Minority Rights Group International [MRG] has issued a report on minorities in Turkey stating that “[m]illions of ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities remain unrecognized by the Turkish state, face discrimination and are now increasingly under threat as a result of a growing wave of violent nationalism.”

[…]

The only protection for minorities in Turkey has been set out in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne but in practice its scope is limited only to Armenians, Jews and Rum (Greek orthodox) Christians.

But Turkey is home to a vast number of minorities including ethnic Kurds, Caucasians, Laz and Roma. The country’s other religious minorities include Alevis, Assyrians, Caferis and Reformist Christians.

[…]

Minorities have also increasingly becoming victims of a rising trend of nationalism in the country. In January 2007, journalist and Armenian human rights activist Hrant Dink was shot dead in Istanbul. The suspect told police that Dink was Armenian and had “insulted Turkishness”.

The report says that the EU accession process and the proposed new constitution in 2008 give plenty of opportunity for Turkey to make legal changes to protect minorities.

“We recommend speedy legal reforms – this is crucial, but to bring real change to Turkey’s minorities there has to be radical transformation of the prevalent mentality towards minorities of both the state and society,” [MRG’s Head of Policy and Communications] Matheson says.

The Uncyclopedia.org joke that “no one knows anything about Azerbaijan other than that they love their minorities, especially the Azerbaijanis” has become quite ironic. While the satirical reference has meant to ridicule Azerbaijan’s official motto that the South Caucasus republic is a “heaven of tolerance for minorities,” disturbing news from Radio Free Europe gives examples of non-discriminatory human rights violations in Azerbaijan.

With 10 current journalists behind bars and a female political activist dead in prison, Azerbaijani officials haven’t fallen short of persecuting freedom of speech:

A series of abuses — some of them bizarre — have been documented in media reports.

According to the reports, local authorities have ordered state employees to perform manual labor on weekends as a condition for keeping their jobs. People who fail to pay utility bills have been seized and tied to trees outside police precincts until a family member or friend can come and settle the debt. Residents are forbidden from hanging laundry from their balconies and from baking bread at home. In a region where average salaries are approximately $130 per month, farmers are charged a steep tax for owning more than one cow or one sheep — $25 per cow, $10 per sheep.

The specific abuses mentioned above have taken place in Nakhichevan (Naxchivan), the Azerbaijani exclave where every single indigenous Armenian monument has been reduced to dust by the state authorities.

Azerbaijanis have started to refer to Nakhichevan as “Azerbaijan’s North Korea” with a reference to absence of recognition and protection of any rights in the region, reports Radio Free Europe.

The Azeri authorities of Nakhichevan have seemingly missed the not-so-old days of destroying Armenian monuments and having themselves left with none to demolish are now destroying Tea-houses (traditional cafes) in Nakhichevan, popular gathering places for Azerbaijanis:

“We hear a lot about arbitrariness on the part of the authorities, but this is nothing compared to what is happening in Naxchivan,” Samedbayli said. “Tea houses are being destroyed in the region’s villages, despite protests from the people. Other strange things are happening in Naxchivan. The authorities are destroying the ovens people use to bake bread in their homes because they say this harms the environment. They are forcing people to buy bread from shops owned by the state monopoly.”

Even though anti-Americanism is quite high in the Republic of Turkey, the ban of the letter “w” has nothing to do with George “W” Bush or the “w”ar in Iraq in the Middle Eastern Country.

At least one person is on trial in Turkey for using the letter “w” in a Turkish article about a Kurdish holiday, Newroz, reports Bianet from Turkey.

NowKiyasettin Aslan, the Kilis province chair of the Office Workers’ Union (BES) is on trial for using the words “Newroz” and “Kawa” in articles published in two local newspapers. The “w” does not exist in the Turkish alphabet[…]

In an article published in the local Huduteli newspaper on 20 March and entitled “May the Newroz Fire Never Go Out” and another article in the Kent newspaper on 24 March, entitled “Fire and Iron”, Aslan had written about the Newroz Festival.

Prosecutor Serkan Özkanis demanding that the Kilis Criminal Court of Peace sentence Aslan to two to six months imprisonment. The trial will begin on 27 December.

The prosecution has clear roots in the Kurdish nature of the article since “www” has been freely used in the Turkish newspapers without any problems (at least, until today). 

So add to your Turkish dictionary that not only there are no Kurds in Turkey and that the Armenian Genocide never happened, but that if you want to avoid Turkish prison you’d better stop using the letter “w.”  (And in case you thought this is new invention, recall the ban of water’s formula in the Ottoman Empire where Sultan Abdul Hamid the Second thought H₂O might mean Hamid the Second is equal to zero.)

A single-mother in a village of Karabakh – the unrecognized Armenian republic in the South Caucasus – has opened a cafe despite hardships and gossips in her tiny community.  Addiction to caffeine, it seems, is stronger than addiction to patriarchy in Karabakh.

KarabakhOpen reports

[…]

The people who don’t know Karine cannot believe this lovely girl already has two children. She was very young and in her dreams life was easy and beautiful when she fell in love and left with her prince far away.

But soon Karine got disappointed and had to come back home with two children. Her family did not accept her, only the old grandmother who lived alone and was happy to get a family.

Soon the men of the village learned about the young woman with two children and no husband. And it began. Some stood at her house for hours to say a couple of words which they thought were so wise.
“Nobody dated me and nobody gave me flowers but everyone asked to come in for a cup of coffee. I wondered if there’s not a single café around and why everyone wanted to come in. In fact, there was no café around, and I thought why I could open a café in our yard.”
It turned out that people in Karabakh cannot do without caffeine. Karine could not imagine it would be so difficult. The business is so small but she had to work very hard. She had to study the laws, learn accounting, be the barmen and the waitress at the same time. People gossiped, nevertheless, Café Karine is the only place where one can go, have a cup and coffee and have a chat.

[…]

Divorced women, especially with children, are often looked down at in Armenia.  They rarely remarry and have few opportunities for economic success. 

And the question that I have from this story is whether the Armenian feminist movement will also start in Karabakh. 

I know that the word “feminism” scares off lots of people and is often associated with the Western culture.  But as a famous Egyptian feminist once said the history of feminism is found in the history of every culture.  And feminism is not about women being as “vulgar” as many men can get; it is about having the right to opportunity and respect as in the case of the struggle of the lady from Karabakh.

An interesting article in ArmeniaNow reveals two interesting things on cultural property in the South Caucasus – governments are highly involved in both protection and destruction.

For one, the article says, Armenia has welcomed European observers to monitor Azeri monuments on Armenian territory regardless whether Azerbaijan (which has twice denied such monitoring) agrees monitoring of Armenian monuments on its territory or not. 

The news that the government of Armenia has given its consent to the European observers to carry out a monitoring on the state of cultural monuments on the territory of the republic, regardless of the official Baku’s standpoint on receiving such group of experts, caused an ambiguous reaction in Armenia. It should be noted that the Secretary General of the Council of Europe Terry Davis declared this during his visit to Yerevan on November 5. Commenting on the news, he stressed that such position is in the country’s interests as it can have a positive impact on its international image.

This has invited criticism by those who think Armenia needs to improve civil rights and not “show off” that it is not destroying Azeri monuments as a means of promoting itself as a democratic country.

“Does the Council of Europe have the right to judge Armenia’s image not from the view of adhering civil freedoms, but of the declared interest in preservation of the Armenian nation’s cultural heritage?” wonders a well-known art critic, the Head of Avan’s Museum of History and Archeology Ara Demirkhanyan.

The ArmeniaNow article also shows a possible link between the destruction of world’s largest Armenian cemetery in Azerbaijan (reportedly destroyed in 1998, 2003 and finalized in 2005) and the now-deceased former Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev, who was succeeded by his son.  It is not ruled out that the order was central, concludes an interviewee.

It’s noteworthy that it was in that period when a special archeological expedition started operating on the territory of Nakhijevan. “It [the expedition] was called by a direct order of Heidar Aliyev in 2001,” says the Deputy Head (on scientific issues) of Azerbaijan’s National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archeology and Ethnography Najaf Musiebli. “That expedition continued its work up to 2003. During the three years large-scale field works were held on the territory of Nakhijevan aimed at revealing historical monuments so far unknown to science. As a result of archeological excavations monuments of ancient settlements were discovered.”

“It’s quite possible that the given archeological party, besides other things, was engaged in making an ‘inventory’ of Armenian monuments that were subject to extermination. This is indirectly confirmed by the timing of its activity,” Demirkhanyan says.

Musiebli’s recently published (November 5) statement in this connection is worth mentioning here: “We have to say that the expedition was not organized by chance. Constant disinformation of the world community by the Armenians that the territory of Nakhijevan is also an ancient Armenian land forced the state to call a scientific-research expedition and as a result of numerous archaeological facts the false propaganda of the occupants was proved.”

Armenia ranks 71 in the newest Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum.

The report examines the following:

1. Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2. Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
3. Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4. Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio

Although Armenia gave women the right to vote in 1918, 2 years before the United States, and 99% of Armenia’s women are literate (as opposed to 100% of men), the percentage of women in the parliament is 5 today.

Female adult unemployment rate is 5% higher from men’s in Armenia.  The most interesting fact is the decrease of women educators as the level of educational institution increases:

Percentage of female teachers, primary education…………………………76Percentage of female teachers, secondary education……………………..56Percentage of female teachers, tertiary education…………………………41

The Report on Armenia is available through a .pdf document at http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gendergap/albania_to_dominican_republic.pdf. Apparently women in authoritarian Azerbaijan are better off – with a rank of 59, but not so much in (until yesterday) democratic Georgia – 67.

The United States ranked 31 in the Report, Turkey ranked 121 while Iran ranked 118. Russia ranked 45. For the ranking list, see http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gendergap/rankings2007.xls.

Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4) once again top the rankings in the latest Global Gender Gap Report. All countries in the top 20 made progress relative to their scores last year – some more so than others. Latvia (13) and Lithuania (14) made the biggest advances among the top 20, gaining six and seven places respectively. The Report covers a total of 128 countries, representing over 90% of the world’s population.

In the last two days I have posted some funny information on Borat – the fictional character from Kazakhstan.

Today in class we were talking about Borat’s new book when I overheard a student asking another student, “Was it in Guantanamobay?” The response was, “No, in Iraq.”

I asked the students what was going on and the  gentleman who had said “No, in Iraq” told me that while he was serving in Iraq they had an Iraqi to dress up in the “swimming suit” of Borat.  When I asked him where they got the suit from he said that the soldiers made it.

After noticing that I didn’t find the incident so funny the soldier added that the Iraqi man had put on the Borat costume voluntarily.  After I asked him other questions – trying to verify whether the Iraqi was a prisoner – he started denying what he had just told me and the rest in our group and joked that he’d kill us if we told the story.

No matter how funny it may sound anyone in Borat’s swimming suit, it is obvious that no Iraqi – for that matter almost no one – would volunteer to wear Borat’s suit (see photo)  so that American soldiers could have fun.

I am not positive that this abuse requires prosecution and investigation but I find it pretty ironic that American soldiers made an Iraqi dress up (or dress down) like Borat – the character who says George W. Bush should drink the blood of every Iraqi woman and child.

It seems everyone loves Borat yet we need to be serious in abuses such as this.

In a move that indigenous rights magazine Cultural Survival calls a “victory for indigenous people,” the General Assembly adopted the U.N. Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples on September 13, with only 4 countries – you can most likely guess which ones – casting against the document.

An e-mail from Cultural Survival (www.cs.org) reads:

The declaration spells out the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples including their right to their traditional lands and resources; their right to give their free, prior, and informed consent before governments take actions that negatively affect them; their right to be free from genocide and forced relocation; and their rights to their languages, cultures and spiritual beliefs. At long last the world’s native peoples have a valuable tool for regaining some of the cultural and physical ground they have lost over the past 500 years.

According to the official U.N. website:

The General Assembly today adopted a landmark declaration outlining the rights of the world’s estimated 370 million indigenous people and outlawing discrimination against them – a move that followed more than two decades of debate.

[…]
Ambassador John McNee of Canada said his country was disappointed to have to vote against the Declaration, but it had “significant concerns” about the language in the document.

The provisions on lands, territories and resources “are overly broad, unclear and capable of a wide variety of interpretations” and could put into question matters that have been settled by treaty, he said. source: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=23794&Cr=indigenous&Cr1=

In addition to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States voted against the declaration. These countries have long been against indigenous activists and are among the main target countries of the activists who started the idea of the declaration. In my own city of Denver, the Police Department has in the past profiled indigenous activists as “terrorists.”

I think the Internet has contributed to the developing solidarity of the struggles of indigenous people around the world. For little or no cost they are able to communicate, share their problems and ask for advice.

Indeed, this is a great success for indigenous people and their long activism. But an old wound is opened in the declaration that nobody talks about. It’s a wound that dates back to 1948 and is actually the essential threat to indigenous peoples’ survival.

My reference is to the dissaperance of the term “cultural genocide” from the final draft of the declaration (http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/LTD/N07/498/30/PDF/N0749830.pdf?OpenElement).

Although earlier drafts for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples included the phrase “cultural genocide” (http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/E.CN.4.SUB.2.RES.1994.45.En?OpenDocument) the new version has “cultural genocide” changed into “destruction of their [indigenous peoples’] culture.”

History repeats itself? Article III of a Secretariat draft for the United Nations Genocide convention originally defined genocide also as “[d]estroying or preventing the use of libraries, museums, schools, historical monuments, places of worship or other cultural institutions and objects of the group.” But opposition by several states, writes Ana Filipa Vrdoljak, including the argument that “the proposed Genocide Convention would become a tool of political propaganda aimed at their assimilation policies to ‘civilise’ indigenous inhabitants,” excluded cultural elements from the final convention draft that was adopted in 1948.

Interestingly enough, the exclusion of cultural genocide was fundamentally against the idea behind defining genocide.

When in 1933 Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin first formulated the idea of punishing the crime of the crimes – what he later named genocide – he argued that barbarity (“the premeditated destruction of national, racial, religious and social collectivities”) and vandalism (“destruction of works of art and culture, being the expression of the particular genius of these collectivities”) were of “international danger.”

The crime of “vandalism” was not separate from “barbarity,” but was also “an attack targeting a collectivity.” In 1947 Lemkin clarified that “genocide” is not a synonym for “mass murder” because the latter “does not convey the specific losses to civilization in the form of cultural contributions.”

But even with kicking out “cultural genocide” from the declaration the U.S. was not satisfied enough to vote for the document. Perhaps the declaration of independence, that calls the entire indigenous people ‘savages,’ is truly so deemed in our collective conscience that we Americans are blind toward the oppression of the true owners of this land.

And what made me sick today in George W. Bush’s speech on Iraq was the use of the term “civilized nation.” Although I am sure he didn’t mean to do that, but pronouncing that phrase on the same day of voting against the Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples was quite sinister.

p.s. although Armenia as a nation-state is not traditionally considered “indigenous,” I see the declaration as an indirect victory for Armenia as well given its aboriginal place in history and geography

According to a Turkish appeals court if you say there are Kurds in Turkey:

1. You are stupid because everyone knows there are millions of Kurds in Turkey
2. You are affirming a fact and must be applauded
3. You are a human rights defender and deserve a Nobel Prize for a statement that no one else dares to make
4. You are suggesting Kurds should be killed and are, therefore, inciting genocide
5. You are praciticing your freedom of speech and are free to make any unfounded claims you want, including the myth that there are Kurds in Turkey or that the Armenian Genocide happened
5. You are committing a crime by inciting racial hatred against Turks because there is no other ethnicity but a Turk in Turkey

And the answer is, of course, number 5.

Agence France Press reports, “A Turkish appeals court yesterday overturned the acquittal of two academics who put out a government-sponsored report urging greater rights for minority groups such as Kurds, opening the way for their possible re-trial for sedition.

The court ruled against the acquittal, saying the October 2004 report by professors Baskin Oran and Ibrahim Kaboglu constituted a threat to the state.”

The glorious Turkish court reasoned that “Creation and recognition of a new minority… would endanger the unitary state and the nation’s indivisibility.”

(http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Gulf%2C+Middle+East+%26+Africa&month=September2007&file=World_News200709143930.xml)

I guess when racist idiots like historian-in-chief Halacoglu (Turks were considering to name a street after him) are heroes in Turkey then human rights defenders like Baskin Orans must be the racists in that country.

Can’t the nationalist Turks see they are advancing the Kurdish cause more and more by their brutal and quite illogical oppression of the Kurds?

By Ahmet Altan, Gazetem.net July 9, 2007 (translated from Turkish)

I met Taner Akcam at an American university city where the winters are long and harsh.
I had heard of him many times.

He was one of the leaders of an old legendary left wing organization.
And, he did not care about any ‘title, name, or class’ of anyone, including his, as he only defined people by their ‘deeds.’

You were a man as much as your deeds.

He was joyful, humorous, and would not complain even under difficult circumstances.
At the university, he was teaching history, I, literature.

During the long winter nights, we would meet sometimes, and he would tell me about his life experiences with a sense of humour exclusive to him.

He had attempted to “democratize” his illegal leftist organization and as a result he had made himself an enemy of his own organization.

He had criticized the anti-democratic stand of the PKK, had been included in the ‘death list’ of the organization, and in an attack, one of his friends had been mistakenly killed.
He would really be moved by sorrow while talking about that.

He was an exceptionally meticulous man.

When he was telling me how he would regularly load up his luggage with detergent bottles before travelling illegally to the Bekaa Valley camp, he would foreground not the difficulties he endured, but the “entertaining contradictions of life.”

He was a leader who carried detergent cleaners, not weapons.

He was researching the deportations of the Armenians executed by the Committee of Union and Progress at that time and he was emphasizing that this amounted to ‘genocide’.

What he claimed so openly and clearly was a difficult thing to do for a Turk at that time.
But he believed in what he spoke, and he spoke what he believed.

Of course he knew that what he was talking about would get him into trouble and he lwas not ooking for trouble, but it was not in his nature to keep quiet in order to avoid trouble, it was not in his nature to shut up about things that he believed.

He would list the actions of the Ittihadists one by one.

He was earning respect with his courage and honesty.

Then I returned home.

He went to another university in the United States.

He wrote new books, he made new enemies.

I received an e-mail from Taner recently.
One line specifically was frightening:
‘First it was Hrant, and I think they put me second in line.’

I remembered Hrant’s last editorial before he died, where he wrote ‘they will kill me’.
We had learned about a murder plot –known almost by the entire state apparatus, documented in intelligence reports numerous times– only after the murder.

No one could help Hrant.

No one had the opportunity or the time to cry that ‘the murder is coming’.

And our ‘lack of awareness’ had cost Hrant his life.

Now Taner was saying, ‘they put me next in line, I guess’.

Hrant’s murder showed us that the State would condone even new murders in order to cover up the sins of the Ittihadists.

That is why alarm bells rang inside me in a more scary fashion when I read Taner’s mail.
It is obvious that ‘that voice, the instict’ which warned Hrant before his murder is now warning Taner.

And he senses the gun being aimed at him.

Are they going to kill Taner for saying ‘Armenians were subjected to genocide’?

Don’t people of our society have the right to say what they believe about our own history?

Does everybody have the obligation to speak in the same way as the state?
Is death the price to pay for not sharing the state views and theses on our history?
Which discussion on history can be punished by death?

Are you going to kill every single person who says ‘Armenians were subjected to genocide’?

If you commit this murder, will the bloodshed prove that ‘there was no genocide’?

It is the very spirit of Ittihadists that is going arounf in this country, they go on killing the Armenian, the Sunni, the Protestant, the Kurd, indiscriminately.

How much longer will this go on?
How much longer will people be killed?

This state and this society could not protect Hrant.
Let us at least protect Taner.
He is a brave and an honest man.
He uttered what was most difficult in this country. He spoke because he believed.
I believe any man who speaks his mind knowing that will put him in trouble deserves respect, regardless of what he believes in.

Death is lingering around his door now.

There are so many newspapers, so many journalists, so many intellectuals in this country; will no one speak up to protect Taner?

Never forget.

Our silence will kill Taner.

If anything happens tomorrow, we will be all complicit.

Protect a person.

Do this so that you can say ‘I am too a human being’.
If you don’t…then you carry your silence like death all your life.