Yes! Weekly, NC
Aug 24 2005
Duke student released by Armenian court after detention
Jordan Green
Staff Writer
Photo: The trial of Yektan Turkyilmaz, seated second from right,
generated international attention. Also shown are Turkyilmaz’s lawyer
(right) his translator and two Armenian police officers. (photo by
Onnik Krikorian)
A doctoral student at Duke University was released Aug. 16 after
being held for two months in a high-security jail in Armenia for
violating a law regulating the removal of cultural artifacts. The
scholar’s imprisonment spurred support from hundreds of fellow
academics from national groups that have in the past remained divided
over questions of genocide and nationalism.
Yektan Turkyilmaz, 33, was pulled off a plane at Yerevan Airport in
Armenia’s capital city on June 17 at the end of his fourth visit to
Armenia. He was there to conduct research for his dissertation on
nationalist conflicts between the Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish
communities in the region of eastern Anatolia during the period of
Turkey’s national formation, according to a website developed by his
supporters.
The authorities seized about 100 books Turkyilmaz had purchased at
used bookstores and open-air markets, along with several CDs that
contained his research. He had planned to fly to Istanbul and later
to Paris to work on his dissertation before returning to Duke for the
2005-2006 academic year.
Turkyilmaz’s dissertation advisor, Orin Starn, who is the director of
graduate studies for Duke’s cultural anthropology program, traveled
to Yerevan to attend the trial, said Duke spokesman David Jarmul.
`We are so happy to celebrate his release,’ said his friend, Ozlem
Dalkiran, a human rights activist who was reached in Istanbul on Aug.
16. `His morale was fine. They were treating him okay, but of course
he didn’t have access to a telephone, which was not a regular thing
for prison. [After the sentencing] he himself called. He was out
there drinking coffee.’
Turkyilmaz received a two-year suspended sentence said Charles
Kurzman, a professor of sociology at UNC-Chapel Hill who is a member
of Turkyilmaz’s dissertation committee.
Dalkiran added that the judge upheld the confiscation of the books
but ordered that Turkyilmaz’s CDs be returned. He is required to stay
in the country until Aug. 31.
Turkyilmaz was charged with violating an Armenian law that lumps
cultural artifacts together with radioactive material, narcotic
drugs, weapons of mass destruction and missile delivery systems as
items whose export is prohibited or regulated, according to his
website. His supporters say Turkyilmaz did not realize he was
required to declare books more than 50 years old at customs.
The fact that Turkyilmaz is a Turkish citizen and a member of the
Kurdish ethnic minority has made his supporters question whether he
was singled out by the Armenian authorities because of his
nationality. Relations between Turkey and Armenia have remained
strained since World War I, when the Turkish government is reported
to have killed more than a million Armenians in a genocide that was a
forerunner to Nazi Germany’s Jewish holocaust. Among Turks, there are
many who question whether the genocide actually occurred.
Turkyilmaz’s supporters say they are mystified by his detention
because his scholarship takes a critical view of the official version
of Turkish history.
`The irony is that the Armenians arrested one of the Turkish citizens
that is most sympathetic to their cause,’ Kurzman said. `A number of
Turkish scholars over the last several years have started to question
the official narrative of late Ottoman and Turkish history. Yektan is
among those scholars. Yektan, by learning Armenian, has become
central to those efforts. Turkish scholars generally ignored the
experiences of other groups by downplaying the massive death of
Armenians during the period of 1915 to 1920. On the Armenian side,
there’s been a hostility towards Turkish and Kurdish people.’
Dalkiran said many of Turkyilmaz’s supporters suspect that the
scholar’s detention was politically motivated.
`We learnt that during the first days of his custody he was being
interrogated about his research, political affiliations and
relations,’ she wrote in an e-mail message. She cited a report by
Radio Free Europe, which has been covering the story from Yerevan, as
the main source of information that Turkyilmaz’s treatment might have
been motivated by something more than enforcement of customs law.
The article reported that the Armenian National Security Service, the
successor to the Soviet-era KGB, had considered charging Turkyilmaz
with espionage and held the scholar in its most tightly guarded jail.
Ozlem added that books Turkyilmaz left with friends in Armenia were
also seized by the police, also indicating that the authorities’
interest in him went beyond customs enforcement.
Many Armenians in the United States rallied to Turkyilmaz’s side
during his imprisonment.
`I’m a little puzzled by the fact that he was detained,’ said Marc
Mamigonian, director of programs and publications at the National
Association for Armenian Studies and Research in Belmont, Mass. `I
can’t really fathom why he wasn’t released in a week. If he’s being
singled out because he’s a Turkish national, then I don’t understand
because I don’t believe he’s some sort of genocide apologist or
denyer.’
As a matter of establishing his importance as a scholar, Turkyilmaz’s
supporters say he was the first Turkish citizen given access to the
Armenian National Archives and that he has the largest collection of
Armenian-language books in Turkey, a resource that has been used by
many international scholars.
His most prominent supporter in the Armenian community is perhaps
Richard Hovannisian, who chairs the modern Armenian history
department at the University of California-Los Angeles, and wrote a
letter to the chief judicial prosecutor offering to post bail for the
young scholar.
`Because I’ve met Yektan, I regard him as a bright graduate student
with a promising career,’ he said. `He’s a person who tries to deal
with controversial issues in an objective manner. I believe he was in
good faith conducting research in Armenia. If he broke the law
technically I don’t think he realized the seriousness of the
consequences.’
Hovannissian’s son Raffi was the Republic of Armenia’s first foreign
minister after the country gained independence from the Soviet Union.
As the president of the Armenian Center for National and
International Studies in Yerevan, he is regarded as a political
opposition figure to the current government.
The case also caught the attention of former US presidential
candidate Bob Dole, who said he was asked to intervene because of his
reputation as a longtime supporter of Armenia and because his wife,
North Carolina Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole, is a an alumna and
former trustee of Duke University.
`Elizabeth and I remain prominent supporters of your country, but the
issues raised by Yektan’s detention go beyond our ties to Armenia and
past support by raising questions about Armenia’s democratic progress
and commitment to the rule of law,’ he wrote in a letter to President
Robert Kocharian on Aug. 2. `Your treatment of Yektan makes Armenia
look bad – with good reason. Armenia has many friends in the United
States, but we cannot and will not defend the indefensible.’
Kurzman said he believes Turkyilmaz’s ordeal has helped create more
understanding between academics in Armenia, Turkey and in those
countries’ national communities abroad.
`Yektan has yet to write his dissertation, but he’s already changing
relations between these countries,’ he said. `He is the only scholar
of his generation, possibly alive, that can work in all three
languages of eastern Anatolia: Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish. There’s
an open letter signed by more than two hundred scholars from Turkey
and Armenia. By cosigning an open letter appealing for Yektan’s
release, it’s a sign that all parties respect Yektan’s work and his
potential. Perhaps there is a thaw in relations between these
academic communities.’
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