Author: Chilingarian Babken

PAMUK’S PRIZE
Maria Margaronis

The Nation, NY
Oct 16 2006

"Pamuk’s Nobel: Deciphering the Code of Silence in Ankara," read the
headline in the Turkish tabloid Hurriyet–a title that could refer
equally to a postmodernist reading of Orhan Pamuk’s work, an account
of intrigues among Ottoman pashas or a news story about the Turkish
president’s failure to congratulate the laureate. Since the Turkish
novelist won the Nobel Prize for Literature, life has strangely come
to resemble one of his fictions. On the day the prize was announced
the French national assembly passed a bill making it an offense to
deny the Armenian genocide, so that a person can now be prosecuted
in France for denying something that it is a crime to assert in Turkey.

In Snow, Pamuk’s most recent novel, a woman tells the hero about a
museum in the eastern town of Kars meant to commemorate "the Armenian
massacre": "Naturally, she said, some tourists came expecting to learn
of a Turkish massacre of Armenians, so it was always a jolt for them
to discover that in this museum the story was the other way around."

Pamuk was indicted in Turkey last year for telling a Swiss newspaper
that "thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in
these lands," and although the charges were dropped, he is seen by many
Turkish nationalists as an opportunistic traitor who has sold out his
country to win the Nobel Prize. The indictment was part of a broader,
ongoing crackdown on writers, intellectuals and political activists,
which is itself related to the right’s reaction against Turkey’s
bid to join the European Union. By attacking an internationally
known writer, Turkish conservatives hoped to score a double victory:
to frighten dissenters at home and to undermine the accession talks
by offending Europe’s liberal elite. Unfortunately, the new French
law–which also reflects France’s failure to integrate its large
Muslim minority–plays directly into their hands.

And so, like one of the heroes of his intricate novels, Pamuk finds
himself caught up in events whose causes lie mysteriously both outside
and inside his own work. Applauded in Europe for the way his work
combines "Eastern" and "Western" culture, reviled by some in Turkey
for using Western literary forms, he seems impaled on the horns of a
dilemma whose very existence his books question and undermine. Pamuk
has been praised for exploring "the clash of civilizations," for
building in his novels a bridge between East and West. But he describes
his work differently. In his memoir Istanbul, he writes about four
older Turkish writers "who drew their strength from the tensions
between the past and the present, or between what Westerners like to
call the East and the West." It’s a subtle distinction but an important
one: the interpenetrating layers of history lived from within, warped
and curved like the strata of sedimentary rock, against the stand-off
of geography as seen from the outside.

CUSTOMS SERVICE HEAD PROTECTS HIS DEPUTY

Panorama.am
17:22 16/10/06

The chairman of customs state committee, Armen Avetisyan, responded
to the recent statement made by business tycoon Khachatur Sukiasyan
who said deputy chairman of customs service, Gagik Khachatryan,
has several businesses and may pose serious impediments to those who
would like to engage in similar business.

Avetisyan said, "I was appointed in this post in the year 2001 and
since that time Khachatur Sukiasyan’s businesses are only growing."

Moreover, he said that the employees of Khachatur Sukiasyan have
failed to perform some tasks and presented the deputy chairman of
customs service as guilty. Avetisyan said he personally talked to
the Sukiasyan but he presented no facts. "Wouldn’t you like such
impediments which will grow your business?" he poses a rhetoric
question.

Avetisyan said checks have shown there are no problems with Galaxi
supermarket which belongs to Gagik Khachatryan as Khachatur Sukiasian
said. Avetisyan said that supermarket belongs to the relative of
Gagik Khachatryan. "If he is my deputy it does not mean he cannot have
relatives or that his relatives must be librarians. People after all
work and live," Avetisyan said.

Avetisyan also that that his employees are fired if they are found in
corruption. In the course of 9 months, 121 employees were dismissed,
37 were reproached and 86 did not pass attestation, he said.

"If you mentioned any customs service where there are no cases of
corruption I will be surprised," Avetisyan confesses. However, he
said every possible is done to curb corruption in customs sphere.

ARMENIA MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN INTERESTS IN RUSSIA AND GEORGIA: KONSTANTIN ZATOULIN

Yerevan, October 17. ArmInfo. Armenia cannot constantly maneuver
maintaining friendly relations with all states. There are situations
when it should choose between the interests in Russia and Georgia,
especially as the interests of Armenia and Russia are incomparable
with those of Armenia and Georgia, said Konstantin Zatoulin, member
of the Russian State Duma, in an interview with ArmInfo.

The parliamentarian is dissatisfied with the passive position of
official Yerevan in the tense Russian-Georgian relations. "Has Armenia
tried to support its strategic partner at least once? Has it made
a single statement to Tbilisi calling on it for restraint? I cannot
remember such statement," he said.

He said that Armenia tries to take into consideration the interests
of Georgia even in the Karabakh problem. "It is quite evident that
the approaches to Karabakh, South Ossetic and Abkhazian conflicts
must be identical. However, Armenia constantly tries to isolate
the Karabakh conflict from the above two conflicts in order not
to infringe the interests of Georgia. However, I think Armenia
should not be guided with the interests of Georgia and must not
isolate the Karabakh conflict from the South Ossetic and Abkhazian
ones. It should protect its own interests, first of all. After all,
I am simply surprised at such a position of Armenia with respect to
Georgia. Has Tbilisi ever taken into account the interests of Armenia
when building its relations with Azerbaijan? Never. While, Armenia
still supports the interests of Georgia. I just cannot understand
this," the parliamentarian says with bewilderment. As regards the
ways of settling the Karabakh conflict, K. Zatoulin thinks they in
Russia are impressed with the last developments in Abkhazia, Ossetia
and Transdniestria. A new approach to the unrecognized states is being
formed. This approach must undoubtedly apply to Karabakh conflict as
well. "Russia and the world must define their impartial position in
the Karabakh issue taking into account the reality.

During the last 15 years new generations of unrecognized states have
originated. In case of further devotion to the term ‘unrecognized
states,’ we can not only torpedo the settlement of conflicts, but also
occur in rather an ambiguous situation when terms not reflecting the
reality are used," he says. At the same time, regarding the Karabakh
conflict, Russia is in rather an uneasy situation when it should
maintain good relations with Azerbaijan, in addition.

"However, I’d repeat that Russia must display a similar approach to
the conflicts in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Karabakh. It is quite
another case if Armenia does not want to draw parallels between these
conflicts," K. Zatoulin said.

ESTABLISHING HISTORY IS NOT A JOB FOR POLITICIANS
by Steven Edwards, National Post

National Post (Canada)
October 14, 2006 Saturday
All but Toronto Edition

French bill making it illegal to deny the Armenian genocide ‘is
just silly’

The European left has been among the first to denounce America’s
anti-terrorist security measures as a threat to the West’s traditional
rights and freedoms.

While the U.S. courts and Constitution will eventually weed out
excesses, the same cannot be said in Europe, where there is a growing
tendency to legislate history.

The latest example is unfolding in France, where the Socialists have
put forward a bill that would make it a crime to deny that Turks
committed genocide against Armenians in the final years of the
Ottoman Empire.

There are other "official histories" in France and across Europe. The
most prominent involves the Holocaust, which is illegal to deny or
downplay in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany,
Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland.

This is one European trend that should stay on the other side of
the Atlantic.

Not that there is any question that the Holocaust saw the Nazi-led
extermination of six million Jews and other disfavoured minorities.

But at the heart of democracy’s success is the premise that truth
and reason will triumph in free debate. So why outlaw deviations from
historical fact?

"Either there is a legitimate question about whether the Armenian
genocide occurred or not. If there is, then people should be free
to argue both sides. If not, and if you deny it, then you are just
going to look ridiculous," says Wayne Sumner, a University of Toronto
philosophy professor and author of The Hateful and the Obscene:
Studies in the Limits of Free Expression.

"In both cases, legislation is not required."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, comes across as an
inveterate anti-Semite when he questions the overwhelming evidence
for the Holocaust.

But limiting his right to free expression hands him and other critics
of the West an opportunity to justify their own warped interpretations
of history.

"When we’re criticizing other countries for the restrictions they
place on free speech — especially Islamic states such as Iran —
it does weaken our moral position because they can reply that we’re
imposing restraints on what we regard as illegitimate forms of speech,"
Mr. Sumner says.

The French bill, which was passed by the lower house, provides for
the same maximum punishment mandated for someone convicted of denying
the Holocaust: a year in jail and a 45,000 fine ($64,000).

It builds on a 2001 law declaring the 1915 Turkish killings of
Armenians as genocide. France has also legislated that the trade in
African slaves was a crime against humanity.

"First we have a law that says a historical fact happened, which is
just silly," says David Boaz, executive vice-president of the Cato
Institute and author of Libertarianism: A Primer.

"Either the event happened or it didn’t, but we ask historians to
make that determination, not legislators and politicians, because
establishing official history is something that belongs behind the
Iron Curtain, not in the West.

"But then you go a step further when you say it is illegal to deny
the official history. That really is looking into men’s souls, trying
to impose truth through a prison term — and that’s what we don’t do
in the West, which is founded on the notion of free inquiry and open
debate, and the right to believe as you choose."

Limiting debate inevitably drives the subject into the shadows,
where people who promote truly sinister theories are more likely to
claim legitimacy.

"If you are not able to have a serious debate with historians
presenting papers or newspaper columnists challenging each other’s
arguments, then you will get offshore Web sites and flyers handed out
by the kind of people who really ought to be excluded from society,"
Mr. Boaz says.

Turkey has always denied the Armenian charge that the Young Turks,
the dominant party in 1915, systematically killed or deported 1.5
million Armenians.

Ankara says as many as 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks
died in the eastern part of the country as inter-ethnic violence
raged during the First World War.

Turkey has always banned debate on the subject and last year began
prosecutions under a law criminalizing a notion called "insulting
Turkishness." France and the rest of the European Union have said
this law has to go if Ankara holds out any hope of admission to the
bloc of democracies.

The hypocrisy of the French bill, which needs Senate and presidential
approval before it becomes law, was pointed out yesterday by Turkish
novelist Orhan Pamuk, who stood trial for "insulting Turkishness"
this year over his questioning of the official line on the Armenian
massacres.

"France has a very old tradition of liberal and critical thinking,
and I myself was influenced by it and learned much from it," said Mr.

Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for literature this week.

"But the decision they made constitutes a prohibition."

Pundits explain the Socialists’ move as having more to do with winning
votes among France’s 450,000-strong Armenian expatriate population
than any desire to ensure the historical record is accurate.

Which makes the move even more despicable. When France’s voters
realize the truth, one can only hope it will trump the politicians’
cynicism and see them defeated in next year’s election.

GRAPHIC: Black & White Photo: John Schults, Reuters; Members of
France’s Armenian community attend a demonstration near the National
Assembly in Paris after the lower house approved a bill making denial
of the Armenian genocide a crime.

A STORM OVER ISTANBUL

The Irish Times
October 14, 2006 Saturday

Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel prize has angered Turkish nationalists, who say
he has sold his country out, writes Nicholas Birch.

Towards the end of Istanbul, the part-autobiography and part-memoir
that came out in English last year, Orhan Pamuk describes his horror
of spring days when the sun "brings every ugly thing in the city into
relief". His first reaction is to try to escape what he calls "this
hybrid, lettered hell" by conjuring up "a pure and shining moment
when the city was ‘at peace with itself’, when it was ‘a beautiful
whole’. But as my reason asserts itself, I remember that I love this
city not for any purity but precisely for the lamentable want of it."

A similar struggle between attraction and repulsion has characterised
the first Turkish reactions to Thursday’s news that he had been
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Except that, in this case,
it remains to be seen whether love will win out over something darker.

Among fellow artists, reactions were overwhelmingly positive. "I am
as happy as if I won it myself," commented film director Nuri Bilge
Ceylan, winner of the 2003 Cannes Grand Prize. The doyen of Turkish
novelists, Yasar Kemal, himself once tipped for the Nobel Prize,
sent Pamuk an e-mail congratulating him for "this award that you
thoroughly deserved . . . I have no doubt you will continue to stand
behind what you believe."

In a country that often seems to fall through international cracks,
many other authors picked up on Orhan Pamuk’s comment that his
victory was above all a victory for all Turkish writers. The author
of best-selling detective novels, Ahmet Umit, spoke for many when
he described it as a "fantastic opportunity for Turkey and Turkish
literature to be better known by the world". In Turkey’s mainstream
media, meanwhile, generosity was in much shorter supply.

"Should we be pleased or sad?" asked Fatih Altayli, the chief editor
of Sabah, one of Turkey’s two most influential newspapers, in the
headline of his Friday column. Unlike the magnificently fork-tongued
contributions of other equally prominent journalists, what Altayli
wrote next at least had the merit of being relatively straightforward.

In the circumstances, he concluded, the best reaction to Pamuk’s
victory was pride. And yet, "we can’t quite see Pamuk as ‘one of us’.

Quite the opposite; we see him as someone who ‘sells us out’ and . .

. can’t even stand behind what he says."

The same impulse to blacken Pamuk’s name was equally in evidence
up the road in Hurriyet, Sabah’s biggest competitor. Chief editor
Ertugrul Ozkok wrote at length in his column about the difficulties
his editorial team had when choosing their seemingly banal headline,
"Nobel to a Turk".

"We all know that this headline will probably not satisfy anybody’s
‘Turkish side’," Ozkok simpered, alluding to the conviction of
nationalists the world over that they hold a monopoly on patriotism.

On one level, all this ill-disguised bile has a very clear source:
Orhan Pamuk’s statement to a Swiss magazine last year that 30,000 Kurds
and one million Armenians had been killed in Turkey. Published in Das
Magazin last February, the remarks were a reference to the war Turkey
has been fighting against Kurdish separatists since 1984 and to what
is widely seen internationally as the 20th century’s first genocide:
the deaths in 1915 of at least 600,000 Ottoman Armenians.

In Turkey, though, despite the liberalising tendencies of the last
few years, free discussion of either issue remains at best difficult.

Within hours, Pamuk had become the country’s most hated man.

While an ultra-nationalist lawyer hauled him to court on charges of
"insulting Turkishness", one local official even went as far as to
issue orders for all copies of Pamuk’s books to be collected and
burnt. His superior countermanded the order a few days later, but he
needn’t have bothered: no books were found.

"They might have more luck if they opened public libraries round here,"
local student Nilay Aksu commented acidly.

Orhan Pamuk’s sin wasn’t just to break nationalist taboos. In a
country which sometimes feels positively Sicilian in its insistence
that dirty washing be kept in-family, he broke the taboo abroad.

That, to a nationalist, can mean only one thing: opportunism.

"This prize was not given because of Pamuk’s books, it was given
because . . . he belittled our national values," Kemal Kerincsiz,
the lawyer who took the writer to court last year, told AP on Thursday.

THE SAME POINT was put more mildly by Sabah’s cartoonist, Salih
Memecan. "Works that won Orhan Pamuk the Nobel," read his Friday
cartoon, above a sketch of the grinning novelist standing in front of
two shelves of books. On the upper one, his seven novels. On the lower
one, a grey tome with "Turkish Penal Code article 301" – the article
used to bring him to trial last December – inscribed on its spine.

"It’s tragic, really," comments Elif Shafak, another novelist brought
to book under article 301. "This is a huge honour both for Pamuk and
the country, and yet so many people are so politicised they forget
about literature entirely."

IN FACT, THE hostility of some parts of Turkish society to Orhan Pamuk
goes back well beyond last year. While books such as The White Castle
and My Name is Red – both set in Ottoman times – largely went down
well here, Snow angered many with its bleak, burlesque portrait of a
contemporary Turkey peopled with religious and secularist fanatics,
separatists and police informers.

For secularists, Pamuk’s greatest crime is his critical attitude
towards the authoritarian secular legacy of Turkey’s Republican
fathers. As he writes in Istanbul, while the public manifestations
of the new Republic’s modernising zeal were occasionally lit with
"the flame of idealism", "in private life, nothing came to fill the
spiritual void".

"Orhan Pamuk’s problem is with his own people and history," Ozdemir
Ince, prize-winning poet and secularist, wrote last year. "Shoulder
to shoulder with religious extremists, he wants to settle accounts
with this Republic’s revolutionary past."

Ultimately, though, mistrust of the new Nobel Prize winner seems to
go beyond political differences. Many see it as simple jealousy on
the part of a parochial-minded intelligentsia. Others present it as
just the latest evidence of how much damage the authoritarian military
coup of 1980 did to Turkish society.

Recent criticisms levelled at Pamuk by the poet and philosopher Hilmi
Yavuz point to another possibility. Writing in the moderate Islamist
daily Zaman, Yavuz argues that the year Pamuk spent in the United
States after the publication of his second novel changed him for
the worse.

"He must have been promised a great future in America if he wrote
novels in a particular Orientalist format, like Salman Rushdie or
VS Naipaul," he wrote, referring to Pamuk’s literary agent. "Look at
Turkey and Turkish history as a westerner does. That was the idea."

Somehow, it’s an argument that contains all the paradoxes of modern
Turkey, a country where westernisation has played such a vital role
for so long that the opinion of the West has taken on an almost
deadly significance.

It’s a painful hesitancy that Pamuk celebrates. As he puts it in
Istanbul, the city’s greatest virtue is "its people’s ability to see
the city through both Western and Eastern eyes . . . Western observers
love to identify the things that make Istanbul exotic, non-Western,
whereas the Westernisers amongst us register all the same things as
obstacles to be erased from the face of the city."

ERDOGAN CALLS ON TURKS TO EMBRACE DISSIDENT NOBEL WINNER

Agence France Presse — English
October 16, 2006 Monday 10:23 AM GMT

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on his
compatriots to wholeheartedly embrace 2006 Nobel literature laureate
Orhan Pamuk and "put aside" the controversies he has stirred up in
the past, in remarks published Monday.

"Let’s put aside the polemics. The prize is a first for a son of Turkey
and it will be wrong for us to underestimate it," Erdogan said in a
television interview to be aired late Monday, excerpts of which were
published in the best-selling newspaper Hurriyet.

"We must congratulate him," he said. "It would be wrong to mix what
Pamuk has said in the past and the fact that he has won this award."

The 54-year-old Pamuk, who has long had bad blood with the state,
landed himself in court on charges of "insulting Turkishness" and won
the reputation of a "traitor" among nationalist circles when he told
a Swiss magazine last year that "one million Armenians and 30,000
Kurds were killed in these lands."

His remarks were widely seen as an acknowledgement that the Ottoman
Turks committed genocide against Armenians during World War I,
a label that Ankara fiercely rejects.

Ironically, Thursday’s announcement of his Nobel prize came shortly
after the lower house of the French parliament voted a bill that
would make it a crime to deny that the killings were genocide,
infuriating Ankara.

The celebration of Pamuk’s award at home was overshadowed by skeptics
who argued that the author won the favors of the West not for his
literary skills but for his vocal criticism of his country

The divisions plagued even the highest state echelons: while Erdogan
personally called Pamuk, currently in New York, to congratulate him,
President Ahmet Necdet has remained mum, contrary to his tradition
of issuing congratulations to international achievements by Turks.

On Friday, Pamuk joined the chorus of criticism of the French bill,
saying that it flouted France’s "tradition of liberal and critical
thinking."

The court case against Pamuk, in which he risked up to three years
in jail, was dropped on a technicality in January.

The writer first drew the ire of the state in the mid-1990s when he
denounced heavy-handed policies against the Kurdish minority.

The state extended an olive branch in 1998, offering him the accolade
of "State Artist," but Pamuk declined.

DOES SARKOZY EVER FEEL LIKE ‘SCUM’ HIMSELF?
Nursun Erel – [email protected]

The New Anatolian
Oct 11 2006

Opinions

There are certain people who make you really fed up and you never
want to see them again. I think French Interior Minister or, as he
dreams, aspiring future French President Nicholas Sarkozy is one of
those for me.

Last time round his remarks on "scum," criticizing protestors of French
immigration policy, ended up in 8,000 cars being set on fire on the
streets of Paris, and I wonder what the price of his statements on
Turkish-French relations will be.

In a way, it’s very easy to understand the logic behind his
attitude. He’s desperately obsessed with being the man of the
moment. Added to which, it contributes a great deal to his popularity
as a politician. So who cares about the biased act of the French
Parliament and government towards Turks? Who cares about why there
was a tragedy once faced by both Turks and Armenians? Who cares about
distorted historical facts almost a century later?

I was talking to number of people yesterday and among them were
some politicians, journalists and even some young people and
housewives. They was also a consensus, which can be outlined as
follows: "Why do Turkish governments always have to behave like
‘good boys’? Will we be battered by Europeans forever? Do they really
believe that Turkey will become a member of the European Union one
day? Do we have to pay such a high price, such as forgoing our pride?"

So most of them seemed eager to break off relations with France. Some
said Turkey should freeze its political relations, disqualify all
French companies from tenders and recall our ambassador from Paris.

They were also agreed on working much harder on history, especially
the massacres carried out by the French in Algeria. According to
them, municipalities were right in their plans to erect monuments
commemorating French massacres from the 20th century.

Of course this will all pass and both sides will consider things more
calmly. But what about the wounds that won’t go away?

So I can’t stop myself from thinking about how dependent the
government’s policies are on some statesmen’s silly acts, even if
they’re simply "scum" themselves.

Public Radio of Armenia
Oct 13 2006

Monument dedicated to the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust
to be raised in Yerevan
13.10.2006 11:50

Monument dedicated to the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust
will be raised in Yerevan.
Head of the Jewish community in Armenia Rita Varzhapetyan told
`Armenpress’ that the opening of the monument will take place October
27 at the crossroad of Teryan and Moskovyan streets. It has been
created by the immediate assistance of RA Prime Minister Andranik
Margaryan.
The Jewish community of Armenia includes about 250 families, which
are under constant protection of RA Government and the Jewish
community. According to head of the community Rita Varzhapetyan, at
the initiative of the community special seminars will be held in
Armenian schools for teachers instructing Common History, following
which they will teach the students about the Holocaust of Jews
perpetrated by Fascist Germany during World War II. `The growing
generation must know about these crimes against Armenians, Jews and
other nations,’ said Rita Varzhapetyan.

Toronto Sun, Canada
Oct 13 2006

Turks angry at French bill
By SUN WIRE SERVICES

PARIS — A thin turnout of French legislators approved a bill
yesterday that would make it a crime to deny that mass killings of
Armenians in Turkey during the World War I era amounted to genocide.

Angry Turks called for a boycott French goods.

The genocide issue has become intertwined with debate about allowing
Turkey into the European Union.

A1+

WIVES OF OFFICIALS ARE SIMPLE PEOPLE
[05:57 pm] 13 October, 2006

THE MAYOR DOESN’T KNOW THE AGE OF THE CAPITAL

Mayor of Tbilisi Gigi Ugolava announced in Yerevan that the
hostilities of Russia against their country harm not only the
Georgians but also friendly Armenians. «I think Georgia and Armenia
must unite their efforts in this field», Gigi Ugolava told the
journalists during the short briefing with Yerevan mayor Yervand
Zakharyan.

The Georgian delegation which included deputy Speaker of the
Parliament Jemal Inaishvili, visited the Yerevan municipality. During
the private meeting the wife of the deputy speaker, Nina Inaishvili,
spent half an hour in the corridor with the journalists.

Mrs. Inaishvili assured «A1+» that in their country the wives of many
high officials are known to be very simple in communicating with
people. She even wondered at our question if the wives of other
officials too can be seen in the corridor of the municipality waiting
for their husbands. «The wife of the other deputy speaker of the
Parliament and I have been friends for a long time. We were born in
Batumi, like my husband. As for how the wives of officials behaved
before Mikhail Sahakashvili gained power, I can’t tell you», she told
us.

Mayor of Tbilisi Gigi Ugolava invited Yervand Zakharyan to Tbilisi to
participate in the celebration of the anniversary of the Georgia
capital. As for how old the city will be on October 22, the young
mayor answered, «I haven’t counted».