ARMENIAN LULU KABOBS GOBBLED UP
By Jennifer Kapiolani Saxton
Belleville News-Democrat, IL
Sept 25 2005
Lincoln Place festival celebrates diverse neighborhood
GRANITE CITY – For Mary Firtos of Granite City and her two friends,
the Lincoln Place Heritage Festival meant a chance to get authentic
ethnic food.
“We got Hungarian, Armenian and Mexican food,” Firtos said as she
and her friends left the one-day festival Saturday afternoon.
The aroma of Armenian Lulu kabobs and the sound of Scottish
bagpipes filled the streets of Lincoln Place neighborhood near the
community center on Niedringhaus Avenue in one of the city’s oldest
neighborhoods.
The Lincoln Place Heritage Festival drew more than 1,000 to enjoy
cultural foods from Hungary, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Armenia and Mexico.
“(Lulu kabob) is the Armenian version of a hamburger,” said Nancy
Avdoian, who was volunteering at the festival for the St. Gregory
Armenian Church in Granite City. “They have a lot more flavor than
your ordinary hamburger. It’s got a lot of kick to it.”
Using ground lamb, the meat is mixed with seasonings and onions, then
topped with a tomato-parsley mix. It is covered with a yogurt-garlic
sauce and placed in pita bread.
“It’s a common dish in most Armenian houses,” Avdoian said.
Also, on display at the festival were memorabilia provided the
association by the descendants of the immigrants who once lived in
this neighborhood.
Varsenig “Vee” Throne, 83, moved back in the 1990s after being married,
raising her children and traveling the world. As a child, Throne grew
up with her four brothers and sister in the brick house across from
the Lincoln Place Community Center. She lives there again today.
“It was different back then,” Throne said. “It didn’t make a difference
what nationality you were. Everybody was very close to one another.”
Throne and her daughter, Norma Asadorian, who is president of the
Lincoln Place Heritage Association, are working to bring back the
heritage and life to this neighborhood.
“Norma and I and a handful of other people are trying really hard to
revitalize this place,” Throne said.
The revitalization process has included flower pots along Niedringhaus
Avenue, which runs down the center of the neighborhood; a welcome sign;
and in the future, antique light fixtures along the avenue.
For more information about future association activities, send an
address to Lincoln Place Heritage Association P.O. Box 476 Granite
City, IL 62040.

USAID TO HELP ARMENIAN POLICE
Washington Technology
Sept 26 2005
The U.S. Agency for International Development seeks proposals from
vendors for designing and establishing an information system for the
Armenian police. The agency has issued the requirement on behalf of
the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Office of the U.S.
embassy in Yerevan, Armenia.
The selected vendor will automate collection and processing of
crime-related data by using new technologies and techniques for
information gathering and handling.
The project includes methodological and legal/regulatory frameworks,
information, software, hardware and training and guidance components.
Responses are due by Oct. 31. Contact Armen Tamazyan at
[email protected].

ONCE UPON A TIME: KUMKAPI
Turkish Press
Sept 26 2005
Fishing, a Bohemian life style and taverns were things which went
together in the ports of the past. In Istanbul the pungent smell
of wine and sound of music rose on the air of the fishing districts
between Samatya on the Marmara Sea and Poyrazkoy on the Bosphorus.
Kumkapi has been home to a fishing community and taverns for many
centuries. During Byzantine times it was known as Kontascalion (Small
Quay), and had a busy harbour and a shipyard. After the harbour silted
up the beach was a convenient source of sand, and the city gate near
here became known as Kum kapi or Sand Gate.
Following the conquest in 1453 the area was mainly settled by
non-Muslim Karamanlis, and by the seventeenth century was famous
for its taverns according to the Turkish writer and traveller
Evliya celebi. His contemporary and author of a history of Istanbul,
Ereemya Celebi Komurciyan, records the district’s Greek and Armenian
churches and fires which destroyed it. In his Topography of Istanbul,
Hovhannnesyan describes the grand houses of Kumkapi, a royal palace
here, katir Han (an urban kervansaray) and bazaar.
Little remains from the pre-19th century buildings of Kumkapi due
to fires, but it remains a district famous for its taverns and fish
restaurants.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

DOUBTS OVER TURKISH JUSTICE CAST SHADOW ON EU ACCESSION TALKS
By Vincent Boland
Financial Times, UK
Sept 26 2005
Nobody yet knowswhether the progressives or the reactionaries have
won thebattle over free speech that has raged in Turkey for the past
few days. One thing is clear, however: despite years of reforms,
the country’s justice system is riddled with loopholes. The result,
observers say, is arbitrary justice, which undermines people’s faith
in judges, prosecutors and police.
Although it is making changes as it seeks to join the European Union,
Turkey still endures a justice system that puts the rights of the
state above those of the individual. Recent events suggest that reforms
made last year to the fascist-era penal code, which were supposed to
make the system fairer and less punitive, are not working.
A court last week banned an academic conference that was to discuss
the mass killings of Armenians as the Ottoman empire collapsed 90
years ago. The conference went ahead at the weekend amid a heavy police
presence and demonstrations by small groups of protesters. A few weeks
earlier, Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s most acclaimed writer, was charged
with treason for remarks about Turkey’s denial of Armenian suffering.
The two incidents suggest how criminal justice and judicial
systems steeped in decades of nationalist ideology, reinforced by an
authoritarian constitution, can betray a reforming government’s best
intentions. They did little to enhance Turkey’s democratic credentials
a few days before it begins the formal EU accession process. The
attempt to silence the conference will have been noted in France,
which opposes Turkey’s EU membership and is home to Europe’s largest
Armenian diaspora community.
Joost Lagendijk, chairman of the Turkey delegation at the European
parliament, says the ban on the conference demonstrated the inadequacy
of the new penal code. Some legal experts claim the court in which
the judge sat had no authority to hear such a case. Turgut Tarhanli,
director of the Human Rights Law Research Center at Istanbul Bilgi
University, says the judge who ordered the ban did not allow the
organisers – two Istanbul universities – to mount a defence, a clearly
unconstitutional act.
“I hope this is an individual case that does not represent the Turkish
judicial system, but I am not so confident,” Mr Tarhanli said. “The
judicial system is a taboo in Turkey and nobody ever questions it. But
we should be asking judges whether they take the principles of the
constitution into account in their daily work.”
Others believe the constitution itself is the problem. It came into
force after a military coup in 1980. The constitution has since
been heavily revised, but the context in which it was drawn up –
when Turkey perceived herself surrounded by enemies aiming to break
up the country – appears still to influence how it is interpreted.
Guler Sabanci, head of the Sabanci Holding conglomerate and Turkey’s
leading businesswoman, says the constitution is “like an ill-fitting
suit”. “It was a suit we put on in extraordinary circumstances [after
the coup] and now it is too tight. It needs to be refitted for Turkey
in the 21st century.”
Ms Sabanci says opponents of reform can find “legal discrepancies”
that allow them to interfere almost at will, not just in the criminal
and judicial systems, or in attempting to silence historians, but in
efforts at privatisation or measures to do with the economy.
One effect of the controversy, Ms Sabanci and others say, is that
it may persuade the government to go further in strengthening free
speech provisions in the penal code and launching a wider campaign for
tolerance of dissent and controversial opinions. The prime minister,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, won praise from academics for his quick and
forthright questioning of the court decision.
But some noted that he reacted with seeming indifference when one
of his ministers scuppered the historians’ first attempt, in May,
to hold the conference, by accusing them of treason.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NATIONALIST TURKS PROTEST ARMENIA MOVE
Irish Examiner, Ireland
Sept 26 2005
HUNDREDS of Turkish nationalists chanting slogans and waving flags
protested over the weekend against a controversial academic conference
devoted to the WWI massacre of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.
The conference had been due to open on Friday at two universities
in Istanbul but a last-minute court order blocked it, causing acute
embarrassment to the Turkish government just days before the start
of its EU membership talks.
Organisers then circumvented the court ban by moving the conference
to a third university in the city.
“This conference is an insult to our republic and to the memory of
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,” Erkal Onsel, head of the Istanbul branch of
the left wing but nationalist Workers’ Party, told protesters gathered
outside the private Bilgi University.
Ataturk is the revered founder of the modern Turkish Republic on the
ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. Armenia and its supporters around
the world say 1.5 million Armenians died in a systematic genocide
committed by Ottoman Turkish forces between 1915 and 1923.
Ankara accepts many Armenians died on Turkish soil during and after
WWI, but says they were victims of a partisan conflict which claimed
even more Turkish Muslim lives as the Ottoman Empire was collapsing.
It denies any genocide.
Turkey is under pressure to change its stance if it is to become the
first Muslim country to join the EU.
The conference had originally been due to take place at Istanbul’s
Bosphorus University in May but was cancelled after Justice Minister
Cemil Cicek accused those backing the genocide claims of “stabbing
Turkey in the back”.
This time, with a nervous eye on Brussels as the clock ticks
towards the start of its long-delayed EU entry talks on October 3,
the government has strongly backed the conference. Despite a flurry
of EU-inspired reforms recently, promoting certain interpretations
of Turkish history can still be deemed a criminal offence under a
revised penal code.
The protesters said the organisers of the conference were not really
upholding freedom of speech.
“They don’t let us inside… they don’t give us a chance to put our
case. They forget those of the Turkish nation killed by Armenians,”
said Kemal Ermetin, who runs a nationalist magazine.
The protesters displayed photographs of what they said were Azeris
killed by Armenians in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh
during fighting in the early 1990s.
Turkey closed its border and cut diplomatic ties with tiny
ex-Soviet Armenia in 1993 to protest against Armenian occupation of
Nagorno-Karabakh, part of the territory of Azerbaijan, a regional
Turkic-speaking ally of Ankara.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

STADIUM THREAT
by John Todd
Warsaw Business Journal, Poland
Sept 26 2005
>>From Warsaw Business Journal
Law and Justice (PiS) has Warsaw’s world-famous stadium bazaar in
its sights.
Will the Russian market be closed down?
The traders at the stadium market – described by organizers as the
biggest in Europe – are under threat from the conservative Law and
Justice (PiS) party set to form a coalition government after last
weekend’s election.
“The stadium is known for unsanitary conditions, crime, a lack of any
standards. If we want to be a modern capital city, it can’t go on,”
says Jan O³dakowski of Law and Justice.
Traders from around the world hawk everything from sofa sets to
pirated DVDs and icons to baby ferrets at the defunct football stadium
in Praga.
Warsaw’s mayor Lech Kaczyñski, a fellow PiS member and the party’s
candidate in next month’s presidential election, wants the central
government to shut down the illegal traders, move the legal ones to
a new site and rebuild the stadium.
It’s estimated that 4,500 merchants ply their trade, compared to the
estimated 4,000 at Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. Music, film and software
groups say the stadium accounts for 25 to 30 percent of all pirated
material – excluding internet piracy – sold in the country.
Once known as the Russian Market, dominated by traders from the former
Soviet Union selling souvenirs such as nesting dolls and Lenin pins,
today the stadium is a global village.
A Polish woman, who gave her name as Ma³gorzata and who paid her
way through four years of university by selling pirated DVDs, said
the Armenians, Poles and Vietnamese who control the three main areas
don’t stray onto each other’s turf.
Dominic Kinoulty of market-research firm Kinoulty Research says people
who do their daily shopping in expensive malls still visit the stadium
for black-market bargains.
“The people buying clothes there are bazaar buyers because that’s
where you get the cheap stuff,” he said.
“The others are really saying ‘Why am I paying Microsoft … when
I can get 63 programs on a CD-ROM for five z³oty?’ It’s more an
anti-establishment thing than a lack of money.”
The traders aren’t the only foreigners at the stadium, listed in
guidebooks as a tourist attraction, says Janusz Grobicki of the Adam
Smith Center, an economic think-tank.
“I used to live nearby, and I would meet employees from Western
embassies and even the odd ambassador. I don’t think they were there
out of economic necessity.”
In a 2005 report on crime in Warsaw, the stadium was mentioned as a
reason for high crime rates in surrounding areas.
Bazaar operator Damis estimates the market’s annual turnover at
z³.1.5 billion.
After several previous attempts to shut the bazaar failed, Ma³gorzata
is skeptical about the new drive to close it down. “The stadium is an
embarrassment for Warsaw. But there’s just too much money involved –
they’ll never shut it down.”
–Boundary_(ID_xKZtmX7od3nRa+0yLZj3MA)–

ARMENIAN CONFERENCE PROTESTERS TARGET INONU
source: Hurriyet
Journal of Turkish Weekly
Sept 26 2005
The controversial conference on the “Armenians during the Collapse
of the Ottoman Empire” began on Saturday at Istanbul Bilgi University
instead of the original host, Bogazici University.
The conference had been postponed once before and finally, a court
decision was passed to stop Bogazici, a state university, from hosting
the event. Former PM Prof. Erdal Ýnonu, who was among the audience,
was booed by nationalist and conservative left-wing groups while trying
to enter the conference hall. Protesters tried to block Inonu’s way
and shouted at him, “Do not join these traitors!”
On his leaving the building, Inonu rejected security guards and
police forces offered to him and turned down taxis that were hailed
for him. “I will be walking to the Taksim Square, and then go home,”
said Ýnonu, “This is my country and I am walking home.”
Eggs and tomatoes were thrown at nonu, and one egg hit his shoulder.
–Boundary_(ID_Y0pUirDa81KTNoXTtTw/4Q)–

‘AK PARTY MAY SUSPEND RELATIONS WITH EU’
By Ayhan Simsek
The New Anatolian, Turkey
Sept 26 2005
* Former PM Yilmaz: EU declaration is Greek Cypriot victory
ANKARA – Former PM Yilmaz, who led liberal reforms for EU bid,
criticizes the EU’s link between Turkey’s accession and Cyprus in
counter-declaration. ‘The AK Party govt can’t meet excessive demands,
such as moving towards recognizing Greek Cyprus or opening ports,
due to domestic political concerns,’ he says. ‘But my worry is that
given rising nationalism in Turkey, they may go towards suspending
relations with the EU’
Yilmaz criticizes the EU for undermining UN peace efforts and diverting
the issue to the EU, just as the Greek Cypriots wanted.
‘This has come about through support from some EU members opposing
Turkey’s membership,’ he says. ‘They’re using Cyprus to obstruct
or delay Turkey’s membership. If not Cyprus they would’ve used the
Kurdish issue. Failing that, it would have been the genocide claims’
The ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party government can’t meet
the European Union’s excessive demands, such as moving towards a
recognition of Greek Cyprus or opening its ports, due to domestic
political concerns, said former Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz, in an
exclusive interview with The New Anatolian on Friday.
“But my worry is that, because of rising nationalism in the country,
they may go towards suspending relations with the EU,” he warned.
Yilmaz, a prominent Turkish politician, 1997-99 Motherland Party
(then ANAP) prime minister and later deputy premier who initiated
key EU accession reforms, criticized the EU’s recent Cyprus
counter-declaration for having established a link between Turkey’s
EU membership process and the Cyprus problem, as well as requesting
the recognition of Greek Cyprus during negotiations.
“The EU gave us a commitment at the 1999 Helsinki summit that Turkey’s
membership and the Cyprus issue were separate issues,” said Yilmaz,
referring to the summit at which Turkey officially became an EU
candidate. “However, they tried to retract this at last December’s EU
summit and in doing so benefited from the AK Party’s foreign policy
missteps. Requesting our signature on the Ankara Protocol was, in
fact, aimed at linking the two issues. And we have to admit that
through the counter-declaration, the Greek Cypriots have achieved
a strategic victory. They sidelined the United Nations’ efforts for
peace and moved the issue to the EU.”
According to Yilmaz, downplaying the declaration since it’s not legally
binding would be a mistake. “It’s true that Turkey’s negotiations
framework is more important than the declaration. But the declaration
will be the basis for future EU policies on Cyprus.
Next year the Greek Cypriots will try to push the EU by using it,”
he underlined.
Turkey to pay for AK Party missteps
Yilmaz recalled the warning he made just before last December’s
EU summit that Turkey should maintain a firm stance on the issue
and strongly reject any reference to Cyprus as part of Turkey’s EU
membership process. “Given the AK Party’s short-term policies and
missteps at that time, Turkey is paying a heavy price today. The
Greek Cypriots took advantage of political changes in Europe. The
year before, after the (April 2004) Annan referendum on Cyprus,
Turkey’s position was stronger on the issue but today the overall
climate has changed,” Yilmaz stressed.
Some members using Cyprus as pretext
While decrying the counter-declaration for undermining UN peace efforts
on Cyprus, Yilmaz also criticized several EU members for using the
Cyprus issue as a pretext to obstruct Turkey’s EU membership in the
near future. Underlining that the Greek Cypriots managed to get such a
declaration through the support of those members, Yilmaz said, “They
had the Cyprus issue to use. If they hadn’t had the Cyprus problem,
they would have used the Kurdish issue. Failing that, it would have
been the Armenian ‘genocide’ claims.”
While strongly criticizing the EU’s Cyprus counter-declaration and
maintaining that the AK Party government may go forward and suspend
relations with the EU, Yilmaz adopted a more cautious position on
freezing relations with the EU now.
“It’s better to wait and see the final decision on the negotiations
framework,” he said. “If they also put such clauses on Cyprus in the
framework, it will be unacceptable to Turkey. Otherwise the start of
negotiations will be good for Turkey. But progress can only be made
through a solution on Cyprus. So Turkey has to work hard for that.
And I believe that Turkey will find support for this from the
international community.”

TURKISH PM: DO NOT BE AFRAID OF FREEDOMS
By Cihan News Agency
Journal of Turkish Weekly
Sept 26 2005
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with a female protester
over the Armenian Conference during the opening ceremony at Bahcesehir
University. Erdogan, determining that they want everyone to live free,
called everyone not to be afraid of freedoms.
A forty-year-old woman, who stood up during Erdogan’s speech,
struggled to make her voice heard. The protester also showed her
poster that wrote “Whose prime minister are you that you want the
Armenian Conference to be held so much?”
While security guards took the female protester away from the incident
area, the Turkish Prime Minister changed the topic of his speech and
said protests aimed to prevent Turkey’s European Union (EU)membership:
“Freedoms turn green in places where there are people who do not
respect opposition views against those who could not digest opposition
views. Whether you accept it or not, freedoms develop through
respecting opposition views and providing opportunity for those views.”
Erdogan pointing that people should not be scared of freedoms added:
“If we trust our views and beliefs, we should not be afraid of those
kinds of freedoms. As I explained before, I do not approve the court’s
decision on the Armenian Conference. I want to live in a Turkey where
freedoms are widely extended. This is my dream for Turkey.”
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan expressed that he found the discussion
to be held just before the start of EU negotiation’s meaningful.
“Precipitation of the discussions on the eve of EU negotiations
is intentional, according to me. I perceive them as provocative
movements,” Erdogan concluded.

MONTEBELLO PAIRS WITH ARMENIAN CITY
By Nisha Gutierrez, Staff Writer
San Gabriel Valley Tribune, CA
Whittier Daily News, CA
Sept 26 2005
MONTEBELLO — Members of the Armenian community joined Montebello city
officials Sunday as they announced the inauguration of Stepanakert,
as their next sister city.
The Armenian city of Stepanakert , is the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh,
which is home to about 40,000 people.
Serge Samoniantz, committee member for Montebello’s Sister City
Program, said that the need for an Armenian sister city came as a
request from Montebello residents.
“There is a large Armenian presence here,” Samoniantz said. “They
came to us with the idea about four years ago. Since then we chose
the city and came up with a plan.”
The plan, according to city officials, is to embrace cultural exchange.
“It’s for two different worlds of people to get to know each other’s
culture and come together as the world gets smaller,” said Mayor
William Molinari.
The committee will be requesting the City Council to formally vote
on acquiring Stepanakert as a sister city at the Oct. 12 meeting.
However, Samoniantz said he is confident about the vote.
“We didn’t jump the gun by having this inauguration,” he said. “We
are confident the city of Stepanakert will be approved and when it
(is), the work will have already been started.”
The program with Stepanakert will be made up of cultural, educational,
health care and trade exchange so people can be exposed to how things
are done in a different part of the world.
The committee is inviting members of the public to attend the council
meeting to show their support for the program.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower began the U.S. Sister City Program in
1956 as a partnership between different groups of people, created
to promote cultural understanding, increase global cooperation and
enhance economic development.
Montebello’s first sister city, Ashiya, Japan, was established in 1961.