DOWN IS UP: SYSTEM OF A DOWN IS ROCK’S LEAST LIKELY SUCCESS STORY.
By Michael Roberts

Denver Westword (Colorado)
September 29, 2005 Thursday

They used to call us nu-metal,” System of a Down singer/guitarist
Daron Malakian told the ecstatic crowd at his band’s April 27 Ogden
Theatre gig. “Now they call us prog rock. I think they’ll call us
anything that’s popular.” Then, after a pause and the subtlest of
grins, he announced, “But actually, we’re just a bunch of mo-rons.”

Months later, as System headlines its biggest tour to date, Malakian is
being touted as the mastermind of Mezmerize, which has been embraced
by critics and fans alike. The CD debuted in May atop the Billboard
album chart, further raising expectations for Hypnotize, a companion
disc scheduled for a November release. Malakian isn’t particularly
comfortable with this attention, and he’s just as wary of questions
about his comments at the Ogden. “I never remember anything I say on
stage,” he warns. Upon having his statement repeated to him, however,
he laughs with relief. “I can stand behind that,” he declares.

No wonder, since his offhand remark effectively satirizes the media’s
continuing attempts to pigeonhole System. “Lately we’ve been doing
interviews, and people have been like, ‘You guys are really leading
the way for the new prog movement,'” he notes. “And I’m like, ‘What?’
Because a couple of years ago, these guys were comparing us to
Limp Bizkit and Korn, and now that we’re still here and those bands
aren’t, they’re talking about prog. It’s just kind of aggravating
that people always have to have something to compare us to or bunch
us up with. I’m not saying we’re the most original band in the world,
but I don’t really feel that we fall into a heavy-metal category,
or a pure rock category. There’s a lot of stuff mixed up into one.”

As for the humorously self-deprecating “mo-rons” remark, it hints
at a truth about the group that’s frequently overlooked. Although
System is clearly one of the smartest acts in popular music, socially
astute, hyper-articulate fare like “B.Y.O.B.” is as popular among
just plain folks as it is with left-wing activists and Mensa members,
for reasons that the live show makes clear. Vocalist Serj Tankian’s
sweeping theatricality, bassist Shavo Odadjian’s elastic head-bobbing,
drummer John Dolmayan’s hyperkinetic rhythms and Malakian’s aggressive
riffology suggest that they remain very much in touch with their inner
mo-ron — the part of them that loved sound and fury long before it
signified anything.

“It’s important not to take yourself too seriously,” Malakian says,
“and I think sometimes people take us a lot more seriously than
we take ourselves, especially when it comes to politics. Politics,
for me, is a reflection of the world I live in. But love is just as
important as politics to me. They both exist in the world, you know?

And if you don’t reflect the entire world around you, then you’re
leaving something out.”

System is all about inclusion. The music bears the mark of so many
varied influences, Malakian maintains, that “I think you could call
us anything you want and you’d be right.” That’s one reason numerous
labels initially kept their distance from System, even though these
“four Armenian guys from L.A.,” as Malakian calls them, had built a
sizable audience among habitues of the mid-’90s Hollywood club scene.

Producer Rick Rubin eventually signed System to his imprint, American
Records, but reviewers didn’t quite know what to make of the quartet’s
1998 self-titled debut. “They’d say, ‘It kind of sounds like this’
or ‘It kind of sounds like that,'” Malakian recalls, “and by the
time they were done, they’d named five bands that had nothing to do
with one another.” He wasn’t bothered by Dead Kennedys references,
since he acknowledges a certain commonality between Tankian’s nasal
wailing and that of DK leader Jello Biafra, but he felt nu-metal
allusions constituted “guilt by association.”

Still, it’s likely that this tag helped convince radio programmers to
give System a chance, and the airplay lavished on strong cuts such as
“Spiders” and “Sugar,” not to mention the publicity garnered for its
star-making turn during the 1998 edition of Ozzfest, helped break the
band nationally. Malakian and company responded with 2001’s Toxicity,
an even better recording than the first, albeit one whose appearance
was awkwardly timed: The disc arrived in stores the week of 9/11.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks, representatives of Clear Channel,
the owner of more U.S. rock radio stations than any other company,
placed the group’s entire oeuvre, including the brilliant single “Chop
Suey!,” on a list of tunes that shouldn’t be aired. This misguided,
arguably racist move, which took place around the same time that
Tankian posted criticism of American foreign policy on System’s
website, hardly stopped listeners from seeking out Toxicity.

As Malakian points out, “We were being censored, but people were
still going out and buying the record. And to be honest with you,
radio was playing it like crazy.” He adds, “The more they try to shut
somebody’s mouth, the more people are going to want to hear what the
person has to say. It’s a big mistake from the beginning.”

Toxicity created such a big noise that System promptly issued 2002’s
Steal This Album!, a first-rate collection of random tracks from
throughout its existence that spawned another hit, the appropriately
explosive “Boom!” The period of relative quiet that followed was
broken in a major way by Mezmerize, and many admirers characterized
it as a coming-out party for Malakian. Granted, Malakian’s voice
is more prominent than before, and “Old School Hollywood,” a wry
recapitulation of a celebrity baseball game that mentions Tony Danza
and Frankie Avalon, finds him employing first person in an extremely
direct manner. Yet he sees the theory that he’s suddenly taken control
of System as being fatally flawed.

“Yeah, I’m singing more, and, yeah, I sing just as much on Hypnotize,”
he confirms. “But that’s the only difference. I’ve always written
and produced and put down the path for System when it comes down
to the songs: first record, second record, third record, these
records. Almost every chorus — about 80 percent of every System
of a Down chorus that you sing — is a vocal line that I wrote,
with words that I wrote. I just didn’t sing them. And this time,
the songs called for more of an interaction between me and Serj,
so suddenly people think I’m doing more. People get very focused on
the vocalist and end up thinking the vocalist is doing everything in
the band, which isn’t necessarily the case.”

It’s unusual for Malakian to trumpet his role in System, primary
though it is. He’d much rather talk about “people I respect” — an
honor roll that runs the gamut from Mahatma Gandhi to Charles Manson.

Malakian tweaked political correctness on Toxicity via “ATWA,” a track
inspired by some of Manson’s environmental musings, and Mezmerize’s
liner sports an epigram from the “Helter Skelter” man: “In your world
you can take a pen and write on a piece of paper and destroy 200,000
people or more and it’s ok because you don’t have to see it.”

“I have no interest in murder, and I have no interest in people dying,”
Malakian stresses. “But I’m interested in people’s minds, and sometimes
Manson puts thoughts together that I find really interesting. Have you
ever seen his unedited videos? He starts making a lot of sense. I’m
sure people are scared of that, but to me, it’s scarier to watch
George Bush try to make sense.”

Even so, Malakian’s rhapsodic waxings about another hero — former
Los Angeles Lakers basketballer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — reveal more
about him than does his Manson jones. Malakian often saw Abdul-Jabbar
play during the Lakers”80s heyday, and he says, “I like that he was
the captain of his team, and he wasn’t so much of a showboater. You
just don’t see players like him anymore — players who keep quiet,
play their fuckin’ game, and don’t act like a rock star.”

Malakian takes the same approach to System of a Down. “When people
come to our shows, I don’t want it to only be serious moments about
politics,” he allows. “I want them to have a good time. That’s what
it comes down to for me.”

THE EU AND TURKEY: PARTNERS OR GLADIATORS?
by Sylvie Goulard

Cafe Babel, France
Oct 3 2005

With negotiations over Turkey’s accession to the EU beginning, Europe
is still utterly confused as to which attitude to adopt towards the
Turkish government. And it is the island of Cyprus that finds itself
at the heart of the argument.

For decades, the conflict between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus
has been a major impediment for the improvement of relations between
Turkey and the EU. When Cyprus applied to join the EU in July 1990, the
Community saw this as a chance for peace. It assumed that the Southern
Greek-Cypriot Republic was acting out the will of the entire island.

Negotiations began in 1998 in the hope of encouraging a process of
political reunification. However, the bet was lost and a divided island
joined the EU on May 1 2004. Both the rejection of the Annan plan (a
United Nations proposal to bring about the reunification of Cyprus)
by the Greek side and the persistence of fervent Turkish nationalism
have hampered efforts to overcome the partition.

Maybe it was a chance worth taking since there are a few previous
examples of when the will to overlook political reality has triumphed
over unfavourable circumstances. For example, from 1945, and in spite
of the Cold War, the Allies kept alive the idea that Germany was whole,
which proved to be helpful during reunification in 1990.

Similarly, the fact that the USSR refused to recognise the Baltic
States’ annexation greatly facilitated their independence in the
1990s. The path to reconciliation and peace are not always the
straightest. Sometimes the bends can lead right back to the start
instead of driving the process forward.

Diplomatic subterfuges

During the 2004 European Council on December 17, the twenty-five heads
of state did not expressly ask Turkey to recognise the Republic of
Cyprus that had by then joined. It was instead decided that they
should have recourse to one of those detours that diplomats know
best in order for Turks to save face within their own borders. The
convoluted formula which allows this to take place deserves to be
quoted in full: “The European Council welcomed Turkey’s decision to
sign the Protocol regarding the adaptation of the Ankara Agreement
[customs union], taking account of the accession of the ten new member
states. In this light, it welcomed the declaration of Turkey that ‘the
Turkish Government confirms that it is ready to sign the Protocol on
the adaptation of the Ankara Agreement prior to the actual start of
accession negotiations and after reaching agreement on and finalising
the adaptations which are necessary in view of the current membership
of the European Union.'”

In other words, even though Cyprus was not explicitly cited but alluded
to twice, Turkey agreed to extend the agreement previously governing
their relations with the EU to the island. This takes into account
all potential implications for the free passage of boats, aircraft
and merchandise. However, shortly after this was announced, Turkey
made it explicit that this was not an acknowledgement of Cyprus. A
controversial move in view of such carefully chosen words.

The French authorities were quick to react. According to Prime Minister
Dominic de Villepin, it was “inconceivable” to negotiate willingly
with a country that refused to acknowledge the existence of one of
the member states. Unfortunately, by late August, President Chirac
had gone back on this statement at the conference of ambassadors,
insisting on the opening of negotiations.

As for the British EU presidency, it allowed the insulting statement to
pass and went as far as supporting Turkey’s decision. Two months later,
the presidency was still looking for an appropriate reaction to give to
the Cypriots and other “smaller” countries. It remains, however, hard
to conjure a compromise that will sanction Turkey without jeopardising
negotiations. No European still dares to suggest the required solution:
that of renegotiating the adhesion in terms of a Turkish turnaround.

European Turnaround

Once more, the EU will give in. This attitude is deplorable. It is
conceivable that Europeans should make the necessary efforts to help
the Turkish government overcome various difficult situations it may
face. But it is dangerous to compromise on such a fundamental point
when the uncompromising Turkish government refuses to look beyond
its nationalist and narrow purpose. By publicly stating that it
refuses to acknowledge the existence of one of the EU member states
whilst aspiring to integrate into the very same organisation, Turkey
demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of the very nature of the EU.

Indeed, the EU is not a circus arena in which gladiators frenziedly
fight each other but a space of cooperation in which members listen
to and respect each other.

The upsurge of Turkish nationalism in Spring 2005, as well as the
threats against the author Orhan Pamuk (whose only crime was to make
the truth known about the Armenian genocide and the resurgence of
upheaval in Kurdistan) have muddied the positive image the Commission
had offered in its October 2004 report. To make matters worse, since
the decision of the European Council in December 2004, two founding
countries have rejected the Constitutional Treaty thereby exposing
the vulnerability of the EU. Negotiations may be opening, but it is
obvious that the heart is no longer in it.

Sylvie Goulard – Paris – 3.10.2005 | Translation : Abla Kandalaft

;Id=4896

BELGIAN COMMENTARY CONDEMNS EU LEADERS’ POLITICAL “HYPOCRISY” OVER TURKEY

De Standaard website, Groot-Bijgaarden, The Netherlands
Sept 30 2005

The debate on Turkey’s EU accession is getting dangerously out of
hand. This is because the leaders of the EU have not been able to
determine the final destination of their “political union” since the
end of the Cold War. For this reason, they are lacking clear criteria
to solve the Turkish dilemma.

Last Wednesday [28 September], the European Parliament in Strasbourg
scored an own goal. At the proposal of the German Christian Democrats,
European MPs refused to approve the Ankara protocol. This is mainly
a symbolic gesture, they said, to show their discontent with the
Erdogan-led government’s declaration that the signing of the protocol
did not automatically imply it would recognize Cyprus.

People in Ankara are not really ill at ease about this. Last December,
the state and government leaders decided that Turkey only needed to
sign the Ankara protocol prior to the opening of negotiations. The
official approval by both the Turkish and European parliaments was
not a prerequisite. What is more, the parliament’s gesture even suits
the Turks, because the non-ratification [of the Ankara protocol]
constitutes an additional reason for Turkey to postpone application
of the customs union to Cyprus.

Moreover, the general indignation over Ankara’s unilateral declaration
regarding the non-recognition of Cyprus raises suspicions. During last
December’s EU summit, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul accepted a
compromise with the EU at a separate meeting with [UK Home Secretary]
Jack Straw, [German Foreign Minister] Joschka Fischer, and [Belgian
Foreign Minister] Karel De Gucht aimed at breaking the deadlock. He
agreed that Turkey would sign the protocol, but added that this would
not mean that it would therefore recognize Cyprus. Gul clearly stated
this at that time and the EU ministers accepted it. Afterward, the
European Council and all European leaders accepted this compromise.

Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, who was EU president
at that time, formally announced the compromise. He clearly said that
the Turkish government would sign the protocol, but that this would
not imply the recognition of Cyprus. The EU’s explanation for this is
that Ankara wants to keep a means of power to put pressure on Greek
Cypriots to accept the UN compromise for the island in due course –
because, after all, it was the Greek Cypriots who rejected the accord
that Kofi Annan negotiated, in a bid to put an end to the conflict,
much to the displeasure of the EU member states, for that matter,
although this did not prevent them from allowing Cyprus to join the EU.

Yet, there is another intriguing element in the European Parliament’s
debate on Turkey: the ease with which the German Christian Democrats
approved the resolution, which literally states that accession
talks will be opened without making any mention of the option of a
“privileged partnership”. The toughening up of the text – demanding a
settlement regarding the European constitution and Turkey’s recognition
of the Armenian genocide as prerequisites for accession – simply serves
as trimmings, because the text clearly states that negotiations will
be about accession. During the Christian Democrats’ parliamentary
group meeting and afterward in the plenary session, Angela Merkel’s
fervent advocates of a “privileged partnership” have stabled their
battle horse.

As far as the Turkish problem is concerned, however, hypocrisy
has been turned into a political virtue. Realpolitik – let us allow
negotiations to start so as to prevent a major crisis – has prevailed
over principles – Turkey is not a “European” country (meaning: It is
an Islamic country) and can therefore not successfully be integrated
into the EU. Yesterday, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin
at least had the courage to distance himself openly from objections
against Turkey’s accession formerly raised by his president.

What then is the real problem regarding the EU’s enlargement to
Turkey? Is it Islam? Without a doubt. However, anybody who wants to
make a judgment out of fear should drop this objection. At this time,
there are more Muslims in the EU than there are Belgians – and if,
within the foreseeable future, the Balkan countries are allowed to
join, their numbers will increase further.

Is it fear of Turkish plumbers [invading the EU labour market] or a new
wave of company relocations towards inexpensive Turkey? Yes indeed,
but a correct analysis shows that the customs union with Turkey was
concluded as early as the 1960s.

The leader of Greens’ parliamentary group, Daniel Cohn Bendit, also
used a novel argument during the debate. Turkey would be the EU’s
first real “enlargement”, he argued, because previous expansions were
about no more than “reunification”.

The EU mainly has itself to blame for its problems with Turkey. Forty
years ago, Ankara was promised membership. At a meeting in Helsinki in
1999, Turkey was again granted the status of “candidate member state”.

Until 1989, this seemed to be a harmless point, since Turkey had
belonged to the “Western” camp since World War II. It joined NATO
and it was closely integrated [into the alliance], as was the rest
of the EU for that matter.

Since the collapse of the wall and the end of the Cold War, however,
this context has changed considerably. The Atlantic connection has
loosened. Since then, the EU has also been struggling with itself.

What will be its final destination? “The process of … (ellipsis
as published) an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”, as
it is stated in the first article of the Union Treaty, has been less
noncommittal since 1989. It is therefore not coincidental that, of all
passages, this one was left out of the text of the new constitutional
treaty, under British pressure.

So the EU’s enlargement problem does not lie with Turkey – it lies
with the European leaders who refuse to engage in a debate on the
political destination of their union. As long as they fail to come
to terms with this issue, they will not be able to give a fair reply
to Turkey, or to their own citizens.

IM WILL USE FORCE. BUT WITH WITS
by Mikhail Fadeev

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
October 3, 2005, Monday

SOURCE: Rossijskaya gazeta, September 29, 2005, p. 9

Today the first militia figures of the commonwealth will discuss the
strategy of fighting one of the three main evils on the post-Soviet
territory- terrorism, corruption and illegal migration. (…) Russian
Interior Ministry Rashid Nurgaliev is fighting to the Council of
the Interior Ministers of the CIS. On the eve he gave an exclusive
interview to Rossijskaya Gazeta.

Question: How do the estimations of the common threatens of the
ministers coincide? What can militia set against extremism?

Rashid Nurgaliev: The Interior Minister of the every CIS country
quite understands, that the terrorist threat exists for every state.

(…)First and foremost local terrorist groups blend into a single
trans-national system, the forgotten ideas of “Islam caliphate” are
reviving now. (…) It is necessary to fix operational information
interchange. And to create within the framework of the CIS countries
special data bases on international terrorist organizations, on
fulfillers of acts of terrorism and their accomplices. We need to
“raise” terrorists’ contacts, follow established by them sequences,
detect and hew away their financing resources and material basis. Our
armory of modern means includes force operations, powerful computer
technologies and analysts research.

Question: Will you insert into the data base not only terrorist?

Rashid Nurgaliev: Beside counter-action terrorism, at the meeting
the ministers will define steps of fighting corruption and illegal
migration. What’s more, we plan to introduce changes to the instruction
on a single way of implementing interstate detection of people, and
also joint formation and employment of accounts of the Interstate
information bank, created and functioning on the basis of the Main
Information Analyst Center of the Russian Interior Ministry.

At the council we will discuss not only operational cooperation,
but also further development of a single legal field. There are also
moot points concerning reciprocal cooperation with the Armenian police.

They involve realization of the decisions, made on June 23, 2005 in
Krasnodar, about the cooperation on the suppression of activities of
organized criminal groups, and also detection and detainment of people,
being on the wanted list We will arrange this meeting of the United
Collegium of the Interior Ministers of our states in the summer 2006
in Yerevan, concerning cooperation on fighting illegal migration.

Question: Have you intention to form some new interstate structures?

Rashid Nurgaliev: I think, the Council of the Interior Ministers is
quite enough to solve tasks and coordinate activities. Our aim is
much more serious: we want to create powerful, single, anti-criminal
front=line. And you know, what encourages us most of all? Not only
pragmatic conscious of necessity to integrate. The main thing is
that all of us are old friends. Some of us have studied together,
other have worked together. (…)

The cooperation encompasses almost all directions of operational
service activities. Speaking about efficient cooperation- I’ll
enumerate only a few latest examples. The operation on detainment of
active members of the terrorist organization “Hizb-ut-Tahrir”, carried
out last year in Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. 12 people, being
on the international wanted list, were detained. There were charged
of terrorist acts, arms and drug trade, homicides, and pillages.

The Six-month operation “Shield-2”, carried out by the Russian
Interior Ministry officers assisted by the colleagues from the Interior
Ministries of Uzbekistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Moldova,
Tajikistan, Turkmenia and Ukraine. As a result they confiscated tons
of drugs, create common computer data base on drug-dealers, kinds
of packages, and labels of Afghan heroin, made the map of possible
drug-trafficking routes.

The operation “Search” was performed by the Interior Ministries of
Russia, Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Ukraine. 8,297 accused
were detained, 2,660 of whom were on the federal wanted list, and 176-
on the interstate wanted list, they found 3,361 missing people.

(…) Together with foreign colleagues we are forming the Interstate
information bank, are sharing information on the line of the National
Central bureau of the Interpol. (…) We help our colleagues to train
personnel. On the whole 461 militia men and police men form the CIS
countries study in educational centers of the Interior Ministry. We
plan to increase quotas on education. We borrow a good deal of useful
things from our neighbors. The Byelorussian special forces demonstrated
a few know-how’s, enabling to economize time while rescuing hostages,
during the joint exercises under Smolensk. And Kazakhstan has developed
a modern system of biometrical control “CIS-visit”, that has been
adjusted to our tasks and is being assimilated throughout the country.

Question: Do you have contacts only with Byelorussian special
subdivisions?

Rashid Nurgaliev: Not only. For example, in October in the Krasnodar
training ground training musters of special forces of Russia and
Armenia will take part. We can need cooperation at any moment. (…)

Question: (…) How will you fight drug-trafficking – financing
of terror?

Rashid Nurgaliev: (…) According to our data, up to 60% of finance,
that are at disposal of the world’s terrorism, are formed at the
expense of criminal offences. Groups, specialized in different kinds of
economic crimes, illegal turnover of weaponry, human trade and other
types of criminal activities play a great role there. And certainly
drug-trafficking, in which almost all terrorist organizations are
engaged

You know, that in our country the coordination of fighting
drug-business is relied on the Federal Service on control over
drug-turnover. In the Russian Interior Ministry system almost all
the services, in a varying degree, take part in this work. According
to the estimations of the experts, these days in Russia there are
4 millions of addicts. Officially 54,000 women are registered. The
real figure is seven or eight times as high as that. (…)

We can efficiently struggle drug crimes only by combining our
efforts. And we have foundation for it: only by the Interior Ministries
lines 48 agreements work, due to which last year more than twenty
international drug criminal groups were detected. We know exactly,
that several gangs in Chechnya have been deprived of supplying with
weaponry and ammunition, obtained on the drug-dealers money.

(…)

Translated by Alexandra Zajtseva

EUROPE CAN LEARN FROM TURKEY’S PAST
By Mark Mazower

Financial Times (London, England)
October 3, 2005 Monday
Asia Edition 1

In the tormented run-up to the start of Turkey’s membership
negotiations with the European Union, the ghosts of the past are
haunting the government of Tayyip Erdogan.

Orhan Pamuk, a novelist, faces prosecution for “insulting the national
character” in a newspaper interview in which he referred to the death
of a million Armenians during the first world war. It was only after
a flurry of legal threats and patriotic violence that a path-breaking
academic conference into those same events went ahead recently in
Istanbul, bringing together leading Turkish and foreign scholars to
discuss the subject for the first time on Turkish soil.

Does all this portend change or demonstrate how deeply entrenched
the resistance to it is? EU officials have been reminding the Turks
of the virtues of free speech, while sceptics about the merits of
Turkish accession have seen these events as justifying their doubts.

The Turks are not unused to being criticised, of course, for western
pressure for reform long predates the formation of the EU. As far
back as the 1830s, European ambassadors routinely told the Ottoman
sultans how and why they should become more like them.

Now, as then, one wonders: which Europe are the Turks being asked
to emulate; the noble ideal in whose name rights and liberties are
demanded or the region as it actually is? Valery Giscard D’Estaing,
the former French president, commented recently that Turkey is “not a
European country”. Had he forgotten that women got the vote in France,
Italy, Switzerland and Belgium many years after they did in Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk’s Turkish republic? Or that France’s sense of national
identity is fragile enough to be threatened by schoolchildren wearing
heardscarves and by rightwing nutcases denying the Holocaust?

It is not only in Turkey that national anxieties prompt the curtailment
of individual self-expression and historical discussion.

The current government in Ankara has, in fact, presided over a
remarkably rapid legal and institutional overhaul: just last year
it pushed a new penal code through parliament at the prompting of
the EU. If anything, the transformation has been too rapid. Although
getting rid of the 1930 code, which was borrowed from fascist Italy,
was overdue, plenty of the old impulses remain enshrined in its
replacement. It is still illegal, for example, to insult or belittle
state institutions. We easily forget that in much of Europe this was
an offence until fairly recently. An expanded version of the medieval
crime of lese majeste protected the honour of many 19th century
national leaders and heads of state and culminated between the world
wars in penal codes that lent even the lowliest public functionary
immunity from public criticism. Such provisions faded from view only
under the glare of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (though
easily abused defamation laws still – in Austria for example – remain
on the books). As a result, Turkish law’s continued protection of the
symbols and the honour of the state has become an anachronism, like
the provisions that shore up the sacralised monarchies of south-east
Asia and the Gulf.

The penalisation of discussion of the Armenian genocide is a similar
kind of hangover from the past. After the great war, some of the
most liberal of the new European states criminalised any questioning
of the circumstances of their origin. In the 1920s, Czechoslovakia
and Estonia, for example, felt so unsure of themselves that they
outlawed what they termed opposition to the state “because of its
origins”. In western Europe, the contemporary criminalisation of
neo-Nazi sentiment and Holocaust denial is a phenomenon closely
related to this, reflecting postwar unease about the fragility of
democratic traditions and testifying to the well-founded suspicion that
without the intervention of the Big Three during the second world war,
rightwing authoritarian rule in the EU heartlands might have lasted
well after 1945.

Today, moreover, even as Turkey is being asked to liberalise its legal
system, Europe is moving in the other direction. Influenced by the
post-9/11 fight against terrorism, crimes of opinion are again under
discussion, though matters have not yet reached thelevel of the US
which, as we see in the recent under-reported convictionof New York
University graduate student Mohammed Yousry, now seems prepared to
criminalise even professional translation and academic research.

Yet it is one thing to say that others are in no position to throw
stones and another to condone the Turkish penal code’s assault on
historical argument. In this matter, the over-zealous prosecutors
are wrong and prime minister Erdogan is right: a confident nation
should allow free debate. Moving the discussion of what happened
to Armenians out of the realm of politics and back into history
will certainly demolish some hallowed nationalist myths. We will
learn how it came about that many hundreds of thousands of Armenian
civilians were killed and who planned and carried out the crime. We
will also learn more about the war during which those events took
place and in particular about the part played by the great powers,
especially Russia, and their plans to partition the empire. We may
learn, too, more about the long-forgotten backdrop – the decades of
Muslim dispossession from former Ottoman lands in Europe and the
millions of refugees this generated. The end result will be less
serviceable to the political concerns of this or that side, but far
more beneficial to both Armenian historical memory and the vitality
of Turkish intellectual life.

As important, it may offer a precedent for how to deal with the most
neuralgic aspects of one’s past that not a few European countries could
learn from. Democratisation and glasnost need not be a one-way street.

The writer, professor of history at Columbia University, is author
of Salonica, City of Ghosts (Harper-Collins/Knopf)

EU TALKS READY TO BEGIN, BUT IS TURKEY READY FOR THE EU?

The Irish Times
October 3, 2005

Turkey has been knocking on Europe’s door since 1963 but doubts are
growing as to how much ordinary Turks want to join the EU, reports
Nicholas Birch in Istanbul

Turkey’s pro-Europeans have long looked forward to EU membership
talks as the consummation of a 40-year courtship.

But Turks are still unclear whether they’ll be getting a marriage
contract, or a jilting.

Assured by the EU on December 17th last year that it met the political
criteria for accession, Turkish anger has been mounting for months
as European countries have questioned its Europeanness.

Now doubts are growing here as to how deeply ordinary Turks want the
European Union.

Such ambivalence is not new. Bringing Turkey into line with European
civilisation was central to the vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
the country’s authoritarian founder.

Yet neither he nor his subjects ever forgot that independence in 1923
was plucked from the hands of invaders, sponsored by western powers
led by Britain and France.

For a long time, the prospect of EU accession has been the only thing
bridging the deep divisions in Turkish society.

A mixed bag of religious conservatives, liberals and nationalists,
Turkey’s ruling party was a symbol of the new consensus. However,
increasingly overt European hostility to Turkey’s accession bid in
recent months has only deepened Turks’ innate suspicions of European
intentions.

Back in December 2004, when Brussels gave Ankara a date to start
negotiations, polls showed 75 per cent of Turks supporting EU
membership.

That figure has now dropped to about 60 per cent. “The EU will never
accept us”, Emin Colasan, a columnist for the mass-market daily
Hurriyet wrote yesterday.

“They will use us just as they have done up to now, belittling us,
forcing us to take decisions based on their interests.”

Faced with Austrian insistence that the negotiating framework for
accession talks contain the possibility of a “privileged partnership”
rather than full membership, Turkish leaders warned last Friday that
they could walk away for once and for all.

Analysts say the temptation for the Turkish government to tone down
its staunch support for the European project must be growing. “If
prime minister Tayyip Erdogan stood up today and said ‘Turkey is a
proud country and we’ve had enough of being humiliated’, his support
would surge,” says liberal political columnist Sami Kohen.

Fearful of the staunchly secular army, which is suspicious of its
roots in political Islam, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party
(AKP) government has no choice for the moment but to carry on.

Some in the West are afraid the present atmosphere may strengthen the
hand of extreme religious groups in Turkey. Didn’t Turkey’s current
prime minister once notoriously say “thank God, I am for shariah
Islamic law “?

It’s a suggestion ridiculed by Turks, who point out that no overtly
Islamic party in Turkey has ever won more than 20 per cent of the vote.

Polls consistently show 90 per cent of Turks support the country’s
secular system.

“Turks are secular not just because they are afraid of the generals”,
says Fulya Ertekin, a student in Istanbul. “They are secular because
they have no memory of any other system, and no inclination for
anything else.”

What is far more likely, Turkish analysts say, is that growing European
hostility will lead to a surge in radical Turkish nationalism.

The foundations have always been there, thinks historian Aykut Kansu.

“Turkey,” he says, “is a country that has normalised ultra-nationalist
ideas.”

The trouble is, argues political scientist Hakan Yavuz, that they may
already have been activated by issues like the European Parliament’s
call last Wednesday for Turkish membership to be conditional on its
recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide.

“When a lot of Turks look at the EU, they see calls for better
rights for the Kurds, greater freedoms for the country’s religious
minorities”, he says.

“For them, that’s worryingly reminiscent of western plans to divide
the country up in the early 20th century.” He has no doubt that the
victims of a nationalist backlash will be Turkey’s Kurds.

It’s a very pessimistic attitude, but not uncommon.

Back in March, controversial columnist Mine Kirikkanat questioned
western fears that the huge sales of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Turkey
had anything to do with growing anti-Semitism.

“Turks put Kurds in the place of the Jews targeted in Hitler’s book,”
she wrote in the liberal daily Radikal, “and find in its ideology of
hatred a suitable foundation for their growing feelings that enough
is enough.”

She was referring to the immense anger many feel at the increasing
Kurdish separatist violence in southeastern Turkey.

Others point out that while organised crime has long been the scourge
of Turkish cities, it is only recently that Turks and the populist
media have begun specifically accusing the gangs of being Kurdish.

Nobody is suggesting Turkey is on the verge of an ethnic civil war,
but tensions are undoubtedly high.

Bahadir Kaleagasi, Brussels representative of Turkey’s powerful
pro-European business lobby TUSIAD, thinks the EU would do well to
step very carefully as negotiations continue.

“If Turkey has been transformed for the good over the past six years,
it’s thanks to the EU”, he says. “But if present European attitudes
do not change, the EU could rapidly become a destabilising force.”

WHY NOT LOOK AT EUROPE FROM TURKEY’S VIEW?
Maureen Freely
X-X-Sender: [email protected]
X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 — ListProcessor(tm) by CREN

The Independent, UK
Oct 2 2005

Is Turkey ready to join the EU? As the debate rages on, there is only
one constant ” the appalling pan-European ignorance about the country
and its history. Begin with the constant references to Turkey as a
moderate Muslim state. It has, in fact, been a secular state for more
than 80 years.

Continue with the other favourite line ” that Turkey has no place in a
‘Christian club’. Not only is this a slight to the 15 million European
Muslims already living in the EU ” it ignores Turkey’s long service
in that other Christian club, Nato.

In Germany, France, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, through
which millions of Turkish guest-workers have passed over the last 40
years, there is the spectre of an immigrant flood. But the agreement
Turkey reached with the EU last December stated immigration would
be subject to severe limits only to be lifted when Turkey’s economy
(which grew last year by 9 per cent) was deemed sufficiently strong.

Even in countries friendly to Turkey ” and Britain is its staunchest
supporter ” there is a worrying fondness for the ‘two-Turkey’ thesis.

By this line of reasoning, half of the country is racing Westwards,
while the other half ” the part closest to Syria, Iraq, and Iran ”
is mired in its old, Eastern ways.

While it’s true that Turkey is a land of many contrasts, it is not
and never will be a game of two halves. To give just one example, most
of Turkey’s Kurds live in the east. If they look poor on television,
it’s because the region is only just emerging from the Turkish army’s
long conflict with the PKK. If they support Turkey’s EU bid, it’s
because they dream of a social democratic future in which all Turks,
whatever their ethnic origins, can prosper.

If modern Turkey has one great untold story, it is the growing
grassroots movement to embrace its diverse ethnic roots, and to face
” albeit haltingly ” the less beautiful chapters in its history.

Though the EU has played a central role in this process, it was born
in Turkey: where the EU has been effective, it has served as carrot,
stick, and midwife.

But there is one highly sensitive matter it has handled very badly. A
bit of history here: at the end of the Ottoman Empire, there were
more Christians living in Anatolia than Muslims. But by the 1920s,
when the Republic of Turkey was founded, they were pretty much all
gone. Anatolia’s Greeks were exchanged for Greece’s ethnic Turks
following an agreement overseen by the Allied powers. The Turkish
state has never acknowledged what most of Europe holds to be true
” that between one and two million were systematically killed or
perished on forced marches; they say ‘only’ a few hundred thousand
died during the wartime chaos.

That the official line was underwritten by the penal code became world
news last month, when a public prosecutor charged the novelist Orhan
Pamuk with the ‘public denigration of Turkish identity’ for asserting
in a Swiss newspaper that ‘a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were
killed and no one dares to talk about it except me’.

By and large, British politicians saw this for what it was: another
attempt by anti-EU nationalists in the judiciary to spoil Turkey’s
chances. The question was not whether Turkey the Islamic monolith was
ready for EU entry but whether the government, constrained as it was
by the army and other powerful state institutions, was strong enough
to deliver its promises.

But for vote-hunting conservatives in Germany, France, and Austria,
this was yet another opportunity to hammer home the racist message
that Turks (barring the occasional Lone Voice like Pamuk) were ‘not
like us’.

Though voices in Britain are more moderate, there is still a
mind-boggling lack of interest in what Turks themselves have to say.

So ” to give just one example ” there was glancing interest last
spring in the government- condoned closure of a conference organised in
Istanbul by Turkish scholars to depoliticise the Armenian question and
open it up to serious, non- partisan study. There were tiny mentions
of the attempt to ban by court order their second attempt to hold
the conference last weekend. But you will need a fine-toothed comb to
find mention of the conference itself ” which was a resounding success.

Only a hundred demonstrators turned up to throw a few eggs ” in Turkey,
this was viewed as a humiliation for the nationalists. The burning
issue last Monday was not the Armenian question but whether or not
Turks had the right to discuss it. The important news for Europe should
have been that, whether or not their penal code gave Turks the right,
there was more than one Turk daring to break a 90-year taboo.

There was, however, no mention of this watershed last Wednesday, when
the European Parliament made a resolution pinning Turkish entry on an
acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide. Once again, the Christians
tell the heathens what to do.

Ask Turks what it’s like to be lectured to by sanctimonious Europeans
who don’t do their homework, and they’ll tell you: it’s like the end
of the First World War, when the Allied occupiers were preparing to
parcel out most of what is now modern Turkey to its neighbours. Or
put it this way: for historical reasons, they don’t trust us. For
obvious reasons, they don’t like being insulted.

If we fail to bring Turkey into the European fold, and if Turkey ”
angered, misunderstood, and disrespected ” moves away from social
democracy, we have only ourselves to blame.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

FOR STUDENTS, A SHOCKING BRUSH WITH GENOCIDE
By Willy Fluharty

The Virginian-Pilot(Norfolk, Va.)
September 26, 2005 Monday The Virginian-Pilot Edition

In May, Willy Fluharty, a teacher in Cape Henry Collegiate School’s
international studies department, took a group of seniors to Cambodia
and Vietnam. Here is his account of the trip to Cambodia:

As our group of 15 Cape Henry Collegiate seniors gingerly walked around
fragments of femurs and skulls that “floated” to the surface after a
recent monsoonal rainfall, Vanta, our guide at the Killing Fields in
Cambodia, told of his personal experience under the genocidal regime
of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge.

Vanta was only a few years old when the Khmer Rouge came and evacuated
his neighborhood in the eastern part of Siem Reap near the ancient
Khmer capital of Angkor Wat. His family was forced into an agrarian
commune as slave laborers — as was the entire population of 6 million
after the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975.

Thousands died of starvation in the beginning of the communist
Utopian vision of Pol Pot, which supposedly was short for “Political
Potential.” Vanta survived on two spoonfuls of rice mush per day and
porridge of indigenous plants that his mother cooked each evening. He
recounted how she was sure he wouldn’t survive because he did not like
the taste of weed soup. So his mother begged the camp cook to help
supplement his diet. The cook obliged, but was caught and executed.

During the 3 years, 8 months and 20 days of the Khmer Rouge reign
of terror, a time frame seared into the memory of every Cambodian,
an estimated 2 million were killed, or 30 percent of the population,
in an act of insane genocide. The trauma this genocide inflicted on
the people is evident in the titles we witnessed at the Central Market
book stand in Phnom Penh. Books like “First They Killed My Father,”
“Stay Alive My Son,” “Year Zero” and “When Broken Glass Floats”
fill the store with morbid tales of genocide and survival.

Few elderly Cambodians are seen because many did not survive the
killing. The median age is 19. At our first stop in Phnom Penh,
at the Buddhist Wat Phnom, our group walked between saffron-robed
monks and a mob of limbless beggars who had the unfortunate fate of
stepping on one of the millions of land mines left over from decades
of civil war. Then came the child beggars.

The students were taken aback by the masses of poor. It’s one
thing to read about economic development and GDP per capita, but
it’s another when students witness first-hand the reality of a $350
average annual income.

But the students were most shocked at the magnitude of the genocide.

After visiting the powerful Killing Fields memorial, a five-story glass
building with thousands of skulls, one of my Cape Henry students,
Brandon Flynn, asked, “We know so much about the Holocaust, why
don’t we know anything about this?” He had just stepped over bones
and clothing that were recently exposed.

Each day someone walks through the mass grave site of an estimated
17,000 people, and gathers the bones and clothes and piles them up
for later removal. For about an hour, I didn’t hear one of my students
say a word as they absorbed the gravity of the Cambodian genocide in
all of its barbarity.

Cambodia was only one of many, many tragedies that man has thrust
upon himself; Armenia, Tibet, Rwanda, Bosnia and the present crisis
in Darfur are a few more examples.

“Why didn’t we intervene in Cambodia to stop the killing?” asked
student Whitney Fulton.

We had just lost 58,000 young Americans in neighboring Vietnam so
we let the Khmer Rouge have their way with the people. We tried and
failed in Southeast Asia. It was someone else’s turn to be the global
cop. Turns out, it was Vietnam itself that was forced to intervene
in Cambodia to stop the killing in 1979.

For our Cape Henry students, the “discovery” of the Cambodian
genocide and the massive poverty created the perfect educational
environment. “How can you stop such genocide?” they asked. “What can
we do to stop global poverty?”

After silently walking through the Tuol Sleng torture prison that
was converted from a high school under Pol Pot, the students saw
blood-splattered walls and floors along with hundreds of pictures of
the tortured and executed.

“How many must die before we do something about it?” As a teacher, I
welcomed being asked the question. Will I have to take another group of
Cape Henry students to another field of bones before I hear it again?

E-mail the author at [email protected]

GRAPHIC: RICHARD VOGEL/ASSOCIATED PRESS; A former soldier lays incense
at Cambodia’s Killing Fields memorial, where thousands of skulls are
on view.

SERIOUS, SILLY, SPELLBINDING: BAND KNOWS HOW TO ‘MEZMERIZE’ ITS FANS
By Gene Stout P-I Pop Music Critic

THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
September 30, 2005, Friday FINAL

System of a Down – a high-decibel foursome with a devilish sense of
humor and an unlikely blend of musical styles – may be one of today’s
most successful arena-rock bands. But the Armenian American group
hasn’t forgotten its roots.

“There’s a commonality there, a common denominator culturally,”
singer Serj Tankian said by phone en route to a show in Minneapolis.

“That’s been a strength in some ways, but it’s also an understanding
of the dynamics of music and the different beats and melodies that
wouldn’t be common to a non-Armenian.”

Tankian never planned to be in an Armenian American rock band, it just
turned out that way. He started playing with singer and guitarist Daron
Malakian in high school, and they later hooked up with drummer John
Dolmayan and bassist Shavo Odadjian. The group signed a recording
contract with Rick Rubin’s American Recordings label in the late
’90s, and Rubin has produced their records every since.

The group’s 2001 album, “Toxicity,” arrived just before the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks and served as a kind of soundtrack for the national
trauma.

“It was kind of luck or destiny that it ended up this way,” Tankian
said.

Currently on its first major North American tour in three years,
the band Newsweek magazine dubbed “L.A.’s Armenian Idols” performs
Wednesday night at KeyArena with The Mars Volta and Hella.

Tankian and his bandmates took time out from the tour on Tuesday to
lead a rally for the Armenian National Committee of America at the
Batavia, Ill., office of House Speaker Dennis Hastert to urge his
support of Armenian genocide legislation.

If passed, the legislation will officially recognize the genocide of
1.5 million Armenians in Turkey from 1915 to 1923.

“We want to encourage him to do the right thing and bring it to the
floor for a vote,” Tankian said. “(Hastert) has had the opportunity
to do it twice before and has not for different reasons. It’s been
five years and everyone is tired of waiting.”

The tour supports the release of the platinum-selling album,
“Mezmerize,” the first CD in a two-part set that includes a companion
album, “Hypnotize,” due in stores Nov. 17.

“Mezmerize” is a schizophrenic album that blends howling vocals and
blistering guitars with traditional Middle Eastern instrumentation
(as well as violins, cellos and violas) and barbed social commentary.

The album explores politics, Hollywood phoniness, and life and death.

It may sound like an impossible mix, but it’s provocative and
entertaining – serious and silly at the same time.

“Why don’t presidents fight the war?/ Why do they always send the
poor?” Tankian screams on the anti-war song “B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your
Own Bombs).”

For Tankian, who grew up in Lebanon, strong anti-war feelings come
naturally.

“I always say that if you come from a place where you hear bombs
dropped on a city, you’d be reluctant to drop bombs on any city,”
he said.

Pornography comes under fire in “Violent Pornography”: “It’s a violent
pornography/ Choking chicks and sodomy.” “Cigaro” is an X-rated song
that has Tankian and Malakian in a hilariously operatic vocal duel
that recalls Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

“It’s probably a combination of personal and non-personal matters
that have led us to where we are musically,” Tankian said.

“I’m not comfortable with just entertaining. Although I like
entertaining, I also like bringing forward the truth of our times as
minstrels used to in the old days.”

“Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” were recorded and mixed at the same time,
but scheduled for release six months apart.

“The packaging is designed so that when people buy the second
record, they can attach it to the first, making it a double record,”
Tankian said.

The band decided to release two discs instead of one because they
had so much good material from recording sessions.

“That doesn’t sound very modest, but that’s what it is. As we were
writing and recording, we realized that there was no way we could
decide what songs were going to be on the record,” he said.

“And we’re not fans of long, long records.”

Tankian described Rubin, a superproducer who has worked with everyone
from the Beastie Boys to Johnny Cash, as a nurturing presence in
the studio.

“He brings a lot out of you, but he doesn’t try to completely change
things. He tries to let the beast be the beast.”

P-I pop music critic Gene Stout can be reached at 206-448-8383 or
genestout§seattlepi.com.

NOTES: NIGHTLIFE COVER STORY COMING UP SYSTEM OF A DOWN, THE MARS
VOLTA AND HELLA WHAT: Rock concert WHEN: Wednesday night at 7 WHERE:
KeyArena TICKETS: $31.50-$44 at Ticketmaster

–Boundary_(ID_hvmq596lkgp0tgJPm9IZWg)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

RELIGIONS NEED TO TALK: ARAM I URGES CHRISTIANITY, JUDAISM AND ISLAM TO PROMOTE PEACE
By Harvey Shepherd, Freelance

The Gazette (Montreal)
October 1, 2005 Saturday
Final Edition

One of the two world leaders of the ancient Armenian Apostolic Church,
Catholicos Aram I, is also a world leader in inter-church dialogue,
as moderator since 1991 of the World Council of Churches.

But his experience in the Middle East, where he is based in Antelias,
Lebanon, as the catholicos (world head) of the branch of the Armenian
church called the house of Cilicia, has led him to give even greater
priority to dialogue between religions.

The Christian churches of the Middle East, one of the three world
religions that began in the region, have “a tremendous responsibility,”
he said in an interview in Montreal this week.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam “are called to play a pivotal role
and become agents of peace-making, agents of reconciliation,” he told
a reporter in the north-end offices of the prelacy of Canada for the
house of Cilicia, next to Sourp Hagop Armenian Apostolic Cathedral.

The Orthodox pontiff, 58, was on his third pastoral visit to Montreal
since he became catholicos in 1995. It was the beginning of a North
American tour marking several anniversaries: the 10th of his service
as catholicos, the 75th of an Armenian seminary in Lebanon, and the
1,600th of the Armenian alphabet.

“Being a Christian is not just being part of a family,” he said.

“It’s also being part of a community and part of the fight being waged
today for principles different from the so-called values imposed on
us by so-called globalization. If we want to establish a healthy,
sustainable world it must be sustained by moral values.”

While the situation in today’s Middle East may leave people insecure
and helpless, it has always been a region where different cultures
interacted, whether through coexistence or conflict, he said.

Relations between them should move past coexistence to “a dialogue
of life where our community life is built on common principles.”

Fundamentalism and “blind traditionalism” are a source of problems in
all religions, he said, as is the blurring of the distinction between
what is and is not religion in public life. “Today, religion is being
exploited for non-religious purposes.”

In addition to attending weekend activities, including a liturgical
celebration and a big cultural celebration in honour of the alphabet,
the prelate also joined representatives of the Canadian Bible Society
Monday in launching the North American edition of a new translation
of the New Testament and Psalms into modern Armenian.

The translation is part of a worldwide effort to produce a new
version of the Bible to complement an ancient translation dating
back to the 5th century, which prompted the creation of an Armenian
alphabet and which is regarded as one of the great achievements of
early Christianity. The language of that old translation, however,
is now archaic and understood by few Armenians.

The translation is largely the work of Rev. Manuel Jinbashian of the
United Bible Societies, a Protestant minister based in France, in
collaboration with several prelates of the Armenian Church, including
Khajag Hagopian, the Montreal-based prelate of Canada. Jinbashian is
currently combining duties for the United and Canadian Bible Societies
with a teaching post at the Universite de Montreal.

“Classic and modern Armenian are as far apart as Latin and French,”
Jinbashian said in an interview.

Since the New Testament translation was completed in 1989, he said, it
has been introduced into the worship of many of the world’s Armenian
churches, including the liturgy that Aram celebrated in Laval this
weekend, complementing the ancient translation. For example, New
Testament readings are often from the new translation except for
those from the first four books, known as the Gospels, which are
chanted in the classical tongue.

A church official estimated that about half of Canada’s ethnic
Armenians live in the Montreal area. She said there are about 40,000
Armenians in the Montreal region, attending churches of either of the
two branches of the church, along with some Catholics, Protestants
and religiously inactive people. (This is about double the census
figure, but some ethnic Armenians identify their origin for census
purposes according to the country their family actually came from,
such as Lebanon.)

Aram is in Ontario for engagements in Toronto, Cambridge and St.

Catharines, and will head for Los Angeles Wednesday to begin the U.S.

leg of his trip. He is to speak at a conference in Los Angeles on
Christian responses to violence.

For more information, visit