Author: Tamamian Anna

GUL IN WASHINGTON FOR UPHILL MISSION
Ilnur Cevik

The New Anatolian, Turkey
Feb 8 2007

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is in
Washington with a tough mission to raise controversial issues with the
American leadership ranging from the future of Iraq to the Armenian
resolution pending in Congress that could pollute Turkey’s relations
with the United States.

Gul is currently discussing Ankara’s frustration with American
inactivity against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in
northern Iraq, the future of Kirkuk as well as the Armenian resolution
against some political odds.

He is dealing with a wounded American administration that got a beating
in the mid-term congressional elections because of its current Iraq
policy. So this is an administration that can hardly concentrate on
the PKK holed up in the northern Iraqi mountains controlled by the
Iraqi Kurds, the close regional allies of the U.S.

It is also an administration that has to find a fine balance between
Turkey’s demands to wipe out the PKK in Iraq as well as delaying the
referendum on Kirkuk and the American need to court and appease the
Iraqi Kurds to recruit their backing to deal with the current mess
in Baghdad.

This is a dilemma for the Bush administration.

American officials who are hosting Gul in Washington have said they
fully understand the seriousness of the situation regarding the PKK in
northern Iraq but they also confess that there is not much they can do
to please Ankara by allowing it to launch a Turkish military operation
into Iraq at the cost of alienating the Iraqi Kurdish administration.

There are of course some positive developments where the Americans have
displayed some sensitivity to Turkish concerns on the PKK but they
are far from satisfactory for the Turkish public where people expect
the Americans to help Turkey launch a military operation against the
PKK in the Kandil Mountains and also apprehend PKK leaders and hand
them over to Turkey. Turks say if the Americans can arrest Iranians
in Erbil they can also do this with the PKK.

Besides this there is the issue of Kirkuk where Turkey says it wants
the referendum on the future of Kirkuk to be delayed while the Iraqi
Kurds insist the ballot should be held by the end of the year as
stipulated in the Iraqi constitution. Ankara fears the rights of the
Turkmens in Kirkuk will be lost in a fait accompli.

There too the Americans feel the issue is an internal matter for the
Iraqis to decide and thus are not prepared to challenge the Kurds
over the issue.

So at the bottom line, while the American’s cherish their strategic
alliance with Turkey, they are reluctant to deliver on the PKK and
on Kirkuk simply because they cannot afford to alienate the Iraqi
Kurds at this crucial stage when they need their help more than ever.

Gul should have realized that as he flew to Washington a long list of
Americans were visiting Erbil to discuss the future of Iraq with the
Kurdish leaders. There are rumors that the Americans are interested
in building a major military base in the region.

Besides all this, there is the Armenian issue that is sailing through
troubled waters in the Democratic controlled Congress. The pro-Armenian
lobby is pushing an anti-Turkish resolution in Congress and observers
said there is a real threat that the document may pass.

It is clear that while Gul has drawn American attention to the negative
impact of such a resolution in Turkey the American congressional
leaders are not too sensitive to these concerns. It is sad that Gul
could not meet key people in the new congressional leadership.

This is an uneasy trip for Gul not because Turkey’s importance for
the U.S. has diminished but because the Americans are sidetracked
with other considerations which may well be a passing phase but can
still damage Ankara-Washington ties.

ARA SAGHATELYAN’S CAR BURNT

A1+
[09:32 pm] 08 February, 2007

On February 8, at about 8:00 p.m., unknown people burnt the car
"Nissan-Jeep" belonging to Ara Saghatelyan, owner of Panorama.am and
"My Right" newspaper.

Ara Saghatelyan informed A1+ that he was the first to see the burning
car and saw nobody on the site. He has received no threats over the
passing days.

Mr. Saghatelyan suspects no one and he will give names only after
the investigation.

To remind, Ara Saghatelyan is the former speaker of David Haroutyunyan,
Minister of Justice.

YURI MERZLYAKOV: WE WOULD LIKE AZERBAIJANI AND ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTERS TO MEET BY EARLY MARCH

Azeri Press Agency
Feb 8 2007

"I think Goran Lenmarker did not mean concluding of peace agreement
between Azerbaijan and Armenia, but reaching an agreement on the core
principles of the settlement," Yuri Merzlyakov, Russian co-chair of the
OSCE Minsk Group told the APA while commenting on OSCE Parliamentary
Assembly’s President Goran Lennmarker’s hopes for reaching an agreement
on the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict by the PA’s session
in July.

Noting that the agreement will base on the core principles of the
settlement, the diplomat said it is not known whether the core
principles will be reflected on paper.

"It is premature to speak about the form, the parties to the conflict
should reach an agreement on the content. Everything will depend on
their decisions," the co-chair said.

As to the date and place of the next meeting of Azerbaijani and
Armenian foreign ministers in the framework of the Prague process,
Mr.Merzlyakov said the co-chairs are working to arrange this meeting.

"We would like the ministers to meet by early March," he said.

AGREEMENT ON BAKU-TBILISI-AKHALKALAKI-KARS RAILROAD TO BE SIGNED TODAY

PanARMENIAN.Net
07.02.2007 15:17 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The leaders of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey
will sign today an agreement of the construction of the on
Baku-Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars railroad. Azeri President Ilham Aliyev
has already arrived in the Georgian capital for the purpose. The
project costs $600 million. Azerbaijan will assign $300 million to
Georgia for the construction and repair of the Georgian sector with
a term of 25 years with a possible prolongation. According to the
Georgian Minister of Economic Development Giorgy Arveladze, it won’t
be a heavy debt for Georgia, since it will be paid off at the expense
of income from exploitation of the Georgian branch of the railway.

In the words of Georgian State Minister Zurab Noghaideli, repair and
construction works will be launched this year. "It’s a very important
infrastructure project thanks to which Georgia will become a bridge
between Europe and Asia," the Georgian State Minister said. The
carrying capacity of the railroad is expected to make 15 million tons
per year.

According to preliminary data, Kazakhstan is going to convey up to
10 tons of cargo through the road that appears the shortest way from
Asia to Europe.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress forbade the American banks to finance the
construction of a railroad bypassing Armenia. Washington’s position
was recently confirmed by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Matthew
Bryza, who is known as Georgia’s friend and lobbyist.

The United States can’t prevent Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey from
the decision but will not assist in building of a railroad bypassing
Armenia, he said, reports Rosbalt.

1574 ROAD TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS REGISTERED IN ARMENIA IN 2006

Yerevan, February 07. ArmInfo. 1574 road traffic accidents were
registered in Armenia in 2006, Gen. Lt. Hovhannes Unanyan, Deputy
Head of Armenian Police, said at the press conference today.

In 2006, 2089 people had road traffic accidents, 332 of them died. In
2005, 1773 people had road traffic accidents, 310 of them died. The
reconstructed highways and provide conditions for high-speed drive v
adding to the traffic accidents. The big amount of foreign automobiles,
imported into the republic, also has its share in the increased number
of the road accidents.

Over 80 thnd cars were imported into Armenia within the last 4 years.

24 thnd were imported in 2006 among which 40 cars were wanted
internationally and 20 had damaged ID numbers.

MICROSOFT HASN’T DECIDED THE MEANS OF STRUGGLE YET

A1+
[04:58 pm] 06 February, 2007

The program packets of Microsoft are sold by the European prices in
Armenia. For instance, one and the same program costs 399$ in America
and 399~@ in Europe.

The non-licensed packets of Microsoft are especially common in
Armenia. Grigor Barseghyan, head of the Microsoft Armenian office
doesn’t know for sure how they can combat against this phenomenon. He
merely advises to buy the packets while purchasing computers.

Otherwise, the price of the packet doubles.

The RA Government signed a contract with Microsoft a week ago
under which all the educational packets of Microsoft will be used
in the educational system of Armenia. Both students and professors
will have a chance to train free of charge. The company will share
its experience and knowledge to contribute to the development of
informative technologies.

Mr. Barseghyan informed A1+ that the Armenian variant of "Office 2007"
will be ready in autumn. Microsoft Word, Word XP have already been
translated into Armenian which will eliminate the language barrier
and make computers available for the users.

EU REPRESENTATIVE EMMA UDWIN: "KOSOVO VARIANT CAN NOT BE APPLIED TO SETTLEMENT OF NAGORNO KARABAKH CONFLICT"

Today, Azerbaijan
Feb 6 2007

"Kosovo variant can not be applied to the settlement of any other
conflict," said Emma Udwin spokesperson of Benita Ferrero-Waldner,
Commissioner for External Relations told the APA exclusively.

She characterized Kosovo conflict as a specific and individual one.

"This conflict can not be compared with any other conflict and Nagorno
Karabakh conflict as well. Every situation has its history, political
and economic reasons," she said.

Emma Udwin stressed that Kosovo variant can not be applied to the
settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

"The European Union plays a specific role in peace talks. Though it
differs from the role OSCE Minsk Group plays in the settlement of
Nagorno Karabakh conflict, it is of no less importance," she said.

URL:

The Straits Times (Singapore)
February 4, 2007 Sunday

A history of amnesia;
Elif Shafak’s controversial The Bastard Of Istanbul is an epic soap
opera that tackles the genocide question

by Stephanie Yap, ARTS REPORTER

MOST writers and journalists would have been riveted by the recent
drama that surrounded Turkish novelist Elif Shafak. Last year, she
was put on trial for ‘insulting Turkishness’, and faced three years’
imprisonment under Article 301 of the country’s penal code.

More than 60 writers, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, had
been charged under that law since its introduction in June 2005, but
Shafak’s case was the first time it had been applied to a work of
fiction.

That controversial work? Her sixth novel and her second in English,
The Bastard Of Istanbul, in which characters refer to the exile and
deaths of thousands of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to
1917, as genocide. Turkey, the Empire’s modern-day descendant, denies
it was genocide.

Readers searching for the controversial parts are rewarded early in
the book. An Armenian American man scolds his nephew for doing
nothing while the latter’s ex-wife, who raises their daughter,
marries a Turkish man:

‘What will that innocent lamb tell her friends when she grows up? …
I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their
relatives at the hands of the Turkish butchers in 1915, but I myself
have been brainwashed to deny the genocide because I was raised by
some Turk named Mustafa!’

Emotions and exclamation marks run rife in this epic soap opera,
which shuttles between a Turkish family in Istanbul and an Armenian
American family in San Francisco. At the heart of each is a teenage
girl.

On the Armenian side is Armanoush, the beautiful and bookish daughter
of an Armenian American father and a white mother. Her mother sparks
the tirade above when she marries a Turkish man, Mustafa Kazanci.

Armanoush visits her stepfather’s family in Istanbul in a quest to
discover her Armenian ancestors’ haunts. She meets four generations
of Kazanci women, including her stepfather’s four sisters – variously
a clairvoyant, a history teacher, a schizophrenic and a tattoo artist
– along with their moody mother and their Alzheimer’s-stricken
grandmother.

Lastly, there is Asya, the daughter of the tattoo artist, and the
bastard of the title. Unlike Armanoush, the headstrong, Johnny
Cash-loving Asya has no knowledge of – or interest in – her ancestry.

Armanoush represents the Armenians’ unwillingness to forget, while
Asya embodies the Turkish people’s blindness, deliberate or
otherwise, to the past.

In her eagerness to tackle the genocide question head-on, Shafak’s
writing can get heavy-handed and didactic, reading like a dramatised
textbook as characters reel off dates and statistics in conversation.

Just as often, though, she effectively uses the domestic setting to
explore a nation’s psyche. When Armanoush tells the Kazancis about
the deaths of her ancestors, she is initially surprised that the
women are unapologetic. But she then realises it is ‘not because they
had not felt for her… but because they had seen no connection
between themselves and the perpetrators of their crimes’.

However, as characters reel from the onslaught of revelations that
rain down in the last few chapters – some more believable than others
– even Armanoush might be tempted to admit that ignorance is bliss.

As the clairvoyant Auntie Banu, the one character who has access to
the whole truth, wonders: ‘Was it really better for human beings to
pine to discover more of their past? Or was it simply better to know
as little of the past as possible and even to forget what small
amount was remembered?’

Shafak does not provide the answer, but she has taken the first step
in realising that the question should be asked.

If you like this, read: The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk (1990, $23.10
with GST, Books Kinokuniya).

An Istanbul lawyer takes on the identity of a journalist while
searching for his runaway wife.

[email protected]

THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL By Elif Shafak Viking/Hardcover/ 357 pages/
$39.90 (with GST)/ Major bookstores/*****

ISLAMISTS VERSUS KEMALISTS: THE COMING STORM IN TURKEY

newsid=6317&lang=US

By Dr. Christos Evangeliou

Professor of Philosophy

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the national movement of Kemalism which he
initiated in the 1920’ies, may finally meet their nemesis in the
person of Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the charismatic leader of the
ruling Islamist Party and current Prime Minister of Turkey. The year
2007 did not begin well for Turkey, with the hideous murder of Hrant
Dink, Editor-in-Chief of Agos, the main newspaper of the Armenian
Community in Constantinople. But, in all probability, this year will
be fateful for Turkey’s future, for it will be a year of elections for
a new President as well as a new Government, perhaps with many
surprises.

It is reasonable, therefore, that the question in the minds of many
thinking Turks and their friends these days is whether the history of
the 1997 will be repeated, with Mr. Erdogan in the role of
Mr. Erbakan. Some also wonder whether Erdogan will decide finally to
use his current parliamentary majority to have himself elected
President, in the parliamentary election of the President in the
spring, leaving thus his trusted friend, Mr. Abdullah Gul, to lead the
Islamist Party (AKP) to a renewed victory in the fall of 2007.

However, such possible development will not go down well with the
powerful Turkish Military, which is the real political power in Turkey
since the time of Ataturk. Traditionally, the Turkish Military has
kept a vigilant eye on the political developments and has intervened
regularly every ten years or so to put Turkey back in the `right
track,’ any time the poor country tried to breathe a little more
freely and more democratically.

These days the Turkish Military, under the leadership of General
Buyukanit, does not seem thrilled with the possibility of having the
headscarves of Mrs. Erdogan and her Islamist friends in and out of
the Presidential Palace of the nominally `secular’ Turkey. But, given
Erdogan’s demagogic appeal to the Islamic masses, the Kemalists may
not have a choice, unless they decide to take drastic action
soon. Hence the possibility of a collision between Erdogan’s Islamists
(the same as Erbakan’s in 1997) and Kemalists, who seem determined to
keep Turkey `secular’ and under their control in perpetuity.

This may sound strange and paradoxical in view of the fact that Turkey
desires to become a member of the European Union, where militaries are
under ` political control.’ The Erdogan Government, so far at least,
has played very skillfully the card of a process of possible
membership in the EU in the distant future, in order to weaken the
Military’s grip on power in Turkey, while at the same time it has
advanced the interests of the AKP. But it is doubtful that the
Kemalists will allow Erdogan and his Party to proceed further in a
direction which, in their minds, under-mines the `secularism’ of
Ataturk’s legacy.

Kemalism, as a political phenomenon, was the product of political
conditions that obtained at the end of World War I, the Great War that
brought an end to three Empires: the Austrian, the Russian, and the
Turkish. Several nationalistic, militaristic, and secular movements
took shape at the period between the end of the First and the Second
World War in Europe, in response to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia
in 1917: Fascism in Italy, Kemalism in Turkey, Nazism in Germany, and
the dictatorial regimes of Franko in Spain and Metaxas in Greece. Of
these regimes, Kemalism proved to be most durable.

It is a mark of Ataturk’s genius that Kemalism is still active in
Turkey, while the other revolutionary regimes of the 20th century have
been dead and forgotten a long time ago. The creations of Metaxas,
Franko, Mussolini, Hitler, and even Lenin and Stalin, are history
now. Only Ataturk’s structure was able to survive to this day. This
may be partly due to the fact that, even after his Party gave up the
monopoly of political power, real power remained with the Turkish
Military (that is, the National Security Council). The parties were
allowed to play their political game of holding elections periodically
and succeeding each other in government, so long as they did this by
following the rules of the game as established by the NSC. Until now,
the scheme has worked remarkably well.

But now the Islamists in power in Turkey may decide to change the
rules of this old game that is getting to their nerves. Since they do
have the majority of the vote, they may undo democratically the
`secularism’ that General Kemal established dictatorially. Following
the example of the Iranian Islamist Revolution, they may set new rules
for the game, with controlling power in the hands, not of Generals,
but Imams, Ayatollahs, or a Caliph. Such development will certainly
make Mustafa Kemal turn in his grave, and make Kemalism history
finally. Such possible development will be in accord with the spirit
of revival revolutionary Islam that is spreading in the Middle East
and in Anatolia. But will Kemalists permit its coming, if they think
that they have the power to prevent it?

That is the question to which this year, as we said, is expected to
provide the answer.

The situation is serious, and not only for Turkey and its political
future. Judging by certain recent moves and pronouncements of the
Turkish NSC regarding the Cyprus problem, they seem to contradict the
statements of the Erdogan Government and its expected moves to meet
its responsibilities to the EU that will allow the process of
negotiations to continue.

So, Cyprus may be used once again as a pretext for the Turkish
Military to take action to frustrate the designs of Erdogan’s
Party. The Greek diplomacy would do well to keep an eye on forthcoming
political developments in Turkey and to be prepared to act
accordingly. Given its recent history of `surprises,’ it should not be
surprised this time.

Alternatively, the Turks may decide to interfere in the politics of
Northern Iraq. This could happen especially if the Turkish militarists
believed that the US has by now forgotten the Turkish refusal of its
request to open a second front in the North in the crucial face of the
Iraq war, in the spring of 2003. The US paid a heavy price for
that. It cannot forget, although it seems that it has forgiven the
Erdogan Government and the Turkish Military for being uncooperative
and even unfriendly in a time of need. That is not what was expected
from an ally, on whose military America has invested so many billions
of dollars for so many years. Communism may be dead, but Islamism is
re-born.

Dr. Christos Evangeliou is Professor of Hellenic Philosophy at Towson
University, and author of several books including the latest, Hellenic
Philosophy: Origin and Character.

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Feb 2 2007

AZERI SOLDIER ARRESTED AFTER RETURN FROM ARMENIAN CAPTIVITY

Baku, 2 February: A soldier of the Azerbaijani army, Vusal Qaracayev,
captured by Armenians on 7 December [2006] has been arrested, APA
news agency has learnt from the republic’s Military Prosecutor’s
Office. According to this report, criminal proceedings against
Qaracayev have been instituted at the investigative department for
serious crimes of the Military Prosecutor’s Office under Articles 274
(high treason) and 338.1 (abuse of rules of performance of military
service) of the Criminal Code. An investigation is under way.

We should note that Qaracayev, born in 1988, was called up this year
[as published, actually last year] by the Balakan district military
conscription office [northern Azerbaijan]. He was captured on 7
December on the territory of Agdam [district partly occupied by
Armenia] and freed on 23 December [2006].