There are many things I would like to do this weekend, but if I had the opportunity to travel I would go to Boston to attend the “Armenians and the Left Symposium.”

Edik Baghdasaryan, editor of www.Hetq.am, Jeffrey Tufenkian, president of Armenian Forests NGO, Halil Berktay, history professor from Istanbul, and many others  will most likely generate a fascinating discussion from deforestation to Armenian-Turkish relations.

So those of you have them chance of living in or leaving for Boston, make sure to have a meaningful Saturday.

You can learn more about the symposium by visiting their website at http://www.armeniansandtheleft.com/.

Instead of a cross, other “sacred” symbols decorate the Armenian church (converted to a museum) of Akhtamar – a poster of Ataturk and a Turkish flag. 

The shameless “ceremony” of converting the Armenian church of Akthamar to a museum has been further desecrating.  The poster of Ataturk and a Turkish flag was placed on the church wall – on both sides of the main entrance – during the opening of the “museum.”

ALSO: Check this article from the Independent via wwwiArarat.com.

The beautiful Armenian church of Surp Khach (Holly Cross) on Van’s Akhtamar island will be opened as a museum by the Turkish authorities in a few hours.  Although I used to think this was a progressive step by Turkey – no matter the anti-genocide recognition propaganda factor – I changed my mind after I found out that…

– the church will open as a museum

 – it will not have a cross on the top of the dome

– it will not be under the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul

and more…

An editorial by California Courier’s Harut Sassounian gives some insights:

No Self-Respecting Armenian Should
Accept Turkey’s Invitation to Akhtamar
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier

The Turkish government has launched a worldwide campaign to exploit, for
propaganda purposes, the renovation of the 10th century Holy Cross Church on
Akhtamar Island, in Turkish-occupied Western Armenia. Ankara has sent out
invitations for “the inaugural” ceremonies to more than 3,000 guests from around the
world, including officials from Armenia and Armenians from the Diaspora.
According to the Turkish Zaman newspaper, the Turkish government’s intent
is to use the restoration of the church on March 29 as part of its accelerated
efforts to counter the adoption of the Armenian Genocide resolution by the
U.S. Congress.
Last week, when a Turkish delegation came to Washington to lobby against
that resolution, Mehmet Dulger, the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission
of the Turkish Parliament, announced that he had brought with him photos ofthe
renovated Akhtamar Church. Dulger said he would show the photo album
published by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to U.S. Congressmen and tell them:
“See, the Turks, whom you accuse of genocide, have renovated an Armenian Church
with taxes collected from Turks. And these photos are the evidence.” The
Turkish government reportedly spent more than $1.5 million for the restoration.
Zaman reported that the album would be distributed worldwide to all
organizations advocating “Armenian genocide claims.” Furthermore, “the culture
ministers of all countries that have adopted or will adopt Armenian genocide bills=80¦
are invited to the opening,” Zaman wrote.

To make maximum propaganda use of this opportunity, an official from the
Turkish Ministry of Culture even suggested that the long-blockaded
Armenian-Turkish border be temporarily opened for guests from Armenia wishing to cross into
Turkey. He also spoke about the possibility of a special direct flight from
Yerevan to Van on that occasion. However, the Turkish military vetoed both
suggestions.
Turkish officials came up with ridiculous explanations when asked why the
renovated Holy Cross Church did not have a cross on its dome. Reporters were
told that the cross could be the cause of a lightning strike that would burn
down the church! Another official ridiculously claimed that he could not find any
old photos of the church with a cross on its dome.
Even the date of the planned ceremonies has been subject to much political
speculation and a comedy of errors. The Turkish government originally set the
date for April 24. But after complaints from the Armenian Patriarch, the date
was changed to April 11. When Turkish officials learned that April 11 was in
fact the same date as April 24 in the old calendar, they changed it yet again
to March 29, hoping that they would thus be able to pre-empt the negative
impact on Turkey of the worldwide commemorations of the Armenian Genocide held in
April of each year.
Once the final date was set, the Turkish Foreign Ministry immediately
instructed its ambassadors and consul generals around the world to extend
invitations to Armenians and non-Armenians alike to attend the ceremonies on March 29.
Invitations were received by scores of Armenians whose addresses had been
provided to local Turkish consulates by a couple of Armenian individuals who do
the Turkish government’s bidding apparently for personal gain.
The invitations offend the invitees by describing the Holy Cross Church as
the “the Monumental Museum of Akdamar [sic] Church.” Even more offensive is
the two-page enclosure which states that the carvings of the church walls “show
an influence of 9th and 10th century Abbasi art, which was itself influenced
by Central Asian Turkish Art.”
The invitation indicates that the guests are expected to arrive in Ankara
on March 28 and leave for Akhtamar in the early morning of March 29, flying
from Ankara to Van by private plane. After the conclusion of the opening ceremony
— which may be attended by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gul — the invitees will be given lunch, taken on a tour of
the city of Van, including the historic castle and then depart to Ankara later
that afternoon. After asking them to fly to Turkey, in some cases from halfway
around the world, the guests are expected to be on Akhtamar Island not more
than an hour and a half which would include the opening ceremony and a recital
by a Turkish pianist.
While it is obvious that the Turkish government is only interested in the
propaganda value of this ancient Armenian Church, it is much less clear whyany
Armenian would want to be a part of its unholy ploy. Why would any
self-respecting Armenian, whether from Armenia or the Diaspora, allow himself or herself
to be used by Turkish authorities for anti-Armenian purposes, specifically in
Turkey’s efforts to counter the recognition of the Armenian Genocide?
Armenians should boycott and denounce this cynical Turkish ploy. If Turkish
officials are truly interested in restoring the Holy Cross Church, here are
the steps they must take:
1) Designate it as a church, not museum, and open it for Christian
worship.
2) Place it under the jurisdiction of the Armenian Patriarchate of
Constantinople, not the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
3) Place a cross on its dome.
4) Remove all false references to a non-existent Turkish influence on
the architecture of the Holy Cross Church.
World public opinion should be told that Turkey deserves very little credit
for renovating this Armenian church. There were thousands of Armenian
churches and monuments before the genocide of 1915 throughout today’s Turkey. Most of
them were confiscated and converted to non-religious use, abandoned to the
ravages of time or outright demolished by Turkish officials. To deserve any
credit, Turkey should restore these churches and monuments and return them to the
Armenian Patriarchate.
Until the Turkish authorities implement the above four stops, no
self-respecting Armenian should in any way assist or support Ankara’s use of the
renovation of an Armenian church for Turkish propaganda purposes.

Having also read one of the Turkish invitations to the “Armenian Diaspora” – a few hundred individuals – I realized I would not wish to attend the opening ceremony.  The letter made no reference to Surp Khach, and used the dearmenianized genocidal term of the island – Akdamar – that word by word translates to white/clean vein in Turkish.  Thanks to David Davidian for sendming me a scan of his personal invitation (that he rejected).  The only “positive” thing in the opening is perhaps the fact that a few hours ago the Turkish Today’s Zaman newspaper started referring to the island with its historic and Armenian name – Akhtamar – as opposed to using the Turkified Akdamar.  

Upon insistence of of my girlfriend, I am posting a summary of my recent talk in Toronto by one of the organizers of the event.  I have the cold. 🙁

This is me and Hon. Jim Karygiannis, a Toronto MP (like the national Canadian representative) who joined us at the end of the lecture.  I had e-mailed him a few days before the talk and he made the commitment to attend.  I am shocked with the accessibility of Canadian elected officials.  My own American representative, the Tom Tancredo, would never attend such a meeting even though he has paid tribute to me in the U.S. House a few years ago.  Wow, a lesson for us Americans to learn.

Simon Maghakyan, a 20 year old student at the University of Colorado, flew to Toronto and in the span of three days, he participated in an Armenian Genocide related Workshop in Montreal over the weekend, then gave an excellent talk on the destruction and vandalism of Djulfa khatchars.  His talk took place on Monday, March 19, 2007, at 8:00pm, in the Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church in Toronto.  Without the help of Rev. Arch Father Zareh Zargarian, the pastor of the Church, this event would not have taken place.

Simon began his presentation with his 5-minute film – “The New Tears of Araxes” – that documents the destruction of thousands of khatchkars.  The film was followed by his talk on the destruction discussing its connection to oil, politics and cultural rights.  At the end, his PowerPoint presentation showed satellite images of the Djulfa cemetery before its 2005 final destruction. These images had not been shown to the public before

Simon’s talk was enthusiastically received by the audience, as evidenced by the lively question and answer period at the end.  Here is a comment from one of the attendees.

“Simon’s lecture was enlightening and he inspired hope in our new generation. God bless him and hope it will inspire other youth to go  in his footsteps. We the grown ups should keep an eye on these youth, help them every which way, so they will be encouraged.”

The Toronto Armenian youth was conspicuous by its absence.  Perhaps this was due to excusable circumstances, such as bad timing, late advertising, etc.  Here are some other comments from other members of the audience.

 “ …he [Simon] has all the qualities to become a scholar.  We thank all those who helped organize the special event.“

“Just wanted to say that I enjoyed Simon Maghakyan’s lecture yesterday, he had strong and energetic presentation skills at that young age with the knowledge of someone twice his age, a very bright young man, and he wasn’t shy at all, may he have a very successful future, my heartiest congratulations to him. I just wish that this lecture was advertised sooner.. as I believe there would’ve been a larger audience attending.“

Thank you Simon.

Artin Boghossian, Toronto

Below is an interesting piece on racism in Russia by Andy Turpin from the Armenian Weekly, Feb 24, 2007 issue (received via e-mail)

The image of the soft but undernourished girl, shivering by the riverbed of a Gotham city, is everywhere. Take your pick from the songs of Edith Piaf, Puccini’s Mimi, Pasternak’s Lara or Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion.”

It is cliché and sentimentalist to a fault, but that is sometimes how I imagine Armenia when it comes to her relationship with Russia, especially in the wake of the ongoing number of hate crimes against Armenians and other Caucasians in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Financially, Russia may feed and employ Armenia’s many economic migrants and keep its utilities in check through ownership of gas and electric companies. The Cossack bear may even protect Armenia from its Turkic neighbors by supplying arms and barracking soldiers in Gyumri. But when such crimes are allowed to continue unchecked by Russian authorities, how can one call such backhands love for Armenia and her people?

One could always argue that Armenians shouldn’t take the crimes too seriously, that Russia is a place of death and chaos for anyone, not merely Armenians. They are just the targets of the hour.

Some argue that Russia lives in constant states of extremes: part police state, part mafia state, part prison, part wilderness, and never punctual with the rest of the world in her political and social trends. It is not a country for the faint of heart.

Certainly Armenians must be on guard to Russia’s growing sense of radical nationalism. Though unlike Turkey’s Grey Wolf form of nationalism, Russia’s berserker rage is not directly antagonistic to Armenia and the Diaspora, but is more of a xenophobic breakdown in Russian society. Domestic abuse is also rampant in Russia, so both figuratively and physically one could say that Armenia is taking the hits.

What is to be done? There lies the rub. How do you seek solutions to acts of violence against a specific group of people when criminality, corruption and violence abound on the streets of the Russian federation?

Most often the perpetrators of these hate crimes are not even deemed by judges to be murderers or criminals, but hooligans instead. How can justice be demanded of a culture that often sentences human traffickers to casual sentences of three years in prison?

Some hayastantsis have the option of seeking jobs with relatives in the Diaspora, but what of the Russian-Armenians persecuted without hope of justice in their own backyards?

I have no clear-cut answers to these problems, and from the silence of the Kremlin, it seems that Vladimir Putin doesn’t either.

Today I Armenianized more non-Armenians, a.k.a, donated blood.  I think this is the best way of practicing nationalism or patriotism.  If you think your blood is better (which I don’t, especially when it is AB positive), you should donate it to make this world a better place.  This would make millions of, lets say, Turks to donate blood around the world. 

 Donating blood makes you healthy.  Until last year, I would get the cold at least 12 times a year in all of my life.  Since the first time I donated blood, I have not been sick and never will.

Donating blood is fun, in my case for the nurse or the nurses, at least.  These people had a lot of fun when I was playing Borat for them.  Wasn’t too much fun for me because they thought I was being myself.  Maybe some part of it.

 Donating fun will make you hate your computer less, at least in my case.  See, my home computer is the worst computer in the world (this is an absolute fact!!!!!!) and I couldn’t update my yesterday’s post after 10 attempts!  Now, as they have taken some blood of me, I don’t have too much energy to practice hate against my computer.  As Blogian’s readership is growing, I need to have a normal access to Internet, but this doesn’t seem the case.  So if I don’t respond to your comments, please don’t take it personal.  Usually, I approve them at work and cannot comment them from there.  If you notice, I don’t edit comments, and there is some Turkish-Azerbaijani love for Armenians in the comments.  But I do read your comments and get really excited especially when you link to Blogian!  One of my friends in Colorado, Kim Christianian, mentions my blog to everybody she sees.  I am serious.  She is the Blogian agent, and everybody is invited to be one.  🙂

Donating blood makes you feel good, despite the fact that nobody asks for an ID or whether you use/used drugs and alcohol.  What if Bin Laden wanted to donate blood?  Most likely not, and the same with the alcoholics or drug addicts, so don’t worry about getting intoxicated blood.

 So what makes you donate blood?  I don’t know the answer, but it paid well.  I was taking my independent study (on Cultural Rights and Djulfa) form for the dean to sign, and saw the blood seekers.  I told them I had to run, but ended up coming back.  I was told at the admissions office that it might take a week before the dean signed it.  I got a call, twenty minutes after I had dropped off the form, that my form was ready as I was already giving blood.  See, had I not volunteered I would have to do it on Friday!

As you noticed, my obssesion (or whatever the word is spelled.  I am not going to use spell check any more!) about Djulfa is becoming academic.  Indigenous rights scholar and very famous Native American Prof. Glenn Morris is going to supervise me on the research, and said many times he was really excited.  I will be also pursuing (and this is my own take) the state of Azerbaijani monuments in Armenia, so those of you who have some materials on the issue please let me know.  I would ask you not send me links to nationalist Azerbaijani websites that post photos of Armenian churches and say these were Azerbaijani monuments.

If Kirk Kirkorian ever ends up reading this entry, I would ask him to buy me a new computer.

A self-described independent blogger from Azerbaijan and Doctor of History Vulgar Seidov is writing in Russian the circumstances under which European parliamentarians and UNESCO would be allowed to visit Djulfa (Julfa or Jugha) – the site of the largest medieval Armenian cemetery that was wiped off the face of the Earth in December of 2005:

Путь в Джульфу европейским экспертам лежит только через разрушенные азербайджанские могилы и памятники в сегодняшней Армении и оккупированных азербайджанских территориях. Только после того, как каждый до последнего разрушенный и осквернённый азербайджанский объект будет наведан, задокументирован, зафиксирован европейцами, только после этого можно будет им сказать Welcome to Julfa!

(The road to Djulfa for the European experts lies only through [the examination] of destroyed Azerbaijani graves and monuments in modern Armenia and [in] occupied Azerbaijani territories. Only after that, when the very last destroyed and desecrated Azerbaijani object is visited, documented, and noted [fixed?] by the Europeans, only after that they can be told, “Welcome to Julfa!”)

Ironically enough, Armenia has agreed to the examination of the state of Azerbaijani monuments in Armenia by European experts. During such a visit last year to Armenia and Azerbaijan, the delegation was denied access to Nakhichevan where Djulfa lies. But you don’t tell this to Azerbaijani academicians, because they know it very well.

I agree that the price to visit Djulfa should be through the documentation of all Azerbaijani objects in Armenia (although I am not sure what Seidov means by “all objects”). There are Azerbaijani monuments in Armenia, and even if they all together do not have 1% of the significance of only one of the thousands of medieval Armenian cross stones forever gone in Azerbaijan, in the words of Norwegia’s former Ambassador to Azerbaijan, “Any kind of act of destruction toward any kind of historical monument of any religion, nation or people should be condemned.”

So why not go ahead and do it? Let’s have the delegation examine the ethnic artefacts and cultural sites of both countries. Although I have not seen reports of Armenian army or authorities destroying Azerbaijani monuments, I am sure Armenia is not an angel either – especially given the fact that even Armenian monuments are neglected in Armenia.
Unfortunately, it seems that the examiniation of Azerbaijani monuments is not Azerbaijan’s real intention. They don’t care about these monuments. They just want one thing – no foreigner witness what they have done in Djulfa. And here is how Seidov, for example, makes the transformation:

Да и вообще, я думаю тема памятников исчерпала себя и и её пора закрывать.

(And actually, I think, the topic of monuments has exhausted itself and it it time to close it.)

What was the whole point of Dr. Seidov’s post if he concludes that Armenian and Azerbaijani monuments should not be of concern?

An unseen footage of Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist whose funeral was attended by over 100,000 people in Turkey, shows the journalist saying in November of 2006 he would rather die on feet than in bed.  He smiled while talking about his possible death.

Prof. Levon Marashlian has prepared a short video, posted at YouTube, in Dink’s memory.

Some of the video (seems has not been shown anywhere before) is from November, 2006 in Glendale, California.  As Prof. Marashlian likes videodocumenting almost everything, I believe this was shot by him.

Dink speaks Armenian, but there is English subtitle too.  With his wonderful smile, Dink adds, “If something is going to happen, I’d rather struggle on feet, and die on feet, and not in bed.”

Interestingly, Dink doesn’t pronounce the word “death/die” but Marashlian still puts it in the subtitle, because no other word could fit in the sentence.

Dink didn’t fear death and smiled while talking about it.

Rest in peace, Dink pasha.

There seems to be realistic hope that Hrant Dink’s death could be the ultimate price for bringing the Armenian and Turkish people together.  Armenian officials, first time after Turkey closed down the border, are in Turkey to participate in Dink’s funeral.

Some Turkish legislators are saying they will do their best to get rid of Code 301 – the law under which Dink was convicted of “insulting Turkishness.”

Yet the biggest question remains the acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide – something that Dink was punished for.  And the hope for this last one is a Turkish sign circulated in the Internet for those who want to use it in Tuesday’s funeral.  The sign has the year of Dink’s murder, and the year of the Armenian Genocide.

Maybe Dink was the one?

Adam Garrie, a UCLA student, has written a poem, posted below, in memory of Hrant Dink.  Originally forwarded by Richard Hovhannisian.