On the wall of the Armenian Surp Takavor Church in Kadikoy/ Istanbul
some wrote on Saturday night, ”A Hrant dead, tomorrow more Hrants.
Die, Ugly Armenian!”

Authorities have cleared the wall immediately, but
journalists are not allowed to take pictures.

Cartoon by Kutal.com, the webmaster of which sent the news about the vandalism.
Source: Todays Milliyet newspaper/ Can Dundars article.

http://www.milliyet.com.tr/2007/01/22/yazar/dundar.html

According to the International Herald Tribune, “One of the suspects [in Hrant Dink’s assasination], Yasin Hayal, an alleged Islamic militant who learned to make bombs from Chechen militants at a camp in Azerbaijan and who served 11 months in jail for the bombing of a McDonalds restaurant in Trabzon in 2004, is suspected of masterminding the attacks on both Dink and Father Santaro.”

The Turkish Haber Vitrini has an article on Yasin Hayal and a photo of him.

Ayse Gunaysu, a Turkish human rights champion and a contributor to Blogian, has written an angry article about shameless Turkish officials’ self-victimization in Hrant Dink’s death. The original was written in Turkish; this is a translation by another Turkish fellow.  Ayse’s article is especially interesting given the fact that the nationalist Turkish media has now overcome its self-victimization stage and is now comparing Hrant Dink’s murder to the assasination of the main organizer of the Armenian Genocide – Talaat Pasha.

HRANT IS KILLED, LET ALL LIARS SHUT-UP

Everyone who says that this was an attack on Turkey, everyone who talks about the sinister games played on Turkey, everyone who talks about the timing of this attack coinciding with foreign parliaments’ making decisions on the “alleged” genocide, and thus trying to disguise the fact that Hrant Dink was being tried because he said “genocide” and was receiving threats because of this, and everyone who is protecting the real murderer, that is the ones who are allowing Union and Progress’ covert operator, lyncher, rabid spirit to still live on, has a share of responsibility.

The Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk, who yelled from the podiums of the congress that the ones who were organizing the Armenian conference were stabbing the Turkish people in the back, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer who vetoed the law proposal dealing with minority foundations on the grounds that it would strengthen minorities, the district attorneys who turn a blind eye on thousands of cases of torture, convictions without trial, unknown culprits taken into custody and lost, but processed and tried the alleged “notices of guilt” that are devoid of the most elementary notions of universal law, the newspaper Hurriyet that in the days Hrant Dink declared he was going to look for justice in the European Human Rights Courts, made front page news with the head of the Greek foundations who said he wouldn’t go to European Human Rights Courts as he trusted the Turkish Justice system, called him a true citizen, and therefore whomever tried to look for justice in the European H.R. Courts was shown as a target, branded as “so-called/pseudo” citizen, and, before Hrant’s blood was even dry, the Turkish Television stations that for hours debated a litany of provocation by relating it to the law proposal pending in the United States Congress, are all a part of this murder, they have a responsibility.

Everybody who says that this was an attack on Turkey is lying. Because this attack was made possible by Turkey herself therefore, Turkey is responsible. This attack was made possible by the government that has implemented article 301, as protection against only the denigration of Turkishness, not of all identities, thus providing a legal basis for aggression, and it was made possible by an entire population of Turkey who didn’t reject this article.

Everybody who, instead of feeling shame faced with the murder of Hrant Dink, instead of saying “we are all guilty”, worried about Turkey’s dignity, from the officials to the opinion leaders, they are all lying, they are trying to disguise their guilt. Let all the liars shut up.

And you shut up too please, democratic journalists like Altan Oymen. If you are not refusing to answer questions that link the murder of Hrant to the genocide recognition proposal in the US Congress, and do not see a problem replying to them, if you are not refusing to be disrespectful to the pain of the Armenian people by making such connections, if you are not rejecting to thus support the ones who are trying to fool people with conspiracy theories by foreign influences aimed at the Turkish people, just to exonerate our own murderers, shut up, all of you shut up.

LET ALL LIARS SHUT UP. HRANT’S WOUNDS ARE STILL BLEEDING.

Original source in Turkish

AYSE GUNALSU

(The homepage of Google News several hours ago)

At this point, almost everybody knows that Turkey’s outspoken journalist and the most famous Armenian of that country was shot to death several hours ago.

I was so shocked the entire day that could not prepare an entry for the blog. It has been several hours, and I am finally able to share some thoughts and information.

Hrant Dink kept his promise of leaving Turkey. When he was convicted in “insulting Turkishness” (saying that he was an Armenian, not a Turk), Dink said he would leave the country if he were not cleared off the charge.

The shots of a nationalist Turk killed Dink today.

As the news is the main story of the international media, there are not, perhaps, new details of the murder that can be posted at this time, and the point of this post is to actually commemorate and provided underreported information.

I turned on my work computer this morning, and as I opened the Internet homepage (www.yahoo.com), a headline struck my heart: Turkish-Armenian Journalist Shot Dead in Istanbul.

I breathlessly opened the link and found out that Hrant Dink had been assassinated. Although not having met Dink in person, I was in such a pain and anger as though as I had just lost a close friend.

I went ahead to check my e-mail where I knew I would find many messages of anger and mourning by Dink’s friends and colleagues received through a private but publicly known group discussion.

Fatma Gocek, a Turkish professor in America, had written,

it is in tears and with great remorse that i try to write you this e-mail,
the worst one i have written in my entire life, to share with you the
news of the assassination of a great friend, hrant dink, the editor of the
agos newspaper and a champion of human rights in turkey.

(The homepage of The New York Times several hours ago)
A good friend, Amberin Zaman, a prominent Turkey-based international reporter, informed that she had

just returned from Agos where hundreds of Turks are keeping vigil, lighting candles and laying down red carnations around his picture, singing Sari Gul, crying, chanting “We are all Hrant Dink, we are all Armenians” Hepimiz Hrantiz, Hepimiz Ermeniyiz.”followed by Katil Devlet, Killer State. Inside Agos the mood was predictably sombre. A clutch of young people were holding up copies of todays’ Agos from the balcony overlooking the crowd.

I am amazed that Erdogan was shameless enough to call Hrant’s slaying “a bullet aimed at free speech.” Its the laws his government passed that have created the atmosphere in which Hrant became a target. And of course Cemil Cicek, the Justice Minister immediately hints at some kind of plot revolving aroud Armenian efforts to get US congressional recogition of the genocide. Well the excuse for not passing the resolution–that it would make it harder for Turkey to reach out to the Armenians–no longer holds.

Dikran Abrahamian, a close friend from Canada, wrote,

Personal feelings and emotions aside, Hrant Dink is the latest victim of the Armenian Genocide. The atmosphere of hatred, intolerance and deplorable stance of the Turkish establishment regarding Human Rights and Freedom of Speech paved the way to such a tragic end.

Dikran’s spirit was seen in an Independent article by Robert Fisk, where the latter wrote, “Hrant Dink became the 1,500,001st victim of the Armenian genocide yesterday.”

Videos from Hrant Dink’s commemoration and his murder’s condemnation are available at http://ihavideo.net/ (I learned about this link from a Yahoo’s Armenia group). Photographs are available at http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=dink&c=news_photos.

Months after annihilating the largest medieval Armenian cemetery in the world, Azerbaijan honored a nearby Muslim monument in stamps.

An ongoing Google search about Jughacide (Jugha + cide/kill) – the destruction of the world’s largest Armenian medieval cemetery in Jugha (Djulfa or Julfa) by Azerbaijani authorities in Nakhichevan– introduced me to a website that sells Azerbaijani postal stamps since 1992.

(Gulustan tomb by Digital Image, 2003)

I was shocked to find out that on May 22, 2006, just a few months after wiping out the cemetery and banning European delegations from visiting the vandalism site, Azerbaijan had issued a stamp with the depiction of Gulustan Tomb – a medieval Muslim monument only a few miles away from the barbarized cemetery.

I couldn’t help but think about the irony and the cynicism of honoring a Muslim monument – just next to the vanished cemetery – in a time when Azerbaijan vehemently denied (and still does) that the vandalism ever happened. What this a coincidence or a message to the Azerbaijani people? If it was a message, then what was it? A sense of satisfaction of finalizing the Jughacide? A reminder that the Azerbaijani people should only think about the Muslim heritage? What about the sarcastic speeches of Azerbaijani tolerance?

Interestingly, the same Gulustan tomb was already depicted, among with other monuments, on a 1999 stamp that commemorated the 75th of Nakhichevan – the birthplace of then president Heydar Aliyev who has stamps for his 80th Anniversary, for his death, etc.

The stamp for Aliyev’s 70th Anniversary had three grammar errors in one word: Nakhichevan, the Armenian region (now part of Azerbaijan due to J.V. Stalin’s order in the 1920s) where Aliyev was born. The regular Azerbaijani spelling for Nakhichevan is Naxçıvan (“c” with a tale on the bottom and “i” without the dot on the top), yet the 1993 stamp wrote the name as “Haxcivan” (H- for Heidar Aliyev?).

In 1994, Aliyev was replaced by Prehistoric Animals – the Dinosaurs – namely Coelophysis and Segisaurus, Pentaceratops and tyrannosaurids, Segnosaurus and oviraptor, Albertosaurus and corythosaurus, Iguanodons, Stegosaurus and allosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus and saurolophus, perhaps in an attempt to document the early days of Azerbaijani culture destroyed by Armanian terrorists. Well, the last one was a joke, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Azerbaijani authorities claimed that Armenians were responsibly for the extinction of the Dinosaurs. But if you pay attention to the stamps, you will see that all stamps, but one, depict fighting animals, and this perhaps symbolizes the anger in Azerbaijan at the time although the war with Armenia was already over.

Another war, namely the one on terror, has also become a theme for an Azerbaijani stamp. On September 18, 2002, Azerbaijan issued a stamp with New York’s twin towers and the phrase, “Freedom for All.” Are the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh part of that “All”? Not the vanished cemetery in Nakhichevan for sure.

We have a unique opportunity to document the Armenian culture and material history before it is completely wiped out in Turkey and in Azerbaijan. This would cost about 1 million dollars, but I highly hope rich Armenian foundations will realize the importance of such a project. In terms of fully satellizing the destruction of the Djulfa cemetery, it would only require about $3,000.

Although having access to American satellites, NATO member Turkey has decided to lunch an 80-centimeter-resolution satellite into the orbit by 2011. According to The Space Review (“Turkey’s military satellite program: a model for emerging regional powers”), “Space-based observation is one important way that they can keep track of activities in places like Armenia” and other places.

In fact it was due to the genocide that Turkey committed against Armenia and the crime’s acknowledgement by the French government that delayed the process of satellitizing Turkey’s military espionage in the region. Back in 2001, “The Turkish Defense Ministry canceled a contract to purchase a US$259 million high-resolution Earth observation satellite from Alcatel Space in retaliation for the French parliament’s vote to condemn the Turkish killings of Armenians in the early 1900s.” An Israeli corporation, according to Space and Tech, was supposed to benefit from the Turkish angriness, but it remains a question why Turkey still wants to lunch its own satellite. Why Israel? According to the report, the Jewish state doesn’t mind doing business on spy satellites: ”Israel seems to be willing to sell spy satellites to other countries. Reports about negotiations with Singapore have appeared in the Singapore and Malaysian press.” Why not Turkey then?

The government-owned Turksat already has several broadcast satellites for promoting “cultural, economic, and political influence” from Turkey to Central Asia – the area that many Turkish nationalists have hoped to unite in a Pan-Turkish empire.

The report says the Turkish military plans to spend 200 million dollars on the project. Turkish personnel have been training in Torrejon, Spain for satellite interpretation and technology. The military satellite will be used for “taking pictures of nations that directly border on Turkey.” According to the Turkish Press, November 17, 2006, was the deadline for “bidding in the tender for Turkey’s first military-purpose satellite project.”

But Turkey has already started documenting its neighbors. It “is already buying imagery from commercial sources” – that are available to everyone for the same price.

The report about Turkey’s satellite ambitions came three weeks after I purchased a 2003 satellite image of Nakhichevan’s (part of the Republic of Azerbaijan) Julfa’s (Culfa, Jugha) region’s western portion – that shows the ancient Armenian cemetery (now destroyed), the village Gulustan, several other monuments such as caravanserais, churches, and a historic Mulsim tomb.

I purchased the image from Digital Globe. Since then I have been wondering whether the Armenian government owns this available-to-everyone satellite images of the region. It would cost Armenia about 1 million dollars to get Digital Globe’s entire coverage of the Armenian Republic and the Republics of Azerbaijan and Turkey, at least the immediate bordering areas.

If you are wondering about the image posted above, it is the September 2003 inverted satellite image of now-gone Djulfa cemetery. Although I have no expertise or training in satellite interpretation, there are still many conclusions that can be made from that image without having professional background:

1. The cemetery was over 70% intact in September of 2003, even after the deliberate acts of official vandalisms in 1998 and 2002 that UNESCO had ordered to stop.

2. The 1998 and 2002 vandalisms were done by heavy technology – the entire level of the soil was scrapped off. The darker side is the most recent and the deepest scrap. This could not have been done by a group of hooligans. This was not done in a search for treasure.

3. The scrapped trace proves the intent of totally wiping out the cemetery even before 2005. A very thick level of the soil had been removed. Hundreds of skeletons must have been exhumed in this process and destroyed.

4. Although it is not too clear – but if it is zoomed in and studied closely it can be noticed that most, if not all, headstones (khachkars) were pushed down to the ground and none were standing in Sept. of 2003. This may have been done either in 1998 or 2003, as a first step of destroying the headstones. In fact, if you compare a December 2005 photograph with the Sept 2003 satellite image you will notice that in both places the khachkars were laying down on the ground instead of standing in their regular positions.

I do have many other images of the surrounding area, but would like to keep them for sharing on possible future presentations about the vandalism. All the images are from the big file that I got from Digital Globe.

The negative aspects of Digital Globe satellite imagery are that these areas are taken on different dates and times. Thus, “coverage” of the region could have been from 2002-2006, and many things might have changed in the meantime. Another problem would be getting detailed imagery. Digital Globe does not provide 80-cm imagery, as the one that Turkey aspires. But even so, the satellite images will provide much information. In fact, Azerbaijan is aware of what I am talking about. When this hostile neighbor accused Armenia of deliberately “burning forests,” they immediately provided several satellite images of the area with different dates of download (these images are available here).

How did Azerbaijan get this imagery (that didn’t really “prove” anything other than that the forests were really destroyed due to a fire)? Digital Globe, as far as I know, would not have been able to provide information that fast. In fact, it takes them up to 60 days to download a current image of an area. So, Azerbaijan either used U.S. technology with the help of its ally and NATO-member Turkey, or has another secret access to satellite imagery, OR, there is another simple access to such images that Armenia is not even aware of. The images say “Space image,” but my Google search did not provide such a copyright holder. I doubt that Azerbaijan has its own satellite in the orbit, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had one very soon.

The text released by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry gives confusing details about the satellite imagery they obtained. According to the statement, the satellite imagery show that “[o]n the 132,2 square km area a number of towns, villages, agricultural lands, cultural and historical monuments, existing flora and fauna, living dwellings have been destroyed or burnt by the fire.” Interestingly, the statement also mentions the possibility that the fires “are nature-caused,” yet it holds Armenia accountable and says “these actions by Armenia constitute a gross violation of international humanitarian law.”

I have discussed it earlier that there is no reason that Armenia would have burnt forests. But an Azerbaijani blog says that the fire was deliberately done “perhaps in an attempt [to] clear land mines at the perimeter of the disputed area.” This wouldn’t make sense either, because there are no people living in these areas, and, as far as I understand, Armenia is planning to give up the particular territory to the Azerbaijanis in the future peace deal. Nor does Nagorno Karabakh President’s assertion – that Azerbaijanis have shot fire starting balls to the forests to blame the Armenians – make sense. Again, I don’t think any side would have deliberately started destruction of forests – although both Armenian and Azerbaijani governments are infamous for environmental degradation in their countries. Though, wait a minute, I may have double thoughts about Azerbaijan on this… I mean, it would be totally “worth” to cause forests fire in Karabakh to blame on Armenia in Azeri officials’ eyes, to balance the pressure on Azerbaijan for destroying the Djulfa cemetery. But, no, I don’t think they are that sick. What if ones of those mines blew up and started the fire? In any case, I think had the conflict was solved earlier the forest fire would have not been so widened in the area. Now let’s get back to satellite wars.

I wonder whether the Armenian government knows that satellite images can be purchased. By didn’t the foreign ministry purchase satellite images of the Djulfa cemetery before and after the destruction? As I already mentioned, I purchased the before image for “The New Tears of Araxes,” but I haven’t found a sponsor to help purchase a current satellite image that would cost between $1,200 and $2,000. It would cost only $1,500 years to have a final documentation of the vandalism, but interested parties are either not genuinely interested or don’t know they can do this.

After all, sometimes satellite images are not helpful at all. Look at the satellite image of Iran’s Embassy in Armenia.

Would you be able to figure out from this that a small Armenian Nazi group (the “Armenian Aryans”) gets financial support from this building?

In fact, not really having much hope for the current Armenian government, I hope an Armenian organization (a library, museum, etc.) in America will find ways to document historic Armenia in satellites (and then perhaps share the info with the Armenian government). We have a unique opportunity to document the Armenian culture and material history before it is completely wiped out in Turkey and in Azerbaijan. This would cost about 1 million dollars, but I highly hope rich Armenian foundations will realize the importance of such a project. But first we need people who would be interested to communicating and organizing all these. An Armenian Research Center at a U.S. university sounds the best option here. One non-Armenian university professor, according to the CNN, has already purchased many photos of Mount Ararat with the ambition to find Noah’s ark.

Finding Noah’s ark would not be the next cool thing after documenting the Armenian monuments. The non-Armenian monuments of historic Armenia should also be documented. If Armenia ever ends up liberating more historic lands, these monuments must be preserved, and we need to document them today so that we take care of them tomorrow. I don’t want the non-ingenious people of historic Armenia (the Turkic-Mongoloid peoples) die and disappear, but history shows that, in the long-run, Armenians end up staying in their homeland, while the newcomers continue their journey.

The Muslim tomb Gulustan (middle ages) not too far from now-gone Djulfa

More realistically, this (80 million Turks leaving the region) will not happen, but future liberation of Nakhichevan – the region that Stalin gave to Azerbaijan and the region where the Djulfa cemetery was wiped out along with thousands of other ancient Armenian monuments – is realistic, so even though all of the Armenian culture has been wiped out there, we should document the Muslim culture to preserve it in the future.

Tonirtrash

Speaking of preserving culture, let’s talk about our own. A Blogian reader from the Czech Republic has visited Armenia lately and got shocked after seeing the treatment of the Armenian monuments in Armenia. He sent us a photo of a tonir (the well where the traditional Armenian bread – lavash – is made) from one of Armenia’s most ancient monasteries – Khor Virap, where Grigor Lusavorish (Krikor the Illuminator) was imprisoned for many years before he converted Armenia to Christianity in 301 A.D. The tonir in the sacred site has been used by a garbage bin by visitors.

A local Armenian would blame the government – or whoever is in charge of taking care the historic monastery – for not putting trashcans in the area. But I think it also has to do with the visitors. For one reason, I can almost swear that no Diasporan Armenian would have thrown trash into the tonir. Has to do a lot with “dastiarakutyun” (the English term doesn’t come to mind); has to do a lot how people are taught about this world. There is lots of chances that even if the monastery was overpacked by trashcans people would still throw garbage into the tonir.

I visited Mother Cabrini’s shrine in Colorado last year. The sacred Catholic site had a sacred water fountain where people say water was found by God’s guidance. There were free plastic cups to drink the water and, as you can imagine, dozens of trashcans all over the place. When I tried to put a small donation in the huge can next to the water fountain, I saw used plastic cups smashed in it that blocked from putting the money in. Why would they do that? Well, perhaps they did not understand the “donation” sign, because most people who go there are Hispanics and perhaps don’t speak English. But hey, what has happened to the thing called common sense? I guess the mere presence of trashcans is not the final and complete solution.

(Khor Virap by Andy Abrahamian)

Well, let’s blame the absence of trashcans for the tonirtrash in Khor Virap, but what about the graffiti on the same monastery done by Armenians? Oh, these are done by unholy communists who hated the Armenian Church. Well, what about the 2005 Alphabet statues? Why is there graffiti on them too?

(the alphabet from pbase.com)