Reform History Research Center and Ataturk Principles, based at Turkey’s Gazi University, have awarded several Turkish students for participating in a contest denying the Armenian Genocide, writes the Turkish Daily News.

Armenian issue discussed in students’ research papers

Thursday, November 1, 2007

ANKARA – Turkish Daily News

  The research paper of a university student who rejects the claims that the 1915-1917 killings of Armenians by the Ottomans are ”genocide” won an essay competition titled “Psychology, Sociology and the legal aspects of the Armenian issue: Reflections on societies and the measures to be taken,” organized by Gazi University.

   The award ceremony took place yesterday at Gazi University and the students of the winning essays were presented with their awards. The ceremony was organized by Gazi University’s Atatürk Principles and Reform History Research Center. Present at the ceremony were Meral Akşener, deputy speaker of Parliament, Onur Öymen the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) deputy, Gazi University rector, Professor Kadri Yamaç and Professor Hale Şıvgın from the center. 

  The jury consisting of eight academics selected Mustafa Arıkan’s paper as the winning one. Arıkan is a history graduate student and in his article is titled “A Small Side Note to the Armenian Issue.” In it he says that the forced resettlement of the Armenians in 1915 was a necessity for the Ottoman Empire, setting his in-depth archival work as basis for his paper.

  “Because, in cooperation with the enemy, Armenians were killing the Muslims behind the scene. Forced resettlement, in this sense, was a kind of ‘self-defense’,” he said. “The amount Armenians who were subject to resettlement or the issue of how many died aren’t a matter of question. Because, the governors of the period were judged in Malta just after the World War I for the issue on forced resettlement of the Armenians but they were acquitted.”

  Arıkan also drew attention to the fact that archives indicated no evidence marking the Armenian genocide. “The mass graves which are expected to be found because of the supposed genocide haven’t been found despite all the intensive work. Hence, there is no ‘real’ evidence which supports the Armenian allegations except for the books published for publicity purposes during the war,” he said in his paper.

  Arıkan added that history exists in order to provide information and offer experience for humanity but it is used as an ideological apparatus today. “The Armenian issue, which came on the agenda for the political weakness of Turks, could solely be solved by being powerful in the political and (of course economical and military) sense,” he concluded.

[…]

Another journalist is facing charges of “insulting Turkishness” in Turkey for an article titled “Turkey Has Made Mistakes.”

“The state made mistakes. When and where? Yesterday, in the East and South-East. then in Istanbul. In Maras and Sivas. Today in Trabzon, Istanbul, Mersin and in the South-East.”

These words have taken journalist Haci Bogatekin to court.

Bogatekin owns the local Gerger Firat newspaper in Adiyaman, south-eastern Turkey. Because he criticised state policies in an article entitled “Turkey Has Made Mistakes”, published in his newspaper on 10 March 2007, he is on trial for “degrading Turkishness, the Republic, state institutions or its organs” – Article 301 once again.

Today (26 September), the Gerger penal court decided to have the next hearing on 6 November, in order to allow the journalist time to present evidence and prepare his defense.

Requested legal support 

Bogatekin has requested legal support from the Press Council and has said that he will ask the Adiyaman Bar Association for help.

At the court hearing today, Bogatekin’s complaint that the indictment had been prepared “without doing any research” was rejected by the court.

Call to “keep the country clean” 

In his article, Bogatekin holds the state responsible for “the deaths of millions of Armenians and Syriac Christians in the East and South-East, after that the deaths of the Alevi in Dersim, then the Greek Orthodox in Istanbul with the September movement, and more recently the deaths of hundreds of people in Maras, Malatya, Corum and Sivas”.

He also criticised the employment policies of the state, saying “Do those who murder in the name of the state, who siphon the money out of the banks make contacts with MIT [the Turkish secret service]?

Those exacting money have become like an army which dares to direct the state. In the East, they have begun to decide on the politics. Commanding themselves, they have started to do any job that is dirty and ominous, to exploit the people…”

He ends the article by saying, “Keeping this country clean is the duty of us all. If we do not accept this duty, the consequences will be dreadful. We will not have a future.” LINK 

At least one person I know of says they are having trouble accessing the website of the Armenian National Committee of America – www.anca.org – from the republic of Turkey. Has it been blocked?

With over 42,397 views in just a day after being posted online, a YouTube video   based on a new Turkish song is praising the killing of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink.

“Even child pornography is innocent compared to this,” Gökhan Özgün, a columnist for the Turkish Radikal daily, is quoted as saying.

Today’s Zaman, a newspaper from Turkey, reports

A new song by folksinger İsmail Türüt, which covertly praises the men involved in the assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, has caused anger, resentment and grief throughout much of Turkish society.

Three ministries have also taken action following news stories on the ultra-nationalist song that an anonymous fan used to make a video showing Hrant Dink and Father Andrea Santoro, an Italian priest who was killed in the Black Sea region. The Justice Ministry and the Interior Ministry have started an investigation; meanwhile Minister of Culture and Tourism Ertuğrul Günay issued a stern statement, saying he had read the news reports “in horror.” Günay said the government would do everything within its power to make access to the online video clip impossible.

“The song includes intentional cues to fan feelings of hatred and enmity within society,” Günay observed. The Human Rights Association (İHD) called for a boycott of Türüt and announced that it would be filing a criminal complaint against the singer.

“Is it possible for society to function well as long as people who are bold about praising a cowardly and abject murder are respected in various sections of society and have their own television shows?” questioned journalist Ergun Babahan.

[…]

Although the video was produced by a fan, the lyrics of Türüt’s song, written by Ozan Arif, a much-loved poet of the ultra-nationalists, are clearly praising the teenager who shot Hrant Dink on Jan. 17. Türüt denies his song has any racist implications, but references to the names of the teenager and Yasin Hayal, accused of soliciting the hit man, are present in the song — concealed in rather basic wordplay.

The song also makes a clear reference to the Santoro murder. “Stop ringing bells/stop being pro-Armenian/the people won’t swallow that/not in the Black Sea region.” A picture of Father Santoro is shown in the video when Türüt sings the line “Stop ringing bells,” and footage from Dink’s funeral is displayed, in which hundreds of thousands of mourners holding banners reading “We are all Armenian” formed a long procession on the streets of İstanbul. A photo of Dink’s dead body in front of his newspaper Agos is shown as the words of the song “If somebody sells out the motherland/they will immediately die” are being sung.

Meanwhile, Star daily reported that the fan who made the video clip to the song was a Turkish worker living in Vienna.[…]

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?

Yevrobatsi (http://www.yevrobatsi.org/st/item.php?r=0&id=3330) informs in French that a Support Committee for Taner Akçam (Comité de soutien à Taner Akçam) has been set up in Europe.

Just noticed through blogs.google.com that a new blog, Akcam.info, has been set up to support Turkish historian Taner Akcam who is being targeted by ultranationalists of his kin for his scholarship on the Armenian Genocide – a holocaust that official Turkey says never happened.

The purpose of this website is to inform the public and the U.S. authorities of the dangers to Pr. Akcam’s life. Pr. Akcam is one of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge and discuss openly the genocide of the Armenians by the Turkish government in 1915. He is one of a growing number of Turkish scholars and intellectuals who are challenging Turkey’s insistent declarations that the organized slaughter of Armenians did not occur. Pr. Akcam is the victim of a lynching campaign that has an uncanny resemblance to the campaign against Hrant Dink immediately prior to his assassination on January 19, 2007. Act now before it is too late.

By Fatma Gocek, University of Michigan professor 

“Hrant Dink was a man of vision who pointed toward a better world, but, as with the prophets of old, was fated not to enter it.” Roger Smith The sentence above in Roger Smith’s essay for the “Institute for the Study of Genocide” which I quote captured extremely well what had made Hrant Dink’s assassination so tragic for me. Within that group of ours of which Hrant was such an integral part that tried and still try so hard to bring democracy to Turkey, I sincerely believe that it would have felt and meant much more to Hrant than all of us in the group to have seen that vision come true. For I think he among us all had already suffered and paid a much higher price for the lack of it than all of us put together. And we, at least I, knew that. I think it is that knowledge combined with the reality that he among us is the one who will never get to see that vision actualized makes his death so unbearable to us all.

In that group, we the ‘Turks’ (and we were and are almost all Turks, urban mostly middle and some upper class ‘white’ Turks even, as we should have been and are, since we were and are structurally a part of the majority, the power structure and therefore more capable of standing up to and taking on the blows of the ‘other’ powerful establishment Turks) had to fight this fight, but we did not and should not have expected any of the minorities of Turkey to join us, to put them in the front lines given how much they had already suffered, were suffering, had been and still were disadvantaged by the existing structure who did not and still do not give them the chances we inherently all had and still have because of who we were and are rather than what we believed and still believe in. It would not have been fair to expect that of them: that was at least what I knew to be the case sociologically from my own academic work. I personally thought what united us as a group was our vision, a vision where the playing field in our country would be made equal for everyone, where no one would receive blows from the system, especially not the minorities who at present had to receive them, unlike most of us in the group, with their hands tied behind their back. Then, there emerged Hrant from among the minorities who had the strength, the heart and the courage not only to join us, but he did so like a member of our group, as if we had already accomplished that future vision of ours and there he was to show how it was to actually start living it within our group. We/I so appreciated and cherished that.

And I think that is why we all were so devastated when he was murdered: we as a group had failed to protect him. We had all thought we could and would succeed as a group in accomplishing our vision to bring democracy to our society, to guarantee that rights applied to all citizens equally. We also assumed that in that struggle, we would be safe together as a group. I am afraid that we somehow convinced Hrant that he too was safe with us. After all, given what he and his community had already been and was going through, it was only natural that he among us would the one who needed the least amount of convincing… Yet then, he also turned out to be the only one in our group who got murdered. The rest of us were not. We all survived and had to account for his death and our survival; we also had to reconcile with the fact that he was the only one among us who was specifically chosen to be killed: there lied the immensity of the cruelty and evil that went back from the gun held by his assassin back to diffuse into Turkish society and the state.

I will always remember that shock and shame I felt when I received the news of Hrant’s murder from Turkey, when I realized, for the first time in my life, what it means to have something — probably my innocence, naivete, optimism, belief in the inherent goodness of all humans, and faith in my country — get ripped within, with the impact of the shame that I too had thought we as a group could somehow accomplish our vision, that I too had gotten caught up with all the positive changes I had observed around me and had perhaps become too impervious to the degree cruelty within the society, state and the country at large and had therefore underestimated it, and, in so doing, that I too had somehow contributed and encouraged Hrant to feel and become impervious as well, which might have in turn somehow facilitated the road leading to his murder. I think this is the doubt that lies at the root of my shame. Granted, I did talk to him on different occasions at various stages of his unfortunate illegal trial to convince him and/or his family to come to the United States, but ultimately, I think, I failed him as a friend and certainly as a scholar. I think that I, as a sociologist, should have been much more aware of the precariousness of both our and especially his situation in Turkey and should have alerted him much more to the danger surrounding him, for I should have been able to observe much bettr the danger signs in the society, state and country at large as I had been trained to do. I could not.

I think that if Hrant had had the chance to read what I have written above, he would have first addressed and demonstrated his appreciation of both my thoughts and sentiments in that unique way of his which gave direct voice to his heart, thay way which none of us will ever be able to reproduce — and that is exactly what makes him so special and why his loss leaves me so heartbroken — and he would have then made a joke to get me to move on to safer, less dangerous, more practical grounds — as he often did whenever I brought up topics of gloom and doom — and he would have asked me what I was working on, how we scholars were crucial in this process, etcetera etcetera…

Ever since January 2007 when Hrant was murdered, I have been trying to reconcile myself to the reality of Hrant’s assassination. The only way I can reconcile it all at the moment is by by my decision to continue to address, not only now but also in my future activities and academic work, the question of democracy in Turkey and especially the significance of the location of minorities in relation to it. Doing so would enable me to help actualize the vision that has now also become Hrant Dink’s legacy to us as a group, that group which survived his death and now has to forever live, keep living and reconcile, keep reconciling with that tragic reality. I think the decision I have reached is the only way I personally can at this time make my peace not only with Hrant Dink’s murder, but also with the country that so violently murdered him .

A Statement by Taner Akçam

July 16, 2007

In May 2007, I revealed the identity of Murad “Holdwater” Gümen, the secretive Webmaster of Tall Armenian Tale, an extensive and influential site devoted to “the other side of the falsified Genocide” and the defamation of genocide scholars, myself included. Mr. Gümen has been a leading voice in an ongoing campaign to denounce me as a traitor to Turkey and as a terrorist who ought to be of interest to American authorities.

For the last three years, disinformation about me from Tall Armenian Tale has been disseminated all over the Internet, eventually reaching the open-source encyclopedia, Wikipedia. This campaign, which intensified after the November 2006 publication of my book, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, culminated in my detention by Canadian and American border authorities last February, on suspicion of terrorism. As evidence, they showed me my vandalized Wikipedia biography.

Just one month before this incident, the assassination of Istanbul-based journalist Hrant Dink by an ultranationalist gunman had put Turkey’s intellectuals on high alert. We knew that in the months before his death, Mr. Dink had been targeted by an increasingly vicious media campaign intent on portraying him as a traitor. Among other things, Dink was pilloried for revealing the Armenian identity of Sabiha Gökçen, the adopted daughter of Turkey’s founding father, Kemal Ataturk. Leading the pack against Dink was Hürriyet newspaper, one of the most influential publications in Turkey.

In the campaign against me, disinformation from Tall Armenian Tale was copied to YouTube videos describing my “terrorist” activities. I received death threats by email. My lectures and book tour were disrupted, and poison-pen letters were sent to the hosting universities. Following my lecture on November 1, 2006, at City University of New York, I was physically assaulted.

My detention was the last straw. I challenged Mr. Gümen to stand up in public.

The unmasking of an individual who had been running a campaign of slander against me was presented to readers of Hürriyet as a criminal or unethical act. I was said to have endangered Mr. Gümen’s life.

“Murad Gümen, who has been defending Turkey for over 30 years under the assumed name ‘Holdwater,’ had his identity unmasked by Taner Akçam, supporter of the claim of a so-called genocide….Upon publication of his identity, Gümen became a target and has been the subject of a hate campaign.”—“Secret Lobbyist Deciphered,” Hürriyet, June 21, 2007

“Murad Gümen, whose identity was unmasked by Taner Akçam, has been the target of a flood of insults sent by Armenians via the Internet. Gümen, who’s been accused of racism, has had his photograph published on the Web….[Taner Akçam]’s disappeared. It has not been possible to reach Taner Akçam….Murad Gümen is a successful illustrator and film producer who lives in America.”—“Immediate Target,” Hürriyet, June 22, 2007

“Taner Akçam fled Turkey years ago. He lives overseas, in the United States at this point, and gets fed by the Armenian lobby. He vomits hate towards our country in all of his books and his speeches. Recently he unmasked the Web site that was maintained by Murad Gümen, who has been defending the Turkish position on Armenian issues in the United States, and he revealed the latter’s identity which had been kept secret until now. This individual named Taner Akçam who has spent his life living outside of the country, writing articles and giving speeches against Turkey…[T]his individual…escaped overseas, works in opposition to Turkey, betrayed his country, and serves the Armenian lobby by promoting the position that ‘there was an Armenian genocide’ all over the world!”—Emin Çolasan, “Bravo Atilla Koç! This is How You Introduce Turkey!”, Hürriyet, June 23, 2007

Hürriyet’s reportage concerns me deeply, for three reasons.

First, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the lynching mentality that was created against Dink. Having revealed the identity of a secret slanderer, I am now being denounced as a traitor who “vomits hate towards our country.”

My second cause for concern has to do with an anonymous email that I received on June 11, 2007: “Today we have started fighting you and those creatures you call your friends, within the boundaries of the law. But if we don’t get the result we’re looking for, we’ll start trying other alternative ways. It would be better for world peace and truth if sewer germs like you were taken off the planet…tomorrow is going to be much more difficult for you. Pray that the devil takes you away soon because otherwise you’ll be living a hell on earth… you think you’ve discovered who “Holdwater” is …you have gotten it all wrong. Right now the world is full of millions of Holdwaters…One day you and your wild Armenian blood brothers will drown in this sea of Holdwaters…The truth hurts…it really does. One day you are going to feel the pain so badly that when you read these lines, you’ll remember how you were.” The similarity in character between the campaign against me by Hürriyet and the language used in this threatening email is frightening.

The writer of that letter concludes, “Who am I? You’re going to find out, Taner, you’re going to find out.” Was it a coincidence that the Hürriyet campaign began just 10 days later?

Third, Hürriyet cold-bloodedly disregarded the most basic principles of journalism. Their headline on the second day of coverage proclaimed that I had “disappeared.” Readers were given the impression that I had gone into hiding the day after Hürriyet reported my unmasking of Murad “Holdwater” Gümen.

The fact is that my office address, telephone numbers, and email address are all available online. The University of Minnesota, College of Liberal Arts, the Department of History, and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies have full-time staff. There is no record of a call, not one single email, from Hürriyet. They never bothered to contact me. They didn’t check their facts or attempt to interview me. And when I demanded a correction, the editor-in-chief ignored my letter.

Thus, in Dink’s case and also in mine, one of the most influential and widely circulated national newspapers does not hesitate to transform itself into a weapon. Once again, intellectuals and activists who dare to question the government’s “official history” are being put on notice. This shameful campaign not only endangers my life and the lives of my colleagues, my family and friends; ironically enough, the very notion of free expression is being undermined by the very institution that depends on it most: the public press.

And what is the point, after all? I published a scholarly study that deviated from the official position of the Turkish State. One should ask the Turkish authorities whether they truly believe that shooting the messenger will prove that their position on 1915 is the correct one.

Just noticed that there is a new petition online targeting Turkey’s Article 301.  Below is the text: Arat Dink, Serkis Seropyan, Karin Karakashli, Aydin Engin, all members of the staff of “Agos” weekly in Istanbul, and Erdal Dogal, the Dink family lawyer, are charged with “denigrating Turkishness” under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. Some of them may face three years of incarceration if convicted. The pretext is the publication of an old interview with the Reuters News Agency in which the late assassinated Hrant Dink made reference to the Genocide of the Armenians.Renowned writers, scholars and journalists such as Orhan Pamuk, Elif Shafak, Taner Akçam, Ragip Zarakolu and others were charged with similar criminal offences over the last while. Some of them have chosen self-exile and are now living in Europe, the United States and elsewhere for fear of their own lives and avoiding the destiny that the late Hrant Dink faced.We, the undersigned, strongly protest against the disdainful use of article 301 of the Penal Code. Its application has proven to be an abhorrent violation of the exercise of freedom of expression and thought. Internationally it has brought nothing but scorn, and locally it has fomented an atmosphere of hatred and xenophobia. It is a painful reminder of the disingenuous call of the Turkish authorities to have a mixed commission of historians to study the past.In solidarity with scholars, artists, journalists, human rights activists who seek freedom of expression and thought, we call upon the Turkish authorities to scrap the Draconian article once and for all.