Agence France Presse — English
September 28, 2005 Wednesday 1:11 PM GMT
Britain warns stalling Turkey’s EU membership bid would be a
‘betrayal’
BRIGHTON, England
It would be “a huge betrayal” if the European Union were suddenly to
slam the door on Turkey’s bid to join the bloc, British Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw said Wednesday.
Straw told the Labour Party’s annual conference in Brighton,
southeast England, that launching accession talks with Turkey next
Monday was one of the “highest priorities” of Britain’s turn at the
rotating EU presidency.
“It would now be a huge betrayal of the hopes and expectations of the
Turkish people and of Prime Minister (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan’s
programme of reform if, at this crucial time, we turned our back on
Turkey,” he said.
Straw will chair an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg next
Monday that is to finalise a negotiating framework, or set of guiding
principles, for the accession talks that would start the same day,
but last many years.
EU leaders gave Turkey a green light at a summit in Brussels last
December for the talks to begin. But strains flared anew after Ankara
reaffirmed last July its refusal to recognize the government of
Cyprus.
Turkey has also come under pressure to recognize what Armenians call
a genocide against their people in the final days of the Ottoman
Empire during World War I — an event that remains highly sensitive
for Turks.
Worries about overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey was a key factor as well
in the stunning rejection of the EU constitution by French voters in
a referendum last May.
Straw said Wednesday: “The decision on Turkey will be made by EU
foreign ministers next Monday, under our presidency… But the test
next week will be of the EU as a whole.”
“Like the United Nations, the EU has to change with a changing
world… Turkey would lose from a ‘no’ decision — but Europe and its
people would lose even more.”
Straw drew a round of applause from Labour delegates when he linked
Turkey’s EU aspirations to the need for the West to engage the Muslim
world, particularly the Middle East.
“Anchor Turkey in the West and we gain a beacon of democracy and
modernity, a country with a Muslim majority, which will be a shining
example across the whole of its neighbouring region,” he said.
Earlier Wednesday in Strasbourg, the European Parliament gave its
cautious backing to next week’s start of talks with Turkey, while
demanding that Ankara recognise Cyprus and the Armenian “genocide”
during the negotiations.
Turkey’s refusal to recognise Cyprus, which joined the EU last year,
has so far proved to be the main stumbling block to the opening of
talks, which could last for 10 to 15 years even if all goes well.
Turkey has steadfastly refused to endorse the internationally
recognised Greek-Cypriot government since Ankara’s troops occupied
the island in 1974 in response to a coup aimed at uniting Cyprus with
Greece.
Speaking to the European Parliament, Britain’s Europe Minister
Douglas Alexander sought to allay fears about the financial burden of
absorbing Turkey, a developing country in relation to the rest of
Europe.
“The negotiations with Turkey will be the most rigorous yet,
reflecting lessons learnt from the previous wave of enlargement. They
are also expected to take many years to conclude,” he said.

Azeri military won’t attend NATO seminar in Armenia – spokesman
MPA news agency, Baku, in Russian
28 Sep 05
BAKU
Representatives of the Azerbaijani armed forces will not take part in
NATO’s Rose-Roth seminar due in Armenia on 6-7 October, Azerbaijani
Defence Ministry spokesman Ramiz Malikov has told MPA news agency.
Malikov described as wide of the mark a report by [Armenian] Arka news
agency which quoted the head of the [Armenian] parliamentary
commission on defence, national security and internal affairs, Mger
Shakhgeldyan, as saying that an Azerbaijani armed forces
representative was expected to take part in the seminar and his
security would be ensured at a high level.

Armenian parliament adopts constitutional changes
Mediamax news agency, Yerevan, in Russian
28 Sep 05
Yerevan, 28 September: The Armenian National Assembly adopted the
draft constitutional amendments in its third, final reading today.
The draft will be put up for a nationwide referendum [in November
this year].
The draft was adopted by 90 votes to none. The factions of the
opposition Justice bloc and the National Unity Party did not take
part in the voting, Mediamax news agency reported.
Addressing the parliament on 27 September, the Armenian president’s
representative for constitutional amendments, Armen Arutyunyan, said
that the draft constitutional changes “is a step forward from the
semi-presidential form of rule to parliamentarism”. He expressed the
hope that the constitutional reforms will unite society and play a
positive role in the country’s future development.
The draft constitutional changes will be submitted to the president
for approval and then he will set a date for the referendum.
The draft constitutional changes were prepared by the ruling
coalition and agreed with the Venice Commission of the Council of
Europe. The main purpose of the reforms is to ensure the equality of
all branches of power.
The constitutional reforms were one of the key points of Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan’s election programme and one of the
country’s basic commitment to the Council of Europe.
The role of the parliament will increase in the country if the
constitutional reforms are adopted in the referendum. In particular,
the National Assembly will play the main role in forming the
government, appoint the prosecutor-general, and the president will
not be able to individually adopt a decision to dismiss the prime
minister.

Financial Times (London, England)
September 28, 2005 Wednesday
London Edition 1
A sour mood as Ankara stands on the threshold
By VINCENT BOLAND
Last Saturday morning, a few hundred protesters gathered outside
Istanbul Bilgi University and threw eggs and insults at a group of
historians and human rights workers as they rushed between riot
police into the sanctuary of the university’s main building. Amid the
shouts of “treason” and “lies”, it seemed that, despite many
indicators to the contrary, the battle between progressives and
reactionaries that has been such a notable characteristic of modern
Turkey has not yet been won.
The cause of the most recent outbreak of hostilities was a conference
on the mass killing of Armenians that took place as the Ottoman
empire broke apart in 1915. A court ruling banning the conference
forced its relocation and sparked a ferocious row over free speech at
an especially sensitive moment, barely a week before Turkey begins
the long and arduous process of joining the European Union. It is
little wonder that Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s foreign minister, was moved
at the height of the controversy to observe that “no country can
shoot itself in the foot like Turkey can”.
The incident was revealing of the sour mood that Turkey is in as it
stands on the threshold of Europe. The country was desperate to be
asked to join the EU; now that the invitation has been extended, it
seems unsure whether to accept. In this, Turkey differs from the
former communist countries of eastern Europe. For Poles, Czechs and
Hungarians, accession to the Union was a moment of destiny, the
righting of a wrong caused by the second world war.
There is no comparable feeling in Turkey. The country was the vision
of one man – Mustafa Kemal Atatu
It is because so many Turks are suspicious of what the EU wants from
Turkey, and of what it is prepared to offer in return, that there
seems to be so little enthusiasm for the accession process. In a
public opinion survey published this month, the German Marshall Fund
of the US found that the proportion of Turks who believed that EU
membership would be a good thing had declined in a year from 73 per
cent to 63 per cent.
Onur Oymen, a veteran diplomat who is now a senior official in the
opposition Republican People’s Party, sums up the ambivalence of many
Turks. “The day Turkey joins the EU as a full member will be a
historic day,” he says. “It would be premature to celebrate anything
before then.” Ural Akbulut, rector of Middle East Technical
University, adds: “I believe the accession process will succeed but I
am less optimistic now than I was a year ago.”
For many Turks, the experience of the EU since December 17 last year,
when the Union’s leaders invited urkey to join, has not been happy,
involving too many concessions for too little gain. Cyprus has
bedevilled relations between Ankara and Brussels throughout 2005, as
European governments put pressure on Turkey to recognise the Greek
Cypriot administration in the south of the divided island while, in
the eyes of many in Turkey, ignoring the isolation of Turkish
Cypriots in the north.
That has been a gift to opponents within Turkey of EU accession. Many
Turks also complain that Europeans put too much focus on the plight
of Turkey’s ethnic Kurdish minority. Amid an upsurge in Kurdish
separatist violence in recent weeks, these issues have fuelled a rise
in nationalism and euroscepticism. These were the sentiments that
Saturday’s protesters against the Armenia conference undoubtedly
sought to exploit.
According to Guler Sabanci, head of the Sabanci family conglomerate
and Turkey’s leading businesswoman, there has always been a segment
of Turkish society opposed to EU membership. “These people will find
a reason, any time and anywhere, to be against this journey, and they
have reasons right now,” she says. Still, she insists, they do not
represent the broad mass of Turkish society. “Now and in the future
there is a bigger consensus that they should not get away with it any
more.”
If the rise of nationalism in Turkey is behind the fall in support
for EU entry, the government must take part of the blame, according
to some commentators. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister,
returned from last December’s summit in Brussels in Ã‚ – triumph. Yet
he failed to follow through, they say, and lost the reform momentum
that led to significant political and economic modernisation in 2003
and 2004.
A certain amount of reform fatigue was probably understandable. But
Mr Akbulut believes the prime minister underestimated the chances of
success last December. “Erdogan and his team were not prepared for
the success of December 17 and its challenges,” he says. “We can see
that they did not have the plans and people and programmes in place
to build on the momentum and this damaged his image in Europe.”
If Mr Akbulut is right, the EU has as much reason to be disappointed
with Turkey as Turkey has to be disappointed with the EU. The
negotiating process will undoubtedly provide opportunities for mutual
misunderstanding, perhaps even the reason for one side or the other
to walk away. Nevertheless, for some observers, joining the EU is
less important for Turkey than the accession process and the pressure
it puts on Turkey to lose its inhibitions about the outside world,
recognise its democratic shortcomings, reform its institutions and
strengthen its still-shaky civil society.
Dogan Cansizlar, chairman of the Capital Markets Board of Turkey, a
financial markets watchdog, says: “The EU is a direction, an
indicator, a light that Turkey can move towards.” Many Europeans, he
says, judge Turkey by the Turkish communities in their countries,
which are often more conservative and hidebound than Turks in Turkey.
Ms Sabanci believes the process of joining the EU will change Turkey
and make it fit better into the union that, she is convinced, it will
eventually join. She had a personal stake in the dispute over free
speech, because a university founded and funded by her family was one
of the organisers of the Armenia conference. She also believes the
dispute over free speech is symptomatic of a growing awareness of the
importance of such things, not just for Turkey’s EU aspirations but
for the country as a whole.
“This is a very long journey, and during this journey Turkey will
change,” Ms Sabanci says. “The Turkey that will enter the European
Union is not the Turkey we have today.”

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
September 28, 2005, Wednesday
ARMENIA BOUGHT TEN NEW RUSSIAN SU-27 FOR ITS ARMY
Armenia bought ten new Su-27 Russian fighters. Colonel Seyran
Shakhsuvaryan, the press secretary of the Armenian Minister of
Defense, confirmed the information. Colonel Shakhsuvaryan didn’t
specify which country sold the operational aircraft. Earlier deputy
Armenian Minister of Defense, Lieutenant General Artur Agabekyan
stated that, “Armenia buys new or refurbishes the possessed military
equipment as and when needed, and at this point the military
equipment of the Armenian Armed Forces is in normal condition”. Some
Armenian sources with reference to Agabekyan reported that the new
fighters were purchased from Slovakia.
Source: Regnum news agency, September 26, 2005
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Waverley Gazette (Australia)
September 27, 2005 Tuesday
Armenia in spotlight
by Luke Holmesby
THE Highway Gallery is hosting an exhibition marking the 90th
anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
More than half the three million Armenian population was killed in
the 1915 genocide.
The Republic of Armenia borders on Turkey and Iran.
A small group of artists in the Melbourne Armenian community worked
to bring their history to light and to preserve their culture,
stories, memories and family links.
Titled An Armenian Journey, it is the fifth annual Hye Art exhibition
to be held at the gallery. The word ‘Hye’ means Armenian.
Works by Armenian-Australian artists and young art prizewinners will
be featured. Paintings, ceramics, glass works, wood carvings,
photography and paintings will be shown.
A power-point slide presentation in the gallery will introduce
visitors to a highly decorative Armenian alphabet from the 5th
century, Armenian architecture, miniatures, and works by master
Armenian painters.
Works by famous Berlin-based Armenian artist Sam Grigorian will also
be on display.
The exhibition opens on Saturday, October 1, but will be officially
opened at 1pm the following day. Exhibition dates: October 1-13.
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11am to 5pm; Sunday, 1-5pm. Phone:
9807 7261.

Mediamax news agency, Yerevan, in Russian
26 Sep 05
Incumbent prefect of Armenian capital’s community re-elected
Yerevan, 26 September: According to preliminary results of the
Armenian Central Electoral Commission [CEC], the incumbent head of
Yerevan’s Kentron [Centre] community, Gagik Beglaryan, has been
re-elected.
Gagik Beglaryan received 32,484 votes; a representative of the
opposition Justice bloc, Ruzanna Khachatryan, won 4,430 votes, the
CEC press secretary, Tsovinar Khachatryan, said. Forty three per cent
of voters took part in the election.
[Passage omitted: other details]

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
September 28, 2005 Wednesday 3:09 PM Eastern Time
Russia Armenians Days in Armenia and Nagorno-Karebakh
By Tigran Liloyan
YEREVAN
The days of the Union of Armenians of Russia and of the World
Armenian Congress in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh began with a
concert in the Yerevan Opera House on Wednesday.
The Union of Armenians of Russia, which observes its fifths
anniversary this year “extended hope and faith in the future of the
Armenian diaspora in the Russian Federation.” The diaspora counts
over 2 million people, Ara Abramyan, the president of the two
organizations, prominent Russian public figure and entrepreneur,
UNESCO good offices ambassador, said on Wednesday. The Union now has
240 chapters in 72 subjects in the Russian Federation. It sponsors an
institute engaged in research into international politics and the
history of Armenian genocide.
“We enjoy much respect because of our deeds not only in Russia and in
Armenia but also far beyond their boundaries,” Abramyan said.
“Russo-Armenian economic cooperation strengthens and broadens due to
the efforts of the Union of Armenians of Russia”.
During the meeting with Armenian President Robert Kocharyan on
Thursday, Abramyan, as head of the Union, is going to “discuss
mechanisms of systemic work” with the republic. Harmonious
interaction is lacking so far, Abramyan believes.
Abramyan said he would continue implementing his programme of
Armenia’s computerization. In its framework, 1,000 computers will be
distributed among institutes of higher learning, schools and other
educational establishments in Armenia. Every year Abramyan provides
several hundred thousand dollars for the National Academy of
Sciences, the Writers’ Union and Artists’ Union in Armenia. Abramyan
will be one of the benefactors contributing to the construction of a
temple of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Moscow.
“The Union of Armenians of Russia does not busy itself with politics,
and because of being Russian citizens, its members have no right to
intervene in Armenia’s political life,” Abramyan stressed. At the
same time, the organization cannot but participate, in the framework
of Armenian laws, in the republic’s social and political life,
Abramyan said.

The Irish Times
September 28, 2005
EU offer would boost reform in Turkey
Although recent events in Turkey raise concerns, there are grounds
for believing a firm promise of EU membership can help advance
reforms, writes John O’Brennan.
After a fraught and difficult year, the European Union is faced with
the extremely contentious issue of whether to proceed to substantive
membership negotiations with Turkey. In advance of the European
Council decision, expected on October 3rd, it is worth examining what
is at stake for the EU.
The internal EU debate about Turkey revolves around two distinct
issues. The first is identity and culture. There are many within the
EU who see Turkey as an Asiatic rather than a European country, or at
best a “Eurasian” country, a bridge between Europe and Asia. Turkey’s
population of 72 million is overwhelmingly Muslim and thus seen as a
threat to Europe’s increasingly secular value system. Although the EU
is manifestly not a religio-cultural entity, this does not prevent
those opposed to Turkish membership, including Pope Benedict XVI,
alluding to the weight of cultural difference as the key barrier to
Turkish accession.
The second key issue is the political power Turkey would potentially
wield within the EU. Under the complex weighted voting system used by
the EU Council of Ministers, Turkey would command a similar voting
strength to Germany, France and the UK. That is something that
worries Paris and Berlin especially. Turkish membership, say the
critics, would paralyse a decision-making system that is already
creaking in the wake of the eastern enlargement and the inefficient
institutional architecture recalibrated through the Nice Treaty.
In the run-up to the European Council summit, the Turkish negotiating
hand has been significantly weakened. On the one hand the EU
enthusiasm for further enlargement has receded significantly in the
aftermath of both the 2004 eastern enlargement and the antipathy to
expansion demonstrated in the constitutional treaty referendums in
France and the Netherlands.
Recent events within Turkey have not helped its cause either. The
decision to prosecute the country’s greatest living writer, Ohran
Pamuk, for allegedly “denigrating the nation” by making public
reference to the 1915 mass murder by Ottoman forces of Armenians was
followed last week by another judicial decision to ban a proposed
academic conference dealing with the same issue. Although the Turkish
government had nothing to do with these decisions, they have enabled
EU obstructionists to argue that Turkey’s value system is
fundamentally incompatible with the liberal norms which lie at the
core of the EU’s identity.
What then can the EU hope to achieve in proceeding to negotiations?
The answers can be found in the mechanisms used by the Union to
incorporate future member-states. In short, the offer of membership
to outside states and the management of enlargement processes has
proved the most effective foreign policy tool the EU has employed in
its efforts to stabilise, modernise and democratise a whole range of
states on its southern and eastern borders over the past two decades.
Just as earlier accession processes helped transform Greece, Portugal
and Spain from authoritarian, economically backward states into
vibrant and dynamic liberal democracies, so too can the accession
process help Turkey’s modernisers effect the transition they (and the
EU) so desire.
More recently, the EU’s experience of eastern enlargement
demonstrates how effective are both the membership criteria and the
pre-accession process as instruments for reshaping the applicant
state’s public administration, judiciary, and economy. In effect, the
EU transposes its norms on to applicant states in advance of their
accession. The process is completely asymmetrical, with the applicant
state having no option but to accept the changes recommended by
Brussels.
In Central and Eastern Europe the transposition and implementation of
EU laws helped consolidate fragile democratic institutions, open up
previously moribund economies, strengthen administrative capacity,
reduce corruption in public life and stabilise relations between
neighbouring countries. The benefits this has brought the EU include
a vast increase in intra-European trade and the stabilisation of its
external borders.
At a more micro level, my own research into the eastern enlargement
demonstrates that for EU policy to work a “good cop/bad cop” strategy
works best. This revolves around a firm promise of membership coupled
with the credible threat of exclusion (in the case of failure
adequately to transpose EU legislation and norms).
Prospective member-states must have sufficient incentive to carry on
domestic reform programmes, which bring them closer to EU norms, but
they encounter significant local opposition as more and more
legislative measures are adopted. The actions of the Turkish
judiciary in recent weeks constitute just such an example of domestic
contestation of EU standards and have been condemned by the Turkish
prime minister, Recip Tayyip Erdogan.
Those within the EU opposed to Turkish membership should look at the
record of reform of the AKP government since it won a landslide
victory in the 2002 election. It has pushed through four major reform
packages, some of which required significant changes in the Turkish
legal code.
Significant though these reforms have been, there is still a
fragility about Turkey’s engagement with modernisation and
Europeanisation. The EU needs to act on the commission’s
recommendation to open talks. If it does it will accelerate the
Turkish reform programme and ensure its eventual success. There is a
lot at stake at next week’s summit. The EU should not shirk the
challenge.
Dr John O’Brennan is IRCHSS post-doctoral fellow in the department of
politics and public administration at the University of Limerick. His
book on the Eastern enlargement of the EU will be published by
Routledge in February.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
September 28, 2005 Wednesday
Son tried to avenge father’s death – court shooting probe results
MOSCOW
City police investigating the shooting near a Moscow magistrate’s
court on Wednesday said a man tried to take revenge, by firing on his
offender who allegedly had caused the death of his father.
The incident occurred in Domodedovskaya Street at 12:06, Moscow time,
a city prosecutor told Itar-Tass.
Igor Mirabyan, 39, an ethnic Armenian, sprayed automatic fire on
Denis Chikin, 25, whose case was review by the court earlier in the
day. Chikin was wounded in the stomach. His lawyer Valentina Baranova
was wounded in the hand.
Chikin was hospitalized. Police are now questioning the gunman who
reportedly had fired a home-made submachine-gun.
According to investigators, Chikin, in a state of intoxication on
November 22, 2004, beat up Mirabyan’s father in a row in a stairwell
of the apartment house in Kashirskoye Shosse Street.
An eyewitness of the incident said in a testimony that Mirabyan
attempted to enter Chikin’s apartment and that Chikin stepped into
his way to block it.
Mirabyan Sr died 37 days after the fight. An autopsy showed that the
chest injury inflicted by Chikin was not lethal and could not be
blamed for Mirabyan’s demise.
On Wednesday, the court ordered an additional forensic examination to
determine the exact cause of death.
Mirabyan Jr did not attend the hearing, apparently waiting for the
defendant in the street by the court building. He opened fire as
Chikin and his lawyer went out.
Prosecutors opened a criminal case over the shooting.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress