Aysor, Armenia
May 1 2010
Lilit Mkrtchian and Elina Danielian play in draw
In round five of the Grand Prix FIDE among women, taking place in
Nalchik, Russia’s Tatiana Kosintseva has again won, this time
overcoming Georgia’s Nana Dzagnidze.
Armenia’s Lilit Mkrtchian and Elina Danielian played in draw.
A day off is offered to chess players for a rest till the round six.
AZG DAILY #77, 29-04-2010
LISTENERS REACT TO RFE/RL’S BROADCAST ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE:
"How Disgusting!"
Hrant Darbinian
"Well, of course, there was no Genocide. It’s the Armenians who
killed themselves, they like it" – that’s how one of the listeners
reacted to broadcast titled "Why so many historians in Turkey study the
issue of Armenian Genocide". Russian Service of American Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) aired that item on April 22 and then
placed the text on its Internet site. The feed came from RFE/RL
correspondent in Istanbul.
To its credit (or disgrace), Radio Liberty got a lot of feedback.
"Ahmadinejad denies Holocaust, madam from Istanbul denies Armenian
Genocide. Congratulations to Radio Liberty – you are in a good
company!", "It’s miserable for such a site as Radio Liberty.
Especially on the eve of April 24. It `s not a worthy contribution but
an editorial window dressing on the occasion of Genocide Memorial Day.
Ashamed of Radio Liberty", "To hear them, so it is the Armenians who
massacred the whole Turkish nation=85", "Radio Liberty should apologize
to its audience. Is it a high standard of journalism of Radio Liberty?",
"Shame on you! Shame and disgrace!"=85
What outraged RFE/RL’s listeners and readers? The views and opinions
of Turkish historians? Not only that, although the vast majority of
respondents does not share them.
"You presented the opinion of Turkish side. Try to ask the Armenians"
The broadcast from Istanbul aired fifteen minutes — infinitely long
for the radio feed and mercilessly dragged out for a listener. This in
itself is unprofessional, however, question is, of course, not the
format but its filling.
For example, RFE/RL listener could learn that American professor
Justin McCarthy "argues that the Genocide is but the historians’
invention" (meaning: not of Turkish historians); that the book "by
famous British historian Norman Stone=85 ‘World War One: A Short
History’ completely refutes all theses of genocide". Quoting from that
book, RFE/RL author explains why the Armenians had chosen April 24th as
the day to commemorate their victims. It occurs that on that date "the
chieftains of Armenian gangs who betrayed the Ottoman Empire were
apprehended". Uninitiated listener could accept it just as one takes any
information from authoritative neutral source. Any Armenian, however,
shudders at hearing that, because it is on April 24, 1915 that the
blossom of Armenian intelligentsia in Turkey was arrested, several
hundred people – parliament deputies, writers, clergymen, doctors,
journalists, actors, artists, publishers=85 Most of them were brutally
killed or perished from malnutrition, thirst, physical privations.
It is not our aim to repeat, then deny or seriously challenge all the
nonsense and outright lies that found its way into RFE/RL report. Just
as it is not our goal here to prove how groundless the claims of the
quoted Turkish historians or some schoolteacher from Istanbul are.
Nevertheless, there are such evident absurdities that is impossible to
overlook.
In RFE/RL broadcast aired in anticipation of the 95th anniversary of
Armenian Genocide, "speaks one of the few witnesses of those terrible
events, Kemal Aakay. He is about one hundred and seven years old". Here
is what he shared with RFE/RL Istanbul correspondent – not as a
historian, but as an eyewitness and participant of the events: "In the
province of Van the Armenians rose in revolt. In our village there were
about two hundred people, mostly women, men went to war. I was five
years old. I do not remember everything, but recall that all were herded
into one hut, a few days we spent without food, we were only given
water, then all were shot; I was protected by my grandmother, she
covered me with her body…".
How is it that the old man, born about 1903, was in 1915, in his own
words, just five, not 12 years old? And why such an obvious absurdity
that undercuts the credibility of the entire heartbreaking testimony,
was not noticed either by RFE/RL contributor in Istanbul, or by
moderating editor in Prague? The result — in listener’s reaction: "To
give such a story on the eve of Remembrance Day for the victims of
Armenian Genocide is mean, to say the least. I do not know what thought
its author, but what is for me even more confusing is unprofessionalizm
of Radio Liberty. Your article is biased and of anti-Armenian
character". Another voice: "Let’s also say there were no massacres in
Sumgait and Baku in 1988! One’s heart bleeds to hear and read such a
nonsense, especially on a day like this, especially from Russians=85"
Meanwhile, the RFE/RL Istanbul correspondent answered — more or less
— her headlined question: Why the study of Armenian genocide became the
mass occupation of Turkish historians. Because, as she notes at the end
of her item, "today the debates about history occupy a central place in
Turkish politics. The Turkish public is extremely politicized and
fractured, including views on the Armenian issue". Of course, she should
of talked with those Turks who, in her words, "unreservedly recognize
the Armenian Genocide". That, to the detriment of RFE/RL listeners, did
not happen. At the same time, to be fair, the stringer reporting from
Istanbul, hardly could or should be expected to present the Armenian
position.
Does it mean that RFE/RL listeners are up in arms without good cause?
No, it does not. For the proper addressee of their frustration is the
American Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as the source of information.
In this case – of misinformation. Because the radio broadcast on
Turkish position, unless it was accompanied or preceded by the position
Armenian, as well as the positions of those, by now quite numerous,
states that have officially recognized the bloody ethnic nightmare in
the Ottoman Empire of 1915 – 1923 as the Armenian Genocide, hangs in
the air. In the truest sense of the word. Such a broadcast becomes (and
became!) just a distorted one-sided presentation of the reasons and
circumstances of Armenian national tragedy – in Turkish view only,
while the victim of the crime was practically rendered silent by the
media organization, by RFE/RL. The radio is not a book with the pages to
be turned over back and forth. RFE/RL is not a volume of "Judgement in
Nuremberg" where one can read first the speeches of accusation and then
of the defense and vice versa. This is why that broadcast by American
RFE/RL is a cry of unprofessionalizm, which caused a painful offense to
the listeners.
Not only to Armenian listeners, but in the first place – to them:
"That article must be translated into Armenian and reprinted in the
local press. After that conduct a survey – how many Armenians will
still go to the RFE/RL website, how many will switch on the set during
Radio Liberty broadcasting hours, how many young journalists would like
to deal with it ".
A fish rots from the head
Where did it come from – such a blatant editorial unprofessionalizm?
It came from indifference. And that, in its turn, stems from the general
atmosphere at RFE/RL – the atmosphere of hypocrisy and cynicism.
Hence, the unbalanced broadcast items of monstrous proportions and
equally monstrous effect. For the editors could not care less.
Practically all the staff of RFE/RL language desks and services know
that they are just the rightless mercenaries hired to talk about human
rights – on the air for the pay. All of them know that RFE/RL
president has over them such a power that not a single authoritarian
ruler in the Radios’ broadcasting area could ever boast – in his own
person, he is a policemen, a prosecutor in his own court without
defense, a judge whose verdict is final without appeal, and the executor
of his own judgements. Everyone knows that those prerogatives of RFE/RL
boss are not included in employment contracts but imposed on RFE/RL
foreign employees by its internal policies; however, that feudal
employment status is called a "free choice of law".
Everyone at RFE/RL knows that the court case of Armenian Anna
Karapetian v. RFE/RL is pending in the Czech Supreme court; and the
lawsuit of Croatian citizen Snjezana Pelivan is submitted to the
European Court of Human Rights – everyone knows that, but is afraid to
discuss it out of fear to be fired without any explanation, just the way
Anna Karapetian and Snjezana Pelivan were fired. Everyone knows that
international media cover these court cases regularly – but not the
RFE/RL own webpages. Everyone knows that Czech parliament already twice,
in connection with Karapetian’s and Pelivan’s lawsuits, discussed
the issue of national discrimination of RFE/RL foreign employees.
Everyone knows that RFE/RL personnel policies are developed and
approved by the Broadcasting Board of Governors in Washington, and that
Hillary Clinton is the member of that Board, as well as of RFE/RL Board
of Directors, so that for them there is no official place and no
official to complain to. Everyone knows that, as a Senator, Hillary
Clinton strongly supported the approval by the Congress of a resolution
that would brand the extermination of Armenians in Ottoman Empire as
Genocide. And everyone knows that, as the Secretary of State, she,
equally strongly, opposes such a resolution: the Communists claim
dialectics of history, the anti-Communists – dialectics of chair.
It’s a big principal difference as everybody knows=85
Everybody knows, as an indignant listener wrote to RFE/RL, that "Radio
Liberty has long ceased to be the Radio Liberty". Or, as in the last
issue of The Journal of International Security Affairs, Washington,
wrote Victor J. Yasman, a political analyst who worked over twenty years
at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich and Prague, "Today, RFE/RL
is just a shadow of its former self", and explained why: Empty words
diverge with deeds, and the deeds are drifting from bad to worse.
Meanwhile, if one is to judge by tone and content of the listeners’
reaction to RFE/RL "looking from Turkey" broadcast on Armenian genocide,
hypocritical and inept bureaucracy in Prague and Washington keeps
laboring on further destruction of RFE/RL reputation and integrity. In
the words of Mario Corty, former RFE/RL Russian Service director, "Those
among the old KGB and the new FSB officials, who see the U.S. as an
enemy rather than a valuable and generous partner of Russia, could only
be enormously happy with such leaders in charge of U.S. international
broadcasting as the current U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors
executive team. They have no reason to worry or need to do anything
themselves to undermine U.S.-funded broadcasts; it is being done for
them by these American government officials who are now trying hard to
hide their mistakes from the White House, the U.S. Congress and the
American public."
For how long they’ll be successful?
PS. On April 26, the text version of RFE/RL broadcast "Why so many
historians in Turkey study the issue of Armenian genocide" and the
listeners’ feedback letters were removed from Internet site of the
Russian Service.
May 2, 2010
Will Adams is editor-in-chief of wiwibloggs.com
Posted: April 30, 2010
Armenia’s Eurovision 2010 Song: ‘Apricot Stone’ By Eva Rivas
Huffpost –
Slighty sweet and fleshy, the apricot works well in summer fruit salads and
as a purée on pancakes. For Armenians, however, it also stirs national
pride. Known by scientists as prunus armeniaca, the fruit is thought to have
originated in Armenia and, over time, it became a symbol of the nation.
In "Apricot Stone," Eva Rivas builds on that, using the fruit as a tasty
vehicle to discuss the Armenian diaspora. She portrays an Armenian émigré
who preserves her identity by clutching an apricot pit: "May the winter stay
away/ From my harvest night and day/ May God bless and keep my cherished
fruit/ Grow my tree up to the sky/ Once I waved my home goodbye/ I just
wanna go back to my roots."
And while the apricot isn’t an obvious candidate for controversy, it’s
landed Rivas smack in the middle of Armenia’s ongoing political brouhaha
with Turkey. In February, a Turkish composer claimed that Rivas’ song hints
at the Armenian Genocide, an event Turkey does not officially recognize:
"Many, many years ago/ When I was a little child/ Mama told me you should
know/ Our world is cruel and wild/ But to make your way through cold and
heat/Love is all that you need." Critics also say the repetition of
"motherland" flames conflict over ancient Armenian territory now controlled
by Turkey.
Rivas, an Armenian born in Russia, denies those allegations and maintains
that the song revolves around cultural dislocation. She’s right to defend
herself. Last year, the European Broadcasting Union, the body behind
Eurovision, disqualified the entry from Georgia because they felt it took a
political jab at Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The entry? "We Don’t
Want To Put In."
Armenia’s official preview video spares the viewer theatrics and instead
focuses on Rivas in the recording studio. She appears to sing from the
depths of her soul, and oozes emotion that helps you look past the
occasionally nonsensical lyrics: "Now I see the northern stars/ Shining
brightly in the storm/ And I’ve got an avatar/ Of my love to keep me warm."
Close-ups convey Rivas’ passion and suggest she could make a healthy living
as an Angelina Jolie impersonator.
Deliberately or not, the video also captures a former Soviet Republic
integrating into Europe. Modernity, we see, has arrived in Armenia with its
expensive computer equipment and synthesizers. Rivas, a young Armenian
singing with a stellar English accent, embodies a sophisticated and educated
nation ready to do business with the West. The jury is still out regarding
her exposed midriff.
Prediction
Armenia has never placed lower than tenth in the Eurovision final and Rivas
will keep that record going. Identity often scores contestants points with
Eurovision voters. Rivas, who has mixed Armenian, Greek and Russian
ancestry, went on a promotional tour through Greece and Cyprus to build on
that. Armenia also has the built-in advantage of being a former Soviet
Republic: there’s a tendency for them to award one another points, perhaps
stemming from shared historical connections and common tastes in music.
Armenia will advance easily from the second semi-final (assuming Rivas
avoids backstage conflict with Turkey, who also compete in that heat). In
the final, Rivas will likely finish in the Top 5, but won’t challenge for
the top spot. The professional jury that comprises half of the vote won’t
look past her occasionally questionable lyrics or the fact this is a song
ostensibly about a piece of fruit. That gives Eurovision favorites
Azerbaijan, Germany and Israel a slight edge.
MY SON WAS CRUELLY KILLED
Lragir.am
20/04/10
The relatives of the 24-year old Vahan Khalafyan, who, according
to the police chief Alik Sargsyan, allegedly committed "suicide"
in Charentsavan police department, are convinced that he was killed.
According to the relatives, Vahan was tortured and then killed in
the department.
Vahan’s mother Anahit says that her son had a cross-shaped stab wound
on his chest, his whole face and body were covered with scratches
and bruises, two stab wounds were found on his stomach.
Vahan Khalafyan’s mother outraged that during a press conference Alik
Sargsyan said, that the police arrested her son and he laid hands
on himself. But how could Vahan draw a cross on his chest with a
knife, and then make another hit in the stomach? "If the police chief
behaves this way, there is nothing to say nothing about the rest’,
said the mother.
The Police head motivates the version of suicide by Vahan’s
"pathological tendency", because of which Vahan was found unfit to
military service.
The mother said that she liberated her son from his service in the
army. She says that it is the police to suffer pathology.
Vahan Khalafyan was taken to the police on suspicion of theft without
a warrant and related documents. Anahit says she learnt about it only
when she came back home from work, but Vahan was taken to the police
in the morning. He was kept in the office from 10.30 to 4.30, was
beaten so that his whole body was blue. My son was killed in agony,
his mother said.
The relatives of Vahan tell that they visited him twice and brought
to eat for him. They say they visited him near 16 o’clock and when
they came back after one hour, the deputy head of Charentsavan police
said Vahan killed himself.
The police brought up a criminal case under article "incitement to
suicide". The case is assigned to the Special Investigation Service. A
forensic examination has been held. Several theories are put forward,
including the murder of Vahan in the Charentsavan police department.
Vahan’s relatives are determined to reveal the truth and to call for
responsibility those guilty. Note none of the police officers attended
Vahan’s funeral.
MARIE JOVANOVICH : LE 24 AVRIL EST LE JOUR OU TOUS LES AMERICAINS SOUTIENNENT LE PEUPLE ARMENIEN
Stephane
armenews
30 avril 2010
ARMENIE
Le 24 avril est le jour où tous les Americains soutiennent le peuple
armenien a declare l’Ambassadeur americain en Armenie Marie Jovanovich
aux journalistes au Complexe Tsitsenakaberd a Erevan.
" Nous nous rappelons ce qui est arrive en 1915 et exprimons notre
solidarite avec le peuple armenien dans le monde entier " a-t-elle
ajoute.
" Le president des Etats-Unis Barack Obama doit prendre la decision
tout seul s’il faut employer le mot de genocide ou pas " a dit
l’Ambassadeur americain en Armenie Marie Jovanovich.
Cet annee Obama a encore employe le mot " Mets Yeghern " pour
caracteriser les evenements de 1915.
LA VISITE JUGEE HISTORIQUE DU CATHOLICOS GAREGUINE II A BAKOU
Stephane
armenews
30 avril 2010
Lors de sa visite a Bakou aux fins de prendre part a un sommet
~cumenique rassemblant des representants de toutes les confessions,
le Catholicos armenien s’est entretenu avec le chef spirituel
des musulmans chiites d’Azerbaïdjan, Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahchukur
Pashazade, ainsi qu’avec le patriarche russe Kirill. Les trois
dignitaires religieux ont lance un appel en faveur de la paix au
Karabagh dans une declaration conjointe rendue publique a l’issue
de leur reunion. La declaration encourage les Presidents armenien et
azerbaïdjanais, ainsi que les mediateurs internationaux, a continuer
de chercher un compromis en vue d’un règlement durable du conflit. "
Il est extremement important de ne pas permettre un retour a des
moyens militaires pour resoudre les questions litigieuses ", lit-on
dans leur declaration. " Par nos efforts de paix, nous entretenons
l’espoir de voir s’effacer les divisions, les obstacles et les haines
actuels ; la guerre, si elle reprend, n’aura pas de fin ", poursuit
le texte des trois chefs religieux, qui se felicitent par ailleurs de
la liberation des prisonniers de guerre et condamne tous les " actes
de violence et de vandalisme " commis dans la zone de conflit. Le
catholicos armenienne a propose d’organiser un sommet similaire a
Erevan l’annee prochaine auquel il a d’ores et deja invite le chef
spirituel azerbaïdjanais.
Ambassade de France en Armenie
US CONFLICT RESOLUTION POLICY BACKFIRES IN YEREVAN
Vladimir Socor
Georgian Daily
m_content&task=view&id=18405&Itemid=13 2
April 29 2010
Georgia
The US State Department seems disappointed, but not entirely surprised,
by Yerevan’s April 22 suspension of Armenian-Turkish "normalization."
Assistant Secretary of State, Philip Gordon, in charge of this policy,
finds solace in Armenian President, Serzh Sargsyan’s decision to
suspend, rather than terminate the effort; and hopes that Yerevan
would continue to cooperate with the US-driven process goal. Gordon
as well as State Department Spokesman, Philip Crowley, argued that
such normalization meets the interests of Armenia, Turkey, and other
[unnamed] countries in the region (press releases cited by News.Az
and Arminfo, April 23).
These statements, however, seem to ignore Azerbaijan’s view and the
change in Turkey’s view. Inasmuch as the normalization focuses on
opening the Turkish-Armenian border unconditionally, or no longer
linked to a withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijan’s interior
-Baku deemed it to be against its interests all along. Ankara had
rallied to Baku’s view last December already.
Since April 2009, US President, Barack Obama’s administration has
pressed for opening Turkey’s border with Armenia unconditionally
Thus, the October 2009 Zurich protocols, strongly backed by the US,
required Turkey to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia and
open the mutual border "without preconditions."
Washington’s policy seems driven primarily by domestic politics. The
administration hopes to remove the annual drama of Armenian genocide
recognition from the center-stage of US politics. It seeks its way out
of the dilemma of losing Turkey versus any loss of the US Armenian
vote. "Normalization" of Turkish-Armenian relations, centered on
the re-opening of that border, was offered as a substitute for the
unfulfilled electoral-campaign promises to recognize an Armenian
genocide in Ottoman Turkey.
Washington’s normalization concept, however, has also turned out to
be unfulfilled. Tilting sharply in Armenia’s favor at Azerbaijan’s
expense, it backfired first in Azerbaijan and shortly afterward in
Turkey. Instead of de-aligning Ankara from Baku, as seemed briefly
possible, it led Turkey and Azerbaijan to close ranks against an
unconditional "normalization" of Turkish-Armenian relations, prior
to a first-stage withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijan.
The US initiative seemed unrelated to any regional strategy in the
South Caucasus. It actually coincided with an overall reduction
of US engagement in that region, downgrading the earlier goals of
conflict-resolution and promotion of energy projects. Moreover,
it risked splitting its strategic partner Azerbaijan from Turkey,
compromising the basis for a subsequent return to an active US policy
in the region.
Previous US administrations had also proposed to open
the Turkish-Armenian border, but never as a goal in itself,
unconditionally, or by some deadline in the political calendar, as
has most recently been the case. Moreover, those earlier discussions
considered opening both the Turkish and Azeri borders with Armenia,
as part of an overall settlement, without dividing Ankara and Baku
from each other on that account. Those border-opening proposals were
being discussed as one element in comprehensive negotiations toward
stage-by-stage resolution of the Armenian-Azeri conflict, and in
conditional linkage with Armenian troop withdrawal from inner-Azeri
districts, again in contrast to Washington’s recent proposals.
Yet, there is an element of continuity between those earlier
border-opening proposals and the latest one. That common element is
the optimistic belief that open borders and freedom to trade are
a prerequisite to resolution of conflict and durable peace. This
carryover from Manchesterianism often colored US political debates
about the possibility of opening the Azeri and Turkish borders with
Armenia. Yet, the diplomatic process integrated this issue within the
broader negotiations. It did not single it out from that context or
allow it to become a currency of exchange in US domestic politics.
The logic of the administration’s initiative from 2009 to date has
implied that Washington would "deliver" the re-opening of Turkey’s
border with Armenia; while Turkey would in turn "deliver" Azerbaijan
by opening the Turkish-Armenian border, without insisting on the
withdrawal of Armenian troops from inner-Azeri territories. That
conditionality is a long-established one in these negotiations.
However, Washington currently insists that the two processes be
separated and that Turkey opens that border unconditionally as per
the October 2009 Zurich protocols.
Breaking that linkage would irreparably compromise the chances of a
peaceful, stage-by-stage settlement of the Armenian-Azeri conflict. It
would indefinitely prolong the Armenian military presence inside
Azerbaijan, placing Russia in a commanding position to arbitrate the
conflict, with unprecedented leverage on an Azerbaijan alienated from
its strategic allies.
Washington had persuaded Ankara to break that conditionality in
the October 2009 protocols, which came close to splitting Turkey
from Azerbaijan. However, Turkey reinstated that conditionality
unambiguously from December 2009 onward. Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, declared this repeatedly and publicly, contradicting Obama
and the US State Department on this account at the December 2009 and
April 2010 Washington summits and afterward. Following the latter
event, Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, flew to Baku with
reassurances that Turkey would only open the border with Armenia if
Armenian troops withdrew from inner-Azeri districts. The assurances
were the more significant after the US White House had demonstratively
excluded Azerbaijan from the Washington summit (Anatolia News Agency,
April 14, 18-20).
The US administration’s policy has now backfired on all sides, Yerevan
being the last to abandon it after the policy had failed to "deliver"
Ankara and Baku. The Obama administration can now be expected to
revert to a balanced approach by taking Azeri and Turkish views more
carefully into account.
Source:
TWO AUTHORS LOOK AT WORDS AS A WEAPON OF CONFLICT, AFTER-CONFLICT
MARJORIE MILLER
Kansas City Star
two-authors-look-at-words-as-a.html
April 28 2010
"A Wall in Palestine" by Rene Backmann, translated from the French
by A. Kaiser; Picador (272 pages, $17 paper)
"Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town"
by Christopher de Bellaigue; Penguin Press (270 pages, $25.95)
Language is a weapon of war and of the after-war. It is ammunition
for making history and for writing it. This is why governments
and their challengers fight over the names of things. This is why
it matters whether a stretch of concrete and barbed wire running
through Jerusalem and the West Bank is called a fence or a wall,
a security barrier or a border. And it is the root of the argument
over whether the slaughter of thousands of Armenians at the start of
the 20th century was a massacre or genocide.
Rene Backmann, foreign affairs columnist for Le Nouvel Observateur,
makes his position clear in the title of "A Wall in Palestine." The
book will be dismissed by hardliners in Israel, which is a shame,
because it is the story of the barrier’s construction from the
beginning, based largely on Israeli documents and interviews. Rooted
in an impressive array of maps, facts and frank discussions, it is
worthwhile reading even for those who don’t agree with its conclusions:
that the barrier is a wall in a place called Palestine, and that,
even if driven in part by the legitimate need for security, it also
functions as a land grab and de facto border.
Backmann was a supporter of the failed 1993 Oslo peace accords
and still cannot believe that "what the entire world saw fall down
yesterday in Berlin could be a solution tomorrow in Jerusalem." He
wants to understand "how and why, at the dawn of the twenty-first
century, the leaders of a modern, sophisticated country would choose
to resolve its biggest problem with such an archaic strategy."
Without a doubt, the barrier has dramatically reduced the suicide
bombings that terrorized Israelis and claimed a terrible death toll.
At the same time, it has severed Palestinian communities and families,
disrupting farming and development of the Palestinian economy.
Palestinians must obtain permits to cross the barrier as well as to
travel on Israeli-built roads through the West Bank. Like the roads
and Israeli settlements, the barrier serves to make a contiguous
Palestinian state all but impossible.
Certainly, there’s nothing new about building a wall against enemies
and invaders, be it in China or Jerusalem, whose old city is, of
course, surrounded by a wall. Backmann makes a convincing case that a
separation barrier had been proposed by both the Israeli right and left
from the beginning. In fact, the idea was born before the state itself,
raised in a 1923 article by the Zionist ideologue Vladimir "Ze’ev"
Jabotinsky, who imagined a "wall of iron" as protection from the Arabs.
About two months after Israel captured the eastern part of Jerusalem
and the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War, the left-wing Labor Party’s
Yigal Allon suggested a 6-mile-wide "strategic defense zone," which
would have meant annexing a third of the West Bank. He also proposed
Israeli settlements on the ridgeline over the coastal plain to serve
as lookouts and a new border.
The barrier, Backmann argues, is part of a system of strategically
placed settlements, roads and checkpoints that both protect Israel
and lay claim to Palestinian territory. The settlements annex West
Bank land while the barrier protects the settlements and marries the
land to Israel, along with disputed Jerusalem, which both sides claim
as their capital.
In July 2004, the International Court of the Hague determined that
"construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying
Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories including in and
around East Jerusalem" was contrary to international law and called
for its dismantling, with reparations. Perhaps the decision, along
with Palestinian court challenges, has contributed to a slowdown in
construction. Or perhaps, as Blackmann suggests, the Israelis intend
to use the wall as a bargaining chip in final status negotiations.
Call it what you will, that’s one big chip.
Of course, it’s not just what you call a thing but the story you
chose to tell. In "Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in
a Turkish Town," Christopher de Bellaigue, a former correspondent
for the Economist, mines the centuries-old conflict among Turks,
Armenians and Kurds, noting how each side omits the others’ grievances,
distorting their heroes and rights, indeed their very identites.
De Bellaigue explains that a love affair took him to Turkey in 1995,
where he also fell in love with the country and absorbed founding
father Kemal Ataturk’s official narrative, that it was a secular
republic, more Western than Eastern, whose ethnic, religious and
political minorities had no legitimate claims. Six years later, he
wrote an essay for the New York Review of Books in which he explained
the massacre of up to half a million Armenians in 1915 as part of the
chaos accompanying the end of the Ottoman Empire. He was inundated
with letters saying that the toll was more like 1.5 million and that
it was an orchestrated genocide. This book is his repentance and,
he says, a betrayal of his Turkish friends.
Because many of the official documents of Turkish history are locked
away by the state, De Bellaigue focused on the remote district of
Varto in mountainous southeastern Turkey, a kind of ground zero of
the country’s ethnic conflicts that had been caught up in both the
massacres of 1915 and the Kurdish rebellion of 1925.
This is rough terrain, shaped by coups and earthquakes and controlled
in turn during the 20th century by Ottomans, Russians, Armenians and
Kurds. It has produced many rebels and not a few turncoats among its
multifaceted population. De Bellaigue tries to humanize them, offering
a close-up look at their faces and foods and bloodied landscape, where
bodies are set alight, pierced by bayonets and boiled in cauldrons.
De Bellaigue notes that he was regarded with suspicion from all sides,
even the Kurds, Alevis and Armenians who presumably stood to gain by a
non-Turkish history. Turkish officials dogged him; in one encounter,
a plainclothes police officer greeted him with a public kiss on both
cheeks and grabbed his arm for a stroll down the street – a gesture
clearly designed to cast doubt on his credibility.
Presented with multiple versions of a single event, he sometimes
became convinced that all sides were lying. As he sat down to write,
he realized: "I had heard diametrically opposed accounts of things
that happened 100 years before or last week." The common trait among
these competing stories is that they present their own suffering in
great detail while failing to mention their crimes. This, De Bellaigue
shows us, is the enriched verbal uranium that fuels these conflicts
to this day.
De Bellaigue is a lovely writer, thorough reporter and deep thinker,
although his mix of historical figures and local characters is
sometimes hard to follow. He understands the importance of language
(as did the Turks, who tried to wipe out the Kurdish language). When
it comes to the question that started his journey, he writes that,
coming as they do from far-flung corners of the world, "it is hard
to take issue with much of the detail that one finds in the Armenian
accounts of the events of 1915."
That said, nearly 100 years later, the sides are caught in an absurd
battle over the word "genocide" that is "a travesty of history and
memory." What’s needed, he says, is a new word, even as he dismisses
such a fantasy as "the prattle of a naif, laughable, unemployable."
ANKARA CONFERENCE LOOKS BEYOND GENOCIDE, DEBATES REPARATIONS
BY KHATCHIG MOURADIAN
Asbarez
Apr 28th, 2010
L to R: Nishanian, Theriault, moderator Eugene Shouglin, Mouradian,
and Demirer.
ANKARA, Turkey (A.W.)-On April 24, as genocide commemoration events
were being held one after another in different locations in Istanbul,
a groundbreaking two-day conference on the Armenian Genocide began
at the Princess Hotel in Ankara.
The conference, organized by the Ankara Freedom of Thought Initiative,
was held under tight security measures. The hall where the conference
was held was thoroughly searched in the mornings by policemen and
security dogs, metal detectors were installed at the entrance of
the hotel, and all members of the audience had to be cleared by
the organizers before entering. Unlike the commemoration events
in Istanbul, however, no counter-demonstrations were allowed to
materialize.
The conference attracted around 200 attendees, mostly activists and
intellectuals who support genocide recognition. Among the prominent
names from Turkey at the conference were Ismail Besikci, Baskin Oran,
Sevan Nishanian, Ragip Zarakolu, Temel Demirer and Sait Cetinoglu.
Besikci is the first in Turkey to write books about the Kurds "at
a time when others did not even dare to use the ‘K’ word," as one
Turkish scholar put it. Besikci has spend years in Turkish prison
for his writings. Oran is a professor of political science. He
was one of the initiators of the apology campaign launched by
Turkish intellectuals. Nishanian is a Turkish Armenian scholar who
has authored several books and also writes for Agos. Zarakolu is a
publisher who has been at the forefront of the struggle for Armenian
Genocide recognition in Turkey with the books he has published over
the years. Demirer is an author who has been prosecuted for his daring
writings and speeches. Cetinoglu is a scholar and activist and one
of the key organizers of the conference.
The foreign scholars and activists who were scheduled to speak were
David Gaunt (genocide scholar, author of Massacres, Resistance,
Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia During
World War I), Henry Theriault (professor of philosophy, Worcester
State University), Khatchig Mouradian (doctoral student in Holocaust
and genocide studies, Clark University; editor, the Armenian Weekly),
Harry Parsekian (President of Friends of Hrant Dink in Boston), and
Eilian Williams (writer and activist from Wales). They all (except
for Gaunt) spoke on the panel dealing with "The Armenian Issue:
What is to be done and how?" That panel, which proved to be the most
controversial, also featured Nishanian, Zarakolu, and Demirer.
Reparations: Unjust or Indispensable?
The panel on what is to be done turned out into a debate on reparations
for the Armenian Genocide with panelists Mouradian, Theriault,
Nishanian, Demirer and Williams, as well as Oran and others from the
audience pitching in.
Mouradian spoke about the importance of reframing the discourse in
Turkey and dealing with the Armenian Genocide issue not only from
the perspective of democracy and freedom of speech, but also that of
justice. He dealt with the concepts of apology and restitution.
Theriault, in turn, said, "Turkey must return or compensate for
all expropriated property. It should return land and other wealth,
including Armenian Church properties, when that wealth has been
preserved." He noted that Turkey should also compensate for (1) all
destroyed property and wealth that is otherwise no longer accessible,
(2) the interest that can be calculated on the original material
losses, (3) slave labor, (4) the pain and suffering of those who died
and all who survived, (5) the loss of 1.5 million people in general
and as specific family and community members, and (6) the loss of
cultural, religious, and educational institutions and opportunities.
Nishanian categorically dismissed Theriault’s demands for reparations,
considering them a dead-end, and noting that such an approach is
unjust, unacceptable, and would open the door for further conflict.
Demirer, in a brilliant intervention, provided a scathing response
to Nishanian, arguing powerfully for reparations. Williams too spoke
in support of reparations.
Armenian Property and historical context
The panel on Armenian "abandoned" properties also generated a lot of
interest. It featured scholars and writers Asli Comu, Nevzat Onaran,
Mehmet Palatel (whose MA dissertation is on the confiscation of
Armenian property), and Cemil Ertem.
The panel on "Official ideological denial and extirpation from the
Committee of Union and Progress to Kemalism" featured scholars Osman
Ozarslan, Tuma Celik, as well as Cetinoglu and Besikci.
The panel on the Armenian genocide from a historical perspective
featured Adil Okay, Nahir Sayin, and Oran. Gaunt was scheduled to
speak on this panel but could not attend.
The representatives of the organizations supporting the conference
spoke at the last session.
Significance of the Conference
It was the first time that a conference on the Armenian Genocide that
did not host any genocide deniers was held in Ankara. Moreover, the
conference did not simply deal with the historical aspect of 1915. For
the first time in Turkey, a substantial part of the proceedings of
a conference was dedicated to topics such as confiscated Armenian
property, reparations, and the challenges of moving forward and
confronting the past in Turkey.
WE WANT ARMENIANS AND AZERBAIJANIS TO COEXIST PEACEFULLY – GAREGIN II
news.az
April 26 2010
Azerbaijan
Garegin II Religious leaders should support the Armenian and
Azerbaijani presidents in peace talks, the head of the Armenian church
said today in Baku.
‘There are single principles of humanism for all peoples and nations
of the world and the mission of the religious leaders is to strengthen
ties between our nations by adhering to these principles,’ Catholicos
Garegin II said at an inter-religious summit in the Azerbaijani
capital.
‘We thank God that the peace negotiations on the Karabakh conflict
settlement continue. Our duty is to support the presidents in these
peace negotiations. We want Armenians and Azerbaijanis to live
together, borders to open and wide contacts to be established,’
he said.
Garegin ll suggested holding the next religious summit in Armenia and
invited the head of the Caucasus Muslims Department, Sheikh-ul-Islam
Haji Allahshukur Pashazade, to attend.