MESSAGE TO EU: OPENING TURKISH PORTS TO GREEKS CYPRUS WILL BRING THE GOVERNMENT DOWN
Zaman Online, Turkey
July 2 2006
The European Union (EU) Council Enlargement Collaboration Group
discussed Turkey’s membership process during a visit to the Turkish
Parliament (TBMM).
Greek representatives in the delegation brought up the issue of opening
Turkish ports to Greeks and the extension of Greece’s territorial
waters in the Aegean Sea, which they regard as “act of war.”
Gathering with the EU Accordance Commission members on Friday, one
of the Greek representatives revealed they expected Turkey to open
it ports to Greeks and Southern Cyprus demands the establishing air
service between Larnaka and Istanbul.
Chairman of the Turkish Parliament EU Accordance Commission Yasar Yakis
firmly responded, saying that Turkey will never open its ports to Greek
vessels as long as commercial isolation of Turkish Cyprus continues.
Onur Ovmen, member of the main opposition CHP, said, “No government
can open Turkish ports for Greeks; if it did, it would dissolve in
an hour.”
Ovmen reproaching the Greeks remarked it is injustice for Turkey
to continuously bring to the agenda the Cyprus, Aegean and Armenian
issues in an effort to hinder Turkey’s membership.
He also underlined no government in Turkey will recognize the
unilateral Greek governments in Cyprus.
Surprised by Ovmen’s statement, the Greeks then brought the “act of
war” issue into the agenda.
Yakis first responded to the Greeks, declaring that Greece extended
the limit of its territorial waters 12 miles including Turkey’s ports
violating international law, and reminded, “If we were to accept it,
our harbors in Aegean Sea would have to be included within Greek
territorial waters.”

NAGORNO KARABAKH TO JOIN THE ASSOCIATION “FOR DEMOCRACY AND NATIONS’ RIGHTS”
Regnum, Russia
July 2 2006
“The Nagorno Karabakh Republic intends to join the Association ‘For
democracy and nations’ rights’ established by presidents of Abkhazia,
South Ossetia, and Transdnestr.” The decision was declared by the
president of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoity at a meeting with the Java
district administration, REGNUM informs.
On June 14, presidents of Abkhazia, Transdnestr, and South Ossetia
Sergey Bagapsh, Igor Smirnov, and Eduard Kokoity had an official
meeting in Sukhumi where they discussed, in particular, security issues
in the Black Sea and Caucasian region. The parties also discussed the
problem of joint cooperation in confronting external challenges, the
course and the prospects of political conflicts’ settlement. Following
the meeting, the presidents signed a joint declaration which proclaimed
the creation of the Association “For democracy and nations’ rights,”
as well as the joint resolution on peacekeeping activities.
Among the Association’s key objectives are: reaching common goals by
exclusively peaceful means and political methods, based on the mutually
profitable and equal cooperation, the supremacy of the people’s will at
taking nation-wide decisions, and the indispensability of principles of
sovereignty and independence at conducting negotiations on political
conflicts’ settlement. The parties also expressed conviction that
“the peaceful initiatives and the striving for peace will positively
influence the dynamics of today’s international and regional processes
and will receive widest support.”

MINORITIES STABBED OVER WEEKEND
The Moscow Times, Russia
July 3 2006
Assailants stabbed two ethnic Armenian students, a Kazakh student
and two Uzbeks in three separate incidents in Moscow over the weekend.
It was unclear whether any of the attacks would be classified as hate
crimes or were at all connected. But they all occurred amid growing
fears of racism and xenophobia and a sharp uptick in skinhead activity
in Russia.
Two Armenian teenagers were stabbed during a fight on the platform
of the Kuznetsky Most metro station around 5 p.m. Saturday, Interfax
reported. The two were hospitalized with various stab wounds; the
attackers fled the scene.
The attack was being investigated as hooliganism, city prosecutors’
spokesman Sergei Marchenko said.
Meanwhile, a Kazakh man studying at Moscow’s Military Engineering
Academy was attacked by a group of 10 teenagers, including four women,
Interfax said. He was also hospitalized and was reportedly in stable
condition.
Also Saturday, two Uzbek citizens were hospitalized with multiple stab
wounds after being attacked in southwestern Moscow, Interfax said. The
two were hospitalized in serious condition, police officials said.

“RUSSIA STARTED ACTIVE FLIRTING WITH GEORGIA”: YURI DZITSOITY INTERVIEW
Regnum, Russia
July 3 2006
REGNUM introduces interview with South Ossetian vice Speaker, head of
the Committee on Foreign Policy, Defense, and Security Yuri Dzitsoity.
REGNUM: Mr. Dzitsoity, Georgia has repeatedly claimed that the
Georgian-Ossetian conflict can be solved not between Georgian and
South Ossetia but between Tbilisi and Moscow. How would you today
describe both countries’ positions on the issue? Could any changes
in the process of South Ossetian issue settlement be expected,
taking into account results of the Putin-Saakashvili meeting in
St. Petersburg?
First of all, I would like to say that the very fact of the meeting
is interesting. Reportedly, Putin and Saakashvili had not intended
to meet, and the initiative of holding a session of the Russian and
Georgian presidents belonged to the U.S. I believe that Russia had
been pressed upon in this regard. In fact, they are trying to solve our
issue through Moscow and Washington, i.e., behind our back. It is hard
to say how far Russia allowed Georgia to advance in solving its task,
since we do not know what Putin and Saakashvili talked about vis-a-vis.
However, judging by statements made by Kamynin and Kosachev, people
who have enough power to know what is going on in Kremlin lobbies,
one could tell that Russia today started to actively flirt with
Georgia. Kosachev, for example, said that Russia is not going to
and never was going to consider appeals of South Ossetia and Georgia
on recognizing their independence and entering Russia. On the other
hand, the same Kosachev says that Russia has always been standing on
the territorial integrity of Georgia, she simply does not accept the
means suggested by Georgia, i.e., when she suggests a forced, not a
negotiation solution… Whereas the goal is defined, the rest is of no
importance. This is why I think that today Russia is actively flirting
with Georgia, counting on Georgia’s proposed change of attitude towards
Russia, counting on Georgia’s loyalty, which envisions, first of all,
Georgia’s giving up accessing NATO structures.
REGNUM: On July 5, the South Ossetian and Abkhaz issues will be
among the subjects discussed at a Washington meeting of Bush and
Saakashvili. What could be expected from the meeting?
We should not forget that the meeting will be held on the verge
of the G8 summit, that is why they will again attempt to exercise
pressure on Moscow. The Bush-Saakashvili meeting is another step in
this direction. The task has been defined already: settling separatist
conflicts in the framework of united Georgia. That is, the final goal
has been already defined, and nothing meaningful remains to discuss.
REGNUM: Do you suppose that an unfavorable situation is being
formed for the unrecognized states? After all, they have the Kosovo
precedent handy as a trump, not to mention the right of nations for
self-determination…
The thing is that the Kosovo precedent has not been created yet.
President Kastunica declared a few days ago that Kosovo will be part of
Serbia. I think that the West is scared with the Kosovo precedent and
is very likely to stop advancing in the direction. It can be projected
that the western countries and, first of all, the U.S., will attempt to
first “settle” conflicts in the post-Soviet space, roughly speaking,
to push South Ossetia and Abkhazia into Georgia, Transdnestr into
Moldavia, to take care of Nagorno Karabakh, and then come back to
solving the Kosovo issue, when nobody already needs the precedent.
REGNUM: And Russia?
By accepting Georgia’s ultimate goal, Russia loses. Georgia indulges
in doing whatever she chooses.
REGNUM: Could this be Kremlin’s diplomatic move?
It could be a diplomatic move, but Georgia is very successfully
using statements of Russian politicians on united Georgia. Of
course, Russia simultaneously speaks of the right of nations for
self-determination. But there is a room for arguing here that a nation
can determine herself within a unified state.
REGNUM: Could it be true that Georgia’s access to NATO is such a
big problem for Russia that it uses all the diplomatic game means,
up to the denial of South Ossetia and Abkhazia?
NATO at Russia’s south boundaries is the main problem, a key issue.
If Georgia becomes part of Russia, all the doctrine changes: defense,
external; the power layout in the North Caucasus changes. Here we
will be able of definitely speaking of not only Chechen separatism,
but also of separatist tendencies in the North Caucasus in general.
REGNUM: But is not seeing Georgia part of NATO projected for the
not-so-foreseeable future?
We thought exactly so when Georgia was accessing the European Union.
Don’t you see that more developed countries like Turkey are being
given conditions, including political ones? For example, Turkey has
the issue of North Cyprus and the Kurdish issue. As for Georgia, it
was admitted so hastily that one could only wonder. One could say for
sure that Georgia was given a very different role by the West. And the
role is no less important than that of Ukraine. Georgia and Ukraine
are the two regions that the U.S. got a stranglehold on.

ORHAN PAMUK: A NOVELIST WHERE THE CURRENTS CROSS
by Peter Byrne
Swans, CA
July 3 2006
(Swans – July 3, 2006) Sisli is an Istanbul neighborhood close to
the water on the European side of the Bosphorus. It has all the
smudged and outdated modern appurtenances you might find in a Balkan
capital. But it differs in the zest of its dominant population, the
brash new Turkish middle class. On December 16, 2005 there was more
excitement in the air than that thrown up by the tangled, honking
traffic. A noisy crowd had gathered in the rain to see a tall, boyish
figure in a dark suit being escorted into the Sisli district criminal
court. To judge by the jeering, his crime must have been a vile one.
Inside the court he remained on his feet for forty-five minutes
while the judge strove to keep order. It wasn’t easy despite the
great number of riot police in full regalia that stood about. The
lawyers of the accused man argued that the case should be dropped;
those of the prosecution that it should be pursued forthwith. The
besieged judge finally got a word in and postponed the case until
February 7, 2006. More important, he referred the decision whether
to prosecute to the Minister of Justice in Ankara.
A lawyer had punched the pink face of an elderly man who accompanied
the accused. The same man, leaving the court, was kicked by an excited
spectator who had been shouting “traitor.” The presumed criminal was
then set upon by a woman who struck him with a rolled-up folder. The
crowd surged as he stumbled toward a waiting car. But the police
stood back. Some of their number in plainclothes were busy inciting
the crowd. A banner called the accused “a missionary child,” an
insult meaning foreign-bred, impure Turk. Shouts came of “Get out of
Turkey.” Stones were thrown. Eggs splattered the car windows as it
pulled away.
The man in the now-crumpled dark suit had just time to look out at
the building opposite the court. It was a five-story block built in
1951 and marked Pamuk Apartments. He had lived most of his fifty-three
years there amongst family and relations. His name was Orhan Pamuk,
and he was Turkey’s most famous living writer. The former British
Minister for Europe, Denis McShane — he of the pink face — had come
to lend support with other campaigners for human rights.
There’s a short explanation of why Pamuk had to appear in court. He
was quoted in the Swiss periodical Tages-Anzeiger of February 6,
2005 as saying, “thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were
killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.” This
brought a charge in Turkey of “publicly denigrating Turkishness,”
which could cost him from six months to three years in prison.
Turkish laws enforce Turkish taboos.
There’s also just as short an explanation of why the judge could
send the case to the Minister of Justice and how that cabinet member
could avoid a prosecution. Article 159 of the old penal code was in
effect when Pamuk made his statement. But by September 2005 when the
district prosecutor filed an action against the writer, a revised
penal code had been in force for several months. It was the new
code’s Article 301 that would cover the case. The old code, but not
the new one, stipulated that the Minister of Justice must approve a
similar charge. The Sisli judge therefore felt justified in asking
the Minister for clarification. The response came on January 22,
2006. The Minister of Justice said he was unable to consider a case
concerning the former penal code, and the Sisli court was able to
drop the case. Pamuk was acquitted, but on a technicality.
However, short explanations can miss the point. At the moment a
pro-European Islamist government rules in Turkey. It has staked
its future on getting the country into the European Union. But
overriding power in modern Turkey resides in the military establishment
flanked by old-guard secularists, Kemalist authoritarians, enriched
bureaucrats and small-time zealots who foam at the mouth outside of
courtrooms. Nothing has changed in that respect since Mustafa Kemal,
afterwards Ataturk, founded the Republic. This nationalist force
suspended parliamentary government in 1960, 1971, and 1980, when
things were not going its way. It would like to be free to intervene
when it pleased in the future. Turkey’s membership of the European
Union would make such interference difficult. It would also endanger
a vast system of special interests and privilege built up by this
new elite since the 1920s.
Enter the somewhat ingenuous figure of Orhan Pamuk. As a Turkish
novelist he has attained unprecedented international fame. His last
novel, Snow, had an initial printing of one hundred thousand copies,
an unheard-of figure in Turkey. It goes without saying that both the
moderate Islamists in power and the nationalists ready to pounce on
them have always considered Pamuk suspect. He may have shied away
from politics, but being a novelist in Turkey is quite enough to
present a danger to men of power. Novelists at their best plumb their
feelings and those of their countrymen to reveal what’s really going
on around them. Can there be a greater public peril? Imagine how the
politicians of both sides were flummoxed by Pamuk’s statement about
Snow: “I’m not writing a political novel to make propaganda for some
cause. I want to describe the condition of people’s souls in a city.”
Nevertheless, Pamuk’s renown abroad made him untouchable. The move to
incriminate him over the Swiss interview came when the nationalists
found that it would better serve their ends for Turkey to be seen
as incapable of meeting Europe’s standards on human rights. They
hoped the indecision in Brussels on Turkey’s entry would tip over
into outright rejection and the nationalists could continue to run
the Republic from behind the scenes as they always have. The ruling
moderate Islamist Party of Justice and Development saw its interest
in the opposite direction. Europe had to be convinced of Turkey’s
respect for human rights. That’s why Prime Minister Erodgan’s cabinet
put an end to Pamuk’s case before he was scheduled to appear in court
again on February 7th.
Pamuk was left on slippery ground. He’d experienced nationalist
rage up close. There had been library purges, burning of his books,
intimidation of booksellers, ritual destruction of his photograph,
ostracism in the streets, goofy death threats, and other rites
of voodoo fascism. At the same time he also felt uncomfortable in
having been spared because of his fame while his colleagues suffered
official persecution unnoticed by the world at large. But if he
whooped up the abuse of free speech in Turkey — as Salman Rushdie
was doing from a perch in Manhattan — it could well bar Turkey’s
way into the European Union. That’s doubtless why at the time of his
December 16th ordeal Pamuk had only said meekly: “It is not good for
Turkey, for our democracy, for such freedom of expression cases to
be prolonged.” With the nationalists free of external restraint and
bolstered by a backlash against Europe’s rejection, they could easily
resume the more brutal censorship of the past.
Pamuk has often spoken more boldly. In 1999 he refused the honor of
Turkish State Artist: “For years I have been criticizing the state
for putting authors in jail, for only trying to solve the Kurdish
problem by force, and for its narrow-minded nationalism. I don’t
know why they tried to give me the prize.” He was the first writer
from a Muslim country to support Salman Rushdie when Khomeni called
for his death. Immediately after 9/11, Pamuk wrote in the New York
Review of Books:
We should try to understand why millions of people in poor countries
that have been pushed to one side, and deprived of the right to decide
their own histories, feel such anger at America.
A foot in both worlds, Pamuk could set up no facile us-and-them
dichotomies. He added:
To debate America’s role in the world in the shadow of terrorism that
is based on hatred of the “West” and brutally kills innocent people
is both extremely difficult and perhaps morally questionable. But
in the heat of righteous anger at vicious acts of terror, and in
nationalistic rage, some will find it easy to speak words that might
lead to the slaughter of other innocent people. In view of this,
one wants to say something.
In accepting the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade at the Frankfurt
Book Fair of 2005, Pamuk waxed Dostoevskyan on the hatred generated
by Turkey’s 20th century modernization. The nationalists made the
annihilation of tradition the gauge of progress. They attempted to
create something from nothing by fiat. When the results inevitably
fell short of Western norms, their pride suffered. Full of shame,
they turned spitefully against their country’s past and their hapless
countrymen who embodied it.
Pamuk delivered the inaugural PEN American Center Arthur Miller
Memorial Lecture in April 2006. He recalled a visit of Miller and
Harold Pinter to Istanbul after the military coup of 1980 that threw
countless writers into jail. At that time most of the persecuted were
leftists. He noted that at present half of these people are aligned
with authoritarian nationalism, and remarked:
Living as I do where, in a very short time, someone who has been
a victim of tyranny and oppression can suddenly become one of the
oppressors, I know also that holding strong beliefs about the nature
of things and people is itself a difficult enterprise.
Official attacks on free speech have diminished but by no means
disappeared since Turkey has tried to measure up to the European
Union. There are fifty writers, editors, and publishers now being
prosecuted for what are nothing more than thought crimes. Pamuk
hasn’t failed to make use of his international prestige to defend
them. In the London Guardian of June 3 he took up the case of
Perihan Magden, an incriminated newspaper columnist. She irked the
military by writing a column called simply “Conscientious Objection
is a Human Right.” (Conscription is obligatory in Turkey and there
is no conscientious objection.) Magden considered the predicament
of Mehmet Tarhan, a homosexual who faced conscription. His sexual
orientation alone would have kept him out of the army since it
considers homosexuality a grave physical disability. But Tarhan would
not submit to the degrading physical examination required. He was
consequently sent to a military prison for four years.
Pamuk’s midstream viewpoint came out in his comments. Ataturk had
promised that the republic would give birth to a new independent
woman of which Magden is certainly an example. But the same army that
claims to guard Ataturk’s heritage has done nothing but persecute
the columnist. A dirty tricks campaign snooped on her private life
and insinuated that as a divorced woman she couldn’t be trusted. As
a matter of fact, without male protection in a difficult country for
women and on her paltry salary as a Turkish journalist, she managed
to raise another independent woman, her daughter. Magden also writes
novels, two of which have been translated: The Messenger Boy Murders,
2004, and Two Girls, 2005. Her first hearing took place on place June
7, with the usual group of jeering nationalists in attendance. The
case was then adjourned to July 17 “to allow prosecutors to collect
more evidence.”
There’s irony in Pamuk’s discomfort in a public role and his refrain
about wishing only to get back to his novelist’s desk. He did in
fact begin writing twenty-five years ago with a definite bias against
“social realism” and didacticism. He found the generation of Turkish
writers who preceded him, which included the giants Nazim Hikmet
and Yashar Kemal, to be excessively concerned with putting across
political and moral doctrines. The emphasis on “social commentary”
hurt their art. His idols were Henry James, Faulkner, Virginia Woolf,
and Proust. He sojourned at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and eventually
adopted an approach to the novel that fluently mixed the modern and
the post modern.
In a word, he was not going to be an early Dos Passos, populist
Steinbeck, or the Malraux of La Condition humaine. From his first
novel, Cevdet Bey and His Sons (1982, but finished eight years before,
unpublished in translation) his perspective is clear. Turkey is ever
on the move from East to West. It will probably never complete the
voyage, but blotting out the starting point won’t help.
“That Turkey has two souls is not a sickness.” This saga of three
generations of an Istanbul bourgeois family much like his own will
be Pamuk’s only novel in the classical mode.
The Silent House (1983, unpublished in translation) is a novel in five
voices reminiscent of Virginia Woolf. In the 1970s-’80s, three siblings
spend a summer at their dying grandmother’s home outside Istanbul while
leftists and rightists join battle in the city’s streets. One tale
within the novel goes back to the reign of the last Ottoman Sultan. A
scholar-physician prepared an encyclopedia in forty-eight volumes that
would at a stroke bring the ignorant peasant nation in line with the
West. But the abrupt suppression of Ottoman script in 1928 — “the
Alphabet Revolution” — rendered his work useless. Artist-scholars
working on the edges where cultures meet risk futility.
The White Castle (1985, translation 1990) plunged into the history of
Turkish westernizing in a freewheeling postmodern way. Two 17th-century
scholars, one an Ottoman Hoja or master, the other a captured Venetian,
strive to prove the superiority of their respective civilizations. Both
are ominously concerned with the science of warfare. But instead of
East and West looming up as distinct realities, a gradual intermingling
takes place in the characters of the two men. At the end, one has
become the other.
The Black Book (1990, a poor translation came out in 1994, but a new
one will appear in the course of 2006) has only an intermittent story
line. A young lawyer searches for his wife who has run off with a
renowned journalist he idolized as a boy. The runaway couple perishes
in an accident and the lawyer assumes the journalist’s identity,
his youthful dream realized. We read insertions of his writing and
contributions by innumerable others. A fantastic Istanbul takes over
as the lawyer questions who exactly he is and what it means to be
a writer.
The New Life (1995, translation 1997) tells how a student observes a
girl engrossed in reading and falls in love with the reader and her
book. It’s that singular, momentous volume that when read changes
both a life and the world. The two embark on a random tour of their
country, everywhere scared by a gimcrack modernity and uprooted
tradition. The young man ends by embracing the novel as an artistic
form, “the greatest invention of Western culture,” and will seek the
New Life in the past of his country, which is “suffering from amnesia.”
My Name is Red (1998, translation 2001), for many the author’s
masterpiece, sees him enter into a larger dimension, and yet continue
to portray the march toward the West. At the Sultan’s Court in the
16th century the introduction of Renaissance painting threatens the
thriving miniaturist tradition come from Persia. The Italian painters
bring perspective, realism, and personality, all of which challenge
the role of Allah as unique creator. The traditionalists, validated by
religion, do not yield easily and this is a story of murder, lust and,
once more, the intense life of Istanbul.
Snow (2002, translation 2004) for the first time looks closely
at present day domestic politics. The scene is remote Kars, a city
between two empires that the Russians occupied for forty years till
1918. That may be why Pamuk here recalls Dostoyevski. Conflict rages
between the secular nationalists and political Islam. A visiting poet,
who has taken on a Western veneer, finds that a Turkish artist may feel
a deep connection to both sides, but can give allegiance to neither. As
Richard Eder (New York Times, September 2, 2001) has said of Pamuk:
“He is not an ideologue or a politician or a journalist. He is a
novelist and a great one. . . . . His job is not to denounce reality
but to be haunted by it, as a medium is haunted.”
Turkey’s greatest living writer can be said to be so close to the
reality of his country that both bickering adversaries who claim to
own it must denounce him. For one side he blasphemes against Ataturk
and the authoritarian state in refusing to throw six centuries of
Ottoman culture on the scrap heap. For the other he dares to speak
without solemnity of religion, respecting it mainly as a social and
cultural fact. Islamist intellectuals also accuse him of exploiting
Turkish history and tradition for purely literary ends of a western
stripe. For both sides he’s “self-absorbed” and “obscure” because he
doesn’t peddle their doctrines or mouth their witless slogans. No
wonder that harassed by government lawyers and the wagging fingers
of the pious, Pamuk stopped writing fiction for a while to reassure
himself he still had Turkish ground to stand on. In Istanbul: Memories
and the City (2003, translation 2005) he tells us all about himself
and his affection for his native place. It’s as if he’s shooing off
the bluebottles of state and religion to be alone with his beloved.
The post-modern stagger through Pamuk’s novels furnishes breathless
twists, turns and sudden startling vistas. But the reader can’t be
blamed for feeling relief that this book of very personal memories
unfolds as straightforward and replete as a Sunday dinner down home.
The numerous atmospheric black and white photographs encourage time
travel and a contemplative mood. In Pamuk’s boyhood, Istanbul was at
its crumbling worst, and he had to scramble to find consolations. The
stone mansions built by the pashas were derelict. When the distinctive
old wooden houses of the city, or the magnificent yalis along the
Bosphorus went up in flames, people stood stolidly by as if they were
being relieved of shame. They seemed more concerned to cast off past
failure than to welcome something in its place.
The author points out that his differs from other worse-for-wear
cities, like Delhi or São Paulo, in that the remains of a glorious past
are everywhere amid the degradation. For him the history of the city
after the destruction of the Ottoman Empire is the key to its mystery
and the core of his book. For one thing, it begins to explain huzun,
the peculiar melancholy of Istanbul, a communal black mood not only
“conveying worldly failure, listlessness and spiritual suffering”
but also “a state of mind that is ultimately as life affirming as it
is negating.”
The boy Orhan was not immune to huzun or insensitive to the civic
shambles around him. It couldn’t have helped that his family was
in no better shape than the city. His grandfather made a fortune
in the first years of the Republic and afterwards his descendants
worked full-time at frittering it away. His father’s bankruptcies
occurred as regularly as the family’s stay each summer on an island
in the Marmara Sea. His parents’ marriage was a series of memorable
battles with the belligerents regularly disappearing on their own,
doubtless to replenish their forces. The five stories of the Pamuk
Apartments, inhabited exclusively by family members, shook constantly
with squabbles over property and nervous breakdowns induced by
diminishing income.
Orhan early found consolation in the Bosphorus. Looking out on it,
he would one day write his novels. It was Istanbul’s inbuilt aid to
shouldering the weight of the ambient gloom. “If the city speaks
of defeat, destruction, deprivation, melancholy, and poverty, the
Bosphorus sings of life, pleasure and happiness.” The thrill of this
strip of open sea running through the middle of the city has never left
him. He would soon be working hard to make himself into a painter, his
early choice of vocation that would render all his writing arrestingly
visual. For the moment he was passionate to know what other artists had
made of Istanbul. This led him to the work of Antoine-Ignace Melling,
an 18th century German artist “who saw the city like an Istanbullu,
but painted it like a clear-eyed Westerner.”
It also led him to a discovery. Ottoman artists had neither the
technique nor interest in depicting their city.
In a similar way, when he turned to writing, Pamuk would search for
forerunners that shared his obsession with the city. Four earlier
Turkish writers had been entranced by Istanbul life: Yahya Kemal,
Kocu, Tanpinar, and A.S. Hisar. They had lived through the demise of
empire and been left with a strong sense of the transitory nature of
all civilizations. “What unites these four writers is the poetry they
made of this knowledge and the melancholy attending to it.”
But when he looked closer it was the Melling phenomenon all over
again. The four had taken their idea of literature from French
writers. Their belief in pure poetry came from Verlaine, Mallarme,
and Valery. Gautier taught them how to do verbal cityscapes. Though
aware that this foreign view of Istanbul was not enough to make them
original Turkish writers, the four found no other available at home.
The contradiction hurt. But living in “a city littered with the ruins
of the great fall” they had to settle for making its expression
by western means their parcel of authenticity. “They are the ones
who taught me how to reconcile my love for modern art and Western
literature with the culture of the city in which I lived.”
One wonders how the late Edward Said would have sorted out this tangled
episode of Orientalism. Had the natives of Istanbul waited for one
of theirs, untainted by foreignness, to portray the city, they might
still be waiting. (The technique in painting they possessed had come
from Persia in compass-reversing Orientalism.) Republican France
stepped in to help put imperial values in relief.
Surely Said would have had to admit that each situation of cultural
creation has its own rules and that these defy facile theorizing.
Early 20th century Istanbul at the time Pamuk’s four precursors wrote
was a singular place. Tradition encountered Western culture, long
established ethnic groups had their separate quarters and immigrants
poured in from all sides. Orthodox Christians went undisturbed and
there was a presence of their Roman brethren. Foreign Protestants
pioneered higher education. Synagogues abounded. Sufi lodges dotted
the city and the imperial mosques held sway over all. The variety was
such that Pamuk finds “for the past hundred and fifty years, no one
has been able to feel completely at home.” But he wasn’t complaining.
The great joy of his boyhood was to accompany his mother to the shoe
stores and pastry shops of Beyoglu still run by the descendants of
the Byzantines who had lost out in the conquest of 1453 but were still
hanging around. To see Istanbul from the different viewpoints of the
variegated humanity who had contemplated it — even the Orientalists —
was for Pamuk to keep his connection to the place vital and vibrant.
The book proceeds like an old-time provincial museum or, rather,
cabinet de curiosites. The exhibits are short quick chapters. We might
confront the author’s grandmother who smoked ferociously and played
afternoon poker with her cronies, one of whom had been a resident
of the last sultan’s harem. Or we could suddenly come up against
Gustave Flaubert writing letters from the Bosphorus to his mother
about the sorry state of his penis, syphilitic after five weeks in
Beirut. A pile of old newspapers gets in the way and lets us guess
at the contribution of columnists to smooth the city’s manners.
One of them counsels: “Don’t walk down the street with your mouth
open.”
And all the time the post-modernist on sabbatical gazes inward at
his young self in rapture before the coming and going of the world’s
great ships that pass, as it were, at the bottom of his garden. He
ransacks the past. If the republican regime has claimed the right
to erase pre-1922 Turkey, why shouldn’t a novelist have the right
to recreate it? After all, to mention the deaths of Armenians and
Kurds only writes in again what’s been rubbed out. A friendly word of
advice to the Humpty Dumpties on the high wall: Sic your regime book
reviewers on a novelist if you like, but don’t demean yourselves with
threats of courts and prison.
–Boundary_(ID_spUWSds/pw3Z3WowimngXg)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PURE CYMBAL-ISM
Toronto Star, Canada
July 3 2006
New Brunswick firm Sabian Ltd. hopes to `ride’ out the metals boom and
`crash’ the fortunes of its foes, by Sharda Prashad
Acadian culture, scenic coastlines – New Brunswick is famous for
many things, even a cymbal company that’s part of a four-century-old
Turkish dynasty.
Sabian Ltd., one of the top two cymbal manufacturers in the world,
laid its roots in Canada a quarter century ago after a bitter dispute
over ownership divided the business.
Today, Sabian’s fighting another battle: remaining competitive against
a high dollar and high commodities prices.
Closing in on $40 million in gross sales, achieving double-digit
growth and counting the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Phil Collins
and other top percussionists among its customers, Sabian’s winning.
Besides producing a world-class product, Sabian is dabbling in
futures contracts to offset the soaring price of copper, one of its
main costs. It is also selling higher-end products with bigger profit
margins more aggressively, and increasing top-line sales targets to
prevent a drop in bottom line, says Andy Zildjian, newly appointed
president.
Andy works alongside brother Bill, a former commodities trader and
drummer who looks after international customers and commodities
transactions.
If Sabian’s profit-raising strategies aren’t effective, it might
have to do something it’s trying to avoid – increase the price of its
cymbals. For now, Sabian’s strategy is working and a growing volume
of orders is pushing up production levels at its cymbal plant in
Meductic in southwestern New Brunswick.
The company, which employs 150, produces 1.2 million cymbals every
year. Sabian makes more than 1,500 different types, with rides,
crashes and hi-hats being the most popular. Most are made by machine.
But the old Turkish tradition hasn’t been lost, as 15 craftsman hand
hammer about 20 per cent of the more high-end metal discs. Cymbals
cost between $64 and $770 for individual pieces, with custom-made
cymbals commanding a premium.
Everyone in Meductic, population of 189, seems to work at Sabian,
including town mayor James “Nort” Hargrove, vice-president of
manufacturing.
How exactly did a company that was started by an Armenian alchemist
named Avedis in Constantinople in the 1600s end up in Meductic?
Avedis Zildjian III moved from Istanbul to Massachusetts in the
1920s. Both of his sons, Armand and Robert, were involved in Avedis
Zildjian Co. with a mission that’s not changed since the days of
Constantinople: to make the world’s best cymbals.
One of the reasons family businesses tend to endure longer than others
is there is a substantive mission, says David Simpson, professor of
entrepreneurship and family business at the University of Western
Ontario’s Ivey School of Business.
The statistic that just 10 per cent of family businesses make it
to a third generation is often thought of as a bad thing, says the
professor, but most companies that have existed for more than 100
years are family businesses.
If you consider the family businesses of Sabian, The New York Times,
or Michelin Tires, says the professor, all seem to have transferred
the business values from generation to generation rather than just
passing the entrepreneurial reins.
For Avedis’ younger son Robert, there was never any question he’d
continue the family business. After serving in World War II, Robert
visited New Brunswick for fishing and camping trips. He was hooked
on Canada, not just on the country’s wilderness, but its inhabitants.
Robert believed they could produce the coveted cymbals.
Robert expanded the company’s operation to Meductic in the late
1960s and hired 15 staff to manufacture the company’s most-labour
intensive cymbals.
When Avedis died in 1979, the brothers spent two years battling over
ownership, until Robert decided to leave the family business and open
a new cymbal company. What’s fascinating about Sabian, says Simpson,
is the family feud wasn’t about getting out of the family business,
since both were dedicated to staying in it and there are few examples
where a family squabble leads to direct competition. The formation
of Adidas and Puma in 1948 after brothers Rudolf and Adolf fought
over their shoe company is another example. Usually family feuds
occur when someone wants to move the business in a new direction,
dissolve it, or leave it.
Robert took over the small Canadian operation in 1981, expanded it
and named it Sabian after daughter Sam and sons Bill and Andy. There
was a one-year non-compete clause with Zildjian that meant Sabian
couldn’t sell cymbals in the United States. In 1983, it turned a
profit for the first time. Robert dryly divulges the amount: $1,750.
The firm has since experienced double-digit annual growth and Andy
wants to close in on $50 million in sales and eventually overtake its
main competitor – Avedis Zildjian Co. of course. Armand died in 2002
and that firm is now run by his daughters.
To compete in the cymbal world, Robert, who is 82 and chairman (he
quips that there’s no board), says Sabian has to innovate in making
cymbals, and get more people playing these copper discs.
The company targets three markets: recreational players, such as
those who play in garage bands, professionals, and growing ranks
buying cymbals as part of a therapeutic music regime. The cymbals
are also promoted in schools, with the hope that young musicians
will catch the Sabian fever early. Robert says the most effective
marketing tool is word of mouth.
That’s how Brendan Buckley, drummer and music producer currently
touring with Shakira in Europe, found out about Sabian. He started
using the brand in 1997 when he was on tour with Julio Iglesias
after a former classmate raved about the product. “I trusted his ears
immensely, so my curiosity was piqued,” says Buckley.
The best way to choose a cymbal is by playing it, he says, since no
two sound the same.
Buckley has worked with Shakira for eight years, and while he says she
doesn’t concern herself with product names, she has “remarkable ears.”
Another reason why the company has prospered is that its mission
includes meeting the needs of all customers, meaning it caters to
the discriminating needs of professionals.
“It’s not easy to get to Meductic,” says Robert, but drummers such
as Phil Collins and the Neil Peart of Rush have made the journey.
“If you get a devoted musician, they’ll have a sound in the back of
their mind.”
Sabian will work with drummers until the exact sound can be replicated
on the cymbal. Despite a high dollar, soaring metals prices and a
bitter family feud, Zildjian’s association with cymbals continues to
endure after several centuries.
ntServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&amp ;c=Article&cid=1151878208084&call_pageid=9 68350072197&col=969048863851

KURDISH IDENTITY IS DENIED IN TURKISH CONSTITUTION
By Dr Rebwar Fatah
Kurdish Media, UK
July 3 2006
Levant 1100 A.D., showing the Indo-European language areas before
arriving Turkic tribes
The first article of this series about Turkish constitution “Don’t
judge Turkish constitution by its European cover”, looked at the impact
of the Turkish constitution on the Kurdish people and their homeland,
Kurdistan. This article, however, looks at the deliberate denial of
the Kurdish identity by the Turkish constitution.
It could be said that fundamentally Turkey is an unstable country.
Formally the homeland of Kurds, Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians,
Turkey has been successful in establishing itself through various
forms of genocide to coerce ethnic groups in favour of Turks.
In this article, I shall deal with what might be considered as Kurdish
identity in the Turkish constitution.
A third of Turkey’s population have Kurdish blood. These Kurds speak
Kurdish and occupy vast areas of ‘Kurdistan’ – what has always been
their homeland but cannot be found in the Turkish Constitution.
The fear and hatred of the Kurds which appears in the Turkish
constitution makes it one of the most racist official documents found
anywhere in Europe. In fact, it doesn’t even reach the standard of
Saddam Hussein’s constitution, which clearly identified “Kurds” and
the “Kurdish language”. In spite of this, Saddam is under trial for
crimes against humanity. Where does this position the Turkish state?
Turkish fear is understandable. What is today termed “Turkey” covers
huge areas of Kurdistan, and Turks know very well that sooner or
later this will be challenged. No one can put the fear of Turks
better than their father, Ataturk, who realised what a Kurdish state
meant. Ataturk stated:
“If one wanted to draw a border separating the Kurds, one would have to
devastate Turkey. There would have to be a border that went as far as,
say, Erzurum, Erzincan, Sivas or Harput. Indeed, one must not forget
the Kurdish tribes in the deserts of Konya.”
At the beginning, Mustafa Kemal was careful not to mention the Turkish
state. Instead, he stressed either the fraternity between the Kurds
and Turks, or the Ottoman nation in conflict with foreign occupational
forces. When Mustafa Kemal first began to form the Turkish-nation
state, it was not clear what constituted a Turk.
Indeed, in appealing for Islamic unity against the ‘Christian
invaders’, Ismet (Inonu) – Ataturk’s famous lieutenant and eventual
successor- initially spoke of the new state as being a “homeland for
Kurds and Turks”.
As Turkey’s commercial and NATO partner, the USA is in full support
of Turkey and does not care for Kurdish or other ethnic group’s
rights. The American leadership demonstrates trivial knowledge of
Kurds, despite partnering with or using Kurds in the past, such as
during the last Gulf War, or even working with them up to now in the
Iraqi government. In his recent visit to America, the president of
Kurdistan dressed up, as is his usual habit, in Kurdish costume. When
President Bush welcomed him in the White House, he showed his support
for the Kurdish dress and stated that the President of Kurdistan
could not wear Kurdish costume during Saddam’s era. The President did
not know that Saddam frequently dressed in Kurdish costume. Saddam,
unlike Turkey, never denied the existence of Kurds, Kurdish language
or Kurdish homeland, Kurdistan.
However, the EU accepts the Turkish constitution and regard Turkey as
a democratic state. Sadly, when attempt to show Turkey the way, the
EU does not pull Turkey’s head out of the sand to show it the light.
Rather, the EU puts its head in the sand and attempts to lead Turkey
in the dark. The blind cannot lead the blind. Turkey is blind by
hatred and fear of Kurds. What is the EU’s fear?
Anything that is “Kurdish” in Turkey is “separatist” and what is
“separatist” by Turkish definition is “terrorist”. Being Kurdish means
one is “separatist” under Article 216 of the new Turkish Penal Code.
Let us accept the official Turkish policy on Kurds: Kurds are
terrorists. But nothing stops Turkey in constituting a civilised
constitution. But the constitution, I suggest, is a recipe for
preparing terrorism.
The Turkish constitution does not mention the Kurdish language at
all. Article 3 states:
“The Turkish state, with its territory and nation, is an indivisible
entity. Its language is Turkish.”
Article 42 elaborates this further:
“No other language than Turkish shall be taught as a mother tongue
to Turkish citizens at any institutions of training or education.
Foreign languages to be taught in institutions of training and
education and the rules to be followed by schools conducting training
and education in a foreign language shall be determined by law. The
provisions of international treaties are reserved.”
By contrast, Saddam Hussein’s constitution (of 1990) stipulates the
Kurdish language. Article 7 [Languages] of the Iraqi constitution
states:
(a) Arabic is the official language.
(b) The Kurdish language is official, besides Arabic, in the Kurdish
Region.
Article 42 of Turkish constitution ensures that Kurdish is not taught
as the mother tongue. Kurds are brought up only with the Turkish
language, ensuring linguistic genocide. Article 42 states:
“No language other than Turkish shall be taught as a mother tongue
to Turkish citizens at any institutions of training or education.”
There are a number of Articles in the Turkish Penal Code that
undermines the Kurdish language. For example, the use of any language
but Turkish for political speeches remains prohibited under Law No.
2820 on Political Parties. As a result, speaking in Kurdish – even
a single word – at an official party functions or press conferences
is illegal.
The persistent denial of the existence of Kurds, Kurdish language and
Kurdish homeland Kurdistan has been done in a very clever, subtle way,
without mentioning any of these words. Throughout the constitution,
and also the penal code, the existence of Kurds are denied. This can
be seen in Article 66 (as amended on October 17, 2001):
“Everyone bound to the Turkish state through the bond of citizenship is
a Turk. The child of a Turkish father or a Turkish mother is a Turk.”
This can be defined as “identity genocide”: wiping Kurds from the
surface of earth. It is disturbing. No individual can be born from
Kurdish parents, even when they are born from Kurdish parents. They
immediately become Turkish by the magic of this article. This is a
clear denial of the existence of Kurds. Please note this article has
been amended to meet EU criteria, or more correctly, to fool naïve
EU politicians.
By contrast, Saddam Hussein’s constitution in Article 5 [Nationalities
or ethnicities] clearly states that Iraqi people constitutes of two
ethnic (nationality ie al-Qawmiya) Kurds and Arabs. It reads:
(b) The Iraqi People are composed of two principal ethnicities:
the Arab ethnicity and the Kurdish ethnicity.
Most importantly:
(c) This Constitution acknowledges the national rights of the Kurdish
People and the legitimate rights of all minorities within the Iraqi
unity.
It must be noted that the Iraqi constitution does not regard Kurds as
a minority. Saddam recognised Kurds as the partners of Arabs in Iraq.
If Turkey wants to join the civilised nation of states, it needs to
regard Kurds equal to Turks in Turkey. It needs to change the name of
the state, establish a Kurdistan region, parliament and government
in order to develop the north of Kurdistan. The EU, also, need to
promote and accept the Kurdistan parliament as part of the EU and
allow Kurdistan bloc to join the EU parliament.
My thanks to Chris Lacey.
–Boundary_(ID_AMorIvX/yaKTjQ1dJyB82w)–

SUSPECT DETAINED IN MOSCOW ATTACK ON TWO ARMENIANS
RIA Novosti, Russia
July 3 2006
MOSCOW, July 3 (RIA Novosti) – Police in Moscow said Monday they
had detained a suspect in connection with the stabbing of two ethnic
Armenians at a subway station in the Russian capital.
Sergei Marchenko, a representative of the Moscow prosecutor’s office,
said the Saturday afternoon attack on the two men, aged 23 and 26,
was “a result of a conflict with a group of 17- and 18-year-olds.”
Police said they had taken a resident of central Russia into custody
in connection with the assault. “The detained 24-year-old resident
of Lipetsk is suspected of attacking two Armenians,” a spokesman said.
“The suspect was on the wanted list already.”
The spokesman said police was checking another group of people
suspected of involvement in the attack.
“Investigators know their names and other details,” he said.
Marchenko said the Moscow subway prosecutors had agreed to launch an
inquiry into hooliganism, a charge often brought against suspects in
assaults and similar incidents.
It is still unclear whether the incident was another attack in a
series of race-hate crimes that have recently rocked the country.
The city of Voronezh in central Russia has seen at least seven
apparently racially motivated killings of non-white foreigners over
the past six years, including the murder of a Peruvian student last
October.
St. Petersburg has been suffering from negative publicity over alleged
neo-Nazi attacks and murders, including the killing of a student from
Senegal in April and the stabbing of a nine-year-old girl of mixed
Russian-African origin in early 2006.
In an effort to combat these extremist and xenophobic trends, Russia
set up a nationwide public movement, Our Russia, in late June. The
movement comprises politicians, entrepreneurs, figures from the arts
world and human rights activists, who will work closely with all of
Russia’s religious and cultural communities.

AZIMOV: “NOT ANY FRAME AGREEMENT BETWEEN AZERBAIJAN AND ARMENIA EXISTS”
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan –
July 3 2006
“Not any frame agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia exists. We
think that the statement made was in haste or of provocation
character. The purpose of making this statement is to make the
situation tense and forward new issues after.”
Deputy foreign minister Araz Asimov has told about it. (APA).
According to him, since the discussions have not finished it is too
early to speak about any agreement. “In the middle of the discussions
bringing of any information to the attention of public, will be
neither good to anyone, nor serve any purpose. Everybody can say
everything. Statement given by co-chairs is not right.” Araz Asimov
said that it is too early to say anything about the results. As
concerns holding of referendum in Nagorno Garabagh, Araz Azimov
said that it is only possible within laws of Azerbaijan. Territorial
integrity and border security’s taking as a base it might be held.
Today the purpose Armenia and the states supporting it is to manipulate
saying this or that word.

ARMENIANS RESIDING IN ENCLAVES IN AZERBAIJAN MAY HAVE SOME LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Author: R. Abdullayev
TREND, Azerbaijan –
July 3 2006
Al nations living in Azerbaijan, including Armenian community of
Nagorno-Karabakh, may use their right for self-determination within
the country’s territorial integrity. In particular, Armenians may
use some local governing mechanisms in their enclaves, Trend reports
quoting Araz Azimov, deputy Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan.
“There are many models in global practice. We are ready to discuss
a new model at a certain stage to be based on the realities of this
region”, Azeri official said, outlining that first it is necessary
to release all grounds of Azerbaijan from Armenian occupation.
“Both the parties admitted that solving the status question at this
stage is not possible. It is necessary to create certain conditions
to achieve the agreement on this matter”, said Azimov.
Azeri official also said first the conditions for peaceful coexistence
of two communities in Nagorno-Karabakh shall be established. This
requires for safety to all Azerbaijanis to get back home. Besides,
Armenian forces in and around Nagorno-Karabakh shall be withdrawn
from there.