Hrant Dink finally acquitted  

Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, slain in January, was officially acquitted in two court cases concluded yesterday at an İstanbul court.

Three other defendants who were facing charges of “insulting Turkishness” and “attempting to influence the judiciary” were also acquitted, though a third similar case opened at a later date will continue.

The two court cases were sent back to a criminal court in the Şişli district after the Court of Appeals ordered a retrial. Retrial of the cases was originally scheduled to begin in February but it was postponed to yesterday, June 14, following Dink’s Jan. 19 assassination by a teenage gunman in downtown İstanbul. Dink, who was the editor of the bilingual Agos daily, was facing charges of insulting Turkishness under the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code and of attempting to influence the judiciary’s functioning under Article 288 in those two cases.

Two of the defendants, Dink’s son Arat Dink, and Agos editor Serkis Seropyan, appeared in the court for a retrial session of the cases. Lawyers for the defendants demanded acquittal, saying elements of the crime were not in place. The court agreed and acquitted all the defendants in the case.

A similar case in which Dink and other defendants face the same charges of insulting Turkishness was postponed to a later date to allow defense lawyers to prepare their plea.

Dink had become a hated figure for ultranationalists for his comments over an alleged Armenian genocide at the hands of the late Ottoman Empire. He called for reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and was a sharp critic of the Armenian diaspora for its uncompromising stance against Turkey.

Before his death, Dink had complained that the charges of “insulting Turkishness” against him made him a target of nationalist anger.

John Marshall Evans, the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia who was fired for referring to the Armenian Genocide as such, is still  America’s de jure Ambassador to the Republic of Armenia.

According to the State Department website, Evans is Ambassador from “08/11/2004 to present.”

A discussion at Topix.net links to www.muradgumen.org, a website revealing the identity of Turkish-American celebrity cartoonist Murad Gumen who is the racist webmaster behind TallArmenianTale.com, a website that denies the Armenian Genocide.

Another photo of racist “Holdwater” Murad Gumen

According to Muradgumen.org,

Ex-Disney cartoonist and celebrity illustrator Murad Gumen is quick to take credit for his famous Mickey Mouse cartoons and made-up characters like Wonderguy.

But one thing the Turkish-American celebrity doesn’t want anyone to know is that he operates one of the most vicious hate websites in the Internet – TallArmenianTale.com. Disguised under “Holdwater,” Gumen has been hatefully denying the Armenian Genocide – the murder of Ottoman Turkey’s native Armenian population during World War I. His tactics have included dehumanizing respected scholars of the Armenian Genocide in order to discredit their work. When there is nothing else to write to prove his thesis, Mr. Gumen writes that Armenians are rats.

Until late May 2007, the identity of “Holdwater” remained a mystery. “Holdwater” admitted he would lose his career if his identity was ever revealed.

British archaeologist Sam Hardy has updated his recent post on Turkey’s Mardin mass grave with photographs he took in May 2007.  I placed these images next to October 2006 photographs taken by a now banned Kurdish newspaper in Turkey.  They show the “glorious” work of the Turkish Historical Society in covering up a possible mass grave from the Armenian Genocide.

(there are two more photographs in Hardy’s post)

Before accusing an ordinary Turk of Armenian genocide denial, you may want to consider the possibility that the person has never heard a word about the Genocide, says Melis Erdur.

Erdur, a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the New York University, says when she goes back to her native Turkey this summer “it’ll be a whole different place” for her. This is because she has recently discovered the greatest cover-up of her country’s history – the wipe out of Turkey’s indigenous Armenian Christian community during World War I, otherwise known as the Armenian Genocide.

Almost everyone I know (including me) became aware of the very existence of 1915 in the last several years, and started learning and thinking about it (unfortunately) only after [Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant] Dink’s [January 2007] assassination.

It’s unbelievable (and a “success” story for those who made it happen) that we grew up in Turkey without hearing one thing about the genocide (not even as a “deportation” of Armenians), and being completely unaware of such a significant Armenian presence in Anatolia (until recently, I never thought of anything in Turkey as Armenian; not even Armenian people–only now I’m noticing the Armenian last names of some famous people, for instance. Maybe some of my friends in the past were Armenian–I have no idea. I’ll go back to Turkey this summer–for the first time since I started learning about all this–and it’ll be a whole different place for me, believe me.)I’m ashamed of myself for being this ignorant, and really angry with everything and everyone who made such ignorance possible.

But was I a denialist for all these years?

Erdur’s above e-mail was posted in a discussion group and I contacted her for her permission to publish it.

“Do not talk about genocide or you may be the victim of a new one!” – Turkish nationalists are quoted as saying in a Turkish Daily News column by Orhan Kemal Cengiz.

Angered with a recent written threat against Turkey’s tiny Armenian community, Cengiz mourns the homogenization of his country that was largely due to the Armenian Genocide.  “For some,” writes Cengis,  “homogenization of Turkey might be the final goal, but I assure you the side effects of achieving it will make this country unlivable, unlovable and primitive.”

“Once, Armenians lived all over this country,” writes the columnist making reference to what is now eastern Turkey’s indigenous Armenian population wiped out during World War I.

The brave columnist concludes that Turkey must finally face its history: “without having an honest and open discussion about our history, we will never heal and we will never able to put a mirror in front of these racists [that now threaten Armenians], which means that we will be seeing the same nightmares again and again. ”

…In the face of these threats we see no serious preparation to protect our citizens of Armenian origins. There are very urgent steps that the Turkish government should take to protect their lives and well-being. 

I would like to urge the government and state officials that we cannot stand any new attack on these vulnerable groups. Protecting them is the highest moral obligation of the Turkish Republic and no other priority should prevent Turkey from fulfilling this responsibility.

Our minorities are not able to take public positions. We do not see them as police officers, as soldiers, or as judges. What a pity! They are forced to live an isolated life in their ghettos.

Already long ago we lost the richness the minorities contributed to our lives. But losing even the last members of these communities to foreign countries would be unbearable…

Plastic surgery was apparently not created to fix breasts but to get wounded soldiers look the way they used to before fighting in World War I.

A book by H.M. Deranian tells the story of “Varaztad H. Kazanjian, who helped invent modern plastic surgery by finding creative ways to restore the faces of soldiers injured on the battlefields of World War I.”

An e-mail from NAASR has more:

Kazanjian was smuggled out of Ottoman Armenia in the 1890s and found his way to Worcester, Massachusetts, then one of the most ethnically diverse cities of its size in the United States. For several years, he worked at the Washburn & Moen wire mill that employed nearly one-third of the city’s Armenian community.

By the time World War I broke out, Kazanjian was chief of Harvard’s Prosthetic Dentistry Department, and had built both a thriving practice and a reputation for treating the most difficult cases. In 1915, Kazanjian accepted a three-month assignment with the Harvard Medical Unit to treat the wounded on the battlefields of France. Drawing on the dexterity with wire he had acquired as a teenager, his prosthetic work in Harvard’s dental lab, and his penchant for innovation, he devised new ways to reconstruct the faces of soldiers with horrendous facial injuries.

The publication of this book marks the 60th anniversary of the occasion when Martin Deranian, then a young dental student, introduced himself to Kazanjian. No matter how busy Deranian was-with his family, dental practice, teaching assignments, and community activities-he never stopped collecting stories, information, and artifacts about the life and career of the “miracle man.”

The author will talk about his book at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 14, 2007 at the NAASR Center, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA.

British archaeologist Sam Hardy, according to a post at Human Rights Archaeology, has visited the possible Armenian Genocide mass grave in Eastern Turkey that was first covered up by the Turkish military and later manipulated by the Turkish Historical Society and proclaimed a “Roman site.”

Photo: Yusuf Halacoglu, mastermind of Mardin mass grave manipulation

Linking to our April 25, 2007 update, Human Rights Archaeology reminds that the Kurdish newspaper that reported in Fall 2006 the finding of the mass grave was closed down, and Swedish researcher David Gaunt wasted an entire week in Turkey just to find out (and soon refuse further cooperation) that the possible Armenian skeletons had been cleaned up by official Turkish historians. 

Hardy’s post confirms that the mass grave has been destroyed.  Here are some excerpts from the post.

This post followed a visit to the formerly Roman family tomb, latterly Armenian mass grave, recently destroyed and covered up by the Turkish military with the help of the Turkish Historical Society.

At 10.10pm on the 17th of May 2007, I recorded that,

I visited my first mass grave today, my first nationalist-archaeologist-allied-with-the-military-destroyed mass grave, too; now that‘s negative heritage tourism.

It was the allegedly – to me, fairly definitely – Armenian (or other Other) mass grave in Kuru/Xirabebaba, for the reporting of which Ülkede Özgür Gündem was shut down and on the excavation of which David Gaunt refused to work.

[…]

All of the Roman resting places seemed empty and all of the diagnostic bones from the top of the stack in the centre had gone; only a few long bones and one jaw fragment appeared to have remained.

If it were natural factors that had reburied or degraded “all” of the remains after the reopening of the tomb, it [they] would have to have been exceptional conditions, to have covered the material on top without covering the material beneath that, or to have been such caustic rain, etc., to have decomposed the material on top entirely without leaving any identifiable wear or residue on the material beneath.

[…]

After this site visit, I made my way to a long-ruined, possibly earthquake-“broken” ancient site, which villagers called a church…

When I had discussed the burial site with locals, they had been divided on whether they thought it was a mass grave or not. A few of the men who thought it was a mass grave said that it was destroyed to hide the evidence and commented that, ‘that’s what they’re doing to us’.

They agreed that the Turkish military was working on the assumption that, ‘if there isn’t a body, there isn’t a crime’. (There are, however, hopes that the, ‘no body, no crime’ principle could be outmanoeuvred by developments in forensic archaeology, either through DNA testing of remianing bone fragments or even by identifying traces in the soil, although these would still be dependent upon the potential victims’ descendant community being able to be identified and being willing to cooperate in the process.)

The logic of the “impartial joint excavation” of the mass grave falan falan falan is similar to that of the “impartial joint commission” on the history of the Armenian Genocide.

It is different though; beyond the futility of a joint commission with deniers who aren’t scientists anyway, the erasure of the evidence puts scientists in the position of helping their opponents “prove” their case by their inability to prove their own.

Now you know the face of “Holdwater” Murad Gumen – one of the most anti-Armenian Turkish-Americans on Earth and the webmaster of tallarmeniantale.com, a hate website that denies the Armenian Genocide and compares Armenians to rodents.  

A reader of Blogian sent the following information:

Murad Gumen had his own cable TV show in the 1980s. Here is a page with some photos of him in character as host “Renald Rap.” I assume they are out of date. He would look 20 years older now.

http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/shaft/780/page2.htm

PROOF that the character of “Renald Rap” is Murad Gumen:

http://shonext.imdb.com/name/nm0347933/

Holdwater: The mysterious name behind the “premier” anti-Armenian websiteBy Taner Akçam

On July 27, 2005, the Yeni Şafak newspaper published an interview, “The Mysterious American Who Drives the Armenians Mad,” about an “interesting and unique” person who writes under the pseudonym Holdwater. “This mysterious American has been financing, for many years, a highly effective, U.S.-based Internet site,” Yeni Şafak reports. “The principal aim of Tall Armenian Tale: The Other Side of the Falsified Genocide is to provide substantial responses to the Armenian Diaspora’s claims of genocide.”According to the newspaper, Holdwater, a New York native, was born in the 1950s to Turkish parents who had migrated to America in the 1940s and raised their son without teaching him a single word of Turkish. He champions the Turkish theses [denial of the Armenian Genocide] on his website at www.tallarmeniantale.com.Holdwater says he uses a pseudonym because he is the target of threats and sabotage on a daily basis. “If I tell you my real name and you publish it in your newspaper,” he told Yeni Şafak, “trust me, within a few days neither my family harmony nor my good business nor my Internet site will still be in existence.”While afraid to disclose his own name because his peace will be disturbed, Holdwater does not hold back from publishing the photographs of intellectuals such as Halil Berktay and Müge Göçek [of the Workshop for Armenian-Turkish Scholarship], and parading them as targets in his articles full of animosity and hatred. It is quite difficult to understand how someone who is afraid of being attacked can organize such ruthless campaigns of belligerence against others.

I too am among Holdwater’s priority targets. He leads the campaign against me, along with institutions such as the Assembly of American Turkish Associations (ATAA) and the Turkish Forum. He publishes articles on his site which claim that I am a terrorist; that I am responsible of the death of Americans in Turkey ; and even that I have planned and organized murders of American civilians. He lists my “terrorist activities” from the years 1974 to 1975, including precise dates and locations. These amount to nothing more than ordinary, small-scale arrests during student demonstrations of the era, which didn’t even make the press at the time. [See “A Shameful Campaign,” Armenian Reporter, Mar. 17]

It doesn’t take too much intelligence to guess who might have passed to Holdwater the police records of these insignificant arrests, whose dates even I had forgotten. But here’s the real problem: Those who funnel this information to Holdwater as “Taner Akçam’s terrorist activities” are actually taking advantage of Holdwater’s ignorance about Turkey .

Poor Holdwater thinks these arrests were for “terrorist activities,” not realizing that they were all related to crimes of leafletting and postering, for which police permission had been obtained. He seems to have no idea that in 1970s Turkey , one had to obtain permission from what is now called the Security General Directorate’s Special Inspection Branch Directorate for Associations, and that even with a special permit in hand, one could be arbitrarily arrested and held at police headquarters for three to five days.

Once I was arrested for an issue regarding the Cyprus landing. As the Student Association, we were distributing authorized leaflets against the [Turkish] military invasion of Cyprus [1974]. Despite showing our permits, we were held for two to three days at police headquarters.

The other actions Holdwater has publicized as my “terrorist activities” were related to our demand for the foundation of a student representation office on campus, where we could voice our issues with the university administration. All this is somewhat difficult to understand for someone who was raised and educated as an American.

In addition, whoever transferred to Holdwater the information about my arrests forgot to send him my photograph. For a long time, therefore, Holdwater represented me on his site by a photograph of a PKK member.

Those who are carrying out a campaign against me, portraying me as a “terrorist,” are exploiting this “mysterious American” called Holdwater. Their calculation is simple: To make use of the “terrorist” image which took root in the U.S. after September 11. They are expecting favors from a mindset which labels as “terrorist” both a person arrested for handing out flyers in 1974 and those who attacked the Twin Towers in 2001.

With this attitude, they are actually making fun of Americans, too. After all, here we have a “terrorist” who has carried out direct “terrorist activities” against Turkey ; and what is logical would be to get hold of this terrorist and hold him to account according to Turkish law. Or at least give information to Americans regarding the past activities of this “terrorist,” his investigation and trial.

Instead, they are telling the Americans something which amounts to: “We treat this man as a citizen with a clean record, but could you be so kind as to treat him as a terrorist?” Because, in fact, the citizen in question had his prison sentence annulled with changes made to the Turkish Criminal Code in 1991 and also has a document stating he has a “clean record.”

Ignorant as Holdwater is about Turkey , it is impossible for him to understand all this. But what I find difficult to understand is why this “mysterious” person is so full of hatred and animosity and why he organizes campaigns of belligerence against others despite stating that he is very afraid. I wouldn’t even want to imagine that Holdwater, who describes his appearance as that of “a typical Christian who goes to church with his family on Sundays,” does not know of the Christian teaching which proclaims: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

It is time for someone to take a closer look at the Holdwater issue.

* The golden rule

In his interview with Yeni Şafak newspaper on July 27, 2005, after stating the reasons for withholding his identity, Holdwater says: “I have been able to sustain this struggle for 30 years because I have been able to keep my mouth shut. So please do not push me too much on this sensitive issue.” Holdwater claims to have exceptional skill at protecting his anonymity.I don’t know if anonymity lends a special mystery to Holdwater and a special meaning to his work, or if it makes people wonder, “Who, actually, is this person?” It didn’t strike me that way. I had no interest either in his writings or in his website—until he took on a key role in the campaign against me.

One of Holdwater’s important arguments in this campaign was that a complaint should be filed with American immigration authorities, denouncing me as a “terrorist.” Now, I don’t know if he actually did such a thing. Nor am I aware of a direct link between his argument and my recent four-hour detention at the Canadian border. But I did mention Holdwater and the campaign in an article I wrote on the detention. [See “A Shameful Campaign,” cited above.] Holdwater wrote a 30-page rebuttal, full of lies, insults and attacks.

Holdwater relies on the fact that his name and address are withheld. No one knows who I am, so I’ll say whatever I like, he must think.

This approach of Holdwater must be curbed, and he must be reminded that every game must be played according to its rules. To shamelessly insult others while hiding one’s own identity fits with no proper principle. It’s a disgrace, to say the least.

Holdwater’s claim regarding his intense effort to conceal his identity doesn’t seem to … hold water. Or he doesn’t take historians seriously enough. He doesn’t know we are enthusiastic about documents and love to trace them. To sum up, he has shown a certain degree of carelessness, the kind of carelessness committed by an ordinary person who fancies himself as very clever and more intelligent than others.

Introducing himself on his website, Holdwater published some correspondence he sent and received in his own name—taking care to omit his name before posting the letters online.

According to this correspondence, Holdwater wrote to President Jimmy Carter on April 2, 1980. This letter was forwarded to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an organization established by the United States Congress in October 1980. [The USHMC is the governing body of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington , DC.]

On June 2, 1980, Council Director Monroe H. Freedman answered Holdwater’s letter. One senses from the reply that Holdwater’s objections to referencing the Armenian Genocide were taken seriously. Freedman states that he lacks sufficient information on the “Turkish theses” and asks Holdwater to forward citations of relevant sources.

This, of course, is a great honor for Holdwater. Therefore, he sees no harm in publishing a facsimile of Freedman’s letter on his website, with Holdwater’s name removed. Also posted at Tall Armenian Tale is another letter he wrote, this one to the New York Times. We understand from this second letter that, on September 5, 1980, Holdwater had responded to Freedman’s June 2 letter.

I don’t know whether Holdwater is aware of this, but the Holocaust Memorial Council and the Holocaust Museum it governs are public institutions—and therefore this correspondence is available to the public. Which means, in accordance with the principle of transparency, that anyone can view the originals of Holdwater’s letters.

Once you have the text of Freedman’s letter dated June 2, 1980, and published by Holdwater, as well as the information that Holdwater wrote a reply on September 5, 1980, it is rather easy to access these documents. The Holocaust Museum must provide this information to anyone who demands it.

Yes, Mr. Murad Gümen, or, to use the English alphabet, Murad Gumen; as you see, one doesn’t have to be comic-strip detective Kerry Drake to find out who you are (Murad Gümen understands very well what I mean). Tracing the documents published by you has proved sufficient. I believe you will stop taking historians so lightly from now on. As you have understood, we are talking about a document that you yourself have also published.

All I am saying is, to prevent any distortion and alteration of the document, that the name on this document, which you effaced, is Murad Gümen. In a sense, I am rectifying the alteration you made on a document presented to the public.

As you may know, we scholars don’t particularly appreciate the alteration of documents. Such distortion is an occupation reserved for the Turkish Historical Society.

Attacking others, and insulting them, while concealing your own name, does not fit moral conduct at all, Mr. Murad Gümen. Believe me, I am still quite curious as to why you think that I, and many others in my position, do not deserve a right you so readily claim for yourself.

Dr. Akçam, a professor of history at the University of Minnesota , is the author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (2006). The present article has been edited from a two-part article written for Istanbul ‘s Agos newspaper (“Holdwater: The Mysterious American who Drives Armenians Mad,” May 18, 2007; and “Holdwater: The Golden Rule,” May 25, 2007); the translations for both parts were by Nazım Dikbaş. The July 27, 2005, interview in Yeni Şafak was conducted by Ali Murat Güven.