Author: Nalbandian Eduard

SOLHEIM ELEMENTARY STUDENTS DIVE INTO ARMENIAN CULTURE
By SARAKINCAID

Bismarck Tribune, ND
Oct 10 2005

Barf. It’s enough to make a fifth- or sixth-grader bubble with
laughter.

Especially when it’s the name of laundry detergent from Armenia
claiming to be snowy white and make clothes sparkling clean.

Solheim Elementary School reading specialist Pam Rettig introduced
eight students to Armenia through products, labels and photos. Soon,
the students will meet Armenian students from Gyumri, Armenia,
through the Internet.

It’s part of the Armenian Connectivity Program, sponsored by Project
Harmony and the U.S. Department of State. It is meant to enhance
cultural awareness by using computer technology. Students post their
photos and type information about themselves and answer questions on
a topic to get conversation flowing.

“It’s fun to get to know people from other countries and what they
think about stuff,” sixth-grader Rachel Eckroth said.

Eckroth and seven other students met in Rettig’s classroom after
school for the first time last Monday. They meet after school twice
a month. They ate Armenian-style chicken wings and had a quick social
studies lesson with photos from Rettig’s summer trip to Armenia.

The students’ goal is to be more aware of other cultures.

“The world is getting smaller and they really need ownership,” Rettig
said. “They are part of the global community.”

In addition to learning about Armenia through the Internet forum,
Rettig is sharing textiles and other items from her travels around
the world. For example, the students drew names for two hand-woven
Guatemalan blankets and Rettig will bring in items from her Fulbright
teacher exchange in Japan.

The students want to learn about everyday life in Armenia.

Sixth-grader Nick Goulet wants to learn about their culture and daily
life, and fifth-grader Faith Ward wants to know what they eat.

They also learn about Armenia through Rettig’s photos. A one-room
house without electricity or running water. Inside a building to
make lavash, a flat, baked bread. People playing backgammon. Candles
burning in church.

An earthquake hit the area about 15 years ago, but some areas look
as if it were yesterday, Rettig said. Not many people want to build
multi-story buildings and connect electricity or water. Many people
also are poor and cannot afford such things, she said. An expensive
rug costs U.S. $100, she said.

Armenian women spend their days rolling out balls of dough, which
are stored in a recessed area of the floor, then cooked in a hot oven.

Many people do not have refrigeration, Rettig said. People will store
leftover food from earlier meals in the day in a cupboard for later,
she said. At her going away meal with her host family, a piece of
freshly broken bread fell on the dirt floor, then was picked up and
placed back in the basket to eat.

“They have different ideas about sanitation because there is no
refrigeration,”Rettig said.

Men play backgammon in their free time. Traditionally, women do not
play it, Rettig said. She was taught while she was there, and the
woman she stayed with knew how to play, which was unusual, she said.

In church it is candles and prayers instead of hourlong sermons
stereotypical of church in the United States. Rettig explained people
buy candles, go inside the church, say a prayer and then leave. The
reason for the quick service is historical. Certain people were
gathered up in churches and burned during the genocide in Armenia,
Rettig said.

The social studies lessons will expand with each meeting, as Rettig
adds more pictures each meeting to the bulletin board outside her
classroom.

The students applied to participate in Project Harmony. Participation
was limited by the program sponsors. They answered questions, as
well as their parents, and were chosen from 40 students. It’s the
second year Rettig participated in Project Harmony. A second group
of students will participate in the spring.

The Web site the students use to share information with Armenian
students is slower to pop up on the screen than most people with fast
Internet connections would expect. Regardless of the speed of the
Internet connection, it connects at the same, slower speed because the
technology in Armenia cannot download pages as quickly as technology
in America, Rettig said.

The Project Harmony forum has students type a paragraph about
themselves, describe themselves in three words and answer several
questions about stereotypes.

Rettig’s class opened the Armenian Connectivity Program to new
schools in Armenia. Previously, the program was open to middle and
high school students only. The program allowed it because Rettig did
a similar Internet forum with a school in Africa, she said. One other
U.S. elementary school, in Illinois, participates in the Armenian
Connectivity Program.

Quad City Times, IA
Oct 8 2005

Sounds of cymbals are heard in the Q-C
By Tamara Fudge

Master cymbal specialist Mark Love and other artists of a premiere
cymbal company called Sabian spent an afternoon earlier this week
under the awning of West Music’s Davenport store on Brady Street as
part of the group’s Vault tour.

Customers were able to have a cymbal custom-made, watch hand
hammering and lathing demonstrations, and test or purchase the many
cymbals on display. For a small donation to Hurricane Katrina
victims, black Sabian wristbands also were available.

`A lot of cymbals are developed working with the artists, taking a
sound or vision in their heads and turning it into an instrument,’
Love said.

Jeff Cook/QUAD-CITY TIMES Allie Cougle of Sabian, a company that
makes cymbals, uses a hammer to shape a custom cymbal during a
company tour visit this week to West Music in Davenport.
`The real secret we have at Sabian is the process added downstream
from the metallurgical process,’ said Bill Zildjian, part owner and
an executive in the company his father created. `It’s the attitude of
our people, who are willing to tinker and experiment. The
possibilities are limitless.’

He listed the number of bronze alloys, patterns of hammering,
lathing, shapes and sizes, all of which affect the cymbal’s sound.

His family’s name has been connected with cymbal making for
centuries. Zildjian said that his name is Turkish-Armenian for cymbal
(zil) – smith or maker (dj) – son (ian) and can be dated back to at
least the 1670s.

According to the Percussive Arts Society’s Web site, Bill’s father,
Robert Zildjian, worked for his father’s cymbal business. Upon the
older man’s death, Robert and his brother, Armand, shared the company
until deciding to split in 1982. Armand kept the original company’s
name, Zildjian, and younger brother Bob created his own company in
Meductic, a small village in New Brunswick, Canada.

`Sabian’ is a combination of the names of Robert’s children: `Sa’ for
Sally, `bi’ for Bill and `an’ for Andy. `We found out later that it
is actually the name of a tribe of people in Turkey,’ Zildjian said.

Sabian cymbals, carefully hand-hammered in the Turkish tradition, now
can be found all over the world, and are used by amateurs and
professionals from the Royal Opera House in London to jazzmaster Jack
deJohnette and rock star Phil Collins.

The idea of this kind of tour came because `whenever drummers make
the pilgrimage to Meductic, they have a great time seeing how cymbals
are made,’ Zildjian said. `They can select from a variety not
available in a store.’

At West’s showing, there were prototypes – unique cymbals that never
had seen store shelves.

`It’s a time-honored tradition,’ said Justin Beahm, combo manager for
West.

`It shows people how they’re made from scratch. They had some
unmarked, unique cymbals for sale that no one else in the world has.’

Why stop in Davenport?

`West Music is one of the premier percussion vendors,’ Zildjian said.
`They have high quality and an aggressive program.’

`It’s interesting to see how they craft these plates, demonstrating
this ancient method, into something that’s still integral in music
today,’ said Shawn Lafrenz, general manager of West’s Percussion
Source division. `Watching them is an amazing process, a show in
itself. The tour brings something quite special to Iowa.’

`Our real competitors are not the other cymbal companies,’ Zildjian
said. `It’s Nintendo, DVD players, and those kinds of things.’

The Calgary Herald (Alberta)
October 7, 2005 Friday
Final Edition

Egoyan’s Truth lost in the layers: Bacon, Firth shine despite
narrative mess

by Jay Stone, CanWest News Service

Where The Truth Lies
Starring: Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth.
Directed and written by Atom Egoyan
Rating 2 1/2 out of five

– – –

Director Atom Egoyan makes movies that are very much about the
moviemaking process: not cameras and film stock, but how a filmmaker
sees a story, how he plucks one narrative out of the multitudes that
surround any event.

At his best, in such films as Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter,
Egoyan’s elusiveness helps strengthen the story by giving us several
versions of it, allowing a mosaic itself to become a character, or a
mystery.

Author Russell Banks, who wrote the novel on which The Sweet
Hereafter was based, was undoubtedly thinking of Egoyan when he said
turning a book into a movie was like smashing a stained-glass window
and making a vase out of the shards. The trouble with this approach
is that it can also put so many layers between us and the story that
the movie becomes about the layers.

Ararat, a highly personal Egoyan film about the Armenian holocaust,
was filmed as a movie-within-a-movie, an approach that cooled the
passions disastrously: the anger or the mourning that must have
fuelled the desire to tell the tale in the first place was replaced
by a meditation on memory, and tragedy seemed like device.

The same problems arise with Where The Truth Lies, a neo-noir full of
highly watchable, lurid subject matter — Hollywood celebrity, a
murder mystery, lots of sex — that has become a jumble of confusing
viewpoints and chronologies.

This is Egoyan’s biggest movie to date ($25 million), featuring the
biggest stars he has ever worked with in Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth,
but the combination of accessible material and name talent has
overwhelmed his vision. You can almost feel Bacon and Firth aching to
break through the layers of technique.The result is artificial and,
in the last reel, absurd.

Bacon and Firth play Lanny and Vince, a famous comedy/singing act of
the 1950s who enjoy a gaudy, Vegas-style success, access to many
lovely women and a wise guy’s knowledge about the benefits of
celebrity.

However, there is a scandal in their lives when a blond turns up dead
in their hotel bathtub.The act dissolves, Lanny and Vince stop
talking to one another, and the mystery of the blond is never solved.

Years later, a reporter named Karen O’Connor (Alison Lohman,
overwhelmed by the task) sets out to write a tell-all book that will
unveil the mystery.

At the end, we finally learn what happened with Lanny and Vince, and
the upshot turns out to be such an ancient movie joke that you wonder
if it was meant as a parody of some of the routines the boys used in
their heyday.

Egoyan tells this story from several points of view and in different
timeframes, a commentary on the unreliability of the narrator,
perhaps, but a son-of-a-gun for the viewer trying to keep things
straight or, more importantly, believable.

Within a glittery production design, much of Where The Truth Lies
seems stagy and fake, and you suspect that not all is a purposeful
metaphor for the mists of the past.

The sex scenes, including the famous menage-a-trois among Lanny,
Vince and a hotel chambermaid (Rachel Blanchard) — the scene that
earned Egoyan the harmful NC-17 rating in the United States — are
oddly unerotic.

The shock of seeing stars the magnitude of Bacon and Firth engaging
in a naked frolic is only part of the reason. There’s also a cool,
distancing effect in Egoyan’s direction that makes the episodes seem
almost laughable.

Within this fractured mystery are several enjoyable episodes,
including a scene in which Karen meets Lanny and his butler (David
Hayman) on a 1970s airplane whose first-class section is as
wonderfully retro as an arborite kitchenette, and scenes from the
telethon in which Bacon and Firth persuade us that, all expectations
to the contrary, they could have been a successful act.

Bacon is especially good as the hip, womanizing Lanny, who is smarter
than he seems and Firth has a light touch that darkens later as the
reporter edges closer to the truth.

By then, though, Where The Truth Lies has collapsed into a pile of
good intentions and narrative obsessions. This was to be Egoyan’s
breakthrough into the mainstream, but it is too complex, too thought
out and neither the truth nor the lies seems to have any reality.

GRAPHIC:
Colour Photo: Courtesy, Alliance Atlantis; Kevin Bacon, left, Rachel
Blanchard and Colin Firth in Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s Where
the Truth Lies.

Better late than never

Oct 4th 2005
The Economist Global Agenda

The European Union and Turkey have finally agreed on a negotiating
framework that will allow formal talks on Turkish membership of the EU
to begin. Within Turkey and outside it, there are questions about the
predominantly Muslim country’s readiness for Europe
WHEN the countries of the European Union agreed last December to grant
Turkey its fondest dream and begin formal talks on admitting the big,
predominantly Muslim nation as a member, it was no doubt envisaged, or
at least hoped, that the date pencilled in the diary for the start of
the process would be a time of ceremony and celebrations, not bickering
and brinkmanship. But the EU wouldn’t be the EU without those
last-minute panics, replete with desperate horse-trading and
just-good-enough fudges, and in this respect Monday October 3rd did not
disappoint. For much of the day, it looked like the love affair was in
real danger of ending in acrimony. But thanks to some frenzied
diplomatic activity, it ended instead in a firm-though hardly
warm-embrace.

The main sticking point had been the insistence by Austria’s government,
ostensibly isolated but perhaps tacitly backed by others in the EU, that
Turkey be given an explicit alternative to joining the EU: a “privileged
partnership” that falls short of full membership. As a result, by the
middle of Monday afternoon, European diplomats still had not agreed a
common negotiating framework for the accession talks, which had been
scheduled to begin officially at 5pm with a ceremony in Luxembourg
attended by EU bigwigs and Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul. It
was finally conceded that, with the deadlock still not broken, there was
no way the event could be held on time. “We are on the edge of a
precipice,” said Jack Straw, Britain’s foreign minister and chairman of
the emergency talks.

A couple of hours later, the EU stepped back from the edge. A common
negotiating framework was finally agreed, after Austria had been
persuaded to step back in line. There followed further confusion, with
the spokesman for the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
having to dismiss reports that his country had accepted the draft.
Finally, several hours after the ceremony had been due to take place,
the Turks confirmed that they could indeed live with the document and
that Mr Gul would be heading off to Luxembourg.

It appears that Austria’s co-operation was bought by clearing the way
for Croatia to open EU membership negotiations of its own. Croatia is an
Austrian ally, and the government in Vienna had linked the Turkish issue
with the Croats’ stalled bid to start accession talks. The EU put its
talks with Croatia on hold in March because, it said, the country’s
government was not co-operating fully with the United Nations war-crimes
tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. But in a statement on Monday whose
timing was almost certainly not coincidental, Carla del Ponte, the UN
war-crimes prosecutor for the Balkans, announced that the Croats were,
after all, doing everything they could to locate and arrest a key
suspect, General Ante Gotovina.

Though Austria has been persuaded to drop its objection to Turkish
membership of the EU, it takes over the Union’s presidency in January
(for six months) and may use its position to try to revive its idea of a
partnership, instead of full membership. It is a view that plenty of
others find appealing. Nicolas Sarkozy, a popular Gaullist who is well
placed to win the French presidency in 2007, opposes Turkish membership.
So does Angela Merkel, who is favourite to take Germany’s chancellorship
following its recent elections, which ended in a hung parliament.
Overall, just 35% of EU citizens support Turkish membership, according
to a recent poll by Eurobarometer.

Some supporters of Turkish membership say it will help to strengthen
ties between the Christian and Muslim worlds. Others argue that failure
to agree terms would have deepened the sense of crisis in Europe after
the rejection of the EU’s draft constitution by French and Dutch voters
in May and June, and the continuing deadlock over the Union’s budget.
But many Europeans are queasy about the idea of taking in a
non-Christian member with a large population (currently 72m), and of
hordes of Turkish job-seekers overwhelming the EU’s current members. It
was precisely because Europe’s national leaders had failed to take
account of its citizens’ concerns that the constitution was voted down,
argue the sceptics; pushing ahead with entry talks for Turkey when the
majority is clearly opposed shows how little those leaders have learnt
from the summer debacle.

The suspicion is mutual
Turkey has doubts about the EU too. Indeed, it raised last-minute
objections of its own on Monday, insisting on clarification of a clause
in the draft negotiating framework that says Ankara may not block the
accession of EU states to international organisations and treaties.
Turkish nationalists and generals expressed concern that this might
prevent Turkey, a member of NATO, blocking Cyprus, which remains divided
into ethic Greek and ethnic Turkish republics, from joining the military
alliance. Turkish fears were only eased after America’s secretary of
state, Condoleezza Rice, telephoned Mr Erdogan to assure him that the
proposed negotiating framework had no relevance to NATO.

Indeed, now that the European club of nations has finally begun formal
talks with Turkey, the focus may shift to the resistance among the Turks
themselves to the legal, economic and cultural changes that the EU is
demanding. To get this far, Turkey has taken such dramatic steps as
abolishing the death penalty, accepting Kurdish as a language in
schools, scrapping state security courts, revising the penal code and
tightening civilian control over the army. Yet it still has a lot to do
on rights, democracy and more before getting in. It must adopt over
80,000 pages of EU law, divided into 35 so-called “chapters”. All 25 EU
members must agree that Turkey has met every condition in each chapter
for that bit of the negotiation to be closed. In other words, anyone can
hold up talks at any time. The Greek-Cypriot president, Tassos
Papadopoulos, has assured his voters that he has scores of vetoes up his
sleeve. After this week’s agreement, France’s President Jacques Chirac
said Turkey needed a “cultural revolution” to get in.

This seemingly never-ending list of required reforms irks Turkish
nationalists, whose influence has been growing since June 2004, when the
outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) ended a five-year truce. A
recent poll shows the jingoistic Nationalist Action Party, which failed
to enter parliament in the 2002 elections, would gain seats today. And
Mr Erdogan’s foes in the army fear that rapprochement with Europe will
reduce their power-and see in Turkey’s internal conflicts a chance to
restore that influence. But solving the Kurdish problem requires more
democracy, not repression, the prime minister insists. People close to
Mr Erdogan say he has pinned his political fortunes on further reforms,
with or without the EU. “He can’t compete on nationalism with the
ultra-nationalists, so it’s in his interest to keep on reforming,” says
a western diplomat.

Another challenge, in his dealings both with sceptical Europeans and his
own voters, is to honour his claim to be giving Turkey its first clean
government. Charges of irregularity in the sale of shares in the state
refinery, Tupras-and also in a tender for the operation of Istanbul’s
Galata port-have weakened that claim. Unless he deals with sleaze, Mr
Erdogan may lose the trust of his own citizens and his European
partners. That would be a pity, when the prime minister has risked so
much for Turkey’s European future

ACT OF COMPLAIN IN A WRONG PLACE

Panorama
13:57 05/10/05

Today a group of residents from the “Union of volunteer gardening
in the Nor Nork, Berdazor and Kaqavadzor areas” were demonstrating
opposite the Ministry of Justice. They are all trying to protect
their lands.

At last the head of the Control Department of MJ Vardan Stepanyan
received a few demonstrators and advised them to apply to court for
solving the problem. According to our information the Prosecution
department of Yerevan brought a suit to the Court of the Nor Nork
Community for taking away the lands.

So It’s interesting, why the residents were demonstrating in front
of the MJ and not a bit far in front of the Prosecution /Panorama.am/

SPEAKER OF ARMENIA’S NATIONAL ASSEMBLY CALLS FOR WIDE POPULARIZATION OF REFORMS

Pravda, Russia
Oct 5 2005

02:07 2005-10-05
“When we speak about changing the ruling elite in Armenia we must
consider that in two and three years accordingly parliamentary and
presidential elections will take place,” said Speaker of the National
Assembly of Armenia Artur Bagdasaryan at a briefing Tuesday.

“If someone tries to prove that the constitutional reforms are
ineffective, I’m open to a constructive dialogue. Maybe, the current
draft is not ideal, but it has been approved by the Council of Europe’s
Venice Commission and international community,” added the speaker.

According to Bagdasaryan, on the threshold of the referendum on
constitutional changes in Armenia, people are divided into four
groups – those, who are against all changes, those, who agree with
the changes, those, who are uninformed about the reforms, and the
last group are speculating about the reforms.

“We must start a wide campaign to inform people about the current
reforms. However, this process must not be a monopoly of the ruling
coalition, and should involve all political and social forces.
Constitutional reforms help creating more transparent government
system”, said Artur Bagdasaryan, REGNUM reported.

BLOCKADE OF ARMENIAN BORDER BY TURKEY UNACCEPTABLE TO EUROPE

Pan Armenian
04.10.2005 14:34

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Today Armenian PM Andranik Margaryan met with
President of the CE Congress of Local and Regional Authorities
Giovanni di Stasi, reported the Press service of the Government
of Armenia. Positively evaluating the CE-Armenia cooperation for
almost 10 years in forming local self-government bodies and control,
A. Margaryan said the mutually favorable cooperation would further
continue. He welcomed Giovanni di Stasi’s visit to Armenia, especially
that election of local government bodies is held in Armenia observed
by the Congress monitoring mission. Giovanni di Stasi emphasized
that notable improvement is registered in the field: the percentage
of population participation is growing, the government and society
acquire some experience in forming democratic institutions. Speaking of
constitutional amendments, the CE Congress President underscored the
importance of establishment of election of Yerevan Mayor. Giovanni
di Stasi expressed readiness to promote Armenia in fulfilling the
demands of the Charter on Local Self-Government Armenia had ratified
in 2003. The parties also discussed regional cooperation at their
meeting. Margaryan emphasized Armenia is for active cooperation in
the South Caucasus and will continue efforts in this respect. In
his turn Giovanni di Stasi considered the blockade of the Armenian
border by Turkey unacceptable. He highlighted the idea of formation
of regional center for local government bodies. In his opinion,
it will promote establishment of economic, social and cultural
cooperation between them. Welcoming the idea the Armenian PM expressed
readiness to support initiatives that would held solve common regional
problems. Mr. Margaryan also welcomed the Transborder Cooperation in
Europe conference opening in Yerevan October 5.

REFERENDUM ON AMENDMENTS TO CONSTITUTION TO BE HELD IN ARMENIA ON NOV. 27

ARKA News Network, Armenia
Oct 4 2005

YEREVAN, October 4. /ARKA/. RA President Robert Kocharyan signed a
decree on holding the referendum on Amendments to the RA Constitution
on November 27, 2005; RA Presidential Press-Service reported ARKA
News Agency. The decree was signed according to the RA Constitution,
RA Law “On Referendum”, and taking into consideration proposal of
the RA National Assembly to put the draft amendments to Constitution
on referendum.

RA National Assembly adopted amendments to the RA Constitution in
the third and final reading on September 27, 2005. The previous
referendum on amendments to Constitution in 2003 failed. Amendments
to Constitution are Armenia’s main commitment to the Council of
Europe. A.A. -0–

TALKS POSE TOUGH TEST FOR ANKARA BUREAUCRACY
By Vincent Boland in Ankara

Financial Times, UK
Oct 4 2005

Turkey could be in for a tough few years of political partisanship
as it seeks to meet the requirements of European Union entry while
allowing for an unprecedented level of interference in its internal
affairs from Brussels.

This will pose a severe test of Turkey’s vast and truculent
bureaucracy.

Turks greeted the start of a long process of joining the EU with a
mixture of pride, emotion and criticism on Tuesday, as newspapers
gave celebratory coverage to the middle-of-the-night moment when the
formal accession negotiations got under way in Luxembourg on Monday.

In an emotional column, Mehmet Ali Birand, the veteran journalist
who has covered every event of Turkish history since the invasion of
Cyprus in 1974, wrote that Monday was “the best day of my life”.

But there was dissent from the political opposition.

Deniz Baykal, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s party,
accused Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, of having settled
for a second-class status for Turkey.

Mr Baykal said the accession process did not guarantee entry to the
EU, as it did for every other aspiring member, and did not give Turks
full labour mobility rights. “This is not full membership,” he charged.

Abdullah Gul, the foreign minister, insisted on Monday night, however,
that full membership was essential for Turkey “and we have it”.

Some analysts argue that making Turkey more European, or at least
more EU-compatible, ought not to be too difficult.

Resat Arim, director of studies at the Foreign Policy Institute at
Bilkent University, says: “The general look of Turkey may not give
the impression that everything is European, but much of our system
is geared to Europe and on the whole our legislation and regulations
are not basically very different. The accession process should not
be very difficult. There is no reason why it should fail.”

The next few years will pose more than an administrative challenge for
Turkey, however. It is likely to present philosophical, intellectual
and historical tests.

Serhan Cevik, who follows Turkey for Morgan Stanley, the investment
bank, wrote to investors on Monday that the most important benefit of
the accession process would be that it provided “a favourable setting
to address historical baggage and entrenched positions”.

These include the continued division of Cyprus into Greek and Turkish
Cypriot areas (Turkey has nearly 40,000 troops in northern Cyprus); the
pressing issue of Turkey’s stance on the mass killing of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks, which some historians say was the first genocide of the
20th century; and the unresolved question of Turkey’s Kurdish minority.

All of these questions go to the heart of Turkish identity: its
constant struggle to square its geographical, historical and cultural
position between Europe and the Middle East with its modernising
desire to integrate fully into Europe.

Some commentators say the EU process is intimately linked with this
identity question, and may even resolve it.

TURKISH SPEAKER SAYS EU SHOULD BE HONEST, OBJECTIVE ABOUT EU ACCESSION

Anatolia news agency
1 Oct 2005

Ankara, 1 October: Turkish parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc said on
Saturday [1 October] that Turkey had its most critical days regarding
its EU bid, adding “Europe is being tested for honesty, equity and
objectivity. We see and denounce those who try to impede Turkey’s
membership to the EU by taking some political manoeuvres.”

The new parliamentary term started the same day and the parliamentary
general assembly convened under the leadership of Arinc.

Addressing the parliament, Arinc said that Turkey would not cope with
terrorism by restricting freedoms. “This parliament should give the
best response to terrorism by staying in solidarity,” Arinc said.

Referring to Turkey’s EU bid, Arinc said that the Turkish people had
difficulty in understanding the hypocrisy shown by EU towards Turkey.

Arinc stressed that Turkey was a big state and it had the power to
change some balances, adding that Europe was on the eve of taking an
important decision.

“Europe will either accept our membership, adapt itself to the change
in the world and get stronger or will impede our membership by looking
inwards and loose its impact on world politics. Turkey’s membership
means the integration of the East and the West, and the meeting of
civilizations,” Arinc said.

Denouncing the attempt to bring claims like Armenian genocide onto
the agenda prior to 3 October, Arinc said that the Turkish parliament
would not accept a crime which its ancestors didn’t commit just to
be a member of the European Union.