UNITING TURKEY, THE EU
By Tulin Daloglu
Washington Times
Oct 4 2005
Afterlong,nerve-wrecking, last-minute negotiations, the European Union
backed away from the precipice last night when Turkey’s accession
talks formally kicked off in Luxembourg.
Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel believed his country
represented a European majority in opposing Turkey’s entrance into
the talks. Though 24 members agreed, and in December Turkey was told
it met the criteria to move forward, Austrians think it is nearly
impossible to integrate into the EU a poor and populous country,
culturally and religiously different than the Europeans. Or at least
that was what held them back until yesterday.
That concern is reminiscent of the old Turkish shadow play of
Karagoz. The hero, a poor soldier named Visal, finds a wife through a
matchmaker. After the wedding, he lifts the bride’s veil to discover
a horrifically ugly woman beneath it. Visal threatens both the
matchmaker and the matchmaker’s husband, and goes on a pilgrimage to
purify himself.
Mr. Schuessel is hardly delighted by the EU leadership under British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, the leading matchmaker between Turkey
and the EU, who pushed him to drop his objections to Turkey’s
membership. The last-minute intervention of Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice supporting Turkey may have even made him feel more
isolated, and deepened the perception that Europeans are incapable of
solving their problems alone. The Austrian demand to offer Turkey a
“privileged partnership” is history now.
In addition, Mr. Schuessel is so adamant that Turkey joining the EU
will be disastrous that he has persuaded himself that he is in even
a worse position than Visal – that when Turkey becomes a member to
the EU, it will be ugly, and there is no way for it to become part of
the European way of life. Which is why Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan said, “There are those who cannot free themselves
from prejudice.”
The most amazing thing about those who hold such views is that they
forget Turkey did not apply to the EU to promote its religion.
It first became an associate EU member in 1963, applied for full
membership in 1987, and in 1992 became the first associate country to
sign the Customs Union agreement before becoming a full member. Yet,
Turkey has been part of the EU process for 40 years because it is
a secular, democratic country that cherishes the same values as
Europeans – and it has also been a NATO ally since 1952.
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw reminded the Austrians that “when
Western Europe needed defense, along with the United States, it looked
to Turkey for that defense on its eastern flank against the then-Soviet
Union… No issues were then raised that it had an Islamic majority.”
Despite all the tough talk, Philip Gordon, director of the Brookings
Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe, is still hopeful
about Turkey’s future in the EU, saying that the 35 percent to 45
percent of Europeans who support its full membership is a good start.
Mr. Gordon also challenges the EU counter-declaration to Turkey,
which insisted that it should recognize Cyprus (or more specifically,
the Greek-Cypriot administration) before it becomes a full member.
Mr. Gordon says the condition was a given, and was added to provoke
Turkey into not cooperating with the EU. Turks also cite the European
Parliament’s demand to recognize the Armenian genocide as another
means.
Yet Turkey continues to beat the odds. Although public opinion polls
in Germany and Austria significantly oppose Turkey’s EU membership,
the leaders who ran elections based on anti-Turkish sentiment lost
their elections. The German Christian Democrat leader Angela Merkel
lost, and Mr. Schuessel lost in a region that was a stronghold for his
People’s Party since 1945. And while France insists that its people
have an opportunity to approve or reject Turkey in a referendum,
Germany’s outgoing foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, warns, “You
can not build Europe on the basis of referendums.”
A recent Turkish public opinion poll showed nearly 60 percent still
support the EU membership. Turks remain hopeful, like in a famous
Turkish movie portraying the same story as the Karagoz play, but
which cast a beautiful actress as the ugly bride. The groom had seen
her ugly – it was the art of makeup – until it was time to unveil
her. Yet when they wed, he was so surprised to see the bride because
what he had seen was beautiful, and he fell in love.
A senior American diplomat told me last week he was sure the talks
would start because Turkey’s full membership is 10 to 15 years down the
road. But while the talk of Turkey’s EU candidacy has always broken
some crockery, Mr. Straw warned the EU that it should get it right,
and “we reach the sunny uplands.”
Today we hope the future negotiations segue into smart, emotionally
less exhausting, and legally tight conversations to make the full
partnership between the EU and Turkey a reality.
Tulin Daloglu is the Washington correspondent and columnist for
Turkey’s Star TV and newspaper. A former BBC reporter, she writes
occasionally for The Washington Times.

TURKEY STARTS DECADE-PLUS EU JOURNEY, WITH NO ENTRY GUARANTEE
Bloomberg
Oct 4 2005
Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) — Turkey, clutching an 11th-hour European Union
accord to start entry talks, faces growing opposition as it embarks
on a journey to membership that could last 15 years and still end
in failure.
Last-minute objections by Austria and Cyprus almost derailed the start
of the talks yesterday, highlighting deeper divisions over admitting
a Muslim country of 72 million people with incomes that are a fourth
of the EU average.
“There seems to be no obvious political will on the part of the EU
to embrace Turkey at this stage,” said Cem Duna, a former Turkish
ambassador to the EU who helped negotiate a 1995 free- trade agreement
with the bloc. “The talks are going to be very tough and nations will
have countless chances to veto.”
Turkey is banking on the EU entry process to attract record foreign
investment in the $300 billion economy. Optimism about membership
has pushed stocks to a five-year high and brought the government’s
borrowing costs down to 15 percent from more than 70 percent four
years ago.
Getting the talks off the ground took a month of brinksmanship, with
veto threats by Cyprus and Austria and counter-threats by Turkey,
culminating in a 30-hour emergency negotiating session in Luxembourg.
“Turkey is determined to carry on with reforms,” Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul told a Luxembourg news conference early today after the
official start of the talks. “Some of the concerns which exist in
European public opinion will, I think, change in 10 years.”
Enlargement Fatigue
The EU is groping for answers on how, when and where to enlarge
again after bringing in 10 mostly eastern European countries last
year, expanding its population to 450 million. Dissatisfaction with
enlargement, and with the prospect of Turkey joining, contributed
to the rejection of the planned EU constitution in France and the
Netherlands this year.
“At the rate Turkey is going it’s going to take at least one generation
for it to join the EU,” said Jean-Dominique Butikofer, who manages
the equivalent of $400 million of emerging market debt at Julius Baer
Asset Management in Zurich.
Opponents have pointed to polls showing only one-third of Europeans
support Turkey’s application. Unemployment in the EU is at 8.6 percent,
increasing concerns that Turkish workers may head to the West and force
more Europeans out of a job. Turkey’s jobless rate is 9.1 percent.
`I’m Hostile’
“I’m hostile to Turkey’s membership,” Marielle de Sarnez, a French
member of the European Parliament, said in an interview yesterday.
“We must continue to build a political Europe,” and letting Turkey
in would lead to the “dilution” of the bloc.
Loudspeakers across Turkey announce the call to prayer five times a
day and the government supplies low-income families with free meals
during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, a
warren of covered, interlocking shopping alleys, has a Middle Eastern
flair. The teeming city on the Bosporus, with about 9 million people,
is larger than 12 EU countries.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is urging Europe to prove it’s
not a “Christian club” by accepting Turkey.
Turkey has made some of the changes demanded by the EU, including
abolishing the death penalty and expanding rights for 12 million
Turkish Kurds, the nation’s largest ethnic minority originating from
a region bordering Iraq.
General Electric Co., BNP Paribas and Royal Dutch Shell Plc this year
agreed to buy stakes in Turkish companies on expectation that the EU
embrace will boost profits.
European Values
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, says the government
must now strengthen democracy, including religious freedoms for Greek
Orthodox Christians in Istanbul, and meet the bloc’s standards in 35
areas including competition, labor and the environment.
“The result of these negotiations is absolutely not guaranteed,”
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said yesterday. “If
it’s not accession, it’ll be another strong link.”
Erdogan, who prays five times a day even during foreign trips, plans
to cut the corporate tax rate from 30 percent to attract investment
and reduce unemployment. Nineteen million people in Turkey live in
poverty, according to government data.
By 2025, Turkey would swallow up EU farm and regional subsidies equal
to about 0.17 percent of annual European economic output, or about
$20 billion in today’s terms, the commission said last October.
Armenian Massacre
“Countries like France and Germany just aren’t ready for any further
expansion of the EU from an economic point of view,” said Daniel Gros,
director of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.
“The negotiations with Turkey basically have to be forgotten about
for the next five or six years.”
Other demands include Turkey’s recognition of the republic of Cyprus,
the Mediterranean island nation that joined the EU last year. The
European Parliament last week told Turkey to lift a ban on Cypriot
planes and ships by next year or risk a halt to the EU process.
Turkey should also acknowledge that Ottoman Turks carried out a
massacre of Armenians in the last century before it becomes a member,
the EU legislature said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Bentley in Ankara at
[email protected].
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

100 MILION DRAMS AS A GIFT TO YEREVAN
Panorama News
13:36 03/10/05
The events of the “The Yerevan Day” festival will begin on October 8.
Concerts and fireworks are organized in all communities of the capital.
The same day the exhibition “My Yerevan” will be opened in Yerevan
History Museum. “It is the first time, that Yerevan History Museum
will open its doors in a new building”, said deputy mayor A. Sahakyan .
He also informed, by the Government decision the second Saturday of
October has been announced “The Yerevan Day”,
Opening ceremony of the festival will take place in the Opera
House. The events will over on October 9 and in the evening a Gala
concert will take place in the Republic Square with fireworks at
the end.
For celebration of its birthday party Yerevan is going to receive
11 delegations from IRI, Greece, Odessa, Florence, Yekaterinburg,
Stavropoulos and other countries.
About 80-100 million drams will be spent on celebration events.

EUROPEAN UNION FORMALLY OPENS TALKS ON TURKEY’S JOINING
By Craig S. Smith
New York Times
Oct 4 2005
LUXEMBOURG, Tuesday, Oct. 4 – After days of wrenching negotiations,
Turkey and the European Union held a brief ceremony here early Tuesday
that formally opened talks on Turkey’s bid to join the union.
The ceremony, which began just past midnight after an agreement was
reached late Monday, set in motion a process that would probably take
a decade or more but could end with the European Union’s extending its
borders eastward into Asia to embrace a predominantly Muslim country.
“This is a truly historic day for Europe and for the whole of the
international community,” said Jack Straw, Britain’s foreign secretary,
who was chairman of the negotiations. He said Turkey’s entry “will
bring a strong, secular state that happens to have a Muslim majority
into the E.U. – proof that we can live, work and prosper together.”
Turkey has worked for more than four decades to join, restructuring
its legal system and economy to meet European standards even as Europe
added demands and refused to start formal negotiations.
The agreement on Monday to open the talks was a hard-won victory for
the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who
has staked his political credibility on getting them under way. He
hailed the beginning of talks, saying, “Turkey has taken a giant step
forward on its historic march.”
But the bitter struggle over the terms of the talks reflects Europe’s
deep ambivalence toward Turkey’s membership.
The talks come at a difficult time for the European Union, which is
mired in an identity crisis and whose consensus-based decision-making
process is already bogged down by the addition last year of 10 members.
Many Europeans – more than half according to some polls – oppose
Turkey’s membership, arguing that while the country has a toehold in
Europe, it is not European at its core. Critics say the union would
have difficulty absorbing such a large, poor country and complain
that Turkey’s membership would open the doors for a potentially huge
wave of Muslim immigrants.
By the time it could be expected to join, Turkey’s current population
of 70 million people would probably have grown to outnumber that of
Germany, now the largest European state. Under current rules, that
would give it the most seats in the European Parliament, skewing an
already complex European agenda.
The agreement to start the talks was held up until late Monday as
European members haggled over an Austrian demand that the talks include
an alternative to full membership, giving the union a diplomatically
palatable option to inviting Turkey to join.
Austria eventually dropped its demands, but an agreement was then
blocked by Turkey’s objections to language that it feared could
force it to support an eventual bid by the Greek-dominated Republic
of Cyprus to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Turkey
withdrew its objections after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
called Mr. Erdogan in Ankara to assure him that the negotiations with
Europe would not affect Turkey’s voting power in NATO.
Supporters of Turkey’s membership say the expansion would open
up a vast potential economic market to Europe. Other advocates,
including the United States, say bringing Turkey into the European
club would help spread democracy into the Middle East and increase
regional security.
That idea was echoed by Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, before
he boarded a plane in Ankara on Monday night to fly to Luxembourg.
“Once Turkey enters in the European Union, all these circles will also
see themselves, one way or another, represented within the E.U.,”
Mr. Gul said. He left Turkey late Monday night in order to attend
the ceremony here early Tuesday.
The squabble over talks with Turkey briefly held up consideration
of Croatia’s European membership talks, which had been frozen since
March over the country’s poor cooperation in arresting a fugitive
war crimes suspect. Austria had pushed for talks with Croatia to begin.
Late Monday, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes
tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, told European foreign ministers that Croatia
was cooperating fully – a sharp reversal of her assessment just a few
days earlier during a visit to the Croatian capital, Zagreb. Membership
talks with Croatia are now expected to start within days.
The last-minute diplomacy kept Mr. Gul waiting in Ankara and frayed
nerves on both sides.
“Either it will show political maturity and become a global power,
or it will end up a Christian club,” Mr. Erdogan said of the European
Union on Sunday.
It is just that question that is haunting Europe. The European project,
begun as a means to ensure peace among historic enemies, has faltered
since the end of the cold war, which helped define it. In the 15
years since German reunification, the union has grown but weakened
as it has absorbed much of formerly Communist Central Europe.
Deep differences within the union, particularly between its incoming
and longstanding members, broke into the open over the American-led
invasion of Iraq, which many of the new union members supported but
the older members did not. “Building a consensus is difficult if you
don’t have common values,” said Constanze Stelzenmuller, of the German
Marshall Fund in Berlin. “There has been a loss of focus, a loss of
the sense of commonality, a loss of common interests in Europe.”
Many people worry that adding a country with such a vastly different
cultural and economic heritage like Turkey’s to the mix would only
soften that focus further.
Meanwhile, economic malaise in much of Europe has made people wary
of the heralded “ever closer union” that for many simply means lost
jobs. Those fears helped defeat referendums on a proposed European
constitution in France and the Netherlands earlier this year, stalling
the union’s already slowing momentum and leading many opinion-makers
to question openly what it was that Europe wanted to become. Turkey’s
effort to become a member, which has continued in some form for more
than 40 years, naturally became central to that debate.
Turkey became an associate member of what was then the European
Economic Community in 1963 and formally applied for full membership
in April 1987. It was officially recognized as a candidate only in
December 1999, and it was not until last December that the union
agreed to set a date for membership negotiations to begin.
As part of its campaign to meet European standards, Turkey has
abolished the death penalty, improved its human rights record and
allowed broader use of the Kurdish language among its large Kurdish
minority. But it is criticized for refusing to explore the killing of
Armenians in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire and for refusing
to recognize Cyprus, which became a European Union member last year.
Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul for this article.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TURKEY POISED TO BEGIN EU ACCESSION TALKS
By Andrew Borowiec
Washington Times
Oct 4 2005
October 2, 2005
NICOSIA, Cyprus – After a 40-year struggle against European reluctance,
Muslim Turkey stands on the precarious threshold of the predominantly
Christian European Union (EU).
The accession negotiating process that formally opens tomorrow
is fraught with uncertainty amid European doubts about Turkey’s
credentials. The talks may last 10 years or more and could easily
stumble over new obstacles.
Until virtually the last minute, Austria objected to the nature to
the talks, insisting on a “privileged partnership” status for Turkey
rather than full EU membership. An emergency meeting of EU foreign
ministers was called for today in Luxembourg to find an acceptable
formula before the talks convene.
As Yasar Yakis, a former Turkish foreign minister and member of the
governing Justice and Development Party put it: “It is too early to
celebrate. The talks will be very tough, tougher than for any other
candidate country.”
Nonetheless, it is a major step for Turkey in its bid to join a
lukewarm Europe where the image of Ottoman conquests “by fire and
sword” is still very much a part of history texts, while some populist
politicians still speak of “the scourge of Christendom.”
In Turkey, where Islam and secular principles clash almost daily,
enthusiasm for membership in what politicians describe as “a Christian
club” has waned somewhat as the Europeans stalled at the green light.
When it finally came last Dec. 17, even more doubts emerged and it
took more than nine months to prepare the talks.
Some issues ignored Leaders of the 25-nation EU, apparently
disregarding opinion polls hostile to Turkey’s membership, insisted
on opening the negotiations on time, even if it required glossing
over certain Turkish acts said to be contrary to European principles.
These include the relentless war against the Kurdish rebels that has
caused more than 35,000 deaths, the denial of certain Kurdish cultural
and nationalist demands, refusal to admit Turkey’s role in the World
War I massacre of Armenians, the recent indictment against a prominent
author accused of “insulting Turkishness,” and the persistent shadow
of the influential Turkish military over the country’s politics.
Equally troubling to the Europeans is Cyprus, where Turkey benefited
from the EU’s reluctance to become mired in yet another problem:
Although Turkey refused to recognize the Greek Cypriot government —
an EU member — and has kept its seaports closed to Greek Cypriot
vessels, the EU preferred not to penalize it or delay admission talks.
Stubborn over Cyprus
A joint declaration by the EU said merely that Turkey should recognize
Cyprus before it is allowed to join the union — when the protracted
negotiations end.
Commented the Athens daily Kathimerini: “The outcome involved endless
talks between European officials, behind the scene contacts .. and
much wasting of time and energy.” .
Even the presence of some 30,000 Turkish troops in northern Cyprus,
in effect occupying 37 percent of the territory of an EU nation,
was not allowed to hinder or delay the accession talks at this stage.
The government in Ankara has shown considerable stubbornness in
the dispute over Cyprus, with statements from Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan that no Turkish concession on the issue of the divided
island would be made before the start of the talks. Even stronger was
a statement by Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul that Turkey’s position
on Cyprus “will never change.”
Hopes remain strong However, to attenuate such categorical views,
senior officials in Ankara explain that once the Cyprus problem has
been solved (to Turkey’s satisfaction), recognition of the Greek
Cypriot government in the southern part of the island would be
considered, but only if a parallel “Turkish Republic of Northern
Cyprus” is internationally recognized.
Turkey’s size and its possible stabilizing role in a highly volatile
area where Europe and Asia meet has been systematically underlined
by some EU politicians, who feel that rejecting Turkey would push it
either toward radical Islam or equally radical nationalism.
Even Greece, Turkey’s historic foe, feels that when Turkey belongs to
the EU, its nationalism and military ambitions could be more easily
controlled. For the time being, both countries, which are members
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, continue improving their
military equipment while staging mock dogfights over the contested
waters of the Aegean Sea.
Population is growing A number of politicians led by former French
President Valery Giscard d’Estaing continue to insist that Turkey “has
nothing in common with Europe,” even though 5 percent of its territory
of 297,000 square miles lies on the European side of the Bosporus.
While the European business community points to Turkey’s growth
over the past three years and its value as a business partner,
politicians worry about the possible burden of a poor country of
71 million with a rising population that soon will exceed Germany’s
present 82 million people.
Europe’s reluctance to admit Turkey was partly caused by the presence
of more than 3 million Turkish workers, mainly in Germany, Austria,
France and several north European countries. On the whole, these
temporary immigrants have shown little inclination to integrate or
adjust to European lifestyles.
Two negative referendums What alarmed some EU officials was that France
and the Netherlands rejected the proposed European constitution in
referendums last spring, mainly because voters interpreted the charter
as paving the road to Turkey’s EU membership.
Somewhat reluctantly, Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European
Commission, admitted that the union’s executive body could not
ignore “the signal sent by the electorate regarding Turkey.” Yet the
commission continued pushing for Turkey’s accession talks, a policy
seen by some as part of a drive to increase the EC’s influence and
economic clout.
To most Turks, being “European” has little meaning. Ataturk was
decisive In 1923, when the country reeled from the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the republic and simply
ordered it to “face West.” This included such measures as dropping
Arabic script and adopting the Latin alphabet instead and a ban on
the fez, the traditional colorful headgear.
Christian Sunday replaced the Muslim Friday as the official day of
rest, but Islam has remained a powerful spiritual influence for most
Turks. Even now, the country is torn by a debate over how Islamic or
secular modern Turkey should be.
Islamic revivals in some Turkish cities and universities, including
resistance to a ban on women wearing head scarves in government
buildings, has caused concern among some Europeans about “the Islamic
cloud over Europe.”
Ankara fully committed Although throughout much of its modern history
Turkey has been regarded as a power crippled by its internal problems,
Turkish officials now point to an unquestionably impressive list of
recent reforms. In statements and interviews, Mr. Erdogan stigmatized
“the campaign against us,” which raised European concern about “the
growth of militant Turkish chauvinism.”
Mr. Erdogan has repeatedly stressed that Turkey is “fully committed
to the European process” and said Ankara would work to change the
nation’s mentality and “take whatever steps are required from us.”
Yet on key issues such as the Turkish military presence in Cyprus, the
Turkish government allowed little room for discussion or compromise,
saying the Turkish Cypriot approval of the U.N.
unification plan, rejected by the Greek side, was a sufficient gesture
of good will.
Old ghosts linger An especially sensitive subject is the fate of
its Armenian population during World War I, when an estimated 1.5
million perished during their forced “resettlement march” to desert
areas. Despite European pressure, Turkey refuses to call the deaths a
genocide and says the “resettlement” was prompted by Armenian support
for Russia, then Turkey’s enemy.
Last month, the European Commission decried the prosecution of Orhan
Pamuk, a Turkish author who told a Swiss magazine “30,000 Kurds and
a million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me
dares talk about it.”
Mr. Pamuk was accused of insulting “Turkey’s national character”
and could face a prison term for possible violation of Turkey’s new
penal code.
The problem of the Kurds — the long-suffering “orphans of the
universe” scattered throughout Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria —
has poisoned Turkey’s internal peace for more than two centuries,
with 32 uprisings drowned in blood. Despite some official Turkish
concessions to Kurdish demands for self-expression, any bid for
autonomy is rejected as undermining national unity.
After several pauses in its guerrilla war, the left-wing Kurdistan
Workers’ Party recently resumed its harassing attacks; Kurdish
nationalist demonstrations spread to several cities and were suppressed
by police. However, rebel demands for autonomy do not appear to
be shared by all Kurds, many of whom have been integrated into the
mainstream. What tarnished Turkey’s policy toward the Kurds is the slow
application of promised reforms recognizing their language and culture.
European concern about Turkey’s democracy has been heightened by the
high profile of the Turkish military, considered the guardian of the
secular system introduced by Ataturk and known as “Kemalism.”
Military calls shots On four occasions since Ataturk’s death in 1938,
the military has intervened in Turkey’s politics — most recently
in 1980, when the country was in turmoil and the government seemed
helpless. Three years later, after crushing terrorist groups and
purging the ranks of quarreling politicians, the generals and their
troops returned to barracks.
Under EU pressure, the role of the military in the powerful National
Security Council has been reduced, though senior officers issue
periodic statements to show vigilance.
The last such statement — in April, by Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, chief of
the general staff — was a blunt assessment of Turkey’s domestic and
foreign concerns, proving that the military is not yet ready to take
a back seat.
Gen. Ozkok described Turkey’s military presence in Cyprus as essential
to security.
Gen. Ozkok, known for pro-EU sympathies, is due to retire next year
and his likely replacement, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, is described by
diplomats as “an unknown quantity.”

STRAW STEERS EU AWAY FROM ‘PRECIPICE’ WITH TURKEY ACCESSION DEAL
Nicola Smith
The Scotsman
Oct 4 2005
Key points
~U Foreign Secretary looks to have repaired deal over Turkey’s
possible entry into the EU
~U Talks mark a success for UK during its six-month EU presidency
~U EU membership may still be 15 years in the future, however
Key quote
“Those in the EU who cannot digest Turkey being in the EU
are against the alliance of civilisations. I appeal to the EU leaders
to show good sense for the sake of global peace and stability.” –
Tayyip Recep Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister
Story in full
THE British government last night averted a deep political crisis
in the European Union after it thrashed out a delicate agreement to
begin accession talks with Turkey.
After over 24 hours of tense negotiations and with only a few hours’
sleep, Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, brokered a successful
compromise to allay Austrian and Turkish concerns about the terms of
the negotiations.
The deal was finally clinched after a fraught four-hour wait on Turkey
to agree to the fine details of the negotiating mandate.
“We have reached agreement. Inshallah, we are departing for
Luxembourg,” Abdullah Gul, the Turkish foreign minister, said from
Ankara as he prepared to board a plane to meet his 25 EU counterparts.
The deal paved the way for the celebratory launch of accession talks
in Luxembourg, marking a milestone in Turkey’s 40-year bid for EU
membership.
The positive outcome to the intense session of diplomatic wrangling
was a welcome relief for the British government which had billed the
opening of talks with Turkey as one of the benchmarks of the success
of its six-month EU presidency.
Mr Straw cautioned his 24 EU counterparts yesterday that a failure
to go ahead with the talks could have disastrous consequences for
the EU’s future relations with Turkey.
“If we go the right way we reach the sunny uplands,” he said. “If we
go the wrong way, it could be catastrophic for the European Union.”
Speaking at a rally of his ruling Justice and Development party
on Monday, Tayyip Recep Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, also
warned that any attempt to sideline Ankara would have wider global
implications.
“Those in the EU who cannot digest Turkey being in the EU are against
the alliance of civilisations,” he said.
“I appeal to the EU leaders to show good sense for the sake of global
peace and stability.”
Mr Straw and Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, were forced
to steer negotiations along a “precipice” between the brinkmanship
of the Austrian and Turkish governments.
Outside, hundreds of Armenians added to the tension with a
demonstration demanding Turkey make amends for the killings of
Armenians under Ottoman rule in 1915.
After seven bilateral meetings between Mr Straw and Ursula Plassnik,
his Austrian counterpart, and a telephone call to Wolfgang Schuessel,
the Austrian chancellor, Vienna appeared to backtrack on its demands
that Turkey explicitly be offered “alternatives” to full EU membership
from the outset.
The drama was heightened when Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of
state, intervened
to assure Turkey that its agreement to the proposed EU negotiating
framework had no implications for its relations with NATO.
The opening of talks with Ankara will only be the start of a ten-
to 15-year process where Turkey will be expected to go through a
series of economic and political reforms.

ETHIOPIA BECOMES THE FIRST “LITTLE AFRICAN TOWN” IN THE U.S.
Addis Tribune, Ethiopia
Oct 4 2005
Little Tokyo, Little Armenia, Korea Town, Little Italy are some of the
names of places in North American cities that were christened to give
recognition to the contributions made by the immigrant communities
from the respective countries.
But no part of a city in North America was named after an African
country until recently.
“Little Ethiopia” was inaugurated in Los Angeles during the last week
of last month around Fairfax Avenue, a centrally located area between
Pico Boulevard and Olympic Boulevard.
“Little Ethiopia” is about 5-10 miles from Beverly Hills and 3
miles from Farmers Market, a well-known tourist attraction site in
Los Angeles.
According to the organizers, about 6,000 Ethiopians showed up at the
inauguration of “Little Ethiopia”
“What you see around you is a bustling hub of activity of business and
commerce mostly run and operated by Ethiopians. The impact Ethiopian
immigrants have made in the life of this great country and particularly
this city is not confined to business and commerce alone. Ethiopians
have their fair share in other noble professions as well,” said one
of the speakers at the inaugural ceremony, Dr. Getachew Mekasha.

ARMENIANS HOLD ‘SO-CALLED ARMENIAN GENOCIDE’ RALLY
Zaman, Turkey
Oct 4 2005
By Cihan News Agency
zaman.com
A group of Armenians have demanded Turkey accept the So-Called
Armenian Genocide Allegations in Luxembourg where European Union
foreign ministers are in session for discussion on the Negotiation
Framework Document relating to accession talks with the country.
In front of the Luxexpo building, over 100 Armenians opened banners
written in French and asked Turkey to accept that the so-called
genocide allegations took place in 1915. The same group also called on
the EU ministers not to let Turkey into the EU unless Turks recognize
the so-called genocide. Armenians defend that Turks need to confront
their past.

EU DEAL ENABLES START OF TURKEY’S ACCESSION TALKS
Irish Times
Oct 4 2005
The EU narrowly averted a crisis last night when foreign ministers
finally agreed a historic deal to enable the start of accession
negotiations with Turkey, writes Jamie Smyth in Luxembourg.
The negotiations, which will take at least 10 years to conclude,
formally began early this morning when the Turkish foreign minister
Abdullah Gul arrived in Luxembourg.
The agreement followed 30 hours of intense discussions at a council
of ministers meeting in Luxembourg to overcome Austrian objections
to the start of the talks.
Austria, which was the only member state to formally object to
starting accession negotiations, had sought to change the text of
the negotiating framework to include a reference offering Turkey
alternatives to full EU membership.
However, after marathon discussions between British foreign secretary
Jack Straw and his Austrian counterpart, Ursula Plassnik, Vienna
dropped its insistence on a rewording of that aspect of the framework
text for the accession negotiations.
Announcing the deal, Mr Straw said it was important to begin
negotiations as planned with Turkey, a European, secular and Muslim
country.
“We are all winners: Europe, the existing member states and the
international community,” said Mr Straw, who chaired the talks as
Britain holds the EU presidency.
The agreement enabled Mr Gul to board a plane for Luxembourg to attend
an official ceremony to mark the start of the accession talks.
He had earlier refused to travel until Turkey had agreed the framework
text for the start of negotiations.
Despite expressing concern over a paragraph in the framework
stipulating that Turkey would not block EU members from joining
international organisations, Ankara signed off on the framework for
the talks.
Turkish ministers were fearful this could force them into having to
agree to allow Cyprus, which it does not recognise, into Nato. But US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Turkish prime minister
Tayyip Erdogan to assure him that the proposed EU negotiating framework
would not impinge on Nato.
Austria was the only EU member to formally object to starting accession
talks with Turkey, which with 70 million people may have the biggest
population of any EU state if it eventually joins.
A recent opinion poll found that 80 per cent of Austrians do not want
Turkey to join, with just 10 per cent in favour.
Several other EU member states such as France, the Netherlands and
Denmark, are also concerned about allowing Turkey to join the EU.
Meanwhile, EU foreign ministers also signalled yesterday that they
were ready to begin accession talks with Croatia, which is likely to
join the EU well before Turkey.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said Ireland had been a
strong supporter of Croatia’s bid to join the EU.
He welcomed the deal to start talks with Turkey and said it would
have been bad faith not to stick to the date for the start of talks,
which was initially agreed last December.
“Turkey is a bridge between the Middle East and Europe,” said Mr Ahern.
“This will send a strong signal to Islam and moderate countries and
people [ that] the EU is not just a Christian club.”
Asked if there had been enough debate in Ireland about the question
of Turkey’s accession to the EU, Mr Ahern said there would be at
least 10 years to educate people.
The deal with Turkey was not welcomed by several hundred Armenian
protesters gathered outside the council meeting to protest at the
start of accession talks.
“Turkey is not yet a democratic country and has not recognised the
Armenian genocide in 1915,” said Michael Cazarian, chairman of the
Armenian Socialist Party, which helped to organise the protest.
Turkey still refuses to accept responsibility for the murder of more
the one million Armenians in 1915.

MOHAMMED ALI
By Fayza Hassan
Egypt Today
Oct 4 2005
Two centuries after Mohammed Ali’s meteoric rise to power, we delve
into the testimony of his contemporaries and descendants to take
the measure of the man the world came to know as the Father of
Modern Egypt.
EXACTLY TWO CENTURIES ago to the year, one man was single-handedly
shaping Egypt’s history as we know it. Simultaneously feared and
admired by his subjects, the visionary viceroy set the wheels of
modernity in motion. Travelers awed by his reputation came from the
four corners of the globe to chronicle the extraordinary legends spun
around him in an attempt to elucidate his formidable personality.
Called the Father of Modern Egypt, the Wali, the Pasha of Egypt and
the Great Viceroy, Mohammed Ali ruled Egypt for almost five decades,
from 1805 to 1849. This year, for the first time since the memory
of the royal family he spawned was collectively declared persona non
grata by the Free Officers’ Revolution, the Pasha is finally getting
his due in bicentenary celebrations.
Feature The Imam of Quraa Once, Sheikh Mostafa Ismail’s recitation
of the Qur’an was e…
Mostafa Ismail .. .
Rebuilding the Rubble Israel has withdrawn from Gaza, Egyptian troops
are back on …
He who saw Egypt 40 years ago can only but marvel at the transformation
that came to pass over [the country]; it is a new world that has
appeared. To what cause should one attribute this transformation? As
soon as one mentions modern Egypt, it is always to the Great Viceroy,
Mohammed Ali that reference is made. He is the one who transformed
[Egypt]; he opened wide the doors to Europe’s material progress
and through these doors events have made their way, ideas have been
introduced which have concluded the task [he] started.Nubar Pasha,
Memoirs, Cannes, November 1890 “Mohammed Ali was a pragmatist,”
says Raouf Abbas, a professor of modern history at Cairo University,
“a pragmatist with qualities of genius and farsightedness.” Abbas,
the ultimate Egyptian authority on Ali’s reign, explains that the
nation was mired in the Middle Ages when Napoleon Bonaparte pointed
out its strategic importance to Europe. The information was not lost
on the young Ali, who soon realized how, on the other hand, Europe
was important to Egypt.
Europe then possessed the knowledge and technical know-how needed
to turn Egypt into an international power to be reckoned with; it
was therefore necessary to attract as many foreigners as possible to
do the job, he decided, while promising young Egyptians were sent on
missions abroad to learn the skills that would allow them to replace
foreign experts in the future.
Mohammed Ali devoted his life to the grand oeuvre of dragging Egypt
out of its state as a backward province of the Ottoman Empire. Though
he fell short of his long-term dream to head the Ottoman Empire,
while attempting this formidable conquest, he managed to turn Egypt
into a self-sufficient, secular and modern country, active on the
international scene and a beacon in the Middle East. Agriculture and
irrigation, digging of canals and building of dams, education and
healthcare, constructing factories and creating a military force were
high on Mohammed Ali’s list of priorities.
His methods may have been ruthless, but he managed to perform a near
miracle in less than half a century.
Debated Origins
Was Mohammed Ali a poor boy raised by his paternal uncle as he
himself always claimed? Or was he born in a well-to-do family of
tobacco merchants? Did his father die when he was only six years old,
as he often recounted? Or rather, when he was well into his 20s,
did he join the family tobacco business as an already married man,
as Afaf Lutfi Sayyid-Marsot contends in her renowned 1984 book Egypt
in the Reign of Mohammed Ali?
Much confusion surrounds Mohammed Ali’s childhood, and different
versions have been periodically circulated on the various episodes
of his life as the ruler of Egypt.
According to Marsot, Ali’s exact date of birth is uncertain – he
claimed he was born in 1769, although other sources suggest 1770 or
1771 – and so are the origins of his family. “Mohammed Ali was from
lowly stock,” Marsot claims. “He was the son of Ibrahim Agha, who was
the son of Uthman Agha, himself the son of Ibrahim Agha, engaged in
military duties for three generations. Beyond that, little is known
about the family or their roots.
“While historians have described his clan as being of Albanian origin,
a family tradition maintains that they might have been of Kurdish
stock and come from the village of Ilic in Eastern Anatolia, where they
were horse traders,” Marsot notes. Apparently, Mohammed Ali’s father,
Ibrahim Agha, moved first from his village to Konia, then to Kavala
in Macedonia, this latter flight the consequence of a blood feud.
Little is known about this incident, except that the family had to
leave in a hurry for fear of reprisals, a tradition that continues
to this day in isolated pockets of neighboring Albania.
The last of the MamluksPainting by William De Famars Testas
Yet, Prince Abbas Helmi, who is descended from Mohammed Ali through
Viceroy Ibrahim, Khedive Ismail, Khedive Mohammed Tewfik, Khedive
Abbas Helmi II and Prince Mohamed Abdel-Moneim, believes otherwise.
Prince Abbas, who is also head of Concorde Investments in Cairo,
contends that the family was very active in the tobacco business,
which was extremely lucrative at the time, and therefore Mohammed
Ali was not a poor boy of lowly extraction, as has been often alleged.
Although several historians claim that Mohammed Ali came to Egypt
as a lieutenant with a small contingent of Albanian soldiers, Prince
Helmi asserts that his forefather was sent at the head of an Albanian
regiment. He was not an Albanian soldier himself, the prince points
out, but an Ottoman subject whose family had moved from Konia to
the tiny port of Kavala for reasons linked to the tobacco trade. In
Kavala, Ibrahim Agha married into the family of the port’s governor
and was appointed commander of a body of irregulars, famous for their
restiveness, the prince adds.
Interestingly, the wording of the Ottoman Sultan’s firman (also
referred to as faramaan, meaning ‘royal mandate’ or ‘royal decree’)
that was to send Mohammed Ali on the warpath, which Prince Helmi has
had the opportunity to study, mentioned an “authorization” rather
than an “order” to levy a contingent of Albanians and sail to Egypt.
“It could mean, perhaps, that Mohammed Ali was a turbulent young man
who made himself a bit of a nuisance with his fiery temperament and
that the sultan was only too happy to grant him the request to go
fight the French,” Prince Helmi suggests.
Actually, though it is not widely known, Mohammed Ali’s brother Ahmad
accompanied him to Egypt, adds Prince Helmi. This fact is also recorded
by Abdel-Rahman El-Jabarti, the famous chronicler of the period:
“On Saturday, Ahmad Bey, Mohammed Ali’s brother, went to the Khan
El-Khalili to conduct an investigation in the matter of the plunder
taken from the Albanians by the Janissaries (members of the elite
personal guard) and deposited for safe-keeping by the latter with
their friends the Turks.”
Mohammed Ali’s mosque at Cairo’s Citadel
Helmi wonders whether Ahmad was sent along because he, too, was too
boisterous for his own good, or whether he joined the expedition to
keep an eye on his brother. His role at this point in time remains
shrouded in mystery, but family tradition has it that once Mohammed
Ali was established as Pasha of Egypt, he offered Ahmad a high-ranking
position, a palace and a fortune in gold, but the latter refused,
preferring to return to Kavala.
As Prince Helmi sees it, this is further proof that the family was
not poor and that business was on the contrary thriving; otherwise
Ahmad would have been happy to stay.
Ghislaine Alleaume, historian and researcher at France’s renowned
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), offers a slightly
different version of the beginnings of the Great Pasha.
“Mohammed Ali was born in 1771 at Kavala.” she writes. “His family
was Turkish from Anatolia and established in Macedonia for three
generations. They were very representative of families of provincial
notables who were hired to head small military or civil functions,
were involved in international commerce as well as being tax farmers.
Ibrahim Agha, Mohammed Ali’s father, headed a sort of local band of
policemen in charge of road security. In parallel, he had investments
in the tobacco business, the principal export product of Macedonia.”
Ibrahim Agha, she goes on, died rather young in 1791, but not before
Mohammed Ali was married to Amina, who remained his only wife,
although he later acquired several concubines. Alleaume also argues
that although his younger brothers and sisters were placed under
the guardianship of his paternal uncle Tussoun, if Mohammed Ali had
a protector in Kavala, it would have been his maternal grandfather,
who was governor of the city.
The massacre of the Mamluks at Cairo’s citadel Painting by Horace
Vernet, 1819
Whichever account is closer to the truth is of little importance, as
Mohammed Ali himself decided early on to rewrite his past, presenting
himself as a poor orphan adopted by his paternal uncle. According to
Marsot, he did so in order “to enhance himself as a self-made man who
rose to fame against insuperable odds, including that disadvantage
early in life.”
In the introduction to All the Pasha’s Men (Cambridge University
Press, 1997), Khaled Fahmi describes the meeting Mohammed Ali had
with John Barker, the new British Consul in Alexandria, when he came
to present his credentials at Ras El-Teen Palace. In a dispatch to his
government, Barker reported that almost at once the Pasha launched into
a monologue about his childhood, designed to impress upon the consul,
his autobiographical adaptation of the awe he inspired in others.
The following is an excerpt: “I was born in a village in Albania,
and my father had 10 children who are all dead; but while living,
not one of them contradicted me. Although I left my native mountains
before I attained manhood, the principal people in the place never took
any step in the business of the commune, without previously inquiring
what my pleasure was. I came to this country an obscure adventurer,
and when I was yet a bimbashi (captain), it happened one day that
the commissary had to give each of the bimbashis a tent. They were
all my seniors and naturally pretended to a preference over me;
but the officer said, ‘Stand ye all by; this youth Mohammed Ali,
shall be served first.’ and now here I am. I never had a master.”
Alleaume believes this was all a fabrication, as was his claim that his
parents died when he was young (the date on Ibrahim Agha’s tombstone
reads 1205/1790 – in reference to the year of his death according to
the Islamic lunar calendar and the corresponding year in the Gregorian
calendar, which is approximately 20 years after Mohammed Ali was born).
“Behind such a fabrication, there may have been an unconscious desire
to cut all links with his past and to invent a new one, more befitting
his new life and social position.” In the same spirit of aggrandizing
himself, he made up a new date of birth, 1769, so as to share the
day with two men he admired: Napoleon Bonaparte and Admiral Nelson.
According to Prince Helmi, Mohammed Ali’s almost childish desire to
have his personal accomplishments celebrated may also have led him
to pretend being completely illiterate. However, as a merchant and
the commander of a regiment, he was necessarily called upon to read
and write, even if marginally. Furthermore, as a practicing Muslim,
he must have been taught at least to read the Qur’an in his childhood.
It is therefore reasonable to believe that he had a working knowledge
of the Arabic script, as well as of the popular Turkish written
language, which was different from literary Turkish.
Nubar Pasha, the Armenian minister who, starting in 1842, played a
major role in the political life of Egypt – first under Mohammed Ali,
and then under the five following khedives – confirms in his Memoirs
that, “One could speak Turkish perfectly, read a document couched
in ordinary Turkish without understanding a word of the literary
language.”
It was probably this latter proficiency that Ali wanted to acquire.
However, he chose to make a big show of learning basic literacy
skills at the age of 40. If his aim was to foster admiration,
he fully succeeded in attracting historians’ attention to this
deed. Few studies of his reign fail to mention these unusual attempts
at literacy, although no comment is ever offered as to how successful
he ultimately was.
The Opportunist
Early on, Mohammed Ali showed an uncanny capacity to take advantage
of circumstances and people. The beginning of his reign is a case
in point. He had come to a seething country where the Mamluks had
turned on each other in a desperate attempt to seize the power that
they thought the Ottoman Sultan would restore to them once the French
had departed. This, however, was never the intention of the Sublime
Porte, who wanted to get rid of the Mamluk troublemakers and rule
the country from Istanbul.
Amid the confusion of the warring factions, Mohammed Ali found
opportunities to consolidate his power base, relying on the Albanian
soldiers he had come to head after his direct chief had been promoted
to the command of the Turkish troops.
He entered into secret alliances, promised or withheld support.
Depending on the situation, he either controlled his charges or
encouraged them to create trouble over their unpaid wages. All the
time, he was careful to remain in the shadows. In the course of one
particular military insurrection, he got in touch with Omar Makram,
head of the Ashraaf (direct descendants of the Prophet, PBUH) and de
facto speaker for a civilian population exhausted by the soldiers’
conflicts and constant extortionist tactics. These followed Omar
Makram in earnest when he incited them on May 13, 1805 to depose the
last governor of Cairo named by the Porte and proclaim Mohammed Ali
the new Pasha of Cairo.
>>From then on, Mohammed Ali made a great show of his religiosity,
sending his wife to the Hajj every year in style and providing extra
camels and provisions for the pilgrims. At the same time, however,
he was surrounding himself with “infidels” who, by all accounts,
had never been better treated and were considered for the first time
equal to Muslims in front of the law.
In his great project of modernizing Egypt, Mohammed Ali sucked
knowledge out of his collaborators, showering them with honors and
gifts while they remained useful, but did not hesitate to get rid of
them in the most summary manner when he was through with them.
A consummate actor, it was hard even for those who knew him to decide
whether he was totally bereft of feelings. Historians point out the
fact that Amina remained his only wife and though he had many children
from his concubines, he was only interested in the offspring that
were born to her. He gave his daughters splendid weddings that are
talked about to this day – and showed deep despair at the death of
his sons Ismail and Tussoun.
The Man without a Heart
Nubar Nubarian (later Nubar Pasha) was a young man freshly graduated
from a British university when he came to Egypt to join his uncle
Boghos Bey, then Mohammed Ali’s trusted Armenian adviser. On the
evening of his arrival, his uncle took him to Ras El-Teen Palace to
meet his future master.
In his Memoirs, Nubar recounts his first encounter with the Pasha
of Egypt: “At the bottom of an immense hall lit by a white crystal
chandelier and deriving grandeur from its austerity and its majestic
proportions, a man was seated in the corner of a sofa covered with
a rich length of material adorned with gold tassels: it was Mohammed
Ali. Leaning on a pillow, his legs slightly bent, he was listening to
one of his secretaries’ reading of the day’s dispatches Five or six
young Mamluks attended the proceedings standing humbly at attention
my uncle introduced me. ‘Work,’ the Pasha told me. ‘I want to see
you at work.’ I then withdrew respectfully having kissed, as the
etiquette required, the hem of the carpet he was sitting on.”
Lord A.W.C. Lindsay offers a similar description of the Pasha’s palace
in his 1838 Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land. “We visited the
old spider [Mohammed Ali] in his den, the citadel Ascending a broad
marble passage on an inclined plane and traversing a lofty antechamber
crowded with attendants, we found ourselves in the presence-chamber,
a noble saloon but without an article of furniture, except a broad
divan, or sofa, extending around three sides of the room, in a corner
of which squatted his highness Mohammed Ali. Six wax candles stood
in the center yet gave but little light.”
Oddly, neither Nubar nor Lindsay make mention of Mohammed Ali’s
piercing eyes, a trait commented on by almost every traveler who
happened to meet him, even briefly. As such, Mr. Ramsay, Lord
Lindsay’s friend and companion on the visit, was more alert: “He
[Mohammed Ali] did not address any of his subjects, but I observed
his sharp, cunning eyes fixing on everyone.” Another traveler, Mr.
Wilde, who visited the Shubra Palace in 1837 with his friends,
came across the Pasha in the garden. Seeing a group of foreigners,
Mohammed Ali stopped briefly to salute them. “He is a fine old man
now,” wrote Wilde after this encounter, “upward of seventy with a
very long silver beard Slight as was our view of him, it did not
pass without making us feel the power of an eye of more brilliancy
and penetration that I ever beheld.”
If so many travelers looked at Mohammed Ali in awe, it was because
his reputation as a bloodthirsty Oriental potentate had been well
established by the massacre of Mamluks at the Citadel in 1811, which
he orchestrated to establish his power over Egypt once and for all.
The awareness of the regime’s cruelty was perpetuated by the sight
of tortured bodies floating down the Nile every so often, as the one
observed by the count of Forbin in 1817: “His two hands were nailed
and crushed between two planks. A thigh had been devoured by the fish.”
Forbin, a writer and a painter, wanted to meet Mohammed Ali and
approached Bernardino Drovetti – who would later become the French
Consul in Egypt and had the ear of the Pasha – for an introduction.
He was welcomed at the Palace of Ras El-Teen: “Mohammed Ali received
me very graciously, and expressed his regrets not to have been in
Cairo when I was visiting the city,” wrote Forbin. “His features
are lively and his eyes very expressive. He was smoking: his gold
narghile [referred to as shisha today] is covered in precious stones
Conversation with Mohammed Ali is often interrupted by a sort of
convulsive hiccup. I was assured that this infirmity befell him after
he had been given a violent poison, which effects, caught in time,
left only that sequel. Many great European doctors were consulted to
provide a remedy, but until now this has been to no avail.”
Forbin was allowed to paint Mohammed Ali a portrait for which the
Pasha posed with evident pleasure. This painting and Forbin’s account
of his visit inspired the painter Horace Vernet in his tableau of the
Pasha half-reclining on his cushions, gazing fixedly ahead. Next to
him is a small lion symbolizing might. He is making a fist with his
right hand, the only indication that he is aware of the massacre of
the Mamluks taking place in the courtyard beyond.
Nubar Pasha had many opportunities to learn of Mohammed Ali’s
callousness. Tales of the bloody events that had brought him to
power were reaching the young man’s ears and it did not take him
long to discover that his uncle had at one time been victim of the
ruler’s ruthlessness: Soon after Ali came to power, he called Boghos,
who was then director of the customs, to Damietta. They had a slight
disagreement over the accounts, which enraged the master, who shouted,
“Drag him by his feet.” This was tantamount to a death sentence. One
of the Turkish attendants got hold of Boghos and dragged him out,
but since he owed him a favor, instead of taking of him to the Nile
where his body should have been thrown after the execution, he hid him
in a safe house. A few days later Mohammed Ali had trouble collecting
the taxes in Rosetta and, finding himself short of cash, exclaimed:
“If only Boghos were here, he would have solved the problem!”
The attendant, believing that Mohammed Ali had found him out,
confessed to the hiding of the customs director. “Boghos is alive,”
cried the Pasha. “Bring him to me at once and if you don’t, you won’t
live long enough to regret it.”
It seems that, from that day on, Boghos earned more and more esteem in
the Pasha’s eyes, but the poor man could never relax enough to enjoy
the favors bestowed on him. Years later, after Boghos had retired,
an incident occurred which left him feeling slighted by one of the
Pasha’s administrators. He was hurt so deeply that he took to his
bed and refused to take any nourishment. Alerted, Mohammed Ali sent
one of his secretaries to inform Boghos that the Pasha was ordering
him to get well.
“If my master has ordered,” Boghos told his physician, “then I must.
See what you can do.”
But it was too late, however, and Boghos died soon after his master’s
command. His funeral was a little-publicized, discreet affair until
the Pasha, who was residing in Alexandria at the time, found out that
the old man was not buried with military honors, as he deserved. He
dispatched at once the following letter to the commander in chief of
his armies:
“To my honored son, the mighty Osman Pasha: You are an ass and a
brute. The man who bought you and raised you dies, and you and the
troops under your orders do not accompany him to his grave! As soon
as you receive this letter, you and the Alexandrian regiment will go
to the Armenian church, dig out Boghos and bury him again with the
military honors due to him. Don’t you dare disobey me.”
The body was not disinterred, but a new mass was said, attended by
Osman Pasha and the regiment, the commander and high-ranking officers,
while soldiers stood at attention in the courtyard.
Death of a Giant
In 1844, Mohammed Ali began to suffer episodes of mental collapse.
The fits were of a passing nature and, after periods where he was
prone to hallucinations, the Pasha recovered without a trace. The
origins of his illness have never been fully ascertained, although
Alleaume suggests that some of the symptoms were indicative of
Alzheimer’s. Ali’s private physician ordered small doses of mercury
to be administered to the Pasha to control the bouts; historian
Mohammed Hakim argues that the treatment was severe and the physician
had ordered that the patient abstain from sexual activity. However,
according to Hakim, one of the Pasha’s daughters, wanting to please
her sick father, surreptitiously allowed women into his room, thus
unwittingly hastening his demise.
By 1848, Mohammed Ali’s spells had turned into comas, and he was
unconscious at the time of his son Ibrahim’s death in November of
that year. Luckily, he was thus unaware of what this favorite son
had done: In the spring of that same year, Ibrahim had convened a
group of 12 physicians who had unanimously declared the Pasha unfit
to govern. He had taken this report to Istanbul, where he claimed
the Sultan’s investiture.
Mohammed Ali was deposed in September 1848, and with that his dreams of
grandeur for the country came to a crashing end. Ibrahim became viceroy
for a period of two months whereupon, after his untimely death, power
passed on to Abbas, the son of Tussoun and the oldest male member of
the family, as prescribed by the law governing the succession in Egypt.
>>From then on, Mohammed Ali’s descendants saw their power decline
until 1952, when King Farouk was finally ousted from the throne.
Dynasty
Today, Princess Nimet Amr lives in a Zamalek flat in sober gentility.
In her living room, cluttered with pictures of her family and children,
is a portrait of Mohammed Ali gazing sternly from a side table, perhaps
looking on at the trials and tribulations of his descendants. Princess
Nimet Amr is his great granddaughter.
The princess, however, does not remember the founder of the dynasty
particularly overshadowing her childhood, except in so far as she was
submitted to a stricter discipline than children her age, “Because
of who I was,” she says. “But that was more related to the present,
to the fact that we belonged to the royal family and had to appear
as examples of good behavior,” she reflects.
Of Mohammed Ali, she was told that he was Albanian and that she should
be proud of his achievements because he had introduced modernity to
Egypt. It was very theoretical however, like being proud to be Egyptian
or Muslim, something really shared with the rest of the population. It
did not amount to personal pride in a special relationship.
That, she says, is why the princess does not normally dwell on the
past and would rather talk about her work in an arts and crafts
boutique. Yet when the conversation turns to Mohammed Ali’s military
successes, suddenly she blurts, “Mohammed Ali would not have lost
Palestine, I can tell you that!” Suddenly, pride in the achievements
of her ancestor is there for all to see. Gamal Abdel Nasser may have
abolished the privileges of the royal family, but he did not succeed
in belittling its founder.
Battered like all the members of the royal family by the Free Officers’
revolution, the princess’ first loyalties are to the country her
ancestor adopted and proudly built. She suffers much less from the
unfair treatment that was meted to his memory and his family during
the past half century than from the defeat of 1948, in which King
Farouk played an active and determining role.
But how binding is memory? The princess’ daughter Magda, born after
the revolution, today has no interest in the glorious past of her
august ancestor. She is resolutely modern. She is steeped in Egyptian
life, embracing the fashions and customs of the day. If her great,
great grandfather brought about some of the progress she is enjoying
now, so be it, but she is more worried about her 20-year-old son
threatening to quit his job or her daughter’s intention to celebrate
her best friend’s henna night in their flat.
A distressed Princess Nimet expresses how the world has changed so
much. She wonders where the manners she was once taught have gone. In
her days, weddings were a most civilized affair, certainly not preceded
by a folkloric carnival.
One can, however, imagine that in his frame the Pasha of Egypt will
look kindly tonight upon the frolicking girls. The sumptuous wedding
including a henna night that he organized for his daughter Zeinab was
a historic event lasting many days; he wanted modernity for Egypt,
but knew better than to reject its people’s lore, which he obviously
did not consider incompatible with progress.
Mohammed Ali is not a primary concern in the life of Fouad Sadek
either. The son of Princess Faika, sister of King Farouk, he is a
partner in a well-known fabric shop in Zamalek. He is surprised that
Egyptian intellectuals have chosen to honor his ancestor on the 200th
anniversary of his ascent to power, but he is nevertheless delighted.
With his friend and expert in Mohammed Ali’s history Mahmoud Sabet
(another descendant of Mohammed Ali – the son of a cousin of Queen
Nazli, King Fouad’s wife), they are happy to evoke the Pasha’s military
acumen and his numerous victories.
“He was one of those rare men who appear every few centuries and who
have natural gifts that propel them to power. Mohammed Ali knew how
to use them well,” concludes Sabet. et
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress