A HISTORY OF DISASTER: LAND AND RELIGION IN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE
Written by Mneesha Gellman

Toward Freedom, VT
Oct 11 2005

When the sun sets on the holy city of Jerusalem, the thick limestone
buildings are cast in a shimmering gold light. The ancient Old City
contains the Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Armenian Quarters, and the
religious mood is palpable in every alleyway. On Friday nights the
air is thick with Hebrew singing welcoming in the Sabbath, mingling
with the Arabic call to prayer from the mosques, and church bells
peal through the dusk. The interconnection between land conflict
and religious conflict is clearest in the Old City of Jerusalem
where the Western Wall borders the Dome of the Rock. The Western
Wall which stands today is part of the second temple complex which
was gradually rebuilt by the Jews upon the ruins of the first temple
when they returned from exile. After a period of rule by the Greeks,
Jerusalem was incorporated into Roman-occupied Palestine in 63 BC,
and when the Jews revolted against the Romans in 70 AD the second
temple was destroyed. The part of the Western wall which remains
standing is believed to be the closest place to the Holy of Holies
that Jews are allowed to go.

Millions of Jews make pilgrimages to the Wall every year, but generally
Israeli military prohibit Jews from entering Muslim-controlled Dome
of the Rock plaza for fear of violence from either side. Messianic
Jews believe they are not allowed to enter the Holiest of Holies
until the messiah comes, and thus they would refuse to enter the
Dome of the Rock complex anyway, for fear of treading on the area
prematurely. Tourists, however, flock to this controversial attraction.

Built atop the earlier location of the first and second Jewish Temple,
the Dome of the Rock was built by the Muslim ruler Abd el-Malik in
688-691 AD. Muslims believe this is the place from where Allah lifted
the prophet Mohammad into the sky and took him on a night tour of the
heavens. The gold-domed building is considered a shrine to this event,
and not a mosque.

Men pray instead at the Al Aqsa mosque located right next door,
and Muslims have sanctified this as the third most holy place in
the Muslim world, after shrines in Mecca and Medina, both in Saudi
Arabia. The fervor with which both Jews and Muslims believe in their
differentiated religious histories of the Dome of the Rock, Temple
Mount, and Western Wall area has led to bloody clashes and these places
are a major source of the ongoing discord between the two groups.

Origins of Zionism

In 1896 Theodor Herzl published his highly influential book The
Jewish State, and the following year the first Zionist Congress met
in Basle, Switzerland to discuss the idea of a Jewish state. This
was in response to the waves of anti-Semitic pogroms sweeping Europe
which systematically murdered the Jewish population from Estonia
to Ukraine. Whenever possible, European Jews fled. By 1914, 65,000
Jewish immigrants were living alongside half a million Arabs in the
Turkish Ottoman Empire that is now Israel and Palestine. Relations
between the groups were generally peaceful at this point in history.

In 1917, the British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour had committed
Britain to work toward “the establishment in Palestine of a national
home for the Jewish people”, in a letter to leading Zionist Lord
Rothschild (BBC). “The Balfour Declaration, made in November 1917 by
the British Government…was made a) by a European power, b) about a
non-European territory, c) in flat disregard of both the presence and
wishes of the native majority resident in that territory” according
to Edward Said in his book “The Question of Palestine.” In fact
“In 1916 the British Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, had
promised the Arab leadership post-war independence for former Ottoman
Arab provinces since they aligned themselves with the Allies (BBC).

To nobody’s surprise, this double dealing had disastrous results.

On December 9, 1917, as World War I neared its end, Jerusalem
surrendered to the British forces. This act marked the end of four
centuries of Ottoman-Turk rule and the beginning of thirty years of
British rule (Palestine Facts). Unable to keep promises to both the
Arabs and the Jews, Britain subdivided the Palestine Mandate along
the Jordan River-Gulf of Aqaba line. The eastern portion–called
Transjordan–was to have a separate Arab administration operating
under the general supervision of the commissioner for Palestine,
and the western portion would be given to the Jews (Palestine Facts).

Uneasy relations existed between the two groups until the situation
exploded into violence with the establishment of the state of Israel
in 1948.

Land Wars

The day after the state of Israel was declared in 1948, five Arab
armies from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq immediately invaded
Israel but were initially repulsed

Eventually the Arab forces won key sections of land but many lives
were lost on all sides. Armistices established Israel’s borders on the
frontier of most of the earlier British Mandate Palestine. Egypt kept
the Gaza Strip while Jordan annexed the area around East Jerusalem and
the land now known as the West Bank. These territories made up about
25% of the total area of British Mandate Palestine” (BBC). When the
Jewish Quarter of the Old City was surrendered to the Arab armies,
Jews lost access to their most sacred place, the Western Wall. From
then on, the religious Jewish community struck out at the Arab
population whenever possible, in retaliation for taking away their
access to the Wall.

Prolonged tension between Israel and its Arab neighbors culminated
again in six days of hostilities starting on June 5, 1967 and ending
on June 11. The War of 1967 changed the geographic map considerably.

“Israel seized Gaza and the Sinai from Egypt in the south and the Golan
Heights from Syria in the north. It also pushed Jordanian forces out
of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The territorial gains doubled the
area of land controlled by Israel. The victory heralded a new age of
confidence and optimism for Israel and its supporters. The UN issued
Security Council Resolution 242, stressing “the inadmissibility of
the acquisition of territory by war” and calling for “withdrawal
of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent
conflict.” According to the UN, the conflict displaced another
500,000 Palestinians who fled to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan”
(BBC). Israel was trying to fulfill the Zionist vision of creating
a modern state with Biblical borders. When “occupied Palestine” is
referred to, it is usually originating from the 1967 conflict when the
West Bank of Jordan and the Gaza strip of Egypt were taken by Israel.

After trying to negotiate with international authorities to regain
the territory they had lost in 1967, in 1973 Egypt and Syria launched
major offensives against Israel on the Jewish festival of the Day of
Atonement or Yom Kippur. The Yom Kippur War, as it is known to Jews,
and the Ramadan War as known to Arabs, ended in January 1974, when
Israeli Defense Forces withdrew across the Suez canal of Egypt and
on May 31, 1974, agreed with Syria to withdraw to the 1967 cease-fire
line in the Golan Heights (On War). Israel’s dependence on the US for
military, diplomatic and economic aid increased at this time. Soon
afterwards, Saudi Arabia led a petroleum embargo against nations that
supported Israel, causing inflated gasoline prices and fuel shortages
across the US (BBC), remembered by my parents as the long gas pump
lines of the early 1970s.

Why Intifada?

The first Intifada, translated as the “shaking off” of the Israeli
occupation, began on December 8, 1987 when four Palestinian men waiting
at a checkpoint into Gaza were crushed to death by an Israeli army
transporter (Jerusalemites). The resulting spontaneous explosion of
popular resistance to the occupation rattled the world.

“Protest took the form of civil disobedience, general strikes,
boycotts on Israeli products, graffiti, and barricades, but it was
the stone-throwing demonstrations against the heavily-armed occupation
troops that captured international attention” (BBC).

“According to the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in
the Occupied Territories, 1124 Palestinians lost their lives in the
first Intifada. Some 16,000 were imprisoned and many were routinely
tortured. Fewer than 50 Israeli civilians were killed” (Al Jazeera).

This first Intifada was concluded with the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993,
which attempted to bring calm to the region, but really perpetuated
the occupation by allowing the Israeli Defense Force soldiers to
maintain all their positions in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israeli settlements in Palestine increased dramatically during this
cease-fire period, and many Palestinian homes and olive orchards
were demolished both to make room for the settlements and as acts of
vengeance. Palestine was divided into areas A, B, and C depending on
if they were under all, some, or no jurisdiction of the Palestinian
Authority. Residents of Palestine were not allowed to travel Israel
and visa versa.

The physical control of Palestine by Israel increased dramatically,
while the international community assumed progress was being made
to restore Palestinian rights, since the Oslo agreement was called
a Peace Accord. “The Palestinian leadership, impotent in the face
of Israeli aggression, agreed to seemingly unlimited concessions to
Israeli demands – until there was no more to give. Instead of setting
the stage for Palestinians to move toward freedom and independence,
Oslo was dragging them toward fragmentation and surrender”
(Jerusalemites). Although negotiations with Israelis were starting
to address the four points critical to Palestinians: Jerusalem, the
settlements, refugees, and the establishment of an independent state,
little progress was made. Suicide bombings and soldier violence kept
both sides wound tight in a web of fear and anger, negating any real
chance for dialogue.

The second Intifada began on September 28, 2000 when Ariel Sharon, then
leader of the Likud Knesset opposition (conservative Israeli government
political party) went, heavily guarded by a 1,500 person police escort,
to visit the Temple Mount and enter the al Aqsa Mosque. Although
Sharon had stated he was going on a peace delegation, while there,
he declared the area the eternal territory of the Israelis.

This flagrant insult to the Islamic faith touched off riots by
the Palestinians, who saw Sharon’s actions as the ultimate symbol
of occupation, that not even the holiest Muslim place of worship
was free from Israeli government and military presence. Violence
followed. Palestinians threw stones, Israeli soldiers shot bullets.

“In the first six days of the Intifada, 61 Palestinians were killed
and 2,657 were injured” (Answers). From September 29, 2000 through
May 31st, 2004, the average number of Palestinians killed stands at
2.26 per day. The total killed is 3,023, and the number of wounded
is many times more. Because of their superior weapons and regional
control, Israeli soldiers have been able to inflict much more damage
than they have incurred, and the US has financially supported much
of their military development.

Palestine’s most famous scholar and political commentator Edward Said
notes that time hasn’t improved the lot of his people. “The fact is
that Palestinians are dramatically worse off than they were before the
Oslo process began. Their annual income is less than half of what it
was in 1992; they are unable to travel from place to place; more of
their land has been taken than ever before; more settlements exist;
and Jerusalem is practically lost…” (Said, The Progressive).

Mneesha Gellman is Associate Producer of “A World of Possibilities”
radio program at the Mainstream Media Project in northern California.

She traveled to Israel and Palestine in June 2005. This is the
fourth article she’s written as part of a series on her trip for
Toward Freedom.

Works Cited

Al Jazeera. Online Newspaper. Webstite found July 4th 2005

Answers. Website found July 13th, 2005.

da

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Websites, found June 30th,
2005.

/2001/israel_and_palestinians/timeline/1897.stm,
” orld/2001/israel_and_palestinians/timeline/1948.st m

h/world/2001/israel_and_palestinians/timeline/1967 .stm

epth/world/2001/israel_and_palestinians/timeline/1 973.stm

Chomsky, Noam. “The Fateful Triangle.” South End Press, 1983

Jerusalemites. Website found July 4th, 2005

Let’s Go. “A Let’s Go Travel Guide: Israel and the Palestinian
Territories.” St. Martin’s Press, New York. 2003.

Map. Israel and Palestine after war of 1967. Website found July
27th, 2005

+Israel+After+the+Six+Day+War.htm

Map. Israel and Palestine in 1948. Website found July 27th, 2005.

y/unplan47.html

Mid East Web. Website found July 25th, 2005.

On War. Website Found July 4th, 2005.

ppur1973.htm

Palestine Facts. Website. Found June 30th, 2005

british_mandate .php,
e_un_194.php

Said, Edward. “The Progressive” Magazine, March 1998

Said, Edward. “The Question of Palestine.” Vintage Books Edition,
April 2002.

IRAN, RUSSIA TIES IMPROVING IN ALL AREAS: ENVOY

Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran
Oct 11 2005

Iranian Ambassador to Russia Gholam Reza Ansari said here Monday that
Tehran, Moscow relations are improving in all areas.

Speaking to Ria Novosti News Agency, Ansari said following the trip
by former president Mohammad Khatami to Moscow several years ago a
new chapter began in bilateral relations in all areas.

He also referred to the two nations’ cooperation in nuclear energy.

“After the completion of Bushehr nuclear powerplant building more
powerplants is on the two states’ agenda.”

Ansari said that the building Bushehr is the most important index of
economic cooperation between the two sides in the recent years.

He also expressed hope that with the timely dispatch of fuel by Russia
and completion of the powerplant, operations will start on schedule.

“We have ensured Russia that our nuclear activities are peaceful and
expect Moscow to convey this policy to other nations.” He alluded
to the energy sector as an important area of cooperation between the
two countries. Soon Iran electricity grid will be connected to Russia
and Armenia.

Ansari said the two nations’ cooperation in industry and advanced
technologies are also extensive and referred to last year’s agreement
to build ‘Zohreh’ satellite.

He also expressed hope that the agreements would be implemented in
the near future.

Iran is interested in active participation in the joint Caspian Sea
security forces. Tehran and Moscow have common views on political,
economic and cultural areas and oppose foreign intervention in the
region, he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last September that his country
is committed to complete Bushehr nuclear power station on time
(scheduled in 2006).

FRENCH AMBASSADOR’S INTERVIEW TO ARMENIAN PUBLIC TV

Armenpress
Oct 10 2005

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 10, ARMENPRESS: Asked by Armenian Public TV to share
his opinion and impressions about the constitutional referendum in
Armenia, France’s ambassador to Armenia, Henry Cuny said: ” I have
repeatedly said that it is not French citizens who will have to cast
their ballots, though in their hearts they always vote for Armenia. But
whatsoever, because of close ties with Armenia France is always
interested in key issues that take place here. In a message sent to
president Robert Kocharian on the occasion of Armenia’s Independence
Day president Jacques Chirac has wished success to Armenians in
implementation of political and economic reforms necessary for the
country’s stability and progress.

I am not in a position to express my views on a package of proposed
constitutional reforms. The final word belongs to the citizens of
Armenia only. I would like to only say that the proposed amendments
signify an irreversible progress, introduce a balance among power
branches to the benefit of strengthening of the parliament, human
rights protector institution and offer a range of guarantees for
providing independence to the Justice Council and a greater extend
of freedom to local governments, including also election of Yerevan
mayor…. All these changes have been praised by experts of the Council
of Europe Venice Commission, who were instrumental in providing
consultations and recommendations to improve the draft text. These
changes are a key step towards broader democracy.

Both the pro-government and opposition forces in Armenia have expressed
their commitment to democracy, and the first democratic step is to go
to the polls and cast a ballot. One cannot simultaneously criticize
and refrain from discussions, to speak in favor of democracy and
remain inactive. In terms of democracy this means to go and vote. To
say that voting would change nothing is tantamount to having no trust
in democracy whose prime goal is to take the society ahead through
evolutionary processes but not a revolution.

The international community is showing a great interest in the
constitutional amendments. Experts from the Council of Europe and
Venice Commission had given a lot of their time to help develop and
elaborate it.

That is why it would be difficult for the international community
to grasp why Armenian citizens were reluctant to give 30 minutes of
their time to going to the polls and make their vote, though everyone
is free to master his or her vote, nevertheless every citizen has the
obligation to make their vote, naturally in conditions of transparency
and justice.

That was the core of a spring press conference held by EU ambassadors
in Yerevan, representatives of the OSCE and Council of Europe. I have
nothing more to add and I think what has been said so far with regard
to the constitutional referendum is more important now as before.”

ACCORDING TO ICG REPRESENTATIVE, ARMENIAN AND AZERI AUTHORITIES SHOULD PREPARE THEIR SOCIETIES FOR PEACE

DeFacto Agency, Armenia
Oct 11 2005

International Crisis Group representative for the South Caucasus Sabina
Freizer believes Armenian and Azeri leadership should immediately begin
preparing both countries’ societies for peace and mutual compromises
necessary for the achievement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict long –
term settlement.

Nagorno Karabakh conflict should not be considered “frozen” – people
are dying of fire – exchanges along the contact line and mines, it
goes on influencing upon the civil population’s life. Freizer stated
it when speaking at the Rose – Roth seminar in Yerevan organized by
RA Parliament and NATO Parliamentary Assembly. According to Freizer,
at present the likelihood of the war’s resumption is higher than
ever. She said lack of contacts between the societies had resulted in
the fact that the two countries’ young generation was more aggressive
than the Soviet one. It concerns mostly Azerbaijan. Freizer blamed
Azeri leadership forbidding Azeris to contact with Armenians. She
noted Azeri identified themselves with Turks and believed their duty
was to liberate the lands from Armenians. In her words, more than
50% of Azeri population does not see the alternative to the military
settlement of the conflict.

According to the International Crisis Group representative, despite
Nagorno Karabakh’s economic development, it depends on Armenia, which
forms Karabakh budget’s 60%, while50% of the NK servicemen are from
Armenia. The lands have been privatized by Armenian population. In
Freizer’s words, it may compound a problem while signing peace
agreement.

In her opinion, the parties adhere to the peaceful settlement. They
realize all the problems cannot be settled now. In particular, the
issue referring to determination of the NK final status should be
put off. First of all the troops should be withdrawn from the regions
surrounding the NKR and refugees return their homes.

Freizer thinks Nagorno Karabakh should get corresponding international
security guarantees then. She stated the UN, OSCE and EU would put a
stop to any kind of violations, especially those from the Azeri party.

As for a referendum, according to Freizer, there are still a lot
of problems to be discussed and clarified. ICG suggests that the
referendum should be conducted with the participation of Armenians
and Azeris.

Speaking about the independence referendum conducted in Nagorno
Karabakh in 1991, Freizer noted Azerbaijan did not recognize its
outcomes. ICG suggests that a new referendum should be conducted for
its outcomes to be recognized by Azerbaijan and be fixed in a peace
agreement. It is difficult to speak about the referendum’s technical
details now. No one knows what is going to take place in 10 – 15 years,
who will finance the referendum and monitor it. The issue referring to
the referendum is still painful. A few months ago Azeri FM rejected
the idea. And yet, according to the Azeri Constitution, a referendum
cannot be conducted in one part of the Republic, it must be held on
the whole territory of the country, noted Freizer.

There are other questions as well: who should vote and where? The
Armenian party believes voting should be conducted in the NK only,
and the question should be “Do you strive for independence?”.

According to Azeris, two referendums should be conducted in the NK:
the one among Armenians and another among Azeris. Who will vote – those
who used to live in the NK before the conflict’s beginning or their
posterity? In Freizer’s words, all the options should be discussed.

In this connection RA MFA representative Varuzhan Nersisyan noted
the issue referring to the status of Nagorno Karabakh could not be
postponed. The status is clear. He stated only its fixation’s form
could be put off.

He added the issue relevant to troops pullout from the territories
surrounding the NK should be discussed very carefully. In the
diplomat’s opinion, the problem is that Azerbaijan can change its
intentions, while Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh will not have the
lever of influence.

Varuzhan Nersisyan said it was obvious for Armenia that only one
referendum was to be conducted in NKR, as it concerned Nagorno Karabakh
people’s security. The Armenian diplomat stressed only the people
who lived in NKR or had lived there before the conflict should make
their choice.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NKR AND ARMENIA STRENGTHEN JUDICIAL – LEGAL TIES

DeFacto Agency, Armenia
Oct 11 2005

The issues referring to improvement of Nagorno Karabakh judicial –
legal system, as well as further strengthening of ties between the
corresponding organs of Armenia and NKR were discussed in the course
of the NKR President Arkady Ghoukasyan’s meeting with the delegation
of RA Courts of Cassation, Appeal and Economy headed by Court of
Cassation Chair Oganes Manoukyan.

According to the information De Facto got at the Central information
department under the NKR President, during the meeting Oganes
Manoukyan informed the President of the fact that the Cooperation
Agreement had been signed in Stepanakert, according to which fruitful
interaction between RA and NKR judicial structures had been assumed as
basis. According to Manoukyan, the parties are to exchange professional
information, render legal and consultation assistance.

In his turn the NKR President Arkady Ghoukasyan voiced confidence
that the cooperation between the two Armenian Republics’ judicial
organs would be useful and effective for both parties.

IN ARMENIA L’ULTIMA FRONTIERA PER GLI IMPRENDITORI ITALIANI: CAUCASO – OPPORTUNITA DI INVESTIMENTO
Dal Nostro Inviato

Il Sole-24 Ore, Italia
6 Ott 2005

Dopo Ucraina e Moldavia l’azione si sposta verso l’Asia centrale

EREVAN – Dopo Ucraina e Moldavia la nuova frontiera per i “pionieri”
del made in Italy si sposta verso il Caucaso, in Georgia e Armenia.

Paesi nati dalla disgregazione dell’ex impero russo che, nonostante i
numerosi problemi di natura politica, offrono interessanti opportunita
di investimento.

Il compito di accompagnare lo sbarco di un primo drappello di quaranta
imprenditori italiani in Armenia se l’e assunto il viceministro delle
Attivita produttive, Adolfo Urso, giunto ieri a Erevan per inaugurare
le “Giornate dell’amicizia italo-armena”, una manifestazione che
durante tutto il mese di ottobre illustrera il meglio della musica,
del cinema e della gastronomia italiani.

Un’iniziativa incentrata sulla mostra dei tesori dell’isola veneziana
di San Lazzaro (la cosiddetta Isola degli Armeni) e affiancata dal
Business forum tra imprese italiane e armene, che si pone l’obiettivo
di far conoscere l’Italia ai rappresentanti delle istituzioni locali.

Negli incontri che il viceministro Urso ha avuto ieri con il ministro
degli Esteri armeno, Vartan Oskanian, e con quello dello Sviluppo
economico, Karen Tchshmarityan, e stata resa esplicita la volonta
del sistema imprenditoriale italiano di rafforzare la cooperazione
economica con il Paese in coincidenza con la maggiore stabilizzazione
politica che si attende dal referendum istituzionale previsto a
novembre per riportare maggiori poteri al Parlamento, e in vista di
un compromesso con Baku per avviare a soluzione il vecchio conflitto
“congelato” con il Nagorno-Karabakh. Una volonta che Urso manifestera
anche oggi nel colloquio previsto con il presidente Robert Kocharian.

‘I rapporti culturali e istituzionali tra Roma e Jerevan – ha precisato
Urso – sono straordinari da molto tempo, non si puo dire lo stesso
per i rapporti commerciali. L’Italia e in effetti l’ottavo partner
dell’Armenia e il decimo investitore. Le cifre registrano segnali
di interesse ma c’e ancora molto da fare per migliorare scambi e
investimenti diretti’.

In realta nel Paese gia da tempo sono presenti ditte come la Renco
di Pesaro, attiva nelle costruzioni, e la Lovable (intimo) ha un
suo stabilimento, ma nel settore del credito e dell’energia nessuna
azienda italiana ha preso parte al processo di privatizzazione avviato
da tempo.

Le banche sono state quasi tutte privatizzate da russi o da gruppi
legati alla cosiddetta “diaspora” armena, e solo di recente Banca
Intesa ha manifestato interesse per aprire sportelli nel Paese.

Per quanto riguarda le prospettive di collaborazione economica
futura, i settori di interesse restano quello dell’edilizia,
dell’agroalimentare (tra le imprese presenti al Business forum anche
il produttore umbro di olio Rapanelli), delle macchine utensili,
del tessile e del turismo. ‘Ma le autorita del Paese – ha spiegato il
viceministro Urso – guardano a noi anche come punto di riferimento per
rendere piu efficiente il loro sistema amministrativo. A questo scopo
hanno chiesto un progetto di formazione per le Camere di commercio’.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FIELDWORK UNDER FIRE
By Orin Starn

The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 14, 2005, Friday

Where, exactly, is Armenia?

I have to admit that I couldn’t have pointed it out on a map for you
until a few months ago.

That changed in a hurry last summer. Almost overnight, it seemed,
I found myself on an Austrian Airlines flight into Armenia’s capital,
Yerevan. A student of mine, Yektan Turkyilmaz, was about to be put on
trial there. The secret police had arrested Yektan two months before
just as he was leaving Armenia, having finished his anthropology
dissertation research on the early 20th-century history of the
region. A kind, passionate, and brilliant young scholar, Yektan had
been held in a miserable basement dungeon. He shared a cell – and the
jars of Nutella a friend brought now and then – with two Armenian
prisoners locked up for petty crimes. Many nights Yektan and his
cellmates could hear the screams of other men being tortured upstairs.

Yektan’s crime? Trying to smuggle old books out of Armenia, according
to the government. The real reason was a poisonous brew of politics,
corruption, and paranoia. Yektan is Turkish, albeit of Kurdish
descent. Even today, many Armenians hate Turks for 1915, when more
than a million Armenians were rounded up for slaughter in the 20th
century’s first genocide. That a Turk, Duke University student or not,
would come to Yerevan to study the period’s fraught history had made
him an object of speculation and suspicion from the very start.

The great irony is that Yektan is one of a few brave Turkish scholars
now calling for Turkey to face up to its responsibility for the
Armenian genocide. Speaking about 1915 has been mostly taboo in Turkey,
with absurd denial and countercharges of Armenian duplicity instead
the order of the day. That Yektan was committed to real understanding
of Eastern Anatolia’s tragic history had won him research permission
from the director of the Armenian National Archive. He was the first
Turkish scholar ever allowed to work there.

None of this mattered to the secret police. Although renamed the
National Security Service, everyone in Yerevan just calls them the
KGB, an unhappy legacy of Armenia’s long cold-war decades as part
of the Soviet Union. Closely tied to President Robert Kocharian,
a former Communist Party official, the secret police are a shadow
state. They harass and brass-knuckle opponents, control plum jobs,
and extort money in bribes and kickbacks in the topsy-turvy gangster
capitalism of these new post-Soviet times.

Over his several months in Yerevan, Yektan had bought about 100 used
books from secondhand booksellers, all related to his research about
Armenian culture, politics, and history. The secret police had probably
been following Yektan, and, just after boarding his flight home, he was
dragged off the plane and taken to KGB headquarters. An obscure law
restricting the export from Armenia of any book older than 50 years
provided the pretext for keeping Yektan prisoner. His interrogators
were convinced that they had captured a major book smuggler, or,
more likely, a Turkish spy.

Then came rafts of letters demanding Yektan’s release from the likes
of Richard H. Brodhead, president of Duke; Craig Calhoun, president of
the Social Science Research Council; Rep. David E. Price, Democrat of
North Carolina; and Bob Dole, the former Kansas senator and a longtime
friend of Armenia. At that point, Yektan recalls, the secret police
began to interrogate him about a third possibilitynamely, that he
was an American spy. How else to explain such concern from halfway
around the world? “Mean and stupid,” one Armenian I met in Yerevan
snickered privately about the KGB.

The tale of Yektan’s arrest might appear like some bizarre outlier,
a freak episode of the Keystone Kops and Gulag Archipelago rolled
into one. I think, however, that the story points to larger changes in
the field of anthropology. In the hoary old days of the pith helmet,
native porters, and steamer-trunk expeditions to Samoa and Congo,
anthropologists noted the minutiae of kinship structures and tribal
ritual down to the last cowrie shell. Those old-time anthropologists
tended to shy away from writing about the less comfortable realities
of poverty, war, disease, racism, and colonial oppression in the
third-world societies that they studied.

It’s little wonder that anthropologists back then seldom got into
trouble. No one besides a small universe of other scholars back in
Oxford and New Haven cared about the exact explanation for why some
New Guinea hill tribes liked to chew betel nut at male-initiation
ceremonies and others did not.

Everything has changed over the last few decades. The turbulence of
the Vietnam War years brought loud calls for, as the title of one
influential anthology had it, “reinventing anthropology” in a more
activist, politically engaged image. Then, too, the changing trade
winds of feminist, Marxist, and later postmodern and postcolonial
theory began to propel questions about social protest and nationalism,
violence and memory, and power and politics to the center of the field.

You can see the results now. At Duke alone we have students doing
dissertations about Mexico’s Zapatista rebels and anti-globalization
activism; everyday life and women’s rights in Castro’s Cuba; and
Palestinian refugees in Syria and Lebanon, among many other charged
topics. It’s a long way from the age of anthropologists with lordly
names like E.E. Evans-Pritchard and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, and heated
hallway debate about the particulars of Crow kinship reckoning.

A degree of risk accompanies the new, more politically minded
anthropology. A recent Ph.D. from our Duke program, Daniel Hoffman,
had to be evacuated by helicopter from Sierra Leone a few years ago.

Hoffman was near death with cerebral malaria he had contracted in the
backcountry while investigating the kamajor militia movement and their
tough, violent world. Myrna Mack, a Guatemalan anthropologist, was
stabbed to death by an army death squad in retaliation for her research
into the slaughter of Mayan Indians in military counterinsurgency
campaigns. Last summer Kregg Hetherington, a graduate student at
the University of California at Davis studying Paraguayan agrarian
activism, was with peasant protestors when they were attacked by
landlord goons, who shot and killed two village friends standing
close by him. Fieldwork under fire is by no means uncommon these days.

It’s always wise to be wary about coming down too hard on
one’s disciplinary ancestors. Whatever their failings, those
early-20th-century anthropologists believed in human equality and
the value of other cultures in an age when the hateful ideology about
white superiority to the “savages” and “primitives” of “lesser races”
was so prevalent. We shouldn’t be too complacent about our own era’s
failures either, since the field is hardly a model of democracy and
political righteousness. Our many shortcomings include a tiresome
addiction to ugly, pretentious, jargon-laden prose that makes far
too much of what we write unintelligible to anyone who doesn’t have
one of those secret postmodern jargon decoder rings.

I do think it’s good that we’ve moved to a more direct engagement
with the world’s social problems. Surely these times demand more than
ever the effort to understand the power of xenophobia and nationalist
hatred, the tensions of wealth and want in the global economy, the
limits and possibilities of social movements, and a long list of
other pressing issues. If not in grace of prose, anthropologists
have the advantage over journalists in the deeper, more intimate
view gained by months and often years of fieldwork. We can play at
least a modest role in expanding awareness, critical understanding,
and a stronger sense of mutual accountability and responsibility in
this irreversibly interconnected world.

But what, then, of Yektan? I watched him being led into the courtroom
in handcuffs surrounded by five policemen as if he were some dangerous
murderer. All the booksellers from whom Yektan had bought books
testified that they had never told him about any law limiting their
export, or in some cases not even known about it themselves.

The smug, overfed, theatrical prosecutor appeared to have watched
too many old Perry Mason reruns. He punctuated his incoherent closing
statement with plenty of pregnant pauses, accusatory stares, and the
dark suggestion that Yektan was not really a student at all. Then he
drove off without even bothering to stick around for the verdict.

Everyone knew, after all, that higher powers had almost certainly
decided the outcome beforehand in the archetypal Stalinist show-trial
tradition. Two years in jail, the judge announced, but with a
suspended sentence, meaning no more prison time. The verdict allowed
the government to pretend that Yektan’s arrest had been justified
while ceding to the heavy international pressure for his freedom.

With a few Armenian friends who’d stood with him through his ordeal,
Yektan walked out of the courthouse into the sweltering August
afternoon. He blinked and squinted, unaccustomed to the sun after
two months in a prison cell.

Now Yektan is back at Duke. He lost 20 pounds in prison, and his eyes
still dart nervously as if someone may be following him, but he says he
went to Armenia knowing it could be risky for him there. What Yektan
learned in his research will help him fill in the story of political
ambition, disputed borders, and nationalism gone awry that led to
the genocide of 1915. Does he have advice for other anthropologists
working in dangerous places? “Just be careful.” His own concerns are
turning to more prosaic matters familiar to any graduate student.

“I want,” he says, “to finish my dissertation and get on with my life.”

Orin Starn is a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke
University. He is the author of Ishi’s Brain: In Search of America’s
Last “Wild” Indian, published last year by W.W. Norton.

CONTROVERSIAL CONFERENCE ON GENOCIDE HELD IN TURKEY
Aisha Labi

The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 7, 2005, Friday

An academic conference on Turkey’s controversial “Armenian question”
took place last month in Istanbul, despite legal maneuvering by Turkish
nationalists that had threatened to prevent it. The conference was
originally to have taken place in May, but was postponed at the last
minute under pressure from government officials.

The meeting was rescheduled at Bogaziçi University, also known
in English as Bosphorus University, but was once again postponed
on the eve of its opening, this time because of a legal challenge
that questioned its scientific validity and the qualifications of
its participants. The challengers also said it was inappropriate
for Bogaziçi, a public university, to be the venue for such
a gathering, which they said contravened its mission.

Academics from Istanbul Bilgi University, Bogaziçi, and Sabanci
University, three of Turkey’s leading higher-education institutions,
organized the meeting, which they described as the first conference
on the Armenian issue in Turkey not organized by state authorities
or government-affiliated historians. Bilgi and Sabanci are private.

Armenians have long contended that the killings of up to 1.5 million
Armenians in 1915 and subsequent years, during the waning days of
the Ottoman Empire, constituted genocide by Ottoman Turkish forces.

Turkey officially rejects that view. Turkish historians and other
academics have become increasingly outspoken in challenging the
nationalist line on the issue, however, and growing international
attention has also focused on the matter. Talks on Turkey’s bid
to join the European Union began last month, and the government’s
inflexibility on the Armenian question remains a sticking point.

The conference, titled “Ottoman Armenians During the Demise of
the Empire: Issues of Democracy and Scientific Responsibility,” was
postponed in May after its organizers could not guarantee participants’
safety.

Last month participants had arrived in Istanbul and the rescheduled
meeting looked set to begin on time when the fresh legal challenge
against it came to light. A three-judge panel of an administrative
court had ruled, 2 to 1, that a legal investigation of the conference’s
validity should take place, even though its organizers were notified
of the decision only the day before the conference was to begin.

With that inquiry pending, Bogaziçi could no longer play
host to the conference without being held in contempt of the court’s
ruling. Organizers hastily shifted the venue to Bilgi so the conference
could proceed.

‘Anti-Democratic Development’

The official response to the threat to the rescheduled conference
differed starkly from the government’s approach in May, when the
justice minister took to the floor of Parliament to brand the meeting
“treason” and a “dagger in the back of the Turkish people.” This time,
in comments broadcast on television, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan said he was saddened by the new threat to the conference. He
characterized the legal challenge as an “anti-democratic development”
to which he was opposed.

Aybar Ertepinar, vice president of the Council of Higher Education,
a government-financed organization that oversees all Turkish
universities, said that although his group had not been invited to
take part, the conference should have been allowed to proceed at
Bogaziçi.

“Our Constitution grants academic and scientific freedom to
universities,” he said. Taking up the opponents’ challenge “was an
unfortunate decision of the court that went beyond the borders of
its responsibility,” he said.

With the more than 350 participants once again assembled in Istanbul,
the conference’s organizers decided that “we can either do this now or
we cannot do it all again,” said Fatma Müge Gocek, an associate
professor of sociology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
who was on the meeting’s advisory committee.

Organizers had selected Bogaziçi as the venue for the meeting
precisely because it is a public institution, but they decided they
had no choice but to relocate to Bilgi. The rectors of all three
sponsoring universities welcomed the participants, who met in marathon
sessions to condense into two days a program that was to have been
spread over three.

Because the conference had received so much attention in the Turkish
news media, participants did not even need to be notified of the
change, said Ms. Gocek. Opponents were also aware of the new location,
and about 100 protesters showed up to heckle participants and pelt
them with eggs and tomatoes, she said.

As the conference concluded, Ms. Gocek said she felt a real “paradigm
shift” had occurred. “We had lots of Turkish journalists there who said
they are not going to use the word ‘alleged’ from now on, in terms
of talking about the genocide. They may refer to ‘genocide claims,’
but they will no longer talk of an ‘alleged genocide,'” she said.

Papers from the conference will be published immediately in Turkish,
which was the working language of the gathering, and as soon as
possible in English, Ms. Gocek said.

ARMENISCH-TURKISCHER PUBLIZIST HRANT DINK BEKOMMT WEGEN VOLKSKRITISCHEN ARTIKELS BEWAHRUNGSSTRAFE
von Boris Kalnoky

DIE WELT, Deutschland
10. Oktober 2005

Verurteilung wegen Beleidigung der Turkei

Istanbul – Wegen Beleidigung der Turkei ist ein armenisch-turkischer
Journalist zu einer sechsmonatigen Bewahrungsstrafe verurteilt
worden. Hrant Dink hatte im Februar 2004 in seiner Wochenzeitung “Agos”
etwas verquer geschrieben, die Armenier sollten sich “dem neuen Blut
des unabhangigen Armeniens zuwenden”. Nur so konnten sie sich von der
“Last der Diaspora befreien”. In dem Beitrag ging es um das kollektive
Gedachtnis der Massaker an den Armeniern von 1915-17 (in der Turkei
darf man diesbezuglich nicht von Genozid sprechen oder schreiben),
und in einer anderen, etwas merkwurdigen Formulierung schrieb Dink,
die Armenier sollten den “verdorbenen Teil ihres turkischen Blutes”
symbolisch zuruckweisen. Nach Angaben von Dinks Kollegen wurden die
Zitate aus dem Zusammenhang gerissen und falsch interpretiert. In
der Turkei steht die Beleidigung der nationalen Identitat unter Strafe.

Wenige Tage nach der Aufnahme von Beitrittsverhandlungen zwischen der
EU und der Turkei hat der Schuldspruch auch deshalb eine besondere
Bedeutung, weil Dink auf der Grundlage von Gesetzen verurteilt wurde,
die nach Ansicht der EU abgeschafft werden mussen.

Die Intellektuellen und Publizisten der Turkei taten indes gut daran,
die Regierung einmal um eine erschopfende und rechtlich bindende
Definition dessen zu bitten, was sie unter “turkischer Identitat”
versteht. Das ware einerseits sicher kurzweilige Lekture, und
andererseits auch Schutz vor dem langen Arm des Gesetzes. Denn obwohl
niemand so ganz genau weiß, was diese turkische Identitat denn sein
soll, macht man sich strafbar, wenn man sie “beleidigt”. (Vielleicht
brauchte man auch eine Definition dessen, was unter “Beleidigung”
zu verstehen ist). Daß das Gericht mit seinem Urteil zugleich die
neuerdings so gern beschworene “europaische Identitat” der Turkei
beleidigte, zu deren zentralen Werten immer noch die Meinungsfreiheit
gehort, fiel vermutlich keinem der urteilsfreudigen Polit-Juristen auf.

Aus europaischer Sicht, und auch aus der Sicht turkischer
Reformpolitiker, ist jedenfalls die Sorge berechtigt, daß konservative
Kreise innerhalb des Justizapparates mit spektakular widersinnigen
Verfahren gegen prominente Intellektuelle versuchen, die europaischen
Traume der Turkei zu sabotieren.

Im Dezember steht ein Prozeß gegen den Schriftsteller Orhan Pamuk an,
der sich gegen ganz ahnliche Vorwurfe verteidigen muß. Pamuk bekommt
dieses Jahr den Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels. Er hat zwar
nicht das verbotene Wort “Genozid” gebraucht, aber doch offentlich
gesagt, in der Turkei seien 30 000 Kurden und eine Million Armenier
umgebracht worden. Letztere Zahl ist nach Meinung vieler Historiker
etwas hoch gegriffen. Aber auch wenn es “nur” beispielsweise 800
000 Tote waren, wird dadurch das Ausmaß der Tragodie nicht geringer,
und das muß frei von Angst vor staatlicher Gewalt gesagt werden durfen.

Die juristische Hetzkampagne gegen “unturkische” Intellektuelle ist um
so bedauerlicher, als der Trend eigentlich in Richtung Liberalisierung
geht. Kurzlich wurde nach langem Widerstand der Justizbehorden –
die in den genannten Fallen stets eine Rolle zu spielen pflegen –
eine Konferenz unabhangiger Historiker zur Armenierfrage in Istanbul
abgehalten.

Seither liest man in Kolumnen und Kommentaren turkischer Blatter
bemerkenswerte Meinungen und Analysen. Enver Pasha und die Jungturken,
die damals das ottomanische Reich regierten, werden da beispielsweise
als vom Volk abgehobene Abenteurertypen geschildert, Fremde eigentlich,
Turken vom Balkan, deren verantwortungslose Politik nicht nur die
Armenier, sondern auch die Turken und letztlich das ganze Land ins
Verderben sturzte.

Das konnte eine Vorstufe fur die Entwicklung einer neuen Standard-These
in der Turkei sein: Wir waren es nicht, Enver Pascha ist es gewesen.

–Boundary_(ID_AcnXmmWAEckMb0y1wjFF1Q)–

ARMENIEN HOFFT AUF TURKISCHE ZUGESTANDNISSE IN EU-VERHANDLUNGEN

Associated Press Worldstream – German
Mittwoch, 5. Oktober 2005

Eriwan

Armenien erhofft sich im Laufe der EU-Beitrittsverhandlungen mit der
Turkei historische Zugestandnisse Ankaras. Außenamtssprecher Gamlet
Gasparjan sagte am Mittwoch in Eriwan, vor einer Aufnahme in die EU
sollte die Turkei die Verfolgung der armenischen Minderheit Anfang
des 20.

Jahrhunderts als Volkermord anerkennen. Eriwan hoffe daruber hinaus,
dass die Turkei als EU-Mitglied ihre Grenze zu Armenien offnet
“und echte Schritte zur vollen Garantie der Rechte und Freiheiten
nationaler Minderheiten einleitet”.

Der Osten der heutigen Turkei war das Kernland der armenischen Kultur
bis zum Zusammenbruch des Ottomanischen Reichs gegen Ende des Ersten
Weltkriegs. Nach armenischer Darstellung wurden bei Vertreibungen und
Verfolgung bis zu 1,5 Millionen Menschen getotet; Eriwan spricht von
einem Volkermord. Wegen des armenisch-aserbaidschanischen Krieges
schloss die Turkei 1993 ihre Grenze zu Armenien. Fur Armenien,
das keinen Zugang zum Schwarzen Meer hat, bedeutet das erhebliche
wirtschaftliche Nachteile.

–Boundary_(ID_C4UAGUpDpN7r7/faR6DOGA)–