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Press Release Source: Harris Interactive

TRIA International Research and Consultancy Joins Harris Interactive Global
Network
Wednesday March 9, 3:09 pm ET

– Turkey serves as a gateway into Eastern Europe, the Middle East and
Central Asia

ROCHESTER, N.Y., March 9 /PRNewswire/ — Harris Interactive® (Nasdaq: HPOL –
News) announces that TRIA International Research and Consultancy, a
full-service global market research and consulting company in Turkey, has
become the newest member of the Harris Interactive Global Network.
TRIA, headquartered in Istanbul, was established in October 2000 and its
management offers more than 20 years of dynamic market research experience
to a broad variety of industries. Sectors include automotive, chemicals,
construction, fast-moving, jewelry, logistics and management performance,
oil and gas, pharmaceutical, retailing, and telecommunications. Data
collection methods include desk research, quantitative research (CAPI,
face-to-face, mail and telephone interviews) and qualitative research with
focus groups and in-depth interviews. TRIA offers market research services
in Turkey, and through its business partners in Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and in Central Asia.

“We are very pleased to welcome TRIA, a firm that offers premier research
capabilities for a diverse list of practice areas, as the newest member of
our global network,” stated David Vaden, executive vice president and chief
strategy officer for Harris Interactive. “We are excited to offer our
clients the opportunity to gain consumer and business insights into this
region that serves as a gateway to Eastern Europe, the Middle East and
Central Asia.”

“Joining the Harris Interactive Global Network will help us gear up the
speed of growth of TRIA,” stated Melih Yurdagul, managing director of TRIA
International Research and Consultancy. “We are pleased to have our local
and international skills and capabilities endorsed by our affiliation with
Harris Interactive. New product and service offerings as well as the
implementation of state-of-the-art Harris Interactive online research
technology will definitely help our clients make better use of research in
the region.”

About the Harris Interactive Global Network

The Harris Interactive Global Network, an international network of affiliate
market research firms, was established in 1992. Today, there are more than a
dozen global network members, representing Africa, Asia, Australia, the
Caribbean, Eastern and Western Europe, Central/North/South America, and the
Middle East. Member firms exchange research expertise and provide the
resourcefulness of local-country knowledge.

Though affiliated with Harris Interactive, global network members operate as
totally independent market- and opinion-research firms. For more information
about the Harris Interactive Global Network, go to
.

About Harris Interactive®

Harris Interactive Inc. ( ), the 15th
largest and fastest-growing market research firm in the world, is a
Rochester, N.Y.-based global research company that blends premier strategic
consulting with innovative and efficient methods of investigation, analysis
and application. Known for The Harris Poll® and for pioneering
Internet-based research methods, Harris Interactive conducts proprietary and
public research to help its clients achieve clear, material and enduring
results.

Harris Interactive combines its intellectual capital, databases and
technology to advance market leadership through U.S. offices and wholly
owned subsidiaries: London-based HI Europe ( ),
Paris-based Novatris ( ), Tokyo-based Harris
Interactive Japan, through newly acquired WirthlinWorldwide, a Reston,
Virginia-based research and consultancy firm ranked 25th largest in the
world, and through an independent global network of affiliate market
research companies. EOE M/F/D/V

To become a member of the Harris Poll Online(SM) and be invited to
participate in future online surveys, visit
.

–Boundary_(ID_fpSlLqQPKN8YpeQ5K5/vNQ)–

Turkey must be encouraged to reject its brutal dark side
By Joan McAlpine

The Herald/UK
March 10 2005

The stampede of policemen hardly looks human. In their visors,
helmets, riot shields and body armour they resemble the robot army in
a science fiction film, with its troops fighting for The Dark Side.
A young woman is pushed to the ground. As the riot police rush past,
they cosh her repeatedly. Several kick her in the head as she struggles
to remain conscious.

This peaceful Turkish demonstration in favour of women’s rights was
smashed as if it were a bloodthirsty band of anarchists equipped
with petrol bombs. The scenes, from Istanbul this week, invariably
raise questions about whether the country is fit to join the European
Union. The EU has already expressed its shock at the “disproportionate
force” used against the demonstrators.

Membership negotiations are set to begin this October, with Britain
and Germany both keen to see the community sign up its first Muslim
partner.

The process could take some time, perhaps 10 or 15 years. Some
Europeans believe it will never happen. Turkey, they believe, is
just too different, too eastern, to embrace western concepts of human
rights and liberalism. Optimists, including our own foreign secretary,
Jack Straw, say that pluralism and tolerance are not exclusively
Judaeo-Christian values.

Turkey is the Islamic world’s first and most succesful secular
democracy. Despite the violence of police in Istanbul, it is
very different from the brutal stereotype of Alan Parker’s film
Midnight Express, where a young American is tortured and raped in
prison after attempting to smuggle cannabis out of the country. The
movie was criticised for its racism at the time of release in 1978
and appears even more dated today. Yet its portrait of Turkey as a
harsh, unreasonable and punitive place has been hard to break down,
despite the passage of years and the growth of package holidays to
the country’s idyllic southern coast.

Turks acknowledge their differences with Europeans from quite a
different perspective. Their country is more religious, with 90% of
the population observing the feast of Ramadan. The family is at the
centre of national culture. In common with other traditional societies,
they place a higher value on friendship, loyalty and honour. These,
they believe, are all positive attributes which, combined with the
economic advances in the west of their country, make them an ideal
partner. If the EU cannot deal with this difference, surely, they
conclude, it is Brussels which exhibits intolerance.

Which vision of Turkey is correct? Ankara has certainly made great
strides towards Straw’s pluralism. It abolished the death penalty
last January, which makes it a more humanitarian country than the US.
The government has signed various conventions on the protection of
minorities, the Kurdish language is no longer outlawed and the state
of emergency which gave security forces carte blanche to abuse the
inhabitants of the south-eastern region has been lifted.

The government has adopted a “zero tolerance” position on torture
and passed a law guaranteeing press freedom. A new penal code will
be introduced next month. This will considerably improve the rights
of women. Honour killings will be punishable with life imprisonment,
and rape within marriage criminalised (we should remember that the UK
only got around to that latter measure within our own generation).
The Ankara government pulled back from an attempt, last September,
to criminalise adultery within the penal code â~@~S a move presumably
intended to appease fundamentalists.

Enlightened commentators within Turkey this week suggested the police
were particularly brutal because their traditional right to behave
as they like will be severely curtailed under the new code. They
feel the wind of change and they dislike it enormously. But many
others within the country, along with human-rights organisations and
the EU itself, acknowledge the changes must be bolder. For example,
the penal code will proscribe the practice of “virginity testing”
forced on young women by their families or prospective in-laws But
this apparent advance is immediately cancelled out, because the code
w ill allow a judge to order virginity tests on young women, even
if they refuse consent. Since the law also criminalises consensual
sex between those under 17, a girl could find herself trapped and
punished by the state for what is an extremely private act, not to
say an individual human right. Since the virginity of boys cannot be
determined, the law is also entirely discriminatory. The new code
will not extend to tolerance of homosexuals, so gays can expect
continued persecution. Amnesty International says that the changes
are insufficient to tackle the widespread violence that is used to
control women within the home. Their research shows local police and
prosecutors remain reluctant to intervene in family matters.

One could go on and on. The failure to educate enough women, 19%
of whom remain illiterate. Or the lack of rights for trade unions to
organise. Or the continuing discrimination against minorities. The
electoral system demands that parties must have 10% of the entire vote
before they get representation, which excludes Kurds and Armenians
from parliament.

However, the whole point of EU membership is to encourage change. The
tempting fruits of a free trade zone stretching from Galway to beyond
the Bosphorus offer a real incentive to modernise. After all, many
members of the community have recent pasts which can only be= described
as primitive. Crimes of passion, our version of honour killings, were
regarded as perfectly acceptable in Mediterranean societies in living
memory. The Republic of Ireland was practically a theocracy until the
1970s and even today it is difficult for single women in some parts
of the country to obtain contraceptives. On the subject of Ireland,
Britain’s human-rights record in the north was hardly exemplary when
Ted Heath signed up for the Common Market, as it was called back
in the early 1970s. We cannot even call ourselves a paragon today,
with a government recently forced to abandon detention without trial,
only to replace it with a who-knows-what mess? Meanwhile, we fawn
over an American administration which most certainly does not have
a zero-tolerance approach to torture.

This is not let Ankara off the hook. I would still prefer to raise
a daughter in central Scotland than Kurdistan. Judged in the global
and historical context, however, the nation which gave the world
the splendour of the Ottoman era and the civilised rationalism of
Ataturk deserves a chance. Turkey has loads of catching up to do.
Let’s hope it makes it, for all our sakes.

–Boundary_(ID_kHNFNFbF6xXlYnHX8pRPAw)–

“WE ARE READY TO RENDER AN ACCOUNT OF HISTORY IF NEEDED”, ERDOGAN STATED AFTER MEETING WITH BAYKAL

Azg/arm
10 March 05

On March 4 Azg informed about the initiative of Deniz Baykal, leader
of the Democratic-Republican Party, to meet Recep Tayyp Erdogan,
Turkish Prime Minister, with the suggestion “to Work in Conference to
Repulse the Statements on the Armenian Genocide.” On March 8, Baykal
met with Erdogan. The meeting lasted an hour and a half. Onur Oymen,
deputy chairman of the Democratic-Republican Party, and Shuqryu
Eleqdeg, parliamentarian, were also present at the meeting. Erdogan
received them in the presence of Abdullah Gul, Turkish foreign
minister, and Jemil Ciceq, Turkish justice minister.

The meeting was highlighted by the main information program of the
Turkish TV, as well as, by Reuters and the leading newspapers of
Turkey.

Baykal represented the draft “On the struggle against the statements
on the Armenian genocide,” as well as two letters addressed to the
House of Lords and the House of Commons of the Great Britain. Erdogan
assured that they will in conference elaborate the draft. The content
of the draft is unknown. By the end of the meeting Erdogan and Baykal
made statements for the press.

Erdogan stated the fact of putting forward such issues in front of
Turkey for being accepted to the EU. He conditioned this with the
“The Blue Book” written in England 85 years ago. He expressed
suspicion about the truthfulness of this book. In particular, he
added, “Such groundless propaganda will yield no results. We call for
the authors of the statements (on genocide), informing them that we
have opened our state archives, if they are sincere in their
statements, let them open their own archives. The committees
consisting of historians and scholars should work here. If after all
this it will be necessary to take steps, Turkey will take them. If
needed, we are ready to render a political account to the history. We
donâ~@~Yt want to poison the future generations with hatred and
revenge.”

Baykal stated that the propaganda directed to the recognition of the
Armenian Genocide will simultaneously follow the development of the
relations between Turkey and EU. Conditioning this by lobbying
activities, Baykal pointed out “the political” character of the
propaganda. He also called on the Armenians to open their archives
and said, “Everybody should be ready to face the truth.” “Genocide is
a serious accusation. It should be proved by historical facts. While
they only accuse in the propaganda against Turkey, without even
trying to reveal the main peculiarities of the genocide. We achieved
full agreement to tell the world the truth from the Turkish National
Assembly,” he added.

By Hakob Chakrian

–Boundary_(ID_hftzr/kP3wUtwGmPhvM4Pw)–

Azeri defence minister, visiting US delegation praise ties

Bilik Dunyasi news agency
9 Mar 05

Baku, 9 March: The USA attaches special importance to cooperation with
Azerbaijan. This idea was voiced during Azerbaijani Defence Minister
Safar Abiyev’s meeting with US Ambassador Reno Harnish and a visiting
delegation of the US Air Force College.

After welcoming the guests, Abiyev pointed to the importance of such
meetings. The minister also spoke about Azerbaijan’s independence
history.

“From the first days of its independence Azerbaijan embarked on the
course of integration into European security bodies. Today, Azerbaijan
views the USA as its strategic ally and closely cooperates with NATO
within the framework of the Partnership for Peace programme. In 2004,
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev presented an individual cooperation
plan to the NATO secretary-general. We are now working to implement
that plan and we intend to fulfil all its provisions. Our goal is
to get as close to NATO as possible. Azerbaijan attaches special
importance to cooperation with the United States,” Abiyev said.

Informing the visiting delegation of the military and political
situation in the South Caucasus, the history and implications of the
Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Col-Gen Safar Abiyev said: “Although
the sides reached a cease-fire agreement in 1994, there has been
no breakthrough in the conflict settlement. Despite the fact that
the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [PACE] recently
recognized Armenia as an aggressor and the Nagornyy Karabakh forces
as separatists, Armenia is still not honouring four UN Security
Council resolutions demanding its unconditional withdrawal from
the occupied Azerbaijani territories. We are stating again that the
people of Azerbaijan will never come to terms with the occupation of
their lands.”

After thanking Col-Gen Safar Abiyev for the cordial welcome and
detailed information, Reno Harnish said the USA attaches particular
importance to cooperation with Azerbaijan and considers it a strategic
partner.

AZERBAIJAN CAN BE SACKED FROM EC

A1+
09-03-2005

The PACE spring session can be the last one for Azerbaijan. The
menace of being sacked from EU looms in front of Azerbaijan.
Gyultekin Gajieva, member of the EU Azerbaijani delegation, has said
about it in the Azerbaijani press. According to the delegate, this
kind of development of events is quite possible, as Azerbaijan has
not met the commitments taken upon before the EU.

At present the EU attention is centered at the necessity of creating
an Azerbaijani national television, setting free of all the political
prisoners without exception, eliminating corruption which has reached
terrible volumes, and introducing changes into the â~@~Electoral
Codeâ~@~].

Neither has Azerbaijan achieved any success in the field of human
rights, so the assassination of the famous journalist Elmar Huseynov
can cause a lot of trouble for Azerbaijan. This fact is confessed by
both the Azerbaijani delegates of PACE, and the officials, and the
delegates of the Azerbaijani Parliament.

The fear is enhanced by the fact that the Azerbaijani Government
has no time for amendments. During a month they will not manage to
set free hundreds of political prisoners and to create a national
television. These will be possible in autumn at best. But in the EU
they already hint that the last straw is near.

–Boundary_(ID_SLiHZvuBwolyKB1Ccf4DQg)–

Anadolu Agency, Turkey
March4 2005

Double Genocide Correction from US Yerevan Ambassador
By Anadolu News Agency (aa)
Published: Friday 04, 2005
zaman.com

The US Ambassador to Yerevan John Evans has had to apologize twice
for use of the term “genocide” about events in Armenia, once to the
US Administration and once to Turkey.

Evans criticized Washington’s policy last week and said that Armenian
events should be called “genocide” from now on. Top level
administration of US State Department reacted to this statement and
made Evans issue a retraction on the Embassy’s internet site. The
ambassador said in the message that the term “genocide” was his own
evaluation and this did not indicate the US policy, which had not
changed. Evans said that he was sorry for causing a misunderstanding.
But Evans hid the term ‘genocide’ within the message of apology
saying “there is no change in the policy of the US over the Armenian
genocide.” The Turkish ambassador to Washington Faruk Logoglu reacted
to this message and the Washington administration approved Turkey’s
demand and made Evans correct the message of apology. Logoglu
reminded the US State Department that the US does not recognize the
Armenian genocide, but the term was used in the message of apology of
the US Yerevan Ambassador. Logoglu noted that a term that is not
accepted by USA could not be used in a statement of policy.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
28. Februar 2005

Türkei kritisiert Armenien-Antrag

BERLIN, 27. Februar (dpa). Der von der Union in den Bundestag
eingebrachte Antrag zum 90.

Jahrestag der Vertreibung von Armeniern im damaligen Osmanischen
Reich hat eine heftige offizielle Reaktion der Türkei ausgelöst. In
einer am Sonntag in Berlin veröffentlichten Erklärung warf der
türkische Botschafter der CDU/CSU-Bundestagsfraktion vor, “sich zum
Sprecher des fanatischen armenischen Nationalismus” zu machen, der
sich gegen die territoriale Integrität der Türkei richte und auf der
ganzen Welt von organisiertem Terror Gebrauch mache. In dem Antrag
der Unionsfraktion vom 22. Februar heißt es, am 24. April 1915 “wurde
auf Befehl der das Osmanische Reich lenkenden jungtürkischen Bewegung
die armenische politische und kulturelle Elite Istanbuls verhaftet
und ins Landesinnere verschleppt, wo deren größter Teil ermordet
wurde”.

–Boundary_(ID_0PZ5J8WXHAHA7FVzLWMfTQ)–

KOCHARIAN PICKS UP NEW SPOKESMAN

ArmenPress
Feb 28 2005

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS: President Kocharian picked up a
26 year-old Viktor Soghomonyan to replace his former spokesman Ashot
Kocharian appointed ambassador to India. Viktor Soghomonyan was born
in 1979 in Yerevan. He graduated the Department of Russian language
and Literature at Yerevan State University in 2001 and continued his
post-graduate education at the Institute of Literature, an affiliation
of the National Academy of Sciences.

He was engaged in TV reporting since 1997. From 2002 to 2003 he taught
at Russian-Armenian University in Yerevan. Later he worked as chief
of staff of parliament chairman. Viktor Soghomonyan is single.

RUSSIAN STAVROPOL AND ARMENIA SEEK MORE ACTIVE BUSINESS CONTACTS

ArmenPress
Feb 28 2005

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS: A forty-member delegation of
businessmen from the southern Russian province of Stavropol, which
has a strong Armenian community, is expected to visit Armenia in late
March in an effort to establish new business contacts here.

In turn the Armenian Union of Businessmen and Industrialists plans
to organize an exhibition of Armenian-made goods in Stavropol.
According to Arsen Ghazarian, the chairman of the Union, the presence
of the strong Armenian community is looked upon as a factor that may
facilitate the entrance of Armenian goods to the region.

Viktor Milenin, the deputy trade minister of the Russian province,
said to Armenpress Stavropol businessmen are interested in Armenian
agricultural goods and jewelry. The annual trade between the province
and Armenia now stands at about $700,000.

“Int’l assistance needed to arraign Khojaly massacre perpetrators”

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Feb 28 2005

Baku, February 25, AssA-Irada

The chief perpetrators of the Khojaly massacre of Azerbaijanis
committed by Armenians in 1992 have yet to be held responsible. The
world community’s assistance is needed in this, the President’s adviser
on national affairs Hidayat Orujov told a Friday news conference
dedicated to the 13th anniversary of the tragedy.

Orujov said that law enforcement are currently investigating the
actions perpetrated by the criminals responsible for the massacre
in Armenia, Upper Garabagh and Moscow. Some of the criminal cases
have already been disclosed, while extensive information needs to be
ascertained with regard to others. The Azeri government is doing its
utmost in this area, he said.

Orujov added that if the number of countries that recognize and
become aware of the massacre increases, this would accelerate and
facilitate catching, bringing these criminals to Azerbaijan and
holding them accountable.*