of Abdullah, and his son,
Prince Turki, says he talks to the king once a week.
Others discount any special influence, and in private, some princes
are especially venomous about Talal’s past.
Talal, these days a little hard of hearing, doesn’t claim influence.
At the end of his story, he posed for a picture. He decided to don
his headdress, reluctantly. Tradition still doesn’t sit well.
“I hate to wear this,” he said.

Salt Lake Tribune, Utah
May 21 2006
A tightly woven family tradition
Utahn keeps art of Armenian rug-weaving alive
By Brandon Griggs
The Salt Lake Tribune

George Aposhian Jr. and his daughter, Diane Moffat, display a rug.
(Danny Chan La/The Salt Lake Tribune )

As a structural engineer, George Aposhian Jr. helped design
buildings. As a rugmaker, he knots ornate wool carpets. Guess which
project takes more time.
“It doesn’t take as long to build a skyscraper as it does to make
a carpet,” says the Holladay man, whose first carpet took him nine
years to finish. “It takes a lot of patience.”
That patience will be on display this afternoon at the 21st annual
Living Traditions Festival, where Aposhian and his daughter Diane
will demonstrate the time-honored and time-consuming art of Armenian
rug-weaving. It’s a skill Aposhian learned from his father, who
learned it from his father.
The carpets are beautiful and functional, but to Aposhian they are
more than that – they are physical links to his Armenian heritage.
The first rug he made was based on a decorative pattern passed down
by his grandfather, who immigrated to Utah in 1909. Without his
carpets, the man may not have completed the journey.
The story, and it’s a good one, goes like this: Zadik Moses
Aposhian was a successful rug merchant in Turkey in 1898 when two LDS
missionaries gave him a copy of The Book of Mormon. He read the book
in three days, felt divinely inspired and, along with his wife,
Catherine, converted to Mormonism three weeks later.
But the Aposhians’ new religion did not sit well with the other
Turks in their village, who shunned them and stopped buying Zadik’s
rugs. After a decade of persecution, the Aposhians decided to flee
with their seven children to Utah. It was an arduous journey that
took them from Turkey to Lebanon, to Egypt, to France and then to
England. Along the way they were robbed twice.
Their odyssey stalled in Liverpool, where Zadik was forced to work
as a laborer to support his family. To fund their trans-Atlantic
crossing, Zadik sold his two remaining carpets, which had been hidden
from thieves at the bottom of his trunk. But when it came time to
depart, their three oldest children accidentally boarded the wrong
ship. By the time their parents realized the mistake, the ship had
sailed.
The remaining six Aposhians traveled by boat to Montreal, and then
by train to Salt Lake City. On the train they bought several oranges
from a man who took Zadik’s last $20 and promised to return with the
change. He never came back. When the family finally arrived in Utah,
they were penniless. The couple finally got some good news when their
three oldest children were located in Mexico and reunited with them
in Salt Lake City.
In Utah, Zadik Aposhian found work in a silver mine and later in a
brick factory. He never sold his carpets again. But he continued to
make rugs for his family’s use, and passed along his skills to a son,
George Sr. George owned an automobile-repair shop but made a few rugs
in his spare time and eventually built a loom for his son, George Jr.
The elder George manned an Armenian rug-weaving booth at the first
Living Traditions

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Advertisement

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festival in 1986 before turning it over to his son several years
later. An Aposhian has shown the family’s handsome rugs at the
festival ever since.
“It’s about preserving the family tradition,” says George Aposhian
Jr., 78, who thinks of his late grandfather every time he works on a
rug. “He was a man who made his living making carpets. I couldn’t see
not carrying it on.”
Like most Oriental rugs, an Aposhian carpet represents countless
hours spent meticulously knotting thousands of colored wool threads
into a pattern stretched vertically on a hand-made wooden loom.
Completing a horizontal row of knots takes about an hour, and each
carpet has hundreds of rows.
“People will watch me . . . and say, ‘How can you stand to do
that?’ ” says Aposhian, who works on a loom in his living room. “It’s
fun to watch the pattern grow. But the real satisfaction is cutting
[the finished carpet] off the loom and putting it on the floor.”
Aposhian made looms for each of his four children. But only one,
Diane Moffat, has kept the family tradition going. Moffat began
weaving on her own about 10 years ago, thanks largely to years spent
assisting her father at Living Traditions.
“I doubt I would have ever started if it wasn’t for the festival,”
says the Salt Lake City woman, who likes rug-weaving because she
feels connected to her Armenian ancestors. “Your fingers are doing
the same thing that their fingers were doing . . . back in history as
carpetmakers.”
Moffat and her father hope to give people a deeper appreciation
for the artistry and hard work that go into crafting a carpet. In an
age when machines can crank out a credible-looking Oriental rug in a
few hours, the Aposhians also hope to keep their family’s heritage
alive.

—
Contact Brandon Griggs at [email protected] or 801-257-8689. Send
comments to [email protected].

Dream weavers

George Aposhian Jr. and his daughter, Diane Moffat, will
demonstrate the art of Armenian rugweaving from noon to 7 p.m. today
in Canopy C on the grounds of the City-County Building, 450 S. 200
East, Salt Lake City. The crafts demonstrations are part of the 21st
annual Living Traditions festival, which celebrates Utah’s ethnic
diversity with food, crafts and live music. Festival hours today are
noon to 7 p.m. Admission is free.

Panorama.am
15:10 20/05/06

TRAMS WENT AWAY. DOES NOT YEREVAN NEED ECOLOGICALLY CLEAN TRANSPORT?
Armenian authorities sent trams to cemetery two years ago. Today they
disassemble the rails only, the only thing reminding about trams in
Yerevan today. Naturally, if there are no trams they don’t need rails
as well. They will pave the streets especially that they have got
another sum from Kirk Kirkoryan.
It’s amazing how we, or the authorities in particular, treat the
ecology and the air which we breathe. There is no air in Yerevan to
breath, in fact. To notice that we do not need research studies done
by professional centers. It will become more obvious when hot summer
starts.
There is nothing else to expect after the trees were cut in parks and
little forests in Nork, Zeitun and other places. To have a more
complete picture, they had to eliminate trams too. They brought
excuses that trams were outmoded and were not cost effective. Instead
of trying to modernize them, the decided to get rid of
them. /Panorama.am/

Peninsula On-line, Qatar
May 21 2006
Sparring over baklava spills over to Doha

By Ayse Alibeyoglu
DOHA – The battle over the famous traditional sweet dish baklava
between Turkish and Greek Cypriots in Europe has spread to the local
pastry shops in Doha, owned by baklava makers from Istanbul and
Lebanon.
Historically, baklava was baked only on special occasions, and
considered a food for the rich in Turkey, the top choice of pastry
amongst the Turkish Sultans. It is made with layers of thin dough,
with chopped pistachio in between those layers, added with honey
syrup, various spices, baked and cut into diamond shapes.
At the celebrations marking “Europe Day” last week, baklava, which is
itself a Turkish word, was asserted by the Greek Cypriots as theirs
and introduced as a Greek Cypriot pastry in a European Union (EU)
poster presenting this traditional sweet as the national dish of
ethnically Greek Cyprus alongside the flag of Cyprus.
As a result, the baklava war between Turkey and Southern Cyprus
intensified. Turkish baklava producers are protesting Greek Cypriot
claims that the pastry is their own national creation, with support
for their protest coming from State Minister and EU Chief Negotiator,
Ali Babacan, in the EU General Secretariat.
The owner of renowned baklava producer Haci Sayid Baklava, Halil
Dincerler, commented at a recent press conference on the situation:
“Baklava is Turkish, what the Greek Cypriots are presenting is just a
copy. We will go all the way to Brussels, and we will let the EU
Ministers taste real baklava,” reported a Turkish newspaper.
The President of the Baklava and Dessert Producers Foundation, Mehmet
Yildirim, also present at the conference, gave his opinion on the
international food fight, “it is time for Turkey to stand up and
claim its national treasures, Turkey brought baklava with them all
the way from Central Asia, there are official documents proving that
baklava rightfully belongs to Turkey.”
These comments were shared with the owners of a Turkish Pastry store,
recently opened in Doha. The baklava makers from Istanbul, told The
Peninsula: “Baklava is definitely more Turkish than Cypriot, the
Greek Cypriot version of the baklava does not taste or look anything
like the original.
`Their version of the Turkish delight, calling it Cyprus Delight, is
another factor that just adds to the increasingly sticky war. Our
Pashas and Viziers (rulers) owned the recipe, though it is made
differently throughout the region, in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria no
one can claim sole rights for baklava.”
A Lebanese “baklava” maker; told The Peninsula: “We had enough wars
in Lebanon and we do not want to start another one with Turkey and
Greece.
`However the Greeks stole our recipe, but even they cannot match the
Lebanese baklava, I support Turkey, they should showcase their
baklava to the EU and the rest of the world before it is hijacked by
others. However our pronunciation of the word baklava is the correct
one.” An Armenian baklava maker working on behalf of the Lebanese
pastry shop added “the Armenians invented and improved the recipe.”
The sticky and rather complicated ‘Baklava’ battle has ensued,
yesterday. Two hundred baklava makers demonstrated in Istanbul’s
historic Sultannahmet district, with banners proclaiming “Baklava is
Turkish” whilst others read “Baklava should unify us, not divide us.”

Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
May 21 2006
Turkish MP Kocak Submits Bill on French Genocide of Algerian People
Print
Sunday , 21 May 2006
Source: Anatolian News Agency
ANKARA – Mahmut Kocak, a Justice and Development Party (AKP)
parliamentarian, has presented a draft law to Turkish parliamentary
Speaker’s office on Thursday [18 May] on genocide against Algerian
people.
The draft resolution proposes that the acts carried out by French
troops in Algeria shall be accepted as “genocide” and asks that 8 May
shall be declared as “commemoration day of Algerian genocide”.
The draft law also proposes that any denial of “this genocide” shall
be considered as a crime.
The draft law describes the inhumane acts which France did in several
Algerian cities on 8 May 1945 as “genocide”.
The draft resolution asks for punishment of individuals who reject
“genocide” in Algeria, with imprisonment terms and fine.
Kocak told a news conference that reciprocity principle was valid in
international relations, stating that the draft resolution was
prepared to “retaliate” [against] French proposal.
He said Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika also had a request in
this direction.
Last week, Motherland Party (Anavatan) parliamentarian Ibrahim
Ozdogan prepared a draft law envisaging three years of imprisonment
for individuals who make claims of Armenian genocide.
The draft requests imprisonment terms up to three years for
individuals who allege (through article, picture or cartoon) that
Turks committed
genocide against Armenians.
French parliament ended Thursday’s session on a draft law which
proposes “any denial of Armenian genocide to be considered a crime”
without bringing it to voting.
French parliament sources said that a possible voting on the draft
law would not be held until new legislation term began in October.