March 8, 2006 Edition
Knowledge Without A Larger Understanding
Books
BY ADAM KIRSCH
March 8, 2006
URL:
To trace the boundaries of the vanished Ottoman Empire, take a map of
Europe and the Middle East and start shading in every country that,
for the last 15 years, has been in the news thanks to civil war,
ethnic cleansing, and terrorism. From Bosnia in the northwest to
Baghdad in the southeast, the world’s most dangerous zone is made up
of Ottoman successor states, carved out of the corpse of the empire by
rebellious ethnic groups (Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania) or high-handed
European imperialists (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq). Just as the collapse of
the U.S.S.R. made it possible to feel nostalgic for the Cold War as a
time of relative stability, so the aftermath of the fall of the
Ottoman Empire – a consummation devoutly wished by Europe for most of
the 19th century, and finally achieved after World War I – can make
even that corrupt, despotic regime look good.
We may have forgotten about the Ottoman Empire, in other words, but it
hasn’t forgotten about us. That is why “Osman’s Dream” (Basic Books,
660 pages, $35), a comprehensive new history by British scholar
Caroline Finkel, is so timely, and why its limitations are finally so
disappointing. For what Ms. Finkel has written is less a history of
the Ottoman Empire than a chronicle, a numbingly comprehensive catalog
of every sultan and grand vezier, every military campaign and treaty,
every conquest and rebellion. Long before reaching Ms. Finkel’s 75
pages of notes and bibliography, her mastery of the historical
literature is obvious: The sheer amount of information packed between
these two covers makes it a landmark achievement.
The problem for a general reader (and Ms. Finkel claims to be writing
for “general readers who know little of the Ottomans”) is that most of
the information in “Osman’s Dream” is of no real use. Of course, it is
always valuable to ascertain the events of history, to set down what
happened when. But the common reader, who has no professional stake in
the subject, does not read history to memorize a succession of dates
and names. He reads pragmatically, looking for knowledge about the
past that will help him understand the present and anticipate the
future.
Good popular history, without reducing the past to a mere fable, uses
it to answer questions: How did people live, think, and act in
conditions different from our own? What potentialities of human nature
did they achieve, and which did they allow to atrophy? How did their
doing and suffering create the world that we have inherited?
Especially when it comes to a subject like the Ottoman Empire, which
to most Western readers is a blank only partially filled in by myth
and literature, facts become usable only as parts of a larger story.
It is this larger story that Ms. Finkel fails to supply. “Osman’s
Dream” charts the history of the Ottomans primarily in military and
diplomatic terms; culture, economics, politics, daily life, the
personalities of great men and women, appear seldom if at all. We
learn that one sultan succeeds another, but not what a sultan actually
did on an average day. We see that, for an Ottoman courtier, it was
practically guaranteed that a splendid career would end in death – one
grand vezier after another falls from grace and gets strangled or
beheaded – but never understand why, despite this fatality, ambitious
men clamored for the job. We are told that the empire conquers one
city after another – Constantinople, Cairo, Baghdad, Belgrade, very
nearly Vienna – but not how its armies were organized, or how those
cities looked. For all the information packed into this long book, it
is surprising how many questions “Osman’s Dream” leaves unanswered.
Start with the most fundamental: Why did the Ottoman Empire rise so
spectacularly, then stagnate so long, and finally fall to pieces at a
touch, like an old tapestry? The empire that would eventually spread
over three continents started out, in the 14th century, as just one of
many small Turkish emirates, fighting for pre-eminence in
Anatolia. The Ottoman or Osmanli Turks, named for the dynasty’s
founder, Osman, had only one obvious advantage: Their lands bordered
the crumbling hulk of the Byzantine Empire, a vacuum into which the
energetic Turks quickly expanded.
By 1389, with the famous battle of Kosovo Polje (whose memory still
inflames Serb-Muslim tensions in the Balkans today), the Ottomans had
established their dominion over the Balkans. In 1453, they finally
took Constantinople, the old capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, and
the sultans started to style themselves as world monarchs, the heirs
of the caesars. In 1517, they conquered the Mamluk Empire, gaining
control of Egypt, Syria, and – most important for this orthodox Sunni
state – the holy places of Mecca and Medina, allowing the sultans to
claim supreme authority in the Muslim world. In 1526, at the Battle of
Mohacs, they conquered most of Hungary, and a few years later
approached the gates of Vienna. No wonder that Sultan Suleyman I, who
reigned from 1520 to 1566, was known in the West as “the Magnificent”:
Under his reign, the Ottoman golden age, the empire seemed
unstoppable.
What never really becomes clear in “Osman’s Dream” is why the Turks
were able to expand so rapidly. Was it the weakness of surrounding
states, the divisions among Christian Europe, Ottoman military tactics
and technology? The question is all the more acute since, on
Ms. Finkel’s showing, the governance of the empire was always unstable
at best. Rebellions were almost the Ottoman version of elections: A
discontented general or provincial governor would take up arms, not to
overthrow the dynasty, but to get some attention for his grievances,
or just to win promotion. Large areas of the empire seem to have been
only nominally under Istanbul’s control.
Throughout its centuries of power, the empire never established a
reasonable system of succession: The death of each sultan opened a
freefor-all among his sons, often resulting in civil war. The
notorious practice whereby each sultan murdered his brothers, which
did so much to create the Western image of Turkish barbarism, was the
closest the empire came to a rule of succession. Remarkably, despite
this thinning of the ranks, the Ottoman dynasty reigned without a
break from Osman to Mehmed VI, the last emperor, who abdicated in 1922
with the creation of modern Turkey.
Likewise, “Osman’s Dream” leaves the reader wondering about the rapid
decline in Ottoman fortunes. Why was it that, starting in the late
17th century, the empire fell rapidly behind its rivals, especially
the rising power of Russia? By the 19th century, European powers were
breaking off pieces of the empire more or less at will; this was the
period when Turkey became known as “the sick man of Europe.” But
efforts at modernizing and reform were constantly thwarted by
entrenched interests, in a vicious circle that seems reminiscent of
the late Roman Empire. Here, again, one longs for more insight into
the Ottomans’ cultural, political, and economic problems than
Ms. Finkel provides – especially since the Ottoman failure has done so
much to shape the world we live in today. When the Ottoman Empire was
founded, America hadn’t yet been discovered; today, it is the United
States that mainly has to deal with the consequences of its
collapse. Given the vital importance of the Ottoman story

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March 8, 2006 Edition

New EU-Russia treaty to deepen security and energy ties
10.03.2006 – 17:40 CET | By Andrew Rettman
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – A new EU-Russia treaty in 2007 is set to
bestrong on joint crisis management, with EU reliance on Russian
energy to grow.
“We might be actually acting side by side in far away places, like
Sudan, under UN auspices,” Russian ambassador to the EU, Vladimir
Chizhov, said in an interview with EUobserver on Thursday (9 March).
“Whether one likes it or not, in the mid-term perspective, that is in
the next 15 to 30 years, the percentage of EU demand covered by
supplies from Russia will grow,” he indicated.
Mr Chizhov dubbed the new legal pact a “Strategic Partnership Treaty
(SPT)” envisaging a slim framework document backed up by
action-oriented instruments.
“The issue at stake is not a new energy treaty…but a new treaty that
would summarise Russia-EU relations and this can replace the existing
Partnership and Cooperation Agreement [PCA].”
The PCA was drafted in the 1980s between the then European Community
and Soviet Union; it came into force in 1997 and will expire in
December 2007.
European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso will fly to Moscow
on 17 March to kick-start the treaty talks with negotiations beginning
“in earnest” in autumn.
“The commission doesn’t have a mandate to negotiate a new
agreement. We understand that the intention is to draft such a mandate
and present it to [member states] before the summer break,” Mr Chizhov
said.
Ukraine gas crisis boosts pipeline plans
The Ukraine gas crisis in January reinforced Russia’s plans to build a
Baltic Sea gas pipeline to Germany as well as Austria’s push to build
the Nabucco gas pipeline to the Caspian basin, the ambassador
indicated.
“The silver lining behind this Ukrainian hiccup is that today nobody
questions the need for additional pipelines, including the North
European gas pipeline.”
Poland still hates the Baltic pipeline, he explained “but today they
are the only ones. There are countries that initially hated the idea
but now they hate the idea of being left out of it.”
Western diplomats believe Nabucco will give the EU leverage in gas
talks with Russia, yielding a new supply route out of Gazprom’s hands.
But “at least some” of the gas flowing through Nabucco will be
Russian, Mr Chizhov predicted, adding “If one wants to play one
country against another in terms of gas supplies that does not
increase stability, that does not increase energy security.”
“It [the EU] is free to choose cheap energy from Russia or more
expensive energy from elsewhere,” he said.
Joint missions in Nagorno-Karabakh
EU and Russian soldiers could also do peacekeeping work in the
breakaway Azerbaijan region of Nagorno-Karabakh in line with the new
crisis management agenda, Mr Chizhov indicated.
“It could only be a solution providing post-solution peacekeeping, not
classic peacekeeping. Because neither the EU nor Russia want to get
involved until there is an agreement on the ground.”
Russia has already sent a few policemen to join the EU police mission
in Bosnia and Herzegovina and offered helicopters to help put out
French forest fires in 2005.
But it would be difficult for Russia to work with the EU on the
Bosnian model, with Russia as a “junior partner,” in post-Soviet
countries, Mr Chizhov said.
EU-Russian crisis work has also been frustrated by Brussels red tape
in the past.
The Bosnian police agreement took one year to write and the last two
months were spent in “endless discussions” on whether it should be in
English only or English and Russian.
“Our partners on the EU side of the table said, since Russian is not
an official language of the EU, you can’t have it. This is stupid.”
Russian helicopters were ready to take off in 24 hours to help France
but it took seven days to get overflight clearance from EU transit
states.
“In the meantime all the forests burned down,” the ambassador
indicated. “Today the EU lacks a coordinated system of civilian
emergency response.”
EU brightness versus Russian darkness
Some aspects of EU diplomacy are unhelpful in managing relations
between the two powers in the post-Soviet region, Mr Chizhov remarked.
“There are people unfortunately here [in Brussels] who want to pose
artificial dilemmas facing these countries,” he said. “The dilemma
being – it’s either forward to the bright future with the EU or
backwards into the darkness with Russia.”
“We are being pragmatic, we understand that whatever any of these
countries wishes is not going to happen today or tomorrow or in the
foreseeable future,” the diplomat stated.
“But they are free to express their wishes, to dream about their
future EU membership.”
© EUobserver.com 2006
Printed from EUobserver.com 11.03.2006

You can keep Saab, Kerkorian tells GM
James Mackintosh, Geneva
02mar06
REBEL shareholder Kirk Kerkorian has dropped his demand that General
Motors close or sell Saab, its troubled Swedish car-making division.
GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz said he had briefed Jerry York, Mr
Kerkorian’s representative on the GM board of directors, and Mr York
had agreed that Saab – and Hummer, the profitable sports utility
vehicle brand – be retained. A spokeswoman for Mr York declined to
confirm his position.
Mr Kerkorian became GM’s third-biggest shareholder last year and has
offered to buy more shares if his plan, drawn up by Mr York, is
followed through.
Mr Lutz, speaking at the Geneva motor show on Tuesday, said: “He (Mr
York) thought Saab was still what it was a few years ago when it was
this nice company sitting in Trollhattan (its Swedish base) with
basically all the structural cost of an entire automotive company but
selling only 120,000 units a year.
“That model was frankly hopeless. I took Jerry through it the other
day at great length and he now understands there is no more Saab you
can sell.”
He said that Saab was now integrated into GM’s global product
development and manufacturing system, which involved a new small
Cadillac being built in Trollhattan. The next generation 9-3, Saab’s
biggest seller, will be built at one of GM’s German factories.
“Trying to sell Saab and Hummer out of GM is like saying there are too
many eggs in that omelette – please take them out and sell them off.”
Mr York last month demanded GM dump Hummer and Saab to refocus on its
core American brands, which are in deep trouble.
GM lost $US5.6 billion last year in its US automotive business as
market share crumbled and sales of its most profitable vehicles
collapsed.
Mr York said that, if his plan were adopted, Mr Kerkorian might buy an
extra 12 million shares, worth $US244 million ($330 million) at the
$US20.36 they were trading at early on Tuesday afternoon, when they
were up US25c.
Elements of the plan, including personal wage sacrifices by top
executives and a halving of the dividend, have been carried out. Saab
is expanding its model line-up, with a small car being considered and
a car-SUV crossover already approved.
© The Australian

MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE TO INTRODUCE NEW BILLS

Azat Artsakh, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh [NKR]
08 March 2006
NKR Ministry of Agriculture is going to introduce a new bill on
veterinary medicine to the government. The law currently in force,
which was passed in 2001, already does not regulate the sphere duly,
says V. Baghdassarian, Minister of Agriculture. `The amendments were
so many that drafting a new bill was preferable. The new law will
define the functions of the privatesector,’ he says. The minister says
the new legislation will enable adopting subordinate legislation if
necessary to react to new conditions. He mentioned that the new law
corresponds to the requirements of he international veterinary
medicine legislation. The bill includes articles on public health,
measures for the prevention and management of diseases transmitted
from animals to people. The next bill the ministry will introduce is
the bill on seeds. The minister of agriculture said so far the sphere
was regulated by the law on seed breeding, put in effect in 2001. The
minister of agriculture said the adoption of this law is important in
the creation of legislation on seed farming in NKR.
SRBUHI VANIAN.
08-03-2006

3/10/06
What Really Happed to the Shah of Iran
By _Ernst Schroeder_ (mailto:[email protected])
My name is Ernst Schroeder, and since I have some Iranian friends from
school and review your online magazine occasionally, I thought I’d
pass onthe following three page quote from a book I read a few months
ago entitled, “_A Century Of War : Anglo-American Oil Politics and the
New World Order_
( 532309X/netnative) “, which
was written by William Engdahl, a German historianm . This is a book
about how oil and politics have been intertwined for the past 100
years.
I submit the below passage for direct publishing on your website, as I
think the quote will prove to be significant for anyone of Persian
descent.
“In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group’s
George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a
special WhiteHouse Iran task force under the National Security
Council’s Brzezinski. Ball recommended that Washington drop support
for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalistic Islamic
opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. Robert Bowie from the CIA was one
of the lead ‘case officers’ in the new CIA-led coup against the man
their covert actions had placed into power 25 years earlier.
Their scheme was based on a detailed study of the phenomenon of
Islamic fundamentalism, as presented by British Islamic expert,
Dr. Bernard Lewis,then on assignment at Princeton University in the
United States. Lewis’s scheme, which was unveiled at the May 1979
Bilderberg meeting in Austria, endorsed the radical Muslim Brotherhood
movement behind Khomeini, in order to promote balkanization of the
entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines.
Lewis argued that the West should encourage autonomous groups such as
the Kurds, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites, Ethiopian Copts, Azerbaijani
Turks, and so forth. The chaos would spread in what he termed an ‘Arc
of Crisis,’ which would spill over into Muslim regions of the Soviet
Union.
The coup against the Shah, like that against Mossadegh in 1953, was
run by British and American intelligence, with the bombastic American,
Brzezinski, taking public ‘credit’ for getting rid of the ‘corrupt’
Shah, while the British characteristically remained safely in the
background.
During 1978, negotiations were under way between the Shah’s government
and British Petroleum for renewal of the 25-year old extraction
agreement. By October 1978, the talks had collapsed over a British
‘offer’ which demanded exclusive rights to Iran’s future oil output,
while refusing to guarantee purchase of the oil. With their
dependence on British-controlled export apparently at an end, Iran
appeared on the verge of independence in its oil sales policy for the
first time since 1953, with eager prospective buyers in Germany,
France, Japan and elsewhere. In its lead editorial that September,
Iran’s Kayhan International stated:
In retrospect, the 25-year partnership with the [British Petroleum]
consortium and the 50-year relationship with British Petroleum which
preceded it, have not been satisfactory ones for Iran =80¦ Looking to
the future, NIOC [National Iranian Oil Company] should plan to handle
all operations by itself.
London was blackmailing and putting enormous economic pressure on the
Shah’s regime by refusing to buy Iranian oil production, taking only 3
million or so barrels daily of an agreed minimum of 5 million barrels
per day. This imposed dramatic revenue pressures on Iran, which
provided the context inwhich religious discontent against the Shah
could be fanned by trained agitators deployed by British and
U.S. intelligence. In addition, strikes among oil workers at this
critical juncture crippled Iranian oil production.
As Iran’s domestic economic troubles grew, American ‘security’
advisers to the Shah’s Savak secret police implemented a policy of
ever more brutal repression, in a manner calculated to maximize
popular antipathy to the Shah. At the same time, the Carter
administration cynically began protesting abusesof ‘human rights’
under the Shah.
British Petroleum reportedly began to organize capital flight out of
Iran, through its strong influence in Iran’s financial and banking
community. The British Broadcasting Corporation’s Persian-language
broadcasts, with dozens of Persian-speaking BBC ‘correspondents’ sent
into even the smallest village, drummed up hysteria against the Shah.
The BBC gave Ayatollah Khomeini a full propaganda platform inside Iran
during this time. The British government-owned broadcasting
organization refused to give the Shah’s government an equal chance to
reply. Repeated personal appeals from the Shah to the BBC yielded no
result. Anglo-American intelligence was committed to toppling the
Shah.
The Shah fled in January, and by February 1979, Khomeini had been
flown into Tehran to proclaim the establishment of his repressive
theocratic state to replace the Shah’s government.
Reflecting on his downfall months later, shortly before his death, the
Shah noted from exile,
I did not know it then – perhaps I did not want to know – but it is
clear to me now that the Americans wanted me out. Clearly this is
what the human rights advocates in the State Department wanted =80¦
What was I to make of the Administration’s sudden decision to call
former Under Secretary of State George Ball to the White House as an
adviser on Iran? =80¦ Ball was among those Americans who wanted to
abandon me and ultimately my country._[1]_
( 1090.html#_ftn1) [1]
With the fall of the Shah and the coming to power of the fanatical
Khomeini adherents in Iran, chaos was unleashed. By May 1979, the new
Khomeini regime had singled out the country’s nuclear power
development plans and announced cancellation of the entire program for
French and German nuclear reactor construction.
Iran’s oil exports to the world were suddenly cut off, some 3 million
barrels per day. Curiously, Saudi Arabian production in the critical
daysof January 1979 was also cut by some 2 million barrels per day.
To add to the pressures on world oil supply, British Petroleum
declared force majeure and cancelled major contracts for oil supply.
Prices on the Rotterdam spot market, heavily influenced by BP and
Royal Cutch Shell as the largest oil traders, soared in early 1979 as
a result. The second oil shock of the 1970s was fully under way.
Indications are that the actual planners of the Iranian Khomeini coup
in London and within the senior ranks of the U.S. liberal
establishment decided to keep President Carter largely ignorant of the
policy and its ultimate objectives. The ensuing energy crisis in the
United States was a major factor in bringing about Carter’s defeat a
year later.
There was never a real shortage in the world supply of petroleum.
Existing Saudi and Kuwaiti production capacities could at any time
have met the 5-6 million barrels per day temporary shortfall, as a
U.S. congressional investigation by the General Accounting Office
months later confirmed.
Unusually low reserve stocks of oil held by the Seven Sisters oil
multinationals contributed to creating a devastating world oil price
shock, with prices for crude oil soaring from a level of some $14 per
barrel in 1978 towards the astronomical heights of $40 per barrel for
some grades of crude on the spot market. Long gasoline lines across
America contributed to a general sense of panic, and Carter energy
secretary and former CIA director, James R.
Schlesinger, did not help calm matters when he told Congress and the
mediain February 1979 that the Iranian oil shortfall was
‘prospectively more serious’ than the 1973 Arab oil embargo._[2]_
( 1090.html#_ftn2) [2]
The Carter administration’s Trilateral Commission foreign policy
further ensured that any European effort from Germany and France to
develop more cooperative trade, economic and diplomatic relations with
their Soviet neighbor, under the umbrella of détente and various
Soviet-west European energy agreements, was also thrown into disarray.
Carter’s security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and secretary of
state, Cyrus Vance, implemented their ‘Arc of Crisis’ policy,
spreading the instability of the Iranian revolution throughout the
perimeter around the Soviet Union.
Throughout the Islamic perimeter from Pakistan to Iran,
U.S. initiatives created instability or worse.”
— William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and
the New World Order, © 1992, 2004. Pluto Press Ltd. Pages 171-174.
_[1]_ ( ref1) [1] In
1978, the Iranian Ettelaat published an article accusing Khomeini of
being a British agent. The clerics organized violent demonstrations
in response, which led to the flight of the Shah months later. See
U.S. Library of Congress Country Studies, Iran. The Coming of the
Revolution. December 1987. The role of BBC Persian broadcasts in the
ousting of the Shah is detailed in Hossein Shahidi. ‘BBC Persian
Service 60 years on.’ The Iranian. September 24, 2001.
The BBC was so much identified with Khomeini that it won the name
‘Ayatollah BBC.’
_[2]_ ( ref2) [2]
Comptroller General of the United States. ‘Iranian Oil Cutoff:
Reduced Petroleum Supplies and Inadequate U.S. Government Response.’
Report to Congress by General Accounting Office. 1979.
From: Baghdasarian

Civil Georgia, Georgia
March 11 2006
Protesters Raid Court, University in Akhalkalaki
Couple of hundred protesters in Akhalkalaki, a town in
predominately ethnic Armenian populated Samtskhe-Javakheti region,
stormed a local court chamber and a building of the Tbilisi State
University’s Akhalkalaki branch on March 11.
Initial reason of a protest rally of about couple of hundred people
in the center of Akhalkalaki was to demand an immediate and unbiased
investigation of a murder of 24-year-old Gevork Gevorkian in Tsalka,
Shida Kartli region on March 11. Gevorkian died in a clash, which the
local population and some ethnic minority advocacy groups claim was
triggered by ethnic reasons. But the Georgian Public Defender
strongly denied that ethnic reasons were behind this clash in Tsalka
and said on March 11 that it was `an ordinary hooliganism.’
Later, the protesters voiced demands related with the right to
conduct the proceedings in courts and in the state structures in
Armenian language. Protesters dispersed shortly after the court
building and a local branch of the Tbilisi State University were
raided.
Khacatur Stepanian, one of the organizers of the protest rally said
that storming of the court and university could have been a
provocation.
`I can say for sure that nothing of this kind was planned by us. I
think it was a provocation, provoked by someone,’ Khacatur Stepanian
told Imedi television.
A group of non-governmental organizations based in Samtskhe-Javakheti
region requested the Georgian leadership to consider possibility of
granting the region autonomy with `broad authority for
self-governance, including the right to hold elections for all bodies
of governance.’

Haber Gazete, Turkey
March 11 2006
Bay Area ANC Hosts Publishers Hrant Dink And Ragip Zarakolu
SAN FRANCISCO–The Bay Area Armenian National Committee (ANC) hosted
its annual “Hye Tad Evening” at Treasure Island, with special guests
including Turkey’s Agos Armenian Weekly editor, Hrant Dink and Belge
Publishing House owner, Ragip Zarakolu.
Hrant Dink is the publisher and founding editor of the only bilingual
Turkish-Armenian newspaper, the Agos Weekly, established in 1996.
Dink thanked the Bay Area ANC for inviting him to the event. Speaking
in Armenian, he said, “I am delighted to have the opportunity to meet
the Armenian community here,” adding that he was happy to have had
the chance to meet and talk with ANC committees all over the world.
Dink grew up in Malatia, attended Armenian school in Istanbul, and
studied Philosophy and Zoology at Istanbul University. Through his
writings, publications, and public statements, Dink has been an
outspoken advocate for the democratization of Turkish society and for
the need to break the silence about the Armenian genocide.
Dink recently went on trial for “insulting the Turkish state,”
because of his remarks about reciting the Turkish oath. Dink said
about the oath, which says “I am Turkish, I am honest, I am
hardworking,” that although he was honest and hardworking, he was not
a Turk, but an Armenian. Although he was finally acquitted in that
case, he was later convicted of “insulting the Turkish identity” for
writing an article about the impact of the Armenian genocide on the
diaspora.
Although his suspended sentence requires that he not repeat the
crime, Dink said, “I will not be silent. As long as I live here, I
will go on telling the truth,” and vowed that he would appeal to
Turkey’s supreme court and to the European Court of Human Rights if
necessary. “If it is a day or six months or six years, it is all
unacceptable to me,” he said. “If I am unable to come up with a
positive result, it will be honorable for me to leave this country.”
Dink now faces new charges for attempting “to influence the
judiciary,” because of his comments about his conviction.
Despite government pressure on people who are speaking out, Dink
said, “It was a dream 10 years ago to imagine seeing the publication
of books and articles on the Armenian genocide. There is no doubt
that there has been some positive change.”
“People are starting to defend their rights,” said Dink, hoping for
“great changes.”
“The activities of the diaspora, the Genocide resolutions passed by
other countries every year, have contributed to the growing
consciousness in Turkey,” said Dink, who also attributed much of the
growing recognition of the Armenian genocide in Turkey to the Kurdish
struggle for national rights there.
“The government used to say, ‘We don’t have Kurds or a Kurdish
problem. Those people fighting up in the mountains are actually
Armenians,'” said Dink. “And to prove their assertions, they would
publish photographs in newspapers showing the uncircumcised corpses
of the defeated fighters. The Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan was
referred to as ‘The Armenian Bastard.'” Dink said that one of the
first things his paper did was to prove a certain priest who appeared
in a government newspaper photo with a Kurdish leader, was not, in
fact, an Armenian priest, as was claimed.
“We said we’re going to speak in their language,” Dink said of the
decision to publish Agos in Turkish as well as Armenian, against the
protests of many in the Armenian community. “Since then we began to
speak about our history and to counter their lies. We said, ‘Now,
it’s our turn.'”
Dink said that the process of democratization in Turkey can no longer
be turned back. “There is a movement to talk about the past and a
desire to know what happened to Armenians, ” he said. One of the
unexpected consequences of this movement was that many people in
Turkey are now revealing that their ancestors were Armenian.
“On the other hand, the Turkish government has responded with more
propaganda,” said Dink, citing the fact that four years ago, new
textbooks were distributed to all the schools which claim that
Armenians massacred the Turks.
Comparing the small number of books on the Genocide now being
published, with the millions of government textbooks denying the
Genocide, Dink said, “My hope is that those 3,000 books will vanquish
the governments’ millions.” He said that the process of recognizing
the Armenian genocide is going to take place from within the country,
starting from the general population. He said that outside pressures
for change must find a partner from within the country, or there is a
danger for extreme nationalism. Dink described a new ideological
movement within Turkey which brings together the Turkish and the
Islamic identities to form one unifying identity. He also pointed out
that the nationalist groups and Islamist groups are competing with
one another and as a result attacks against Armenians have increased.
Nevertheless, Dink expressed optimism about Armenian genocide
recognition. “One day they will recognize that the Armenian genocide
has to be addressed. But they will try to delay it and water it down
as much as possible.”
Regarding Turkey’s entry into the European Union, Dink said, “Turkey
is like a young man in love with a young European woman. But by the
time a union can actually take place, the man will be old and the
woman will be ugly… But love is the important thing. It keeps men
young, because they try to look better, act younger, take care of
themselves. Joining the European Union is not the important thing,
but being in love is important.” Dink also expressed his hope that
one day Armenia would join the European Union.
Ragip Zarakolu is the owner of Belge Publishing House. Through the
publication of books deemed subversive by the Turkish authorities,
Zarakolu has given voice to countless victims of injustice whose
stories have been silenced, denied, and banned by successive Turkish
regimes. The first book on the Armenian genocide which he published
in Turkish was Yves Ternon’s, Le Genocide des Armeniens, under the
title, Armenian Taboo, in 1994. Later came Vahakn Dadrian’s Genocide
as a Problem of National and International Law. When Zarakolu was
acquitted of charges against him for that publication, the
possibility of more free discussion about the Armenian genocide in
Turkey increased.
Among Zarakolu’s other translated publications about Armenian and
non-Armenian human rights issues is Mgrditch Armen’s Heghnar’s
Fountain, Franz Werfel’s Forty Days in Musa Dagh, Avetis Aharonian’s,
The Fedayees, Tessa Hoffman’s Talaat Pasha Trials in Berlin, Peter
Balakian’s Black Dog of the Fate, and most recently, Turkish
translations of Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.
Because of his work, Zarakolu spent three years in prison in the
1970’s. His wife also spent several years in prison.
Zarakolu spoke about his first exposure to the Armenian genocide,
when his mother, a witness to the deportations, told him about being
kept in the house, while hearing Armenians being taken away outside.
“My mother said, ‘The Armenians were crying outside, and we were
crying inside,'” said Zarakolu. Referring to Turkey’s involvement in
WWI as a “stupid, adventurous war of the Ittihadists,” Zarakolu said
his mother lost both her parents. She was also able to save two
Armenian girls from deportation, but the government later removed
those girls from their home.
Zarakolu also spoke admiringly of Sarkis Cherkezian, an Armenian
genocide survivor born in a Syrian refugee camp who just passed away
at 90 years of age.
“We learned many things about the realities of what happened to the
Armenians,” he said of his close relationship to Cherkezian. He said
it was because of people like Cherkezian that he is able to write.
Zarakolu discussed the initial years of the Belge publishing house,
during which his work was not only banned but received little
attention. “We had a press conference for our collection of writings
of the first reports on the Armenian genocide, but there was no
coverage in the press,” said Zarakolu.
Since then he has withstood a constant barrage of criminal charges,
further imprisonment, confiscation and destruction of books, the
bombing of his publishing house, and heavy government fines and
taxes. His publishing house has endured more than 40 criminal
indictments. Zarakolu is currently being tried for publishing George
Jerjian’s History Will Set Us Free, and Dora Sakayan’s An Armenian
Doctor in Turkey: Garabed Hatcherian: My Smyrna Ordeal in 1922.
Economic means permitting, Zarakolu hopes to publish the Turkish
editions of the Blue Book from the United Kingdom, Armin Wegner’s
testimonies, Captanian’s testimonies, and a selection of Zabel
Yeseyan’s works, as well as a photographic documentation of the
Armenian deportation to the Syrian Desert.

Prime News Agency, Georgia
March 11 2006
Ombudsman Urges Police Of Tsalka Region To Activate Work

Tbilisi. March 11 (Prime-News) – Sozar Subari, Public Defender of
Georgia, urges law enforcement bodies of Tsalka region to activate
work owing to recent events.
Sozar Subari stated at the briefing on Saturday that a quarrel
between Georgian and Armenian citizens of Georgia occurred in Tsalka
on March 09, which ended with death of Armenian citizen and injury of
four people.
Representatives of Ombudsman’s office arrived in Tsalka on March 10
to get familiar with situation on the spot.
It turned out that the quarrel happened because of life conditions
and not on ethnic base.
Police detained several suspects on the same day.
Armenian population of Tsalka held a protest action outside the
building of local administration.
About 300 people gathered outside the Police building demanding
punishment of all guilty by Lunch law.
About 200 people entered administrative building, raided studies and
burned down documentation.
Sozar Subari stated that the Lynch law is not civil method.
Sozar Subari appealed to everybody to refrain from any groundless
statements and allow law enforcement bodies to investigate the case.

Zaman, Turkey
March 11 2006
Genocide Movie with Turkish Money
By Foreign News Desk, Istanbul
Published: Saturday, March 11, 2006
zaman.com
The Council of Europe decided to give financial support to the
Italian movie “The farm of the skylarks” which is about the so-called
Armenian genocide.
The Council of Europe foundation Eurimages decided to allocate
600,000 euros to Italian Antony and Paolo Taviani Brothers’ new film
titled “The farm of the skylarks,” which was adapted from Armenian
originated Antoni Aslan’s novel after its last meeting in Strasbourg.
Euroimages’, to which Turkey contributes a million euros yearly, drew
reaction from Ankara. Turkish Representative to Eurimages, Ihsan
Kabil, told Zaman that the movie insults the Turkish army and calls
an army officer a “donkey.”
The meeting in Strasbourg was reported to host many discussions about
this issue. All members, except Turkey, approved the financial aid
for the film, which had previously been approved by a 23-member jury
early this week.
Kabil said Ankara could not prevent the decision despite its
diplomatic efforts. He further noted Eurimages’s French Chairman
Jacques Toubon was quite influential in the decision. “Touban
delivered a 15 minute speech during the meeting and explicitly
supported the so-called Armenian Genocide. He said Turkey committed
the genocide, acting as if he was talking about a historical fact
rather than an unproven claim.” Kabil and Ahmet Boyacioglu, Turkey’s
representatives in Eurimages, gave speeches to criticize Toubon’s
speech and the film. Toubon, also a European Parliament (EP) Deputy,
is known to be a supporter of the so-called Armenian Genocide.
Kabil also remarked about the scenario of the movie and said one of
the Turkish army officers in the film was called a “donkey,” the
movie was not sufficient in artistic value. “There are many
cartoon-like scenes in the film which insult Turks and all of the
Turkish soldiers in the movie were portrayed as cruel people.”

>From The ANCA Desk
Th ursday March 19, 2006
“The Armenian Genocide’ on PBS
Andrew Goldberg’s documentary, `The Armenian Genocide,’ will be one of
the most important works for informing the American public about the
Ottoman Empire’s attempt to exterminate its Armenian minority
population. The movie includes affirmation from Turkish and other
non-Armenian scholars at Harvard, Princeton and other major
universities, thoroughly provides photographic documentation of the
genocide, uses the voice of a very well known television celebrity, and
crafts a visual narrative that is moving and inviting.
While there are parts of the film that Turkish denialists will distort
to subvert the entire movie, `The Armenian Genocide’ soundly exposes
Turkey’s nefarious campaign of denial and beautifully recounts America’s
response to the plight of Armenians at the time. The documentary tells
the story of the Hamidian massacres, the special organizations marshaled
by the Ottoman government as mobile killing squads, and other elements
essential to the intentional nature of the Young Turk genocidal
program.
The movie includes a television interview with Rafael Lemkin, who was
one of the driving forces behind the United Nation’s adoption of the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
During the interview, Lemkin explained that he coined the word genocide
based on the cases of the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. On April
17, PBS will make `The Armenian Genocide’ available to its local
stations across the country. We must all stay tuned for it and encourage
anyone we know to view this invaluable program, which will teach the
American public about the horrible crime the Ottoman Empire perpetrated
against our ancestors.
####
2006-03-09
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress