CARGO TRANSPORTATION IN ARMENIA INCREASED 8.5%
Pan Armenian
10.10.2005 15:27 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The average volume of cargo transportation (without
pipelines) within the CIS member-countries (excluding Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan, whose statistical services did not present information)
made 104% against the last year data. According to the CIS statistical
committee, the volume of cargo transportation in Armenia increased
8.5%, in Belarus – 8.3%, in Georgia – 7.8%, in Kazakhstan -2.9%,
Tajikistan – 2.9% and in Russia – 6.3%. Decrease of cargo
transportation volume was observed in Ukraine, Kyrghyzstan and Moldova.

JOURNALISTE TURC CONDAMNE POUR DES PROPOS SUR LES ARMENIENS
SwissInfo, Suisse
7 Octobre 2005
ISTANBUL – La justice turque a condamne vendredi a six mois de prison
avec sursis un journaliste turc de souche armenienne pour insulte a
l’identite turque. Il entend faire recours jusqu’a la Cour europeenne
des droits de l’Homme.
Hrant Dink, redacteur en chef de l’hebdomadaire bilingue “Agos”, qui
paraît en turc et en armenien, a precise qu’un tribunal d’Istanbul
l’avait declare coupable d’avoir insulte et affaibli l’identite turque
dans un article sur les Armeniens. Le papier date de fevrier 2004.
M. Dink appelait dans ce texte les Armeniens a “se tourner maintenant
vers le sang neuf de l’Armenie independante, seule capable de les
liberer du poids de la Diaspora”.
Dans cet article consacre a la memoire collective des massacres
d’Armeniens commis entre 1915 et 1917 en Anatolie, il invitait
egalement les Armeniens a rejeter symboliquement “la part alteree de
leur sang turc”.
M. Dink se defend de ces accusations. Il affirme au contraire avoir
voulu inviter les Armeniens de la diaspora a oublier leur colère
envers les Turcs.
La question du genocide des Armeniens sous l’Empire ottoman en 1915
reste très sensible en Turquie. L’ecrivain turc le plus connu, Orhan
Pamuk, risque ainsi une peine pouvant aller jusqu’a trois ans de
prison pour des critiques a l’egard de l’attitude d’Ankara. Celles-ci
ont ete publiees dans la presse suisse,
Lors d’un entretien publie le 6 fevrier dans “Das Magazin”, le
supplement hebdomadaire du quotidien zurichois “Tages-Anzeiger”,
l’intellectuel avait notamment declare que 30 000 Kurdes et un million
d’Armeniens avaient ete tues en Turquie. Selon lui, personne d’autre
n’ose en parler.
–Boundary_(ID_P/o+uYzGNBeimLldMlNCGw)–

FOREIGN COUNTRIES ASPIRE TO MILITARY PRESENCE IN ARMENIA – BRITISH OFFICIAL
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
posted Oct 10 2005
Baku, October 7, AssA-Irada
The withdrawal of Russian military bases from Armenia should be
achieved after the Armenia-Azerbaijan Upper Garabagh conflict is
settled. This is due to the fact that other countries intend to
station their military units in this country, Great Britain’s special
representative to the South Caucasus Brian Fall has said.
The British representative told the Rose Roth seminar organized in
Yerevan by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly jointly with the Armenian
parliament, that ‘after this it will be impossible to freeze the
Garabagh conflict’.*
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AZERBAIJAN NOT CONSIDER EU STATEMENT AS SERIOUS
Azerbaijan News Service
Oct 7 2005
A high-ranking European Union official has warned Azerbaijan may
“fall behind” in the EU New Neighborhood Policy due to its forging
ties with the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
(TRNC), Armenia media reported. The European Commissioner for
Foreign Affairs Benita Ferrero-Waldner said the international
community recognizes a united Cyprus. This country is currently
blocking the progress achieved by Baku within the mentioned program
due to the opening of direct flights with TRNC, she said. I have
informed Azeris that if they do not change their decision, we will
continue collaborating only with Georgia and Armenia within the
New Neighborhood Policy. Nonetheless, we hope Azerbaijan will find
a solution for the problem, said Ferrero-Waldner.In his turn Azeri
official do not consider the statement as serious. Tahir Taghizadeh,
head of the information of the Ministry of foreign affairs of
Azerbaijan said official Baku did not receive any letter on the
issue. In his interview with ANS TV, Mr. Taghizadeh said during his
visit to New-York within the 60th session of UN, Elmar Mammadyarov,
foreign minister of Azerbaijan met with his Cypriote (Greek Part)
Colleague and no excitement was heard from that part. In any case we
are not going to change our position. Because position of Azerbaijan
coincides with one of the United Nations, European Union and other
countries who call to eliminate problems and bring the Northern Cyprus
from isolations. Relations with Northern Cyprus are only commercial
and no need to politicize the case.

WE CANNOT LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN
Turkish Daily News
Oct 9 2005
‘How many great poets, like Nazim Hikmet, could we have had if in
the past hundred years our culture had not been suppressed,’ Yasar
Kemal had once lamented. He would know the answer better than anyone.
Himself an ethnic Kurd, Kemal has always been outspoken on issues
of human and minority rights not only via his writing but also via
his activism.
Elif ªafak “How many great poets like Nazim Hikmet could we have had
if in the past hundred years our culture had not been suppressed,”
Yasar Kemal once lamented. He would know the answer better than
anyone. Himself an ethnic Kurd, Kemal has always been outspoken on
issues of human and minority rights not only via his writing but also
via his activism. In 1995 after publishing an article in Der Spiegel,
he was given a suspended sentence of 20 months in prison. During
Kemal’s trial 1,000 intellectuals had claimed responsibility for
the book in which his article had appeared in order to stand behind
him. Among these intellectuals, 99 went on trial at the Istanbul
State Security Court (DGM).
Viewed from this perspective, it looks like nowadays an old pattern
is repeating itself. Once again an acclaimed Turkish novelist is
being put on trial for his views. Orhan Pamuk will go to court in
December for the views he expressed during an interview with a Swiss
paper. In that interview Pamuk had claimed, “Thirty thousand Kurds
and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but
me dares to talk about it.” Once this statement was heard in Turkey,
it triggered a huge reaction and nationalist uproar. At the same time
there was an intricate debate in the Turkish media, full of twists
and turns. The debate was not between “black” and “white” but between
“shades of gray.” Not many Western journalists have paid attention to
the nuances of this debate, and not many Turkish intellectuals have
tried to explain the nuances to foreign journalists. As a result,
civil society in Turkey has been depicted as more black-and-white
than it really is.
There is no clash of civilizations. Instead there is a clash of
opinions and values. As in many countries, in Turkey too there
is a clash between two forces. On the one hand there is the
“state oriented.” They comprise a crooked alliance: army officers,
conservative bureaucrats, some diplomats, ultranationalist groups,
some Kemalists and some groups on the far left. All these people
can act together if they suspect that “Ataturk’s legacy is being
challenged” and that the state is in danger. For them the state
machinery is above everything, above society and the individual. They
all respond with a nationalist reflex when a Turkish intellectual
voices a critical opinion outside Turkey. The desire to look “good”
in the eyes of the Western world runs deep in the subconscious of this
group. Anyone who taints Turkey’s image in the eyes of the Western
world is seen as a “traitor.” This group is strong, as it is backed
by state apparatuses. Yet, it is also problematically heterogeneous.
The second major force in Turkey today is the “civil
society-oriented.” These, too, compose an alliance: liberals,
libertarians, some social democrats, some conservative Muslims critical
of an excessively centralized regime, many Kurds and Alawis and Sufis
and all open-minded intellectuals. This second alliance is pushing
the country harder and harder towards a multicultural, cosmopolitan
regime and strongly favors Turkey’s accession to the EU.
This group is strong. The problem is, the more they gain pace, the
more the backlash against them.
Turkish media and civil society were recently stirred by a critical
conference that was held for the first time in Istanbul: a conference
on Ottoman Armenians. Over the last four years, similar workshops and
conferences had been organized by open-minded Turkish and Armenian
scholars in different parts of the United States. Yet this conference
differed from the previous ones in three aspects: It was held in
Istanbul, organized collectively by three Turkish universities and all
its keynote speakers came originally from Turkey. For the first time
critical-minded Turkish intellectuals came together to jointly explore
what had happened to the Ottoman Armenians before, during and after
1915. Though highly diverse in other ways, the participants shared one
thing in common: their belief in the need to face the atrocities of
the past, no matter how distressing or dangerous, in order to create
a better future and a more democratic society in Turkey. Despite a
last-minute legal maneuver by a lawyer to prevent it from happening,
the conference was held and openly supported by Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan. All papers were presented without censure, and even
the taboo word “genocide” was publicly uttered. The next day Turkey’s
Milliyet said “Another Taboo Has Been Smashed.”
Though there has been an accompanying nationalist smear campaign,
the number of Turks supporting the network of intellectual solidarity
between Turkish and Armenian intellectuals is on the rise. Through
the collective efforts of academics, journalists, writers and media
correspondents, 1915 is finally being opened to discussion in Turkey
like never before. All this is accompanied by a series of important
steps that the government has taken to improve its human rights record.
Therefore, Pamuk’s case will be received within such a complicated
framework in which two forces are in conflict. We are in need of
collective efforts for the civil society-oriented to preside over
the state-oriented. Turkey is a country where in the past, social
transformation was always introduced from above, imposed by a cultural
elite on the rest of society. This time it has to be different. For
a true democracy to exist, change has to come from below and from
within. This is what we are struggling for.
Turkish intellectuals will stand by Pamuk on the day of his trial,
just like they stood by Kemal in the past. Our country has already
hurt and isolated many of its great poets and writers in the past. We
cannot let it happen again.
–Boundary_(ID_COyhDwRn5uic7+LA23/slw)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EU SUPPORT FOR TURKEY ‘GENOCIDE’ WRITER
By Amberin Zaman in Istanbul
The Daily Telegraph, UK
Oct 10 2005
A senior European Union official has underlined concern for Turkey’s
human rights record by joining the acclaimed author, Orhan Pamuk,
for lunch in Istanbul. An Istanbul court provoked outrage last month
when it charged Mr Pamuk with violating laws that forbid description
of the mass killings of Armenians during the last days of the Ottoman
Empire as genocide.
The author, who is due to appear in court on Dec 16, could spend
up to three years in prison if found guilty of “insulting Turkey’s
national dignity”. The charges were filed after Mr Pamuk told a Swiss
newspaper in February that “a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were
killed in these lands and nobody but me dares talks about it”.
Olli Rehn, the EU’s enlargement commissioner who lunched with Mr Pamuk,
hinted that negotiations with Turkey over its entry to the EU might
be interrupted if the author were to be convicted.
From: Baghdasarian

TURKEY PLAYS DOWN AUTHOR’S TRIAL
Al-Jazeera, Qatar
Oct 10 2005
Sunday 09 October 2005, 23:13 Makka Time, 20:13 GMT
Abdullah Gul (R) says Turkey’s rights record has improved
Turkey’s foreign minister says he is confident a court will dismiss
charges against a best-selling Turkish writer who faces prison for
his views on the massacres of Armenians 90 years ago.
Orhan Pamuk has been charged with insulting Turkish identity for
supporting Armenian claims that they suffered a genocide under Ottoman
Turks in 1915. He faces three years in jail if convicted.
Pamuk further upset the establishment and nationalists by saying
Turkish forces shared responsibility for the deaths of more than
30,000 Kurds in southeast Turkey during separatist fighting there in
the 1980s and 1990s.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul on Sunday sought to play down the
controversy, telling Canal television that he expected the case to
be dismissed because a court had thrown out similar charges against
a different person.
Rights record
“The same trial has been held before, over the same phrases, the same
words,” Gul said.
“The judge ruled that everyone has the right to express their
opinion. The same decision will be handed down, I have no doubt
about this.”
Nationalists reject any attempt to reopen the Armenian chapter
Pamuk’s prosecution has highlighted concerns over whether Turkey’s
human-rights record is compatible with EU membership. About 60% of
French voters say they do not want mainly Muslim Turkey to join the EU.
In a show of support, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn met Pamuk
at the writer’s Istanbul home on Saturday and urged Ankara to respect
freedom of expression.
Pamuk, best known for historical novels such as My Name is Red and
The White Castle, goes on trial on 16 December.
Archives opened
Gul said that despite the case, human rights had advanced by leaps
and bounds in the past three years.
“The same trial has been held before, over the same phrases, the
same words”
Abdullah Gul, Turkish Foreign Minister
“We have a limited democracy in Turkey … but thanks to the reforms
of the past few years, its scope has widened enormously.”
Turkey had offered to open its archives to international historians
to resolve the Armenian massacre issue, which has complicated Ankara’s
bid to join the European Union.
The European Parliament last month passed a non-binding resolution
saying Ankara must recognise the Armenian massacres as a genocide
before joining the EU, and gave only grudging support to the start
of entry talks with Turkey on 3 October.

TURKISH OFFICIAL SAYS AZERBAIJAN GAINING ADVANTAGE IN CONFLICT SETTLEMENT
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
posted Oct 10 2005
Baku, October 7, AssA-Irada
A high-ranking Turkish military official has said that Azerbaijan is
increasingly getting an advantage over Armenia in the settlement of
the Upper Garabagh conflict.
“Time is in favor of Azerbaijan, while Armenia is getting economically
weaker. We believe this factor will affect Azerbaijan’s political
power and create favorable conditions for the conflict settlement”,
Chief of the Turkish General Staff, General Hilmi Ozkok said.
He said in a meeting with Azeri Minister for Defense Safar Abiyev on
Friday that Turkey and Azerbaijan should continue cooperation while
ensuring that their common historical roots are not forgotten.
Abiyev said Azerbaijan wants to settle the Garabagh conflict
peacefully. “But if the efforts turn out fruitless, the national army
will definitely liberate the occupied territories”, he said.
The minister praised the expanding military collaboration between
the two countries, saying that President Ilham Aliyev is making every
effort in this area.
Views were also exchanged on prospects for further military cooperation
and the current political situation in the Caucasus and the Middle
East at the meeting, attended by the Turkish Ambassador to Azerbaijan
Turan Morali.*

2 IRANIAN LITERARY FIGURES IN YEREVAN
IranMania, Iran
Oct 10 2005
LONDON, October 10 (IranMania) – The Biggest gathering of Armenian
authors will be held in Yerevan from 8 to 12 October with the presence
of 2 Iranian literary figures; Zoya Pirzad and Ahmad Nouri Zadeh,
said CHN.
The gathering is dedicated to the writers and poets who write their
works in languages other than Armenian.
Among the invited literary figures for the event, Zoya Pirzad,
an Iranian awarded female writer, is mentionable. Zoya Pirzad whose
famous ?I am the one who turns off the lights? has won several national
literary awards, is one of the few Armenian writers in Iran who writes
in Persian.
?Since Leon Analian became responsible for the directorship of Armenian
Writers Association, the association is more active.
Organizing several literary conferences are among its achievements?
said Varand, secretary general of the association.
This 2nd edition of the conference of Armenian writers is dedicated
to the review and study of Armenian writers who live outside the
country. These kinds of literary events are aimed at creating greater
kinship among Armenian literary figures from all over the world.
Beside Zoya Pirzad, Ahmad Nouri Zadeh is another Iranian literary
figure who will be present at the event. He will be awarded for his
great translations of Armenian works into Persian.

TURKEY NOT FIT FOR MEMBERSHIP
By Matthew Nickson
Daily Texan, TX
Oct 10 2005
Last Monday at a ministerial conference in Luxembourg, the foreign
ministers of the European Union agreed to begin membership talks with
Turkey. The decision to open “adhesion negotiations” – taken after
overcoming an Austrian counter-proposal for a “privileged partnership”
– is a blow to the democratic goals of a unified Europe.
Since joining the European Economic Community as an associate member
in 1963, Turkey has consistently professed its reformist credentials,
eager to counter the world community’s outdated image of a thinly
veiled military dictatorship. But time and again – despite progress
in certain areas outlined in the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria for EU
expansion – the Turkish government has shown it is either unwilling
or unable to fully democratize and modernize. In its own country,
Turkey continues to systematically restrict freedom of expression and
oppress its minority Kurdish population. Abroad, Turkey maintains an
ever belligerent posture toward its neighbors, particularly Armenia
and Cyprus.
The latest example of Turkish repression came last Friday, when
a Turkish administrative court convicted an Armenian journalist,
Hrant Dink, of insulting the “Turkish identity” by writing about
the Armenian genocide. During World War I, the Ottoman Army and
its guerilla auxiliaries massacred more than one million Armenians
who refused to convert from Christianity to Islam. To this day, the
Turkish government illegalizes practically any admission of Turkish
guilt and threatens or imprisons individuals who speak out.
Nationalist officials trivialize the massacres as tragic but
inevitable consequences of war, or dismiss the Armenians as pro-Russian
traitors. Although Armenia is a small, underdeveloped country, Turkey
continues to blockade it by land, cutting off road and rail traffic.
Ironically – and in a sign of the Turkish court system’s perversity
– Dink was tried and convicted for writing that Armenians should
rid themselves of anti-Turkish anger. The court implied from his
admonition that Dink – who received a suspended six month sentence –
was somehow deriding the Turkish blood.
The fact is, unlike many former European colonizers, Turkey has
made few if any efforts to atone for its imperialist past. The Turks
have been unable, notwithstanding decades of co-membership in NATO,
to arrive at a truly permanent peace with Greece. As late as 1996,
the two countries nearly fought a war over the Imia islands in the
Aegean Sea. Furthermore, the Turkish government adamantly refuses to
recognize the independence of the Greek portion of Cyprus and the
sovereignty of the government in Nicosia. Although Turkey signed
a July 29 protocol extending its customs union with the European
Union to the 10 members admitted in 2004 – among them the Republic
of Cyprus – Turkey obstinately refuses to open its ports and airports
to Cypriot commerce.
Turkey also has a bad track record with its Middle Eastern neighbors.
The country has consistently been accused by Syria and Iraq of
siphoning an inordinate amount of water from the Euphrates River,
which Turkey has diverted for a massive – and environmentally risky
– development project involving the construction of 22 dams and 19
power plants.
The Southeast Anatolia Development Project has been touted as an
economic boon for Turkey’s minority Kurdish population. Yet Turkey
has engaged in a long-standing policy of political and cultural
warfare against the Kurds who live in southeastern Turkey, near the
Iraqi border by imprisoning Kurdish political figures and limiting
classroom instruction in Kurdish. As recently as the early 1990s,
Turkey conducted a Central American-style scorched earth campaign
against Kurdish villages suspected of harboring separatist guerillas,
killing as many as 30,000 people.
All the foregoing is not to deny that Turkey has enacted reforms
in its quest for EU membership. The country has abolished the death
penalty and retreated from its once total censure of Kurdish culture.
In the economic realm, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
repealed subsidies favoring the textile industry. If admitted to the
EU, Turkey holds out the promise of revitalizing laggard European
economies with its growing consumer market, cheap labor (an augury
of massive emigration) and increased trade.
But Turkey’s reforms are too little, and Turkish society has evolved
insufficiently since 1963. Treacherous fault lines still haunt the
political landscape, with Islamic fundamentalists on one extreme and
a military clique on the other, ever ready to intervene to defend
the ideological vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The bottom line is that Turkey absolutely does not deserve an EU seat
alongside progressive, democratic nations like France, Great Britain,
Germany and Spain.
Nickson is a third year law student and executive editor of The Texas
International Law Journal.