OFFICIALS QUESTION THE FATE OF DIPLOMAT
By Tania Chatila, News-Press and Leader

Glendale News Press, CA
March 26 2006

Reports say U.S. Ambassador to Armenia may be removed for genocide
comments.

GLENDALE — Rep. Adam Schiff and two other Congressmen have written
letters or questioned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice regarding
reports that the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia is being removed from
his post over remarks he made last year acknowledging the Armenian
Genocide.

The concerns stem from remarks Ambassador John Marshall Evans made
on a visit to UC Berkeley in February 2005. Evans referred to the
1915 massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of
the Ottoman Turks as a genocide.

The U.S. government does not recognize the killing as a genocide.

“It was more than just mentioning it in passing,” said Aram Hamparian,
executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, which
joined Schiff and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey) and Rep. Grace
Napolitano (D-Santa Fe Springs) in writing letters to the White House
regarding the matter. “It was an explicit mention of the events and
why the U.S. government needs to properly recognize those events.”

Since then, Hamparian said the committee has received word that Evans
is being removed from his position because of the statements.

“Our information from friends in the American government and the
Armenian government is that he is being recalled,” Hamparian said. “I
am convinced that he is.”

But Terry Davidson, a State Department spokesman, said that he has
not been recalled.

“Generally, we don’t open up the personnel process, but ambassadors are
appointed by the president and serve at the pleasure of president,”
he said. “Currently, he is the ambassador in Yerevan [Armenia] and
until the president determines otherwise, he’ll be there.”

Despite the State Department’s official insistence on the matter,
the rumor has picked up speed and raised concerns.

Schiff said he proposed several questions to Rice at an open hearing
a few weeks ago, and last week met privately with a deputy secretary
of state and expressed his opposition to a recall.

“I expressed … I thought it would be real a travesty,” Schiff said.

“The American government doesn’t deny the facts of the genocide, and
while the government hasn’t demonstrated the courage to recognize it,
that certainly shouldn’t compound policy by discharging an ambassador
that chose to speak the truth.”

If the move goes through, it would be a setback for the
Armenian-American community, said Armond Aghakhanian, an executive
board member of the Glendale-based Armenian American Chamber of
Commerce.

“He’s been a great ambassador and then you get rid of him just because
of speaking the truth?” he said.

Aghakhanian said Evans’ fate is something that no one wants to admit.

“I think there are plenty of strong indications that [Evans’] tenure
is being cut short because of the comments,” Schiff said.

“It certainly has not been a career-enhancer and might be a
career-ender.”

Evans did not return calls for comment.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE RECOGNIZES INFLUENTIAL BUSINESS AND LEADERS
By Tania Chatila, News-Press and Leader

Glendale News Press, CA
March 26 2006

Gala honors service

BURBANK — The best thing about owning or running a successful business
is the ability to give back to the community, according to officials
with the Glendale-based Armenian American Chamber of Commerce.

That was evident at the chamber’s third annual business awards gala
Friday night at The Castaway restaurant, where one business and two
local business owners were awarded for their support of the local
Armenian-American community.

About 400 people — including chamber members and local officials —
attended the event, which honored Bank of America as business of the
year, Alec Baghdasaryan as businessman of the year and Jenik Akopian
as businesswoman of the year.

“We just wanted to recognize the businesses, professionals and business
owners who are not only successful in their industry, but also manage
to give back to the communities they serve,” chamber Executive Director
Annette Vartanian said. “Anything possible they can do, they do it.”

The three honorees were chosen by a committee based on their
involvement in the community, said Armond Aghakhanian, an executive
board member of the chamber.

“These are good examples of businesses that are not only successful,
but really contribute back,” he said.

Baghdasaryan, who has lived in Glendale since 1987 and opened his
Glendale-based business, Information, Integration Group Inc. in 1991,
is a member of the Homenetmen Glendale Ararat Chapter and the Armenian
Educational Foundation.

“In my upbringing, my parents were always ready and willing to help
others,” Baghdasaryan said. “So I developed this sense of helping
others too.”

It is especially important for successful business owners to help
the Armenian American community because it is still a relatively new
community to the nation, he said.

For Akopian, the importance is in supporting the elderly because they
helped build the community and the Armenian American youth because
they will build the future, she said.

“I do believe in the community, and I believe in the young generation,”
she said.

Akopian, a Glendale resident, is also involved with the Armenian
Educational Foundation and the Homenetmen Glendale Ararat Chapter,
as well as being an administrator for Autumn Hills Health Care Center
in Glendale.

“It’s such a great feeling [to be honored],” she said.

“But again, my message is cherish your families, because without the
love and support of your families, no one can be successful.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

‘TERRIBLE FATE’; THE LEGACY OF ETHNIC CLEANSING
By Pamela H. Sacks, Telegram & Gazette Staff

Telegram & Gazette (Massachusetts)
March 21, 2006 Tuesday
All Editions

Historian Ben Lieberman was reflecting on Slobodan Milosevic shortly
after the Serbian strongman’s death last week in a jail cell in
The Hague.

Milosevic led Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, into four Balkan
wars. At the time of his death from a heart attack, he was on trial
before an international tribunal, charged with 66 counts of war crimes,
including genocide, in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

“Milosevic was at one time a socialist, or communist, and didn’t
care about national purity,” Mr. Lieberman said. “In the 1980s,
he realized he could draw power by manipulating opinions.”

Mr. Lieberman went on to explain that Milosevic’s actions fit a
historical pattern of ethnic cleansing, in which one group starts the
process by creating fear of another through the telling and retelling
of hate-filled stories. “In periods of crisis, those stories about
people who aren’t and haven’t been their enemies take over, even
among people who know better,” he said.

Ethnic-cleansing campaigns range from intimidation to terror to
violence that sometimes includes rape, Mr. Lieberman said. “Then
there’s extermination.”

Mr. Lieberman, who will speak Thursday at Clark University, has
traced ethnic cleansing over the past two centuries in eastern and
central Europe and Asia. His findings are presented in his new book,
“Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe.”

As the Ottoman, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and German empires collapsed
in the 19th century, waves of ethnic cleansing and related violence
changed the populations of towns and cities and transformed those vast
multi-ethnic empires into the nearly homogenous nation-states of today.

The decimation continued through the 20th century, with the Armenian
genocide, the two world wars, the Holocaust, the rise and fall of the
Soviet Union and, in the 1990s, the breakup of Yugoslavia. Monarchs
and dictators were fomenters, but so were democratically elected
leaders. Ordinary people often required little encouragement to rob
and brutalize their neighbors, Mr. Lieberman said. The Holocaust and
the Armenian genocide were not discrete atrocities but part of a much
broader process.

“Ethnic cleansing remade almost the entire map from Germany through
Turkey,” Mr. Lieberman, a professor at Fitchburg State College, said
by telephone from his campus office. “You could look at any town or
village and find the population was different 150 years ago.

Different minority populations were forced out – usually violently.”

The denial of the Armenian genocide by the Turkish government is,
he said, “part of the mythology of politics.” On the other hand,
there are many Turkish historians and scholars who do acknowledge
what happened, particularly if they are speaking privately or are
outside of their country.

“The Turks have a lot in common with other nations,” Mr. Lieberman
said. “Many nations have powerful national stories, and they are the
heroes, and they were victimized. They have a hard time understanding
and recognizing the suffering of others. You can look at the Turkish,
Armenian or Greek understanding of history – there are similar stories
of victimization. The Turks aren’t that different from other people.”

Today, there is reason to worry that ethnic cleansing is taking place
in Iraq, he said. Some argue that members of the two major Islamic
sects, the Shiite and the Sunni, are not different enough to touch off
widespread ethnic violence. Mr. Lieberman is not so sure. “The close
ties do not tell me there is not going to be more ethnic cleansing,”
he said.

Attitudes about ethnic cleansing have changed only in the last
15 years, Mr. Lieberman asserts. The idea was acceptable in the
mid-20th century. Even after World War II, he said, there was a
strong international consensus that sometimes people needed to live
in separate spheres to create long-term peace.

In the 1990s, attitudes changed in the face of the extreme brutality
occurring in the Balkans, where Mr. Milosevic played an important
and brutal role, and steps were taken to stop it.

“People used to say, `What could we do?’ Now, they say, `It is bad,'”
Mr. Lieberman said.

Nonetheless, little to no effort was made to stop the killing of
hundreds of thousands of Tutsi by the Hutu in the early 1990s in
Rwanda, and it is widely acknowledged that genocide is occurring in
the Darfur region of Sudan right now.

“Nicholas Kristof is writing about it,” Mr. Lieberman said, referring
to a columnist at The New York Times. “But I don’t think there’s been
an adequate response thus far.”

What: “Driven Off the Map” – a lecture by Professor Ben Lieberman,
presented by the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, Clark University

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday

Where: Tilton Hall, Higgins University Center, Clark University,
950 Main St., Worcester

How much: Free and open to the public, to be followed by a reception.

AN EVOCATIVE TOUR OF ALL THAT IS ISTANBUL
By Keith Monroe

The Virginian-Pilot(Norfolk, VA.)
March 19, 2006 Sunday
The Virginian-Pilot Edition

ISTANBUL Memories and the City
ORHAN PAMUK
Knopf. 373 pp. $26.95.

SOME WRITERS flee home – Hemingway, Shakespeare, Zola. Others stay
home and cultivate their own little patch – Faulkner and Austen.

Orhan Pamuk is one of the latter. He grew up in the family’s Pamuk
Apartments where a grandmother or uncle was only a flight of stairs
away. Nearing 60, he still lives in the Pamuk Apartments.

Such rootedness can smack of the ingrown – Dickinson in Amherst,
Flaubert in provincial Rouen. But Pamuk inhabits a city so fascinating
and multifarious, it hardly seems eccentric to burrow deep.

This book begins at the beginning, and few writers have ever captured
the hothouse of childhood so well. Pamuk’s recollections are vivid
and deeply felt, and only gradually does he iris out from his family
– where a beloved mother feuds with a ne’er-do-well father who is
squandering the family fortune through ill-conceived business ventures.

As Pamuk learns about a wider world, we learn with him about his
adored city, often through the works of those who depicted it: The 18th
century German artist Memling, the French writers Nerval and Flaubert
and four melancholy Turks whom he counts as spiritual guides – Kemal,
Kocu, Hisar, and Tanipar.

This mixture of Western and Turkish influences is appropriate
in a Turkish writer who was raised as an unbelieving Muslim in a
westernized, bourgeois family. He observes of his Turkish artistic
forebears: “After long deliberation they found an important and
authentic subject, the decline and fall of the great empire into
which they were born.”

Pamuk himself was born a half century or more after these men,
in 1952. He has seen the crumbling city of his youth (population 1
million) metastasize into a sprawling 10-million-person megalopolis.

He mourns the replacement of much dilapidated ancient beauty with
even more dilapidated modern ugliness.

He could undoubtedly say a good deal about the decline of comity
as well in a city that has replaced habitual melancholy with rising
militancy. Pamuk was threatened with jail in 2005 for discussing the
brutal treatment of Armenians by Turks a century ago. But this book
stops long before the present.

In fact, it ends around 1970, with Pamuk as a lackadaisical student
of architecture who also paints. His distraught mother fears he’ll
try to make a living as an artist. “In a country as poor as ours,
around so many weak, defeated, semiliterate people, to have the sort
of life you deserve … you have to be rich.”

To which, with the comical, cocksure obliviousness of youth, he offers
Mom this reassurance: “I don’t want to be an artist. I’m going to be
a writer.”

It’s not exactly Joyce’s megalomaniac boast that he will forge the
uncreated conscience of his race in the smithy of his soul, but it
does show that “Istanbul’s” submerged theme is “A Portrait of the
Young Artist Discovering his Vocation.”

Since Pamuk is Turkey’s leading novelist and on the Nobel short list,
it seems to have worked out. Since the tale of his entire adulthood and
working life remains to be told, it also suggests that this luminous
book is only the first volume of memoirs we might expect >From him.

Almost half of the book’s page count is devoted to dozens of
astonishing photos by Ara Guler. He deserves to be regarded as the
Eugene Atget of Istanbul, and his cityscapes alone are worth the
price of admission.

They help make this book wonderfully evocative of a unique place –
part “Arabian Nights,” part Third World trash heap, part first world
capital.

* Keith Monroe lives in Greensboro, N.C.

HE PLAYS HIS WAY, WHEREVER;

Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, NC)
March 19, 2006 Sunday
Metro Edition

Trumpeter’s Current Gig As A Freelancer Is With The Symphony

Ryan Anthony, a virtuoso trumpeter without a full-time gig, often
checks his calendar to see what jobs he has lined up over the next
12 months.

“It looks awfully blank,” he said. “You scratch your head and kind
of hope, ‘How are we going to get through the year?’ It always seems
to work out. Things come through.”

They do indeed.

The latest “thing” will happen next Sunday when Anthony teams up with
the Winston-Salem Symphony at the Stevens Center.

He will solo in Armenian Alexander Arutunian’s Trumpet Concerto in
A-flat Major (1950). The program will also include Brahms’ Variations
on a Theme by Haydn and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Robert Moody
will conduct.

Symphony fans can get a taste of Anthony’s artistry when he performs
excerpts of the Arutunian concerto Saturday at the Stevens Center, as
part of a “Saturday Nights, Live!” program. This concert, also to be
conducted by Moody, will feature jazz singer Banu Gibson and the New
Orleans Hot Jazz swinging their way through classics from the 1920s,
’30s and ’40s.

Anthony, 36, may feel a freelancer’s anxieties over the uncertainties
of future employment. But he keeps filling his schedule with enough
part-time work to enjoy what he calls “a pretty full-time career.”

Each week, for example, he commutes from his home in Memphis, Tenn.

to Winston-Salem, where he is working as a visiting instructor at
the N.C. School of the Arts until May.

He has one of most unusual jobs in orchestral music, serving as
guest principal trumpeter of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. When
I told Anthony that I’d never heard of such a position, he said,
“I haven’t either.” “It’s a dream job,” he said. “They fly me in to
do the Mahler and the Strauss, and all the big Shostakovich trumpet
works, and then I go home.”

Anthony will become the Dallas orchestra’s interim principal next
season, though he says that playing in an orchestra is “not something
I could do 100 percent all the time and make a career out of.” He has
done his share of studio recordings, for radio, television and motion
pictures. He champions tried-and-true solo fare for his instrument,
and he is getting composers to write him new works.

He went to London recently to appear on the inaugural recording
of Brass Classics, a series that will feature music performed by
principals from some of the world’s leading orchestras. On New
Year’s eve, he stood in front of the Pensacola Symphony in Florida
and soloed through one pops classic after another. He said he wants
to do something similar with the Winston-Salem Symphony after next
weekend’s concerts.

On many a Sunday, too, Anthony teams up with organist Gary Beard
at the Lindenwood Christian Church in Memphis. The two released an
eclectic recording, Ryan Anthony with Gary Beard, which features
everything from “Amazing Grace” to a Carmen fantasy.

“I like the extremes that organ pushes me to do,” Anthony said. “It
makes me feel like I have to go the distance, in all directions.”

Anthony will be the first to say how “incredibly lucky” he is to be
“doing all these things at a high level.” Plum free-lance work has
come his way because he is talented, knows how to market himself and
has learned a thing or two about cultivating relationships.

The marketing part shows up on his Web site, It
has just about everything a musician might need to promote himself,
including testimonials from leading musicians. One of the testimonials
is from Doc Severinsen:

“He (Anthony) is not only an impeccable trumpeter but has true
artistic depth in his playing,” Severinsen says. “Also, he has
extensive exposure to audience demands and knows the importance of
communicating with them. aI feel certain he will have a great and
distinguished career as a soloist.”

And Anthony is big believer in keeping lines of communication open
with, say, a conductor after an engagement ends.

“A lot of musicians don’t understand that,” he said. “They just go
and play and don’t realize that there’s a personal aspect to what
we do. That means getting to know somebody – not just on the podium
but off of it.” About two years ago, Anthony gave up one of the most
coveted permanent jobs in classical music – membership in the Canadian
Brass, probably the most popular quintet of its kind in the world. He
had been with the group for three years.

“To be honest, it was about 250 days a year on the road,” Anthony
said. “Once my 2-year-old (son Rowan) got old enough to say,
‘Daddy, don’t go,’ the pleasures of being on the road were quickly
diminishing.”

Anthony said he now controls his schedule a lot more than it used to
control him. That’s become even more important to Anthony, as his wife,
Niki, also gave birth to a daughter, Lili, now four months old.

The greater flexibility has afforded Anthony opportunities to do the
two things he said he loves most – perform chamber music or solo with
an orchestra.

As for the Arutunian concerto, Robert Simon conducted it a few
years ago with the Piedmont Wind Symphony. (Arturo Sandoval was the
soloist.) In the program notes for that performance, the concerto is
described as “a standard of the trumpet repertory.”

“Arutunian’s style makes use of Armenian folk elements, is rather
accessible and often explores the tension between classical and
romantic procedures,” the notes say.

Anthony described the concerto as one of favorites. The piece’s
beautiful, slow melodic lines come off well on his instrument,
he said. And he likes exploiting all the technically demanding,
fanfare-like passages.

“It allows me, as a performer, to take the audience through different
styles, different sounds and colors that the trumpet can do,” Anthony
said. “I have a lot of fun with it. I think that translates to the
audience.”

ANTHOLOGIST HELPS KICK OFF FRESNO COUNTY’S SESQUICENTENNIAL
Jim Guy The Fresno Bee

Fresno Bee (California)
March 24, 2006 Friday
Final Edition

Author celebrates Valley’s voices

When writer Gerald Haslam published “Many Californias,” an anthology
of California writers, he drew fire from a critic at the San Francisco
Chronicle because much of the work was by Fresno poets.

The critic argued that there should be more representation for other
California poets from cities such as Berkeley.

Haslam was quick to challenge the critic. What poets had Berkeley
produced in the past 40 years, Haslam asked, that can stand up to
the work of Valley poets? Haslam says the critic had the grace to
concede the point.

Haslam, a widely published author himself, spoke about “Fresno of the
Mind” on Thursday night in downtown Fresno to help kick off the first
event in the Fresno County Sesquicentennial, a yearlong celebration
of Fresno County’s 150th year. Books by Haslam include “The Great
Central Valley: California’s Heartland,” “Working Man’s Blues” and
“Coming of Age in California.”

Much as crops from all over the world have flourished here, Haslam
credits a diversity of people with hardworking roots for making the
written word blossom in the Valley.

He traces much of that back to William Saroyan, who was first to
acknowledge the complexity of society taking shape here in the early
part of the the 20th century through stories like “70,000 Assyrians,”
about an Armenian boy getting a haircut and a history lesson from
the victim of another diaspora.

Longtime California State University, Fresno, professor Philip Levine
is credited by Haslam for carrying on the tradition through nonelitist
poetry that pays homage to the everyday person.

“He put himself through school while wearing a shirt with his name
on it,” Haslam said. “He understood poverty. He understood diversity.”

Haslam cites “Death of a Hog,” a seemingly simple poem about a boy’s
coming of age as he helps slaughter a hog, as evidence of that.

“I think it’s possible that no one has done more to invent the
‘Fresno of the Mind’ than Levine,” he said.

Modern heirs of the tradition, Haslam says, include the prolific
author Gary Soto and historian/polemicist Victor Davis Hanson. The
two may have very different points of view, but that’s part of the
diversity, too.

SPEAK THE TRUTH: U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA IN HOT WATER OVER USE OF ‘GENOCIDE.’

Fresno Bee (California)
March 24, 2006 Friday
Final Edition

John Evans, a career diplomat, may be about to discover that speaking
the truth can have severe personal and professional consequences —
especially when it is a truth one’s bosses wish to avoid.

Evans is the American ambassador to Armenia — for now. His
transgression came last February, when he spoke at UC Berkeley,
where he had gone to accept a prestigious award from the American
Foreign Service Association.

In the course of his address, according to the Los Angeles Times and
other news sources, he said that it was “unbecoming of us as Americans
to play word games here. I will today call it the Armenian genocide”
— something The Bee and many others have been saying for years.

Since then, Evans has been made to issue a “correction,” and seen the
State Department force the association to rescind its award. Now his
job is threatened. Shame on the State Department.

Evans was referring, of course, to the actions of the Ottoman Turks
from 1915 to after the end of the First World War. During that time
the Turks killed some 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children,
by most estimates. Their stated reason: The Armenians were supporting
Turkey’s ancient enemy, Russia, in that conflict.

No doubt many Armenians did just that. The enmity between Muslim
Turks and Christian Armenians has run deep for centuries. But the
Turks set out to systematically destroy an entire people, not just
enemy combatants, in the first — though sadly not the last —
genocide of the 20th century. Some Armenians were able to flee,
including the ancestors of the Armenian Americans who’ve made such
valuable contributions to the Valley for many decades.

Several American administrations, abetted by the State Department,
have tiptoed around Turkish sensibilities because of that nation’s
strategic importance on the southern flank of the former Soviet
Union. Whatever merit that pragmatic approach might have once had
vanished with the fall of the communist giant.

Today Turkey desperately wishes to join the European Union, but the
EU has strongly urged that recognition of the genocide be a condition
for Turkish membership.

It’s past time for the State Department, Congress and the
administration to do the same. The facts are plain. The history is
clear. Turkey offends the victims’ survivors with its intransigence,
but hurts itself most of all when it continues to deny what the entire
world knows.

John Evans doesn’t deserve this either.

CINEMA: PER FILM “LA FATTORIA DELLE ALLODOLE” SU GENOCIDIO ARMENI

ANSA Notiziario Generale in Italiano
16 Marzo 2006

Berlusconi Invita I Taviani A Prudenza, Giornale Turco

(ANSA) – ANKARA, 16 MAR – Silvio Berlusconi avrebbe scritto una
lettera ai registi Paolo e Vittorio Taviani chiedendo loro di non
urtare la suscettibilita’ dei turchi con ‘La fattoria delle allodole’,
il film che stanno per girare sui massacri degli armeni nell’Anatolia
ottomana del 1915-16, che sposerebbe la tesi armena del “genocidio”.

Lo scrive oggi il giornale turco in inglese ‘The New Anatolian’,
lasciando intendere che la lettera del premier sarebbe una risposta
a passi diplomatici intrapresi di recente sia verso l’ Italia, sia
verso altri paesi europei, annunciati nei giorni scorsi dal ministro
degli esteri turco, Abdullah Gul.

Lo stesso giornale riferisce che l’organismo Euroimages del Consiglio
d’Europa ha deciso di finanziare, con 600 mila euro, il film dei
Taviani basato su un romanzo della scrittrice italo-armena Antonia
Aslan, che sposa la tesi del genocidio raccontando una vicenda
ambientata durante la deportazione forzata degli armeni dell’Impero
ottomano fino al nord della Siria.

La decisione di finanziare il film e’ stata presa – secondo il giornale
– durante una riunione dei 32 ministri della cultura del Consiglio
d’Europa, con l’opposizione del solo ministro turco e l’astensione
di quello macedone.

La decisione ha irritato fortemente Ankara, anche perche la
Turchia partecipa con un contributo annuale di 1 milione di euro
ai sovvenzionamenti di Euroimages, per cui – sostiene il giornale
New Anatolian – “la Turchia sta finanziando le tesi armene con il
proprio denaro”.

Secondo il giornale, il fatto poi che anche la Rai avrebbe deciso
di finanziare il film avrebbe creato una tensione diplomatica in
particolare tra Ankara e Roma.

La tesi turca e’ che la deportazione degli armeni da parte del governo
ottomano degli anni 1915-16 non fu un genocidio perche fu decisa
come necessaria “misura di guerra” in risposta alla ribellione, su
istigazione delle potenze europee, degli armeni dell’est anatolico,
i quali avevano tradito la fedelta’ agli ottomani alleandosi con
l’invasore Russia, attaccando le popolazioni turche e facendo diverse
centinaia di migliaia di vittime tra queste ultime.

Sta di fatto che i convogli ferroviari che deportavano gli armeni
furono attaccati lungo il cammino da forze paramilitari, soprattutto
curde e – secondo gli armeni – ben 1,5 milioni di armeni (la quasi
totalita’ degli armeni di Anatolia, compresi molti armeni che vivevano
fuori della regione armena, dove c’era stata la ribellione) furono
sterminati, per cui – sempre secondo gli stessi armeni – si tratto’
del “primo genocidio del XX secolo”.

I turchi respingono con sdegno queste cifre, insieme alla qualifica
di “genocidio” per quei massacri, affermando che ci furono 500-600
mila morti sia da una parte sia dall’altra, in un conflitto armato
tra armeni cristiani e turchi musulmani.

SCOPPIA LA POLEMICA SUL PROSSIMO LAVORO I TAVIANI CENSURATI PER LA SHOAH ARMENA?
Caprara Fulvia

La Stampa, Italia
17 Marzo 2006

Fulvia Caprara ROMA Secondo il giornale turco in lingua inglese
“”The New Anatolian”” il premier Silvio Berlusconi avrebbe inviato
ai fratelli Taviani una lettera per invitarli a non rendere tesi
i rapporti con la Turchia. Motivo? Il nuovo film che i registi
inizieranno a girare il 24 aprile in Bulgaria e’ tratto dal romanzo
“”La fattoria delle allodole”” ambientato nell’Anatolia ottomana del
1915-16, proprio durante la tragedia dell’eccidio armeno negato dai
turchi. In realta’, fa sapere Paolo Taviani, nessuna lettera e nennun
invito e’ mai arrivato dal Presidente del Consiglio. Almeno finora.

Anzi: “”Durante la preparazione del film avevamo avvertito un certo
clima poco disponibile da parte dei turchi, cosi’ abbiamo parlato
con il ministro Buttiglione che e’ stato chiarissimo. “In Italia”,
ci ha detto, “non esiste la censura “, “i film vengono giudicati per
la loro qualita’ artistica”””.

Il romanzo della scrittrice italo-armena Antonia Aslan sposa la
tesi del genocidio ricostruendo una vicenda avvenuta durante la
deportazione forzata degli armeni dell’Impero ottomano fino al
nord della Siria. La tesi turca e’ che questa deportazione non fu
un genocidio, ma venne decisa come necessaria “”misura di guerra””
in risposta alla ribellione, su istigazione delle potenze europee,
degli armeni dell’est anatolico. Questi ultimi vennero considerati
traditori degli ottomani perche’ si erano alleati con gli invasori
russi, attaccando le popolazioni turche e facendo, tra queste,
diverse centinaia di migliaia di vittime. E’un fatto che i convogli
ferroviari che deportavano gli armeni furono attaccati lungo il cammino
da forze paramilitari, soprattutto curde, e che, secondo gli armeni,
lo sterminio fu spaventoso, tanto da meritare la definizione di
“”primo genocidio del XX secolo””.

I turchi respingono questa versione degli eventi sostenendo che non
ci fu massacro e che i morti, sia da una parte che dall’altra, armeni
cristiani e turchi musulmani, furono non piu’ di 500-600mila. “”Il
nostro film – chiarisce Paolo Taviani – e’ ispirato al libro con la
liberta’ che da sempre un autore e’ abituato a prendere rispetto
a un’opera letteraria. Della storia dell’eccidio ci interessava
soprattutto l’aspetto umano e infatti al centro degli eventi c’e’
l’amore che unisce una giovane armena a un soldato turco.

Anzi, direi che i turchi un film cosi’ dovrebbero proiettarlo nelle
scuole””.

Sempre in base alle informazioni riportate su “”The New Anatolian””
l’irritazione del governo turco sarebbe aumentata nel momento in cui
al film e’ stato assegnato il contributo Eurimages (600mila euro),
decisione presa durante una riunione dei 32 ministri della cultura
del Consiglio d’Europa con l’opposizione del solo ministro turco e
l’astensione di quello macedone: “”La Turchia – si legge nell’articolo
– sta finanziando le tesi armene con il proprio denaro””. Ma non basta,
la notizia che al film sarebbe andato anche il sostegno Rai avrebbe
creato una forte tensione nei rapporti diplomatici tra Ankara e Roma. E
tutto questo proprio mentre il ministro degli esteri turco Abdullah
Gul avrebbe annunciato passi diplomatici nei confronti dell’Italia
e di altri Paesi europei.

“”Siamo favorevoli all’entrata della Turchia nella Comunita’ Europea –
dicono i Taviani -, nel nostro film non parliamo di turchi in generale,
ma di quella organizzazione nazionale dei “Giovani Turchi” che scateno’
l’eccidio. Abbiamo scelto il romanzo perche’ ci ha appassionato,
ci e’ sembrato che valesse la pena raccontare questa storia.

Punto e basta. I “messaggi”, come diceva Rossellini, li porta il
postino””.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

CINEMA: BORGHEZIO A UE,TURCHIA NON NUOVA A CENSURA SU ARMENI

ANSA Notiziario Generale in Italiano
17 Marzo 2006

A Proposito Del Film Dei Taviani ‘La Masseria Delle Allodole’

(ANSA) – BRUXELLES, 17 MAR – Mario Borghezio, capo delegazione della
Lega al Parlamento europeo, ha chiesto, in una interrogazione alla
Commissione Ue e al Consiglio, se non ritengano che il “tentativo di
censura” al film “La masseria delle allodole” dei fratelli Taviani
“dimostri che il regime turco non ha ancora acquisito i valori fondanti
di liberta’ su cui si basa l’UE ed in particolare quello delle liberta’
di espressione”.

“Da notizie di stampa – si legge nell’interrogazione – risulta
che il governo turco sta tentando di esercitare pressioni, anche
per via diplomatica, sui governi europei per ottenere censure al
film ‘La masseria delle allodole’ dei maestri del cinema italiano
Paolo e Vittorio Taviani, a cui e stato assegnato il contributo
Eurimagis da parte del Consiglio d’Europa”. “Il governo turco –
rileva l’eurodeputato del Carroccio – non e’ nuovo a queste manovre
per impedire la conoscenza dell’olocausto degli armeni”.

Il giornale turco in inglese ‘The New Anatolian’ ha scritto ieri che
Silvio Berlusconi avrebbe scritto una lettera ai fratelli Taviani
chiedendo loro di non urtare la suscettibilita dei turchi col film
che stanno girando sui massacri degli armeni nell’Anatolia ottomana
del 1915-16.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress