Duke researcher arrested on suspicion of smuggling books

Lexington Dispatch, NC
June 17 2005

The Associated Press

A Duke University researcher was detained at Yerevan airport on Friday
on suspicion of smuggling antique books out of Armenia, the National
Security Service said.

An official for the security agency, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said that Turkish citizen Yektan Turkyilmaz had been
arrested in possession of books dating from the 17th to 20th
centuries and was suspected of seeking to take them secretly on a
flight to Turkey.

Turkyilmaz, of Duke University in Durham, N.C., is likely to be fined
although the offense he is accused of carries a maximum five-year
jail term, the security official said.

Books older than 50 years cannot be taken out of Armenia without
special permission. Turkyilmaz was in Armenia to carry out research in
the Armenian national archives, the first Turk to be allowed to do so.

Armenia and Turkey do not have diplomatic relations because of dispute
over the killings of Armenians during World War I, which Armenians
say was genocide.

Armenians say some 1.5 million of their people were killed as the
Ottoman Empire forced them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923
in a deliberate campaign of genocide.

Turkey says the death count is inflated and insists that Armenians
were killed or displaced in the civil unrest during the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire.