Istanbul-based young American photographer Kathryn Cook’s “Memory Denied: Turkey and the Armenian Genocide” project has been granted $25,000 as the winner of the 2008 Aftermath Project, reports PDNonline:

The Aftermath Project has announced a $25,000 grant for photographer Kathryn Cook to support her project “Memory Denied: Turkey and the Armenian Genocide.”

A one-time special award of $2,500 will go to Natela Grigalashvili of Tbilisi, Georgia, for her project “Refugees of Georgian Villages.”

Finalists for the 2008 Aftermath grants were Pep Bonet of Mallorca, Spain; Tinka Dietz of Hamburg, Germany; and Christine Fenzl of Berlin, Germany.

The Aftermath Project, which is supported largely by the Open Society Institute, sponsors projects that show the effects of war and conflict.

Judges for this year’s grants were photographer Jeff Jacobson, Fortune deputy picture editor Scott Thode and photographer and Aftermath Project founder Sara Terry.

Cook is an American photographer based in Istanbul who is represented by Agence Vu and Prospekt. Her project on Turkey examines the impact of the Armenian massacres of the early 20th century and the scars it left on the country’s national identity. Turkey still refuses to officially label it “genocide,” a word Cook uses in the title of the project. The Aftermath Project says her work “explores the many ways that the greater implications of memory and history continue to resonate at home and abroad.”

Cook has worked as an Associated Press photographer in Panama, freelanced for a variety of publications including Time and The New York Times, and was featured in PDN’s 30 this year.

Georgian photographer Grigalashvili was awarded a grant for a project on refugees who have fled conflicts in the Caucasus region and have settled in villages in the mountains of Georgia.

All five photographers recognized this year will have their work included in “War Is Only Half the Story, Volume 2,” to be published in Spring 2009 by Aperture, Mets and Schilt, and The Aftermath Project.

“The Executive Board of the International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists, has named Hrant Dink, former editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, as one of its World Press Freedom Heroes,” reads the Dec 10, 2007, IPI press release.

IPI, that has also produced the shortest film (25-seconds long) honoring Hrant Dink, states:

[…]
“Hrant Dink’s nomination as our 52nd World Press Freedom Hero is a tribute to his bravery, but also an acknowledgement of his significant contribution to freedom of expression and press freedom in Turkey,” IPI Director Johann P. Fritz said.

Dink, a well-known Turkish-Armenian editor and columnist, was murdered in Istanbul on 19 January 2007. He had received numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists who viewed his journalism as treacherous.

Dink was shot twice in the head and once in the neck by a Turkish nationalist outside the offices of the newspaper he founded in 1996. He had faced legal problems for denigrating “Turkishness” under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code in his articles about the massacre of Armenians during the First World War. In July 2006, he lost an appeal over a suspended six-month prison sentence handed down for violating Article 301. His prosecution stemmed from an article in 2004 about the 1915-17 massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire. Aside from this criminal case, Dink was also facing prosecution for a second article condemning his conviction.

Born on 15 September 1954, Dink was best-known for reporting on human and minority rights in Turkey and for advocating Turkish-Armenian reconciliation. In a February 2006 interview, he said he hoped his reporting would pave the way for peace between the two peoples. “I want to write and ask how we can change this historical conflict into peace,” he said.

At his funeral on 23 January, 100,000 people marched in protest at his assassination, chanting, “We are all Armenians” and “We are all Hrant Dink.” Since his death, calls for the repeal of Article 301 have become increasingly vocal.

The Dink murder trial opened in Istanbul on 2 July. 18 people were charged in connection with his assassination.

The IPI award was formally handed over to his widow, Rakel Dink, on 10 December in Vienna. “The murder of Hrant Dink deprived Turkey of one of its most courageous and independent voices and it was a terrible event for Turkish press freedom in general,” Fritz said. “Hrant Dink is one of at least 91 journalists murdered so far in 2007. In most cases, these murders occurred with impunity. We call on governments around the world to ensure that those responsible for these heinous crimes are brought to justice.”

FYI UPDATE: Just noticed that ArmeniaLiberty.org has also posted an article on the same topic. I wanted to make sure to give them a credit, although my source wasn’t ArmeniaLiberty.org and their post appeared in Google News after I published this entry.

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.

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.)

The story of Turkey’s hidden Armenians is not so hidden any longer as a groundbreaking book by a famed Turkish human-rights lawyer breaks the silence of her suppressed Armenian roots that she learned about at an adult age.

Amazon announces the date of the release of the English translation of “My Grandmother: A Memoir” – March 1, 2008:

When Fethiye Çetin was growing up in the small Turkish town of Maden, she knew her grandmother as a happy and universally respected Muslim housewife.

It would be decades before her grandmother told her the truth: that she was by birth a Christian and an Armenian, that her name was not Seher but Heranush, that most of the men in her village had been slaughtered in 1915, that she, along with most of the women and children, had been sent on a death march.

She had been saved (and torn from her mother’s arms) by the Turkish gendarme captain who went on to adopt her. But she knew she still had family in America. Could Fethiye help her find her lost relations before she died?

There are an estimated two million Turks whose grandparents could tell them similar stories. But in a country that maintains the Armenian genocide never happened, such talk can be dangerous. In her heartwrenching memoir, Fethiye Çetin breaks the silence.

After I shared the news of a famous Armenian church being restored in Turkey to be converted to a museum with an online group of Armenian-Turkish scholars and students, I received some upsetting account by a Turkish member of the listserv who was in Kars last week and is unhappy with the restoration work. Below is the entire e-mail:

Image: St. Apostles of Kars as seen in August of 2007 by a group of www.Hayastan.com members; for more photos click here

Dear all,

I was in kars last week and I had the chance to see the restoration works. Unfortunately, as the church is being used as a mosque since 80’s, now the restoration work which is leading by general directory of vaqf (foundation) is going through a restoration of a mosque more than a church.

The municipality is not totally involved in to the restoration.

I m not an art historian, but the picture that I saw last week was terrible. Some of you may know that there were still some frescoes on the dome, but now unfortunately there are some Islamic paintings or figures instead of the frescoes.

I just wanted to inform you about the situation.
Bests

—
CIGDEM MATER UTKU
ANADOLU KULTUR
PROGRAM KOORDINATORU

Another ancient Armenian church is being restored in Turkey, to be converted to a museum, as the Turkish Mayor of of Kars – a historic Armenian city – says he wish he could do more.

Image: Relief carvings from the Kars Church via VirtualAni

The front page article of Azg Daily‘s November 21, 2007 issue (in Armenian) is an interview with Kars Mayor Naif Alibeyoglu who reveals that the ongoing restoration of Surp Arakelots (St. Apostles) Armenian church, the building will be converted to a museum and not to a mosque.  This comes as a surprise because “[i]n 1999 work began to convert [the church] into a mosque.”

Image: The cathedral in Kars at the end of the 19th century with the destroyed belltower via VirtualAni

The mayor says that his attempts to build a monument to Armenian-Turkish friendship in Kars have failed and that there are no Armenians participating in the
restoration of the Kars Church.

Image: The Mayor of Kars via ExtraHaber.com

After the reporter asked the mayor whether he was aware that the house of famous poet Yeghishe Charentsin his native Kars is almost in ruins and a sign says it is for sale, the mayor replied that he didn’t know that Kars had a famous Armenian poet and would now try to find out more about it.

Although Mayor Alibeyoglu may have a true commitment to restoring peace between Armenia and Turkey, he certainly doesn’t represent the views of everyone who live in his city.  As we revealed in April of 2007, a member of Azerbaijan’s “Sicilian mafia” (the Azeri journalist who gave this name was killed in 2005) is in Kars working hard to keep the Turkish-Armenian border closed. The Economist did similar reporting a month later confirming that “Hasan Sultanoglu Zeynalov, Azerbaijan’s consul-general in Kars, eastern Turkey… openly complains about Naif Alibeyoglu, the mayor, who is promoting dialogue between Turkey, Azerbaijan and their common enemy, Armenia, just over the border.”

MSNBC has gathered together a variety of political cartoons dealing with the Republic of Turkey. Thanks to Lucine Kasbarian for sharing the link.

Here are a few.

Via Groong, The Noyan Tapan News Agency informs that a theatre play denying the Armenian Genocide has been organized for Turkish prisoners.

ADANA, NOVEMBER 16, NOYAN TAPAN. In one of the prisons of Adana the
actors of the Chukurova’s Center of Culture and Art have staged the
“Yell: the tale of the so-called Armenian Genocide” performance.

As the Turkish press reports, the performance has been staged within
the frameworks of the cultural events organized by the management of
the prison for the prisoners.

Idris Shahin, the Head of the Chukurova’s Center of Culture and Art,
declared that the above-mentioned performance “telling about the
tale of the Armenian Genocide” will also be performed in a number of
villages of Turkey.

Are the Turkish officials going to release again their prisoners to “relocate” Armenians to Moon as was done in 1915? What’s the point in making prisoners to hate Armenians even more?

An Armenian village on the Turkish border, writes a Hetq article, is surrounded with a hill on the Turkish territory reading ‘Happy is he who is born a Turk.’ 

A vandalism, perhaps, in the eyes of environmentalists, blasphemy in the eyes of earth worshipers and irony in the eyes of history, the writing in Turkish doesn’t bother the villagers of the remote Armenian village. 

The residents of the Shirak village of Jrapi wake up every morning and look at the hills before them, where there are unintelligible words written in a foreign language.  Jrapi is a border village and the hills are located beyond the border, in Turkey. “What is written on that hill?” I asked deputy village head Pargev Balasanyan.

“It says, ‘Happy is he who is born a Turk,'” he said.

“Isn’t it difficult psychologically to see that writing every day?”

“What’s difficult is living here, what do we care about that writing?”

[…]

Read more at http://hetq.am/eng/society/7249/