An article from the English Economist quotes Hasan Zeynalov as saying he doesn’t believe in dialogue. Zeynalov is the one who is working to keep the Turkish-Armenian border closed, as we mentioned several weeks ago. Our “findings” on Zeynalov are at http://blogian.hayastan.com/2007/04/22/the-godfather-of-hate/.

 

Clash of civilisations

economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9202614

May 17th 2007 | KARS
From The Economist print edition

Beleaguered Armenians in Turkey—and a closed border with Armenia

FOR a seasoned diplomat, Hasan Sultanoglu Zeynalov, Azerbaijan’s consul-general in Kars, eastern Turkey, is unusually indiscreet. He openly complains about Naif Alibeyoglu, the mayor, who is promoting dialogue between Turkey, Azerbaijan and their common enemy, Armenia, just over the border. “I don’t believe in dialogue,” Mr Zeynalov snorts. He recently ordered his compatriots to boycott an arts festival organised by the mayor after finding that “there were Armenians too.” Like his masters in Baku, Mr Zeynalov is unnerved at the thought of his country’s biggest regional ally suddenly making peace with Armenia.

He will have been cheered by the victory of Serzh Sarkisian, Armenia’s nationalist prime minister, in a general election on May 12th. Mr Sarkisian is said to have engineered a last-minute ban on Turkish observers of the election. “I think it would be unnatural to receive observing representatives from a country that does not even wish to have a civilised official dialogue,” he commented… (see the Economist website for the rest of the article)

The Denver Post has posted an Associated Press article informing that “[e]nvironmental activists are building a replica of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat—where the biblical vessel is said to have landed after the great flood—in an appeal for action on global warming, Greenpeace said Wednesday.”

In this picture provided by Greenpeace, wooden planks are carried by horses in the Dogubayazit valley to built a replica of Noah’s Ark near mount Ararat in Agri, eastern Turkey, Sunday, May 13, 2007. Greenpeace activists are building a replica of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat, the mountain where the original Biblical Ark is said to have landed after the great flood, in an appeal to world leaders to take action against global warming. Turkish and German volunteer carpenters were building the wooden ship on the mountain in eastern Turkey, that sits on the border with Iran. (AP Photo/Manuel Citak, Greenpeace, HO )

The joint Turkish-German project is something to welcome especially the universal message that the involved volunteers are trying to spread.Yet in promoting environmentalism, Greenpeace, I believe, is also unintentionally violating Armenian cultural rights while not inviting Armenians to be part of a project that involves their sacredMount Ararat. Ironically enough, the Mount is not even called Ararat Turkey (it is called “Agri”).

The largest circulating worldwide Armenian Magazine, AGBU, makes mention of my film on the Djulfa destruction in its current, April 2007, issue.  

Titled “Internet Video: Making the Local Global,” Hrag Vartanian’s article tells of the videonet revolution and its Armenian connection. 

One veteran filmmaker, Ted Bogosian, was approached by Hollywood bigwig Danny DeVito to be part of a new movie portal called Clickstar (cstar.com). Run by actor Morgan Freeman’s company and sponsored by Intel, Clickstar was launched last December. It allows users to have a more flexible movie experience by offering the ability to download movies either to rent or own, 24 hours a day.

 

With a brief note on Hetq’s “documentary on human trafficking from Armenia to Dubai” and an interview with freedom fighter Monte Melkonian, the article talks about the platform that YouTube.com has unintentionally provided to often hate videos denying the Armenian genocide.  At the same time, the article reveals a hypocritical gesture by YouTube censoring videos that “insult Turkishness.”

YouTube is quoted as saying the video giant will “remain committed to working with authorities in Turkey to address any concerns that they may have,” given a recent ban of YouTube by Turkey after a Greek video “insulted” Turkey’s founder Ataturk by calling the latter homosexual (the video was removed by YouTube).

As a reminder, the previous issue of AGBU magazine had an article on Armenian blogs that mentioned this blog in a few paragraphs.  The author of both articles, Hrag Vartanian, has recently set up his own interesting blog that has BoingBoing-like posts in addition to unique entries on Armenian issues

If the chance for abuse on YouTube is possible, others are utilizing the service for cultural or social activism. One Armenian blogger, Simon Maghakyan, posted a short documentary about the 2005 destruction of the medieval Armenian cemetery of Djulfa in the Azeri-controlled region of Nakhijevan, The New Tears of Araxes-a story he was the first to spotlight on his website, Blogian.net.

“It took two months to create, and I had no idea how to make a video,” Maghakyan says. “I received financial help from a non-Armenian foundation to purchase the satellite image used in the video. A scriptwriter helped, and I had someone lend a hand with the soundtrack.” Since its posting it last December, the five-minute video has received 8,000 views on YouTube and an additional 1,000 views on Google video-a competing site.

“There has been lots of feedback,” he explains. “The strangest response I received was from someone in Turkey who wrote in broken English that he or she accepted the Genocide and was sorry. I was surprised because the film didn’t deal with that at all.”“[Online video] is a powerful tool delivering messages and even conventional media is referencing YouTube,” Maghakyan says. “But there is still a prevalent idea that online videos aren’t as credible as videos in the library.”

My dial-up Internet at home is not letting me watch this, but the title and the short description are interesting enough to inform about a French TV video.

France 24, a sort of French CNN, has posted a reportage about Turkey’s Hidden Armenians:

Turkey’s hidden Armenians

Friday, April 27, 2007

After the genocide of the early 20th century, Armenian identity in Turkey has been hidden or even pushed away for fear of discrimination.

Thank you to Appo Jabarian from Armenian Life Magazine for sending an e-mail about the video

Cartoon source: “Ermenistan,” seen on the shirt of a Ku Klux Klan member, means Armenia in Turkish and Azerbaijani

What do Ku Klux Klan, Terrorism, Narkomania, Snakes, Swastika, Evil, blood thirsty Scarpions, Weapons, Death, Beasts and Big Nose devils have in common? They equate to Armenians and their country, according to a supra-talented Azerbaijani oil “investigator” and cartoonist who has received many honors from his government.

In October of 2005 I posted an article from Agence France Press telling about the president of Azerbaijan’s National Geophysicists Committee, Kerim Kerimov, who, the article said, is better known for signing treaties to open Azerbaijani oil to American and western markets than for his anti-Armenian cartoons.

Much of his work targets Armenia, against which Azerbaijan fought a bloody war, and in large parts complements the government’s official information campaign against the Caucasus nation.

Anyone in Baku will tell you that Azerbaijan has many enemies: Armenia with its Russian backing, Armenia’s wealthy diaspora, Azerbaijan’s own opposition forces and perhaps a few loose clerics from Iran.

Kerimov goes further and puts the enemies into pictures, with horned and bewarted horrific caricatures of Armenians clawing at the map of Azerbaijan or driving a wedge between the country and its ally Turkey with a giant bomb.

If you are surprised that you have not heard of Kerimov before, don’t feel bad. I mean what is wrong making hundreds of cartoons depicting Armenians as snakes, scorpions and Ku Klux Klan members? After all, Armenia has won the war over Azerbaijan, hasn’t it?

Cartoon: Azerbaijan holding Armenia’s swastika knife

This is exactly what you hear all the time. Azerbaijan hates Armenians to death, smashes their ancient monuments to dust, jail its own Azeri journalists for writing the truth about the war with Armenia, and even deports a Turkish pianist with Armenian roots because of the war of Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s. Who dares to ask why the war started in the first place? Who dares to remember the anti-Armenianism in Azerbaijan and the pogroms against Armenian citizens and the destruction of monuments before there was even word about war?

If you are still surprised that you have not heard of Kerimov before, you are missing something big. According to his official website, “Prof. Kerim Kerimov for the first time in the world found the right way and method for prediction earthquake approximately 4-5 hours before the starting of this process.” This is not Borat, it is true.

And there is more, in case you are interested. According to his official website, Kerimov is:

• President of National Committee of Geophysics of Azerbaijan (read about Committee)
• President of Azerbaijan Section of SEC
• Member-corresponding of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences
• Doctor of Geology and Mineralogy sciences, Professor • Head of scientific works and author of many inventions
• Honored man of science and techniques
• Real member of Eastern International Oil Academy
• \fs20cf4Real member of Ecoegenetic International Academy
• Real member of European Academy Sciences
• He is an editor and chief of “Geophysics news in Azerbaijan” magazine An author of more than 550 scientific works, including different monographs, atlases, maps, inventions, articles and other.
He is an author of more than 4500 political cartoons, which have been published in different countries.
Since 1998, he has been awarded with a lot of medals including gold medals from the government and several times was appointed with the following titles: the man of the year, inventor of the year, scientist of the year.
He was conferred the cold order “Glory”, by government.

Pretty amazing. Did you catch the part that he is “author of more than 4500 political cartoons”?

Cartoon: Turkic countries – Kazakhstan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kirgizstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan – killing the Nazi snake, Armenia. The cartoon is reflective of Pan-Turkism, a racist-linguistlic idea to establish a pan-Turkish Empire from Turkey to Kazakhstan that some scholars have argued has contributed to the planning of the Armenian Genocide.

I must admit I have not seen all 4,500, although I had the displeasure to go through hundreds of them available at his website (added in October of 2006). Besides the boringly self-repeating few figures, there is something else that Kerimov’s cartoons have in common. Most of them say in four different languages, “Terrorism, narkomania and armenism are the same diseases.”

These ones are worth no words:

Cartoon source

Cartoon source

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Cartoon

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Cartoon

Cartoon

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Cartoon

Cartoon

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Cartoon

Cartoon

How the arrest of a journalist leaks to the infamous agenda of an ultranationalist

Pictured: Hasan Zeynalov, member of Azerbaijan’s “Sicilian” mafia who is more famous for persecuting Azerbaijani journalists and less famous for his sinister agenda in Turkey to keep the Armenian-Turkish border closed.I hope that after the murder of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink there is more appreciation for the work of journalists among Armenians.

I am not sure that my optimism is applicable to the case for Armenia’s journalists yet, who are usually beaten, threatened and harassed in Armenia. Speaking of torture against journalists, I want to continue telling the underreported story of one journalist who was placed in jail yesterday, with the hope that there will be transnational outcry for persecution of journalists worldwide in general, and in Azerbaijan in particular. And not only because persecution of Azerbaijani journalists is too alarming (deaths, unbelievable high fines, regular beatings), but also because it is in the interest of everybody in the Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and the rest – to have democracy and freedom of speech. Journalists are the only ones in those isolated conflicts that can bring the rails to the truth on the table. They are the ones who can de-demonize “the other” by showing how much common all people have among each other.This is exactly why Eynulla Fatullayev was placed in jail for 2 ½ years yesterday. “Why do you interview Armenians?” This is the question that Fatullayev, in his own words, is being asked.

In his “last words” (before the court decision), published at Fatullayev’s founded Russian-language Realniy Azerbaijan website, the Azerbaijani journalist ridicules the fact that in the twenty-first century people ask him why he interviews Armenians.

“It is my duty to do so,” has uttered Fatullayev, “After I am free again, I will be occupied with the same exact work.”

Fatullayev is not playing games. He knows how serious it is to challenge Azerbaijani authorities. Before establishing his own newspaper, Fatullayev worked with editor Elmar Huseynov. Huseynov was an Azerbaijani journalist who was murdered in March of 2005 after having written “The Godfather,” an article that accused the labeled Azerbaijani authorities “Sicilian mafia.” Before his murder, Huseynov, along with Fatullayev, was taken to the court by an Azeri ultranationalist – Hasan Zeynalov, Nakhichevan’s permanent representative in Baku since at least 1998.  This is the same Zeynalov who made news in 1998 when talking to the BBC he denied state-sponsored vandalism against Armenian monuments – especially the now-gone-to-dust Djulfa cemetery – in Nakhichevan by saying, “Armenians have never lived in Nakhichevan, which has been Azerbaijani land from time immemorial, and that’s why there are no Armenian cemeteries and monuments and have never been any.”

In my research about the Djulfa vandalism – the annihilation of several thousand hand-crafted medieval Armenian monuments called khachkars – I have seen pattern between persecution against journalists in Azerbaijan and destruction of Armenian monuments in Azerbaijan. It is interesting how Zeynalov himself has been apparently involved in both, but there is more to come – something hard to believe.

Zeynalov is now the Azerbaijani Consul General to Kars (unless there are two Hasan Zeynalovs – which would prove my speculation wrong), where he is involved in “proving” that there is no Armenian heritage there (just like Armenians have never lived in Nakhichevan).  For example, only last month Zeynalov alarmed to the Azerbaijani press that an Armenian delegation had visited Kars and “By the study of some historical sites, the delegation tries to prove the relation of these areas to Armenians. During the visit the Armenian representatives discussed the opening of the state border.” In August of 2006, the mayor of Turkey’s Kars city – across the Armenian border – was attacked by Zeynalov for having advocated for the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border.  

I don’t know when Zeynalov transferred to Kars, but I can’t help to speculate that his mission is to stop the border from opening (why would Azerbaijan need a representative in Kars in any way?).  He is further busy organizing a commemoration for “Azerbaijani genocide” in Kars.

I don’t think the line of anti-democracy and anti-“otherness” has ever been this bold in Azerbaijan before. And the bottom line is – ultranationalist Azerbaijanis are not only danger to ordinary Azerbaijanis, but to ordinary Armenians and ordinary Turks likewise and vice-versa.

The international media is finally reporting the trial of an Azeri journalist who is accussed for “insulting” some Azeri refugees for having challenged Azerbaijan’s official claim that Armenian forces have killed up to 600 civilians in the 1990s during the Karakabh war.

The Associated Press informs

Eynulla Fatullayev, editor and founder of newspapers Real Azerbaijan and Everyday Azerbaijan, was found guilty of disseminating false information about a 1992 attack during the country’s six-year war with Armenia.

He was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.

I noticed that only media in Azerbaijan have been reporting the trial against Eynulla Fatullayev for questioning what happened in an Azeri village – Khojaly (Khojalu) – when Armenian forces occupied it during the Karabakh war of the 1990s.  Even the few reports are difficult to follow and understand (the word, “Armenian” for example, is not mentioned in any article perhaps to avoid attracting attention on the trial through popular “Armenian” keyword searches).  Here is a summary of Azerbaijani sources (in Russian and English) with a background on the journalist’s involvement.

An Azeri journalist, who has challenged the official Azerbaijan’s rhetoric that Armenian forces have massacred between 200-600 Azeri civilians in the 1990s, is facing charges for insulting Khojaly village refugees in an Azerbaijani district court, reports Azerbaijan’s Trend News Agency.

Photo source

Eynulla Fatullayev, editor-in-chief and founder of the Russian language Realni Azerbaijan and Azeri language Gundeliik newspapers, has reportedly accused the Azeri government for perpetrating the killings of Khojaly civilians – an event that Azeri officials and pro-government media refer to as “Khojaly genocide perpetrated by Armenians” – often denounced as “anti-Armenian propaganda” by others.

In 2006, Fatullayev visited Nagorno Karabakh – an Armenian enclave within Soviet Azerbaijan that proclaimed independence in 1991 and provoked war between Armenia and Azerbaijan – and wrote a long article in Russian called “Karabakh diary.” Fatullayev recalled in the diary of interviewing Azeri refugees from Khojaly in the 1990s who said that Armenian forces had warned the civilians several days before the attack about the upcoming operation and offered the civilians to leave the village through a humanitarian corridor along the river Kar-Kar (the exact scenario of the pre-operation presented by Armenian officials). Visiting Khojaly in 2006 and putting the account of some Azeri refugees with the geography of the village, Fatullayev concluded that “It seems that the battalions of Azerbaijani Popular Front strove not for the salvation of the Khojalies, but for a big blood.”

According to the March 1, 2007 issue of Today.az, a news website from Azerbaijan, “[a] group of [former] Khojaly residents held a protest action outside Gundelik Azerbaijan paper editorial office… and raised posters ‘Eynulla Fattulayev is dashnak’s (Armenian) agent.” They demanded depriving the journalist of citizenship and broke two windows of the office by throwing eggs.

A letter from Human Rights Watch to Azerbaijan’s president Illham Aliyev (dated February 9, 2007) accused the authorities for suppressing freedom of speech and persecuting journalists in the country. According to the letter, “Eynulla Fatullayev, editor-in-chief of Realny Azerbaijan and Gundelik Azerbaijan, was forced to suspend publication of both papers on October 1, 2006, after his father was kidnapped. The kidnappers threatened to kill Fatullayev, as well as his father, if Fatullayev continued to publish the papers. The kidnapping had been preceded by numerous phone threats against Fatullayev and his family.” The letter also denounced Azerbaijani courts for fining high amounts to journalists, including Fatullayev.

The Armenian government has long denied responsiblity for the massacre of between 200-600 Azeri civilians in Khojaly, charging one fraction of Azeri military – a political opposition group in Azerbaijan at the time- for orchestrating the event for anti-Armenian propaganda and domestic political purposes. They often recall the footage of Azerbaijani cameraman Chingiz Mustafayev, who shot footage of killed Azeri civilian corps from Khojaly – under Azeri control – both on February 29 and on March 2. The same corpses were mutilated on March 2, 2007 but not on February 29 – an incident that led Mustafayev to accuse Azerbaijani forces for orchestrating the mutilation of Azeri bodies. The footage was shown in the Azerbaijani parliament, followed by Mustafayev’s murder during filming military units of the Azerbaijani Popular Front.

Although most Armenians don’t give gifts on Easter, here is a tip what to do if you are Armenian and want to give a gift for this year’s Zatik, or Easter in English.  If you have nobody to give a gift too, Blogian is, as always, here to help.

I wrote last year about praying Armenian toys.  After I ended getting one, I was convinced that this would be a wonderful religous gift.  Although we were confused about our praying toy when we saw it the first time, now my Mom loves our hippo that cites a short cute prayer in western Armenian.  It prays for parents with such a cute articulation that will give you chills.  You can order it (and actually listen to the prayer) at http://hyemedznank.com/pages/animals.asp for $20.00.  There are other gifts on that website too, but I think hippo is far the best.

There is hope in the shameful comedy of the official Turkish opening of an ancient Armenian church as a museum.  Turkish newspapers are speaking out… with a surprisingly courageous and progressive voice. 

As I mentioned earlier, the Today’s Zaman has started referring to the name of the island where the church is situated on with the proper and historical name – Akhtamar.  The Turkish Daily News has published a powerful column – that makes a reference to cultural genocide of Armenian heritage in Turkey – and a reporting about the opening.

Saturday’s issue of The Turkish Daily New, for example, gives some details of the opening ceremony that nobody heard before:

A small demonstration by nationalists in Van preceded the ceremony. Everyone acted as if it had not occurred. Some Turkish officials appeared distressed when dignitaries from Armenia, which Turkey does not have diplomatic relations with, entered the church wearing small Armenian flags. There were a few strange looks when some of the Armenian guests crossed themselves at the end of the ceremony, placed dozens of candles from Armenia in various parts of the church and lit incense. And when the regional governor offered his remarks, his lack of a word of welcome to the Armenian Minister of Culture Gagik Gürciyan and Turkey’s Armenian Mesrop Mutafyan, was lost on no one. And the fact that none from the Armenian delegation were asked to speak at the ceremony was bit of silence that rang in everyone’s ears.

A column from the same newspaper’s Friday issue by Cengiz Çandar (that I encountered through iArarat.com) made points that if they were made by Armenian authors the latter would be libeled “nationalists.”

I see hope in the Turkish newspapers.  I see more hope in Turkey overall when I found out that Taner Akcam has been acquitted of “insulting Turkishness” charges.”