Author: Boshkezenian Garik

SYLVESTER STALLONE’S DREAM TO PRODUCE 40 DAYS OF MUSA DAGH

Armenpress
Dec 20 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 20, ARMENPRESS" In an interview with Denver Post
actor Sylvester Stallone said one of his dreams was to to create an
epic, and the book that intrigues him is Franz Werfel’s ‘The Forty
Days of Musa Dagh,’ detailing the Turkish genocide of its Armenian
community in 1915.

"French ships eventually rescued some Armenians, and Stallone has
his favorite scene memorized: ‘The French ships come, and they’ve
dropped the ladders and everybody has climbed up the side. The ships
sail. The hero, the one who set up the rescue, has fallen asleep,
exhausted, behind a rock on the slope above. The camera pulls back,
and the ships and the sea are on one side, and there’s one lonely
figure at the top of the mountain, and the Turks are coming up the
mountain by the thousands on the far side.’ "Talk about a political
hot potato. The Turks have been killing that subject for 85 years,"
the super star added.

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is a 1934 novel by Austrian-Jewish author
Franz Werfel based around an event that took place on Musa Dagh
in 1915 during the Armenian Genocide in Turkey. The Forty Days of
Musa Dagh achieved great international success and has been credited
with awakening the world to the evidence of the persecution of the
Armenians.

The novel is a fictionalized account based on the real-life defense
of Musa Dagh’s Damlayik by Armenians who were facing systematic
deporatations and massacres put into effect by the government of
Young Turks.

Although written as a novel, the historical background content of
the book has generally been accepted as fact. In the 1930s Turkey
pressured the United States State department to prevent MGM Studios
to produce a film based on the novel.

A filmed version of the story was eventually made independently and
was released theatrically in 1982.

Turkey’s Killing Fields
By GARY J. BASS

New York Times Book Review
December 17, 2006

A SHAMEFUL ACT
The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility.
By Taner Akcam. Translated by Paul Bessemer.
483 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $30.

In July 1915, the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire sent Washington
a harrowing report about the Turks’ `systematic attempt to uproot peaceful
Armenian populations.’ He described `terrible tortures, wholesale expulsions
and deportations from one end of the Empire to the other accompanied by
frequent instances of rape, pillage and murder, turning into massacre.’ A
month later, the ambassador, Henry Morgenthau – the grandfather of the
Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau – warned of an `attempt to
exterminate a race.’

The Young Turk nationalist campaign against the empire’s Armenian subjects
was far too enormous to be ignored at the time. But decades of
government-backed denial have created what amounts to a taboo in Turkey
today. Instead of admitting genocide, Turkish officials contend the
Armenians were a dangerous fifth column that colluded with Russia in World
War I; many Armenians may have died, they say, but there was no organized
slaughter. Turkish writers who challenge this line, like the novelists Orhan
Pamuk and Elif Shafak, have risked prosecution for insulting Turkish
identity. And on the diplomatic front, when Turkey should be polishing its
credentials for eventual European Union membership, it is mired in
historical fights; this May, for instance, it pulled out of a NATO military
exercise to protest the Canadian prime minister’s acknowledgment of the
genocide.

`A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish
Responsibility,’ by Taner Akcam, is a Turkish blast against this national
denial. A historian and former leftist activist now teaching at the Center
for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, Akcam is
often described as the first Turkish scholar to call the massacres genocide,
and his impressive achievement here is to shine fresh light on exactly why
and how the Ottoman Empire deported and slaughtered the Armenians. He
directly challenges the doubters back home, basing his powerful book on
Turkish sources in the old Ottoman script – including the failed Ottoman war
crimes tribunals held after World War I. Although he bolsters his case with
material from the American, British and German archives, he writes that the
remaining Ottoman records are enough to show that the ruling party’s central
committee `did deliberately attempt to destroy the Armenian population.’

Akcam closely links the 1915 genocide with World War I. The Unionists, as
the nationalist leaders were known, dreaded the partition of their empire by
the European great powers. Not only did they suspect the Armenians of
dangerous disloyalty, Akcam writes, but massacres of Muslims in Christian
regions of the faltering empire before World War I had fostered a desire for
vengeance.

While never excusing the atrocities, Akcam does argue that the Turkish
leaders chose genocide in a mood of stark desperation. Staggered by a series
of early military defeats, and by the Allied onslaught at Gallipoli, they
fully expected their empire – driven out of so much of its vast territories
over the past two centuries – to collapse. The Turkish heartland of Anatolia
was threatened – as was Constantinople.

The fiercest Ottoman enemy was Russia, which had nearly seized
Constantinople in a bloody 1877-78 war and had a storied history of trying
to foment uprisings against Ottoman rule. The Turkish nationalist line puts
great weight on the internal menace of pro-Russian Armenians. But Akcam
argues that there was little real danger from the Armenian uprisings, which
were limited and directed mostly against the deportations. (British
officials considered the Armenians militarily useless and thus refused to
encourage the uprisings.) Akcam allows that the evacuation of Armenians may
have been justified by military necessity in areas where the Armenian
revolutionaries were strong – but not throughout the empire.

The killings were a colossal undertaking. Paramilitaries and Interior
Ministry gendarmes slaughtered Armenians en masse, while the Interior
Ministry under Talat Pasha, who coordinated the campaign, arranged for the
deportation of untold thousands more to the blazing Syrian deserts. Many of
the deportees were massacred along the way, and those who survived were left
without food, shelter or medicine, in what Akcam calls `deliberate
extermination.’ Akcam cites Ottoman Interior Ministry papers that chillingly
call for keeping Armenians to less than 5 or 10 percent of the population. A
postwar Turkish investigation found that some 800,000 Armenians perished.

After the war, Britain pressured the defeated Ottoman government into
setting up its own war crimes tribunals. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk himself, the
founder of the present Turkish republic, once said that the Unionist leaders
`should have been brought to account for the lives of millions of our
Christian subjects ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and
massacred.’ Today, those who deny the genocide have to dismiss these trial
records as mere victor’s justice. Akcam uses the records as important
evidence, though he frowns on Britain’s imperialist ambitions and cultural
biases.

This dense, measured and footnote-heavy book poses a stern challenge to
modern Turkish polemicists, and if there is any response to be made, it can
be done only with additional primary research in the archival records. In
1919, a British general hoped the Ottoman war crimes trials would `dispel
the fog of illusions prevailing throughout the country.’ Eighty-seven years
later, the murk still lingers.

Gary J. Bass, the author of `Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War
Crimes Tribunals,’ is writing a book on humanitarian intervention.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

NKR MFA EXPRESSED ITS BEWILDERMENT WITH THE EUROPEAN INTERNATIONAL STRUCTURES’ RESPONSE TO A REFERENDUM HELD IN KARABAKH

DeFacto Agency, Armenia
Dec 14 2006

The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic MFA expressed its bewilderment with the
European international structures’ response to a referendum held in the
NKR. According to the NKR MFA, by their statement the international
structures have attempted to cast doubts on the very fact of the
possibility of the Nagorno-Karabakh people’s being in legal field.

The Karabakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ official statement runs,
in part, "the Ministry notes the referendum is a new stage on the way
of firming democratic principles in the country’s Main Law and the
development of legislation as a whole and aims to give an impulse
to the formation and development of new, more liberal principles
in the sphere of state governance, as well as to the process of
civil society’s formation. In this connection the attempts of
the European instances, an architecture of which is based on such
pillars as democracy and superiority of law, to ignore and neglect
the democratic and legislative processes taking place in the Nagorno-
Karabakh look at least strange.

At the same time, the Ministry expresses its conviction that the
Constitution’s adoption will in no way hamper the international
mediators’ constructive attempts to settle the Nagorno- Karabakh
conflict peacefully.

If one follows the logic of the last statements, according to which
the constitutional referendum in the NKR will hamper the negotiations,
one can conclude that adopting the Constitution of the Azerbaijan
Republic at a referendum in 1995 and amendments made to it in 2002
the official Baku pursued namely such an object – to deliver a blow to
the negotiations held those years. So, why the European structures did
not criticize Azerbaijan’s policy then? It is not the first case for
the last 15 years, when the representatives of separate international
organizations respond asymmetrically to the analogous procedures
taking place in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijan. The
international community’s role in influencing on the character of the
processes in the conflict zone has always been great. Only the fact
that in 1991 the international community unilaterally recognized the
results of a referendum on independence in Azerbaijan, but refused
to recognize an analogues referendum in the Nagorno Karabakh, which
had been held before it, encouraged Azerbaijan’s pretensions to the
Nagorno-Karabakh, which became the reason of Azerbaijan’s aggression
against the NKR.

The constitutional referendum in the NKR cannot predetermine the
outcome of the consultations on the conflict solution being held
under the OSCE MG aegis. Moreover, a question arises whether the
position on territorial integrity voiced by Azerbaijan permanently
and the unitary of Azerbaijani state fixed in the AR Constitution
are the factors predetermining and violating the logic of the Minsk
process, which assumed the right to self-determination along with
other principles as a basis.

The NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses hope that the European
structures guided by their fundamental principles will reconsider
their preconceived attitude to the democratic procedures taking place
in the Nagorno-Karabakh", the NKR MFA Press Center reports.

ON THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH FRONTLINES
Zoe Powell

EurasiaNet, NY
Dec 14 2006

Recent announcements by Azerbaijan and Armenia have spurred hopes that
a Nagorno-Karabakh peace settlement is within reach. But on a windswept
Karabakh military post northwest of the disputed territory’s capital,
Stepanakert, the struggle over this self-declared state seems far
from over.

At this position, roughly 300 to 400 meters from the Azerbaijani
lines, exchanges of gunfire are a daily occurrence, soldiers said. A
seven-person unit that is refreshed every seven days mans the post.

An Azerbaijani sniper recently killed a Karabakhi soldier not far
from here.

In a recent tour of the frontline organized for international
journalists by Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
officers were reluctant to discuss their views on the ongoing Karabakh
negotiations, and on the potential impact of a settlement on the
separatist government and military they serve.

"That’s for the politicians," said one army representative, a veteran
of the 1988-1994 conflict with Azerbaijan who gave his name as Artur,
when asked to comment about recent announcements of a breakthrough
in the negotiations. "The military doesn’t mix with politics. Nor
should we, right? We’ll do what we’re told."

The size of the Karabakh army is "a state secret," officials say, and
information about the defense budget is not readily available. A 2005
report by the International Crisis Group, however, cites an unnamed
official in Nagorno-Karabakh’s Yerevan mission who stated that the
army has 20,000 soldiers. Another source cited in the report, a US
military expert, put the number at 18,500 soldiers.

Along with military hardware, Armenia is thought to provide some
of the troops in Karabakh defense force. Former Armenian conscripts
interviewed by Crisis Group in Yerevan reported that they had been
sent to serve in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Conscripts serving at the frontline post, a bleak collection of
trenches, observation hut, one-room office and one-room living
quarters, asserted that they came from Nagorno-Karabakh, adding
that they were there "to serve the homeland." A clock with a large
image of Jesus dominates the office visually, standing across from
a Russian-language wall poster describing how to fight tuberculosis.

"This isn’t the American army," one defense ministry representative
on hand for the tour commented with a laugh about the stark scene.

"This is the Karabakh army. They have to be tough."

Young men in Karabakh are required to serve two years of military
service. The government says conscripts are paid 3,000 Armenian drams
per month (about $6.83) for "extras." Army representatives detailed
a long list of food items – including first and second courses,
salad and soup for dinner — reportedly brought in to feed frontline
soldiers daily — and, indicating one particularly bulky conscript,
claimed that they’re fed meat each day.

An academy "with a military inclination" exists in Stepanakert, but
students who wish to serve as officers in the Nagorno-Karabakh army
do their training in Yerevan, army representative said. Plans exist,
however, to open a more formal military academy in Karabakh, where
students would be taught, "as in Tsarist Russia," foreign languages
and ballroom dancing along with their regular course of study, he said.

Twelve years after the cease-fire agreement that ended the 1988-1994
war over the territory, ruined houses and other buildings still dot
the landscape outside of Stepanakert. The military did not allow
photos to be taken, but the images seen suggest a conflict indelibly
engraved in residents’ minds.

The economy appears to be recovering slowly, but independently
verifiable economic data is unavailable. At a December 6 plenary
parliamentary session, de facto Minister of Economy and Finance Spartac
Tevossian reported that Karabakh’s Gross Domestic Product expanded
by 20.8 percent for the first nine months of 2006, as compared with
the same period in 2005, reaching $97.4 million, the Armenian news
bulletin service De Facto reported. Monthly salaries average around
36,605 Armenian drams, or about $83.38, the minister claimed.

Primarily an agrarian society, Karabakhis are returning to
cultivating vineyards and wheat fields. A gold mine opened in 2002,
and construction projects – including a new parliament building and
adjoining hotel – can be seen throughout Stepanakert, often financed
by diaspora Armenians. The separatist leadership is also putting
increased emphasis on tourism: The government claims that in 2006
some 3,750 foreign tourists visited this rugged region, prized among
Armenians for its monasteries and churches, and that the number of
such visits is steadily increasing.

Security concerns remain foremost in Karabakhis’ minds. Interviewed
residents routinely cited maintaining an adequate defense against
Azerbaijan, which formerly controlled Nagorno-Karabakh, as their
territory’s largest problem. Many cast a doubtful eye on the return of
the seven territories surrounding their region to Azerbaijani control.

"If Armenia frees those territories, without a doubt, then, Azerbaijan
should take reciprocal steps and recognize our independence or, in the
worst case, recognize our right to a free choice," commented Vahram
Atanesian, chairman of the Nagorno-Karabakh parliament’s foreign
affairs committee. "We went toward independence because it was the
best way to guarantee our security."

While war veterans, refugees from Azerbaijan and long-term residents
interviewed by EurasiaNet all spoke out strongly against any resumption
of armed hostilities with Azerbaijan, feelings were mixed about the
return of Azerbaijani refugees to this predominantly ethnic Armenian
land. The government of Azerbaijan has insisted on such a right
of return as one of the conditions for a lasting peace resolution
with Armenia.

"There’s no chance we can live together now," said octogenarian
Areg Oganisian, an Azeri-speaking ethnic Armenian refugee from
the Azerbaijani town of Sumgait who returned to his family village
outside of the Karabakhi town of Shushi after the 1988 pogrom against
Armenians in Sumgait. "But I also can’t say that all Azerbaijanis are
bad. They are civilized, too . . . . If it hadn’t been for Sumgait,
we could have worked things out, but Sumgait was a detonator."

"We took Karabakh by blood," said a Karabakh war veteran, who gave
his name as Artur. "How will there not be a war if Azerbaijan tries
to take it back?"

Editor’s Note: Zoe Powell is the pseudonym for a journalist based
in Tbilisi. Sophia Mizante is a freelance photojournalist based
in Tbilisi.

Dec 14 2006

France trying to cover up its role in genocide Wednesday, 13th
December, 2006

Alfred Ndahiro

By Alfred Ndahiro

Rwanda’s decision to sever diplomatic relations with France continues
to be a subject of animated discussion among those who have an interest
in the political evolution of Rwanda, and the proxy war that France has
waged since the defeat of the Interahamwe extremists who masterminded
the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The recently published report by Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, now
discredited by most legal experts and even those he claims to be his
informers, can only be construed as a facet of that proxy war.

>>From the time of the downing of the plane carrying Habyarimana
and his Burundian counterpart, credible commentators and analysts
concluded that extremists in the Habyarimana government, with the
help of the French army, brought down the plane.

Yet, Judge Bruguière brushes this aside and instead indicts the
leadership of Rwanda and senior aides of the Rwandan president. In
so doing, Bruguière aims to cover the role of the French government,
by intimidating Rwandans and attempting to divert them from their
effort to unearth the truth about French involvement in Rwanda.

The following are but a few of the facts that Judge Bruguière knows
but chooses to ignore: At the time of the plane crash, the entire
airport and the surroundings were under the control of the French
soldiers and the then Rwandan presidential guard.

When soldiers of the United Nations peace-keeping force in Rwanda
attempted to reach the scene of the plane crash, they were blocked
and prevented from accessing it by those same forces. That is how
the whereabouts of the black box have remained a mystery to-date,
although French officials admitted having it, at some stage.

France trained, armed, and fought alongside the former Rwandan forces
before, during, and after the 1994 genocide, just as its soldiers
trained the Interahamwe militias.

The Rwandan Patriotic Army fought and single-handedly stopped the
genocide.

France continues to harbour and give sanctuary to the architects
of the Rwandan genocide, including Agathe Habyarimana, Fr Wenceslas
Munyeshyaka, and others, who masterminded the carnage.

Judge Bruguiere’s so-called evidence is based on false testimonies
provided by genocide fugitives and Rwandan dissidents who aim to
use it either to deny the occurrence of the Rwandan genocide or to
advance their misguided goals and justify their applications for
political asylum.

The French government has never come to terms with the regime change
in Rwanda and have worked ceaselessly towards achieving their hope
that some day, their former proteges would be reinstated.

In ignoring the above facts, Judge Bruguière’s injudicious project
serves to advance the broader political enterprise and hidden agenda
of the French government.

All this, however, is beginning to crumble, and many legal experts
and his alleged informers are distancing themselves from his findings.

One such alleged informer, quoted in his report, is Emmanuel
Ruzigana. In a letter addressed to Bruguière on November 30, Ruzigaza
draws the attention of the judge to the fact that he was forcefully
picked from the airport in Paris and taken to Bruguière’s office by
his members of staff on March 29, 2004.

In Bruguière’s office, Ruzigana was questioned as to whether he
belonged to the "Network Commando" and whether he knew the person
who shot down the Habyarimana plane. In spite of having denied both
allegations, Ruzigana appears in the judge’s report as having confirmed
the allegations.

Another of his principle informers by the name of Abdul Ruzibiza was
a nursing assistant in the north-west of Rwanda, far away from the
scene of the plane crash. How such a fellow can claim to be privy to
the plans of an operation of such sensitivity boggles the mind.

Besides, he is a convicted criminal, having stolen soldiers’ allowances
before his escape.

A third key witness, a certain Innocent Marara, claims he was privy
to RPA planning to assassinate Habyarimana in 1993. Yet Marara joined
the RPA in 1994, and not 1990 as Bruguiere claims.

The missiles Judge Bruguiere claims shot down Habyarimana’s plane
were found to have been a hoax, foisted upon the world by a French
Parliamentary mission of information. One of the launchers allegedly
used to down the plane still had its missile unfired when it was
allegedly photographed after the event.

Finally, Judge Bruguiere, without a shred of evidence, accuses key
regional leaders, including President Museveni, of being complicit
in the killing of Habyarimana, a thinly veiled political attack on
what the French call their "Anglo-saxon" enemies.

There is no doubt that France can do a lot of good for itself by
coming clean. It cannot blame Turkey for refusing to acknowledge the
genocide of the Armenians in 1915 and at the same time withhold its
own ‘mea culpa’.

In any case, France, even in its might, should have understood that the
Rwandans are a people with a proud legacy of a rich culture, history
and values. They will not allow France to subdue and subjugate them.

France should also learn that people who uphold the truth, and who
have the right cause, will always triumph. It was so when Rwandans
fought the genocidaires on the battlefield, it will be so on the
‘diplomacy-field’!

The writer is the advisor in communication and public relations in
the office of the President of Rwanda

–Boundary_(ID_qu4hhDgjWiHpLs2o7Sacyg)–

IMF WELCOMES PRUDENT MONETARY-CREDIT POLICY OF CBA

Noyan Tapan
Dec 13 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 13, NOYAN TAPAN. The IMF Executive Board welcomed
the prudent monetary-credit policy of the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA)
that aims to maintain price stability. Nienke Oomes, IMF Yerevan Office
Resident Representative, stated this during the December 13 press
conference. According to her, the IMF Executive Board also approved
the floating exchange rate policy that the CBA has conducted for the
same purpose. N. Oomes said that the CBA’s intervention in the foreign
currency market to smoothen sharp fluctuations without setting a target
level of exchange rate was also assessed positively. The IMF Executive
Board takes the view that resisting nominal appreciation pressures
may lead to high inflation, which may have a negative impact on the
vulnerable groups of the population and the economic growth. According
to the IMF, there is no definite evidence of the Armenian dram’s
being overvalued, while the best way to resist the danger posed to
competition is to conduct a policy of promoting productivity growth,
including improvement of the business environment and encouragement
of competition.

OFFICIAL POSITION OF TURKEY IS NOT REFUSAL OF 1915 TRAGEDY, TURK EXPERT SAYS

Noyan Tapan
Dec 12 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, NOYAN TAPAN. Turkey is in the regime of special
relations with Azerbaijan and does not want to establish diplomatic
ties with Armenia to the detriment of those relations. Mensur Akgun,
the head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Turkish Economic
and Social Sciences Foundation (TESEV), made such a statement on
December 11, during the round table organized by the Caucasus Media
Institute. In the expert’s words, defining of relations of Armenia
with Turkey is a pre-condition within the Karabakh problem context
for establishing political relations between Turkey and Armenia and
development of communication between the two countries. Touching upon
the Armenian Genocide problem, M.Akgun mentioned that "it would be
desirable to create a commission which would satisfy demands of the
two sides. In the expert’s opinion, just this commission would find out
if the happened was a genocide or any other thing. "Turkey’s official
position is not refusal of that tragedy which may not be qualified as a
genocide, M.Akgun stated. The expert at the same time emphasized that
"acceptance of the fact of that genocide is a huge change in Turkey’s
position as Turks did not at all speak about the happened 30 years
ago." Politician Alexander Iskandarian mentioned that discussions on
establishing diplomatic relations with Turkey or opening of borders
in wide circles of the Armenian society takes place in economic but
no political field. In his words, it is wrong to consider solution of
the conflict with Azerbaijan as a pre-condition of the Armenia-Turkey
relations. "We do not say, do we, to improve your relations with
Cyprus for we establish relations with you," A.Iskandarian said,
addressing to Turk participants of the round table. In his words,
creation of the mentioned commission is meaningless as the fact of
the genocide is beyond any doubts for Armenia.

WHO LOST TURKEY?
By Owen Matthews; With Sami Kohen in Istanbul

Newsweek
December 11, 2006
International Edition

It’s a slow-motion ‘train wreck,’ and the imminent crash of Ankara’s
EU bid is a disaster for everyone.

Benedict XVI stood, shoeless, side by side with the Mufti of Istanbul
beneath the cavernous great dome of onetime Constantinople’s famed
Blue Mosque, palms upraised in the traditional Muslim gesture of
peace and supplication. What precisely the pope prayed for is a
matter between himself and his maker–but surely it involved healing
between Christians and Muslims, an issue that has come to define his
pontificate and his era.

When prayer becomes a geopolitical strategy, there’s a problem. The
most immediate: an imminent breakdown of relations between Turkey
and the European Union. Not so long ago, it seemed that Europe would
overcome prejudice and define itself as an ideology rather than a
geography, a way of being in the world rather than a mere agglomeration
of nation-states. But that chance is now lost. "Turkey will never be a
full member of the EU," predicts British M.E.P. Daniel Hannan. "There’s
a dawning realization of that reality on all sides."

This is a tragedy–a catastrophe, potentially–of epochal
proportions. Europe’s engagement with Turkey was a chance to show
the world that the West is not incompatible with the East, that
a democratic Muslim nation can be just as modern and European as
a Christian one. As Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
said recently, what’s at stake is nothing less than "world peace,
fighting global terror and the clash of civilizations." A European
Turkey could have been a model for the rest of the Muslim world,
too, playing "constructively the role the Ottoman Empire once played
destructively–a bridge between the East and West," argues Egyptian
political thinker Abdel Monem Said Aly. Accepting Turkey might well
have helped Europe cope with its own issues of Muslim integration and
identity. And for Turkey itself the lure of EU membership was a force
for social transformation. The nation has come far in recent years;
but it still has far to go in jettisoning its authoritarian legacy
and creating a democracy that reaches broader and more deeply among
its culturally and ethnically diverse peoples.

Now come the recriminations, with fingers pointing this way and that.

Indeed, a glittery cast of geopolitical notables gathered just last
week in Brussels for a symposium aptly titled, "Who Lost Turkey?" EU
Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn has worked hard to avoid what he
has called a "train wreck," long seen coming but difficult to stop.

The proximate causes are numerous as they are petty, from bickering
over Cyprus to a vote by the French Parliament criminalizing denial
of Armenian "genocide" at the hands of the Turks in 1915. The rift
isn’t formal yet, as the EU will likely opt for only a face-saving
partial suspension of negotiations after a deadlock on Cyprus failed
to be resolved last week. But it takes no special reading between the
lines to see that a fundamental tipping point has been reached. Late
last week Cyprus threatened to "veto" Turkey’s entire bid. French
presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, kicking off his campaign,
also called for the suspension of further talks. "Turkey’s place is
not in the EU," said he.

Officially, politicians in Ankara insist that they will plod on
regardless. "There is no Plan B," says Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.

"Our goal is to continue on the same road" toward EU membership. Yet
in truth, with the EU as a guiding light, Turkey now risks careering
off on an entirely different geopolitical trajectory, the direction
and consequences of which can only be guessed at. Indeed, attitudes
are already changing. A recent poll in the newspaper Milliyet shows
support for joining the EU has fallen to just one third, down from 67
percent in 2004. If they don’t want us, the prevailing sentiment goes,
we don’t want them. Europeans, meanwhile, are doing some devaluing
of their own. Said Rehn last week: "Turkey’s strategic importance
should not be exaggerated."

Now what? Gul and others may speak of "business as usual," but
European pressure has been the catalyst of a host of vital reforms
in recent years that no internal Turkish political force could ever
have accomplished. They range from reducing the role of the military
in politics to granting cultural rights to the country’s 14 million
Kurds. Without the gravitational pull of EU membership, will these
changes continue? Or will the ethnic, religious and cultural wars
that have long raged beneath the surface of the Turkish republic
finally erupt in earnest?

The visit of the pope, a deeply controversial figure in the Islamic
world, has exposed the deepest of these: tension between secular
Turks and Islam. Ever since the founding of the Turkish republic
on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire by Gen. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
Turkey’s rulers have looked to the secular West rather than the more
religious East. With the election of the mildly Islamist government
of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AK Party in 2002, however, that line
has been blurred.

A recent study by Bosporus University found that more Turks are
defining themselves by their religion these days than by their
nationality; 45 percent said they were "Muslims first" (up from
36 percent in 1999) and 19 percent said they were "Turkish first"
(down from 21 percent). Erdogan has taken pains not to push overtly
Islamist policies–for instance, he’s studiously avoided repealing
Turkey’s draconian law banning Islamic headscarves from government
offices, schools and universities. But he sent his daughters to be
educated abroad, in the United States, rather than have them remove
their headscarves at a Turkish university, and in 2004 tried (but
failed) to introduce a controversial law prohibiting adultery.

Erdogan’s engagement with the Middle East is no less worrying for
Turkey’s secular elite, particularly the generals who see themselves
as the guardians of Ataturk’s modernizing (read: antireligious)
values. He is the first Turkish leader in years who’s deliberately
looked East as well as West, making reform in the wider Islamic world
almost as much a priority as Turkey’s EU project. A devout Muslim–he
recently passed out in his car during October’s Ramadan fast because of
low blood sugar–Erdogan has campaigned for global Islam to reinvent
itself. In 2004 Ankara helped to wrest control of the Organization of
the Islamic Conference from conservative Islamists and backed a worldly
Turk, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, as secretary-general. Last week Erdogan
told an OIC session in Istanbul that women are "the most productive
part of society," and that they were discriminated against in Islamic
societies because of "traditions portrayed as religious rules."

That’s revolutionary stuff, at least within the traditionally
conservative Muslim world. But back home, Erdogan’s crusading rhetoric
has played into the hands of potential enemies, many of whom suspect
him of being a crypto-fundamentalist and aim to use the failure of his
EU bid to stop both him and his reform programs. As support for the EU
wanes, so Turkish ultranationalismrises. According to a confidential
AK Party poll earlier this year, more than 20 percent of first-time
voters support the chauvinist Nationalist Action Party, or MHP. Its
leader, Devlet Bahceli, complained last week that "the EU project is a
treacherous plan designed to weaken, divide and disintegrate Turkey,"
and he vowed to undo "anti-Turkish" human-rights legislation (such
as freedom of speech) pushed by Brussels.

A nationalist backlash could prove especially ugly at a time when the
aspirations of Turkey’s 14 million Kurds have been raised by half
a decade of rapid (though still incomplete) liberalization. Recent
unrest flaring in Turkey’s southeast saw a score of towns and villages
across the region wrecked in riots that brought hundreds of thousands
onto the streets. And the consequences for Cyprus would be nasty,
too. Already there has been talk from the opposition of absorbing the
Turkish northern part of the island into Turkey itself, which would
put an end to efforts to reunite the island for generations–and,
of course, deliver a death blow to Turkey’s lingering EU aspirations.

Perhaps most dangerous of all, Turkey’s generals–the "pashas"–are
becoming more vocal after years of relative silence. This year
they’ve blasted Brussels for promoting dangerously liberal reforms
from broadcasting in Kurdish to the right to nonmilitary national
service. (Though, in truth, their real concern is undoubtedly the
EU’s insistence that the military stay out of politics.) "The Turkish
armed forces will never turn a blind eye to the basic values of
the Turkish republic for the sake of the EU," stormed naval forces
commander Adm. Yener Karahanoglu in September. Meanwhile, there is
evidence of an unholy alliance between ultranationalists and anti-EU
elements in the Army, some of whose members have been implicated in
attempted extrajudicial killings of Kurdish activists.

The stage is set for a showdown between the military and Erdogan next
May as the AK-dominated Parliament selects Turkey’s new president.

The choice is entirely Erdogan’s, thanks to his control of the
legislature. Some speculate he will take the post himself–a move
likely to infuriate Turkey’s secularist bureaucracy, judiciary and
military, who suspect him of harboring a hidden Islamist agenda
and cannot forgive him his past as a leader of the radical Islamist
Welfare Party, banned in 1997. Erdogan himself was jailed four months
for sedition as recently as 1999.

Perhaps things are not as bleak as they appear. The collapse of
Turkey’s EU bid may sharpen the country’s internal ethnic, religious
and political divides–but that does not necessarily mean they will
erupt into open conflict of the sort that, most recently in 1997,
prompted the country’s military to step in. And while the mutual
disillusionment between Turkey and Europe may be deep, Turkey remains
more Western, in terms of culture and economics, than it has ever been
before. From this it will not retreat. "Turkey’s place is in Europe;
any talk of ‘alternatives’ is just talk," says former ambassador
Ozdem Sanberk. And yes, Turks may be turning more religious. But
those same polls from Bosporus University also show that support for
purely religion-based political parties has fallen, from 41 percent to
25 percent, over the past seven years. In other words: religion yes,
but religion-based politics, no. Meanwhile, another sign of the times:
while more people now favor scrapping the longstanding ban on wearing
headscarves in schools and public offices, the number of Turkish
women actually wearing them has dropped from 16 to 11 percent over
the past seven years.

Whatever the outcome, Turkey’s struggle is going to have serious
repercussions. Europe’s alienated and angry Muslim minorities, for
instance, will hardly be encouraged to come to terms with Western
culture if Europe sends a clear signal that Turks cannot be full
Europeans. And in the wider Middle East, Turkey’s growing role as a
model will be undermined by a break with Brussels. "Middle Easterners’
disillusionment with the failures of Arab nationalism and the extremism
of fundamental Islam is making them reassess the Turkish route,"
says Hugh Pope, a writer on regional affairs. "More and more opinion
leaders see hope in what appears to be Turkey’s successful synthesis
of Islam and modernity." Will that leadership evaporate if Turkey
fails to join the European club?

Many strategists in Washington–and not just neoconservatives–fear
that an EU-Turkey split will resonate through the Muslim world as a
major geopolitical defeat for Western values. "Turkey is to the West
what Germany was in the cold war … a frontline state," former U.S.

ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke told EU Commissioner Rehn at
the "Who Lost Turkey?" symposium. Turkey’s progress "is keenly watched"
by its neighbors, acknowledges Foreign Minister Gul. "We have been
a rare beacon of stability in an inherently turbulent region."

Will that beacon flicker and die without the EU? "The government
can’t turn its back to the EU," says one Erdogan foreign-policy
adviser, who is not authorized to speak on the record. "And the
EU cannot turn its back on Turkey." The two sides have too much in
common to split completely. Rather, there’s the makings, long term,
of an entente. Europeans already talk of a special partnership,
short of membership. Turkey has said it will never settle for that,
but we’d best hope for some accommodation. Everyone is poorer for the
failure of vision that has scuppered one of the great civilizational
projects of our times.

A POLITICS OF MYTH
Seda Muradyan

Open Democracy, UK
Dec 12 2006

As women in Armenia renew efforts to secure their role in politics,
Seda Muradyan examines the challenges they confront, from flowers in
place of debate, to systemic corruption.

Twenty-two parties recently signed a document making proposals for
Armenia’s electoral code, to broaden women’s access to politics. It
suggests a 25 percent quota for women in party lists, up from the
current provision of only 3 percent. But the chances of any real
change emerging may be slim, given lack of support from two of the
largest factions in government. Women make up more than 65 percent
of the literate population with higher education. Yet they face an
uphill struggle to achieve political influence.

Armenia ranks among the lowest countries in the world for women’s
representation in parliament, with a participation rate of only 5
percent. In local government, this figure is below 2 percent. Seven
of the National Assembly’s 131 members are women, while one minister
and three deputy ministers are female. So why is women’s intellectual
potential neglected in state management? Women engaged in the public
sphere divide the underlying reasons into myths and realities.

Seda Muradyan is Armenia country director for the Institute of War
and Peace Reporting (IWPR)

Myth or reality? "It is cultural: politics is a man’s business"

One of the commonest explanations for women’s exclusion says politics
is a man’s business and Armenian women more frequently see themselves
as housewives, mothers and wives.

Alvard Petrosyan, of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (a ruling
coalition member) does not think this is a myth. "Armenian women love
ruling the country or the family from behind their husbands’ backs.

Might it be true that it is important to maintain a womanly image? I
keep this in mind even when I am at the National Assembly… I
frequently hold back and think: ‘let these men speak out here’. In
cases where I become extremely active, I don’t show it off, and the
reason is in the nature of Armenian women." However, she is confident
that for the country to develop harmoniously both sexes should be
equally represented at the National Assembly.

In contrast, Hranush Kharatyan, head of the agency for ethnic
minorities, says "frequently we become ‘cultural conservatives’,
although our culture has no traditions of opposing women’s
activities". No matter how much women in Armenia might dispute cultural
factors, the moral-psychological atmosphere dictates certain attitudes
towards women politicians.

In 2005, Gagik Beglaryan won the Kentron community local administration
election over his rival Ruzan Khachatryan, the only female candidate
for the post. Throughout the campaign Gagik Beglaryan presented his
female rival with bunches of flowers instead of holding ideological
debates with her. On 8 March 2004, some five hundred women marched
to the presidential residence to demand the ousting of the incumbent
authorities. The president claimed, "those women either have no
families or lack family warmth". (Ruzan Khachatryan disputes this
crude equation. "There are women in Armenia who are actively involved
in social and political work, but it does not keep them back from
being caring mothers and loving wives.")

Meanwhile, a 2006 Gallup survey measuring pre-election tendencies
revealed that, presented with a choice, Armenian voters would give
preference to male candidates. Only 6 percent of voters were ready
to vote for women against 64 percent support for male candidates.

Political analyst Aghasi Yenokyan believes that men’s predominance
stems from social factors, and that women’s inclusion remains a mere
cosmetic measure from parties. "Women have not traditionally been
engaged in politics in Armenia. It is not perceived as a matter of
their daily activities. They are still not formed as a social group
that could demand and get benefits."

So is there a desire and understanding for women’s participation in
politics? Khosrov Harutyunyan, chairman of the Christian-Democratic
Party of Armenia, regrets he can’t see such demand, though he strongly
believes that many things – from tolerance to corruption – would
radically change if women played a decisive political role. Yet he
is confident that women’s suppression by men is not the problem.

He too attributes women’s lack of participation to social attitudes.

But scratch the surface, and the reality may be more fluid than the
myth. Armenia’s national UNIFEM program coordinator Ilona Ter-Minasyan
refutes the idea that the Armenian mentality is an obstacle. "There
have been many other things that our mentality once lacked. But we
are already seeing change in some spheres despite the fact only a
short period of time has elapsed. We can’t say our mentality in five
hundred years will be the same as it was three hundred years ago. We
can influence our mentality, to change aspects of it, and we must
do so. We need to realise the necessity and orient ourselves to the
country’s development."

Myth: "Women are unwilling to go into politics"

That women are unwilling to go into politics is one of the most
irritating stereotypes for politically active Armenian women. Women
politicians are confident that they are "simply not allowed to come
close to politics".

Eighteen women ran for seats in the National Assembly during the 2003
parliamentary election in Armenia. Only one was elected.

"Today the deputies in the National Assembly are mostly those who
have gained property in the course of the time and their aim is to
keep that property. They will hardly make way to others. That is
why they need a myth about the unwillingness of the women to go into
politics," says Jemma Hasratyan, chair of the Association of Women
with University Education.

Some experts think that the view that women are to some extent
unready to be engaged in politics relates to women’s lack of political
experience rather than inadequate knowledge or education.

Ruzan Khachatryan is confident there is quite a big number of
politically active women, but they are not allowed to enter the field
because the opponents exploit ‘dirty political mechanisms’ like the
use of force, violence and fraud. She says this is why women do not
want to be engaged in politics, despite their suitability.

Realities

Once myths are dispensed with, the underlying realities become
clearer. The political and economic spheres are adjusted to suit male
managers, such that women are more likely to bend to the system than
to struggle against it. Women require the backing of a political
party to enter politics, and cannot take part independently. The
highest positions they can hope to achieve are head of an agency,
advisor or deputy minister – not positions that would allow them to
reform the system. "A woman moving in this milieu needs to adopt the
laws and the rules. The environment does not create the conditions
for a woman to manifest her other qualities," says Ilona Ter-Minasyan.

And the system is frequently corrupt. A recent survey by Transparency
International showed that 62.9 percent of the Armenian population
thinks corruption has grown in the last three years. Amalia Kostanyan
of Transparency International is confident that the system in Armenia
is "corrupt from top to toe".

Women politicians think a certain percentage of representation would
help them avoid obeying the rules of the game set by men, in terms
of corruption, and prevent them falling victim to the system.

Will quotas solve the problem?

International organisations promote women’s increased participation
in politics, in the hope of building democracy (a key requirement in a
recently adopted action plan for greater cooperation with the European
Union, for example). But their efforts have so far been successful only
in the non-governmental sector, where women play a major role. Analysts
believe the overall situation will remain unchanged unless women are
artificially included in politics, with steps on the state level to
promote women’s entrance into the political arena.

UN expert Dubravka Simonovich thinks the implementation of quotas is
an effective mechanism to redress the balance, while specifying that
it is not "a sign of discrimination towards men, because convention
provides for quotas to promote women’s participation in big politics".

"A parliament that does not represent the interests of the half of the
population is not representative. It’s not an aim in itself, but the
balanced representation of men and women provides the opportunity to
consider problems raised by both men and women," says Jemma Hasratyan.

Nevertheless, many believe legislation alone will not solve
the problem: attitudes also need to change. Both opposition and
pro-governmental parties accept the need for more women in the National
Assembly. Yet they agree the attempt to artificially increase their
number will not be very productive.

At the parliamentary election 2003 it was decided that 5 percent of
the party lists would be allotted to women. Because the position of
women on the lists was not specified, men immediately took advantage,
says Hermine Naghdalyan, elected on the Republican Party list. Women
were included to meet legal requirements, but their names were set
in the lowest places.

To escape such disappointment in future the introduction of quotas
needs to be accompanied by a relevant work with the political parties,
says Ilona Ter-Minasyan. Women’s names should be set in every fourth
place in the list, and women should not be included simply for
being women, but so they are engaged in the development of human
and intellectual resources. Foreign experience shows the quantity
gradually turns into a quality.

Looking ahead: election 2007

Parliamentary elections in May 2007 will be another test of Armenian
democracy. Armenia has failed its previous tests. It is too early to
forecast the results this time, but the unofficial campaigns already
launched do not inspire much hope.

The Republican Party of Armenia, the largest coalitional political
force in Armenia, has chosen to target young people by engaging them
in various events and organising concerts by Russian pop stars for
them. Gagik Tsarukyan of the Prosperous Armenia Party pays young
people’s tuition fees, distributes potatoes and seeds, and organises
activities for rural villagers. Despite the prohibition of business
activities by politicians, many members of the National Assembly
of Armenia don’t bother concealing their violations, and their
entrepreneurial endeavours enable them to spend large amounts of
money gaining voters’ hearts.

These unofficial campaigns tend to replace intellectual and
policy competition, and distort the democratic process, since such
"benevolence" – which is not within the responsibilities or the
salaries of National Assembly members – generally amounts to bribery.

Such methods add to the obstacles women face, as they are less able
to raise funds for campaigns.

So perhaps democracy itself will be the force that properly enables
women’s participation. "The artificial involvement of women in
politics will not make the country democratic. If the country becomes
democratic, women’s inclusion in politics will grow without special
efforts," says National Assembly member Shavarsh Kocharyan.

In any case, it seems the two will need to go hand in hand.

Lena Badeyan of the A1+ TV Company also contributed to this article.

esolution_1325/armenia_4176.jsp

"ENDLESS VISION" TO CONTEND FOR GRAMMY

Mehr News Agency, Iran
Dec 12 2006

TEHRAN, Dec. 12 (MNA) — "Endless Vision", a live recording of
world-renowned musicians Hossein Alizadeh of Iran and Djivan Gasparyan
of Armenia, has been nominated in the category of Best Traditional
World Music Album at the 49th Annual Grammy Awards.

The album was recorded at open-air concerts in Tehran from September
4 to 6, 2003 before a total audience of 12,000 people, with Vazgen
Markaryan, Afsaneh Rasaii, Hurshid Biabani, Armen Ghazaryan, Ali
Bustan, Mohammadreza Ebrahimi, Ali Samadpur, and Behzad Mirzaii
accompanying the two musicians in the shows.

Alizadeh, 56, is one of Iran’s leading traditional music composers
and musicians. He is a virtuoso on the six-stringed Persian tar but
also possesses great mastery of the four-stringed setar.

Along with Kayhan Kalhor, he recently left the band of Iran’s living
legend of traditional music, vocalist Mohammadreza Shajarian, to seek
new opportunities, but all acknowledged the breakup was on good terms.

Alizadeh is also the inventor of a stringed instrument, sallaneh,
which is a sort of bass tar.

He performed tar on Shajarian’s album "Faryad", which was nominated
for a Grammy Award in 2006.

"Ghazal", an album that resulted from a collaboration between Kalhor
and Indian sitar virtuoso Shujaat Hussein Khan, was nominated for a
Grammy in 2004.

The world’s most prestigious prizes for excellence in the recording
industry, the Grammy Awards are given in the United States by the
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS).

The awards honor recordings in musical fields including pop, rock,
jazz, blues, rap, classical, and folk.

The 49th Annual Grammy Awards will be held at the Staples Center in
Los Angeles on February 11, 2007.

GROUP AIMS TO BLOCK ANTENNAS
By Christina Pazzanese, Globe Correspondent

Boston Globe, MA
Dec 8 2006

Neighbors fight plan for 12 more

A proposal to erect a dozen cellular antennas atop an office building
in Watertown’s Coolidge Square has prompted neighbors to say enough
is enough.

Resident Norman Adler objected to a plan by Sprint Nextel to put
antennas on the 80 Bigelow Ave. office building at a Zoning Board
of Appeals hearing last week . Adler filed a petition signed by 125
residents. Council president Clyde Younger and councilors Angeline
Kounelis and Marilyn Petitto Devaney spoke in support of the neighbors.

Adler, who lives nearby in the Coolidge Village Condominiums complex,
said neighbors, including a large number of seniors, oppose the
antennas on the grounds that they would decrease property values,
block views, and be aesthetically "discordant" with the surroundings.

"Something is wrong here," said Adler. "We shouldn’t be exposing kids
to this."

The neighborhood includes five schools, a public park, several multi
family residences, and four churches. Adler noted that other cities,
including New York City, have limited cellular antennas so close
to schools.

The zoning board, which has been considering the plan since October,
is scheduled to resume hearing the matter Jan. 3.

Alegria Caragay, who also lives in the Village condos, said the
application should be denied because the town already has more than 100
antennas, 59 of which are within a half-mile radius of Coolidge Square.

Caragay said the company’s contention that it needs antennas to fill
a service gap is unfounded.

She recently surveyed 25 people at the Arsenal Mall, a local Shaw’s
supermarket, and around the Hosmer School to ask about their cellular
service. A dozen people told her they used Sprint or Nextel , and of
those, only one reported trouble with reception , said Caragay, adding
she believes the company wants to fill gaps in Cambridge and Belmont.

Mark Elliott, a spokesman for Sprint, said the antennas were necessary
but declined to say how many customers would be affected or quantify
how much better their cellular reception will be if the antennas go up.

Local zoning ordinances cannot be used by the board to deny such
applications, said Harry Vlachos, the zoning board chairman. "We have
to look at them case by case, and they have to show there is a need."

The US Telecom Act of 1996 prohibits zoning officials from basing
a denial on the grounds that cellular antennas may harm residents’
health, he said.

Vlachos said he was concerned about the affect on the skyline of
adding the antennas. "That building is already higher than what’s
normally allowed," he said.

The four-story building, which is owned by the Armenian Cultural
Society , houses the Armenian National Committee of America (Eastern
Region) , the Armenian Youth Federation , and the Hairenik Association
Bookstore . It is nearly 40 feet tall, putting it 10 feet above the
town’s 30-foot limit for a neighborhood business zone, said Nancy
Scott, zoning enforcement officer. The antennas would add another 15
feet above the maximum allowed under zoning rules, she said .

Zoning board members have also raised concerns about the placement
of a ground-level electronic cabinet. Originally, the cabinet was to
take up a parking space, but officials pointed out that the building
already lacks the minimum 15 spaces — another issue that will have
to be addressed.

Sprint Nextel attorney Ricardo Sousa could not be reached for
comment. But Watertown attorney Ara H. Margosian, who represents the
building owner, said he was only hired to protect the rights of the
property owner, not push the zoning board for a permit. "You won’t
be able to see antennas on top of the roof," he said.

Despite Adler’s perception that the town has been "very permissive"
in giving out permits to cellular providers, Vlachos said that’s
simply not the case. "I don’t think anyone’s coming to Watertown to
put up antennas," he said.

"We’re encouraged the thing has not gone through at this point,"
said Adler .

In 2003, Sprint sued the town after the zoning board denied its
application to put six antennas at the former Rosary Academy . The
company was eventually allowed to install one antenna, said Scott.

The board denied T-Mobile’s request to erect a 120-foot antenna tower
atop the Oakley Country Club in 2004. The company filed suit but
dropped it after the town allowed four antennas elsewhere, said Scott.