Editorial note: The entry below is an original article written by a Blogian reader who would like to remain ananymous. Readers can submit their original (unpublished in other places) work to [email protected] for consideration.
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Both sides of the story

Complaining about international film depictions of the Armenian Genocide, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s foreign policy advisor supports a new international film about Turkish benevolence towards Jews during the Nazi era. Oddly enough, the Turkish-American production company is best known for a 2006 domestic hit film which was widely criticized as anti-Semitic.

The Turkish Daily News reports that BMH Worldwide Entertainment is filming The Ambassador, about a Turkish diplomat who saved Jewish lives during World War II.

BMH’s 2006 film, The Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, wildly successful in Turkey, was heavily criticized in Turkey, Germany, and Israel as racist and anti-Semitic. Gary Busey co-stars as a Jewish U.S. military doctor who cuts out the organs of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and sells them to wealthy clients in New York, London, and Tel Aviv. There is no sympathetic Jewish character to balance out this portrayal, reports the Jerusalem Post.

The initials BMH stand for the company’s co-founders: Los Angeles sports promoter Bjorn Rebney; Chicago financier, Assembly of Turkish American Associations former Midwest VP and past president of the Turkish American Cultural Alliance Mehmet Çelebi; and Chicago PR/marketing executive Hüma Alpaytaç Gruaz, who is reportedly married to Rebney.

Based in Los Angeles and Chicago, BMH shares a fax number with the Alpaytac PR/marketing firm, which promotes the Chicago Turkish Festival. Alpaytac’s clients include the Turkish American Cultural Alliance and the Turkish Consulate.

Confirming official Turkish support for The Ambassador, Çelebi told TDN:

BMH Worldwide Entertainment has been working with Member of Turkish Parliament and previous President of the Federation of Turkish-American Associations Egemen Bagis, who has spent many years in the United States and is very aware of and concerned about Turkey’s image around the world. He has been a great supporter of this and other projects that will enhance Turkey’s image across the globe.

Bagis, the president of the U.S. Caucus in Turkish Parliament, had given the first clue about the project last week in Parliament. Bagis, also a member of advisory council of the Turkish Film Council in the United States, suggested,

Prominent figures of the diaspora pay Hollywood to make genocide movies. We too have wealthy people; however, we don’t have a culture of investing in Hollywood. We should also be relying on such methods and commission movies explaining Turkey’s side of the story.

Two sides to the story? Sure. Racism and anti-Semitism for domestic consumption, tolerance and harmony abroad.

Taner Akcam’s latest essay has been translated from Turkish and published by the Armenian Reporter. The online version omits the paragraphing and the Turkish accent marks, which makes it difficult to read as it should be read. Below is the corrected version:

Armenian Reporter, Feb. 10, 2006

© 2006 Armenian Reporter

“My Turkishness in Revolt”

By Taner Akçam

EDITOR’S NOTE: Taner Akçam – Turkish intellectual, professor at the University of Minnesota, and the author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility – recently became the subject of a formal complaint under Turkey’s Penal Code Article 301: the same “crime” of “insulting Turkishness” for which Hrant Dink was tried and found guilty by the Turkish judiciary. The essay below – originally published as Türklüğümün İsyanı (“The Revolt of My Turkishness”) in the January 24, 2007 edition of the Turkish newspaper, Radikal – is Mr. Akçam’s approved English translation of his original Turkish-language article. It is being reprinted in the Reporter with the author’s permission.

I am a Turk. Hrant was an Armenian. I write for Agos. He was Agos. Hrant, Agos‘s Turkish writers, and Agos itself risked everything for a cause: to cease the hostility between Turks and Armenians; to bring the resentment and hatred to an end. We wanted each group, each nationality, to live together on the common ground of mutual respect.

Hrant and Agos were a single flower blooming on the barren plains of Turkey. That flower was destroyed, torn from the ground. Everyone says, “The bullet fired at Hrant hit Turkey.” That’s true, but we need to ask ourselves in complete and transparent honesty: Who made the target for that bullet? Who targeted Hrant so the bullet would find its mark? Who held him fast so the shot wasn’t wasted?

Hrant wasn’t killed by a lone 17-year-old. He was murdered by those who made him a target and held him in place.

Nor was he killed by a single bullet. It was the targeting, month by month, that murdered him.

“I’m afraid,” he said on January 5. “I’m very afraid, Taner. The attacks on me and on Agos are very systematic. They called me to the Governor’s office, where they started making threats. They said, ‘We’ll make you pay for everything you’ve been doing.’ All the attacks began after I was threatened.”

“2007 is going to be a bad year, Taner,” he continued. “They’re not going to ease off. We’ve been made into a horrible target. Between the press, the politicians, and the lawyers, they’ve created this atmosphere that’s so poisonous, they’ve made us such an obscenity, that we’ve become sitting ducks.

“They’ve opened up hunting season, Taner, and they’ve got us right where they want us.”

Hrant wasn’t killed by a 17-year-old. He was murdered by those who portrayed him as an enemy of Turkey, every single day in the press, to that 17-year-old. He was murdered by those who dragged him to the doors of the courthouse under Article 301. He was murdered by those who aimed Article 301 during their open season on intellectuals, and by those who didn’t have the courage to change Article 301. Hrant was murdered by those who called him to the Governor’s office and then threatened him instead of protecting him.

There’s no point in shedding crocodile tears. Let us bow our heads and look at our hands. Let us ponder how we will clean off the blood. You organs of the press who have expressed shock over Hrant’s death, go read your back issues, look at what you wrote about Hrant. You will see the murderer there. You who used 301 as a weapon to hunt intellectuals, see what you wrote about 301, look at the court decisions. You will see the murderer there.

Dear government officials, spare us your crocodile tears. Tell us what you plan to do to the Lieutenant Governor who called Hrant into his office and, together with an official from the National Intelligence Bureau, proceeded to threaten him. What do you intend to do to them?

Hrant was portrayed as “the Armenian who insulted Turkishness.” For this he was murdered. He was murdered because he said, “Turkey must confront its history.” The hands that pulled the trigger – or caused it to be pulled – in 2007 are the same hands that shot all the Hrants in 1915, the same hands that left all those Armenians to choke in the desert.

Hrant’s killers are sending us a message. They’re saying “Yes! We were behind 1915 and we’ll do it again in 2007!” Hrant’s murderers believe they killed in the name of Turkishness, just like those who killed all the Hrants in 1915.

For them, Turkishness is about committing murder. It means setting someone up as the enemy and then targeting that person for destruction.

Quite the contrary, the murderers are a black stain upon the brow of Turkishness. It is they who have demeaned Turkish identity.

For this reason, we have stood up and we have decided to take Turkishness out of the assassins’ hands and we have shouted out, “We are all Hrant! We are all Armenian!” We are the resounding cry of Turkishness and Turkey. All of us – Turks, Kurds, Alevites, secularists, and Muslims alike – shout out on behalf of everyone who wants to take Turkishness away from these murderers.

Turkishness is a beautiful thing that should be respected instead of left in the hands of murderers; so is Armenianness.

We can feel proud to be Turkish only if we can acknowledge the murderer for who he is. That is what we are doing today. By declaring, “We are all Armenians,” we know that we honor Turkishness; by identifying the true murderer, we create a Turkishness worth claiming.

Today we declare to the world that murder has nothing to do with Turkishness or Turkey. We are not going to leave Turkishness in the hands of murderers. We will not allow Turkishness to be stained by hate crimes towards Armenians. Either Turkishness belongs to the murderers, or it belongs to us.

Turks cry out that the person who killed Hrant is a murderer. In the wake of his death, Turkishness affirms that we are all Armenians.

This, I say, is what we also need to do for 1915.

If we can affirm that a real Turk is someone who can distance Turkishness from the murder of Hrant Dink, then we ought to be able to do the same thing for the events around 1915. Those who gather in a protective circle around Hrant’s murderer are the same people who protected the murderers of 1915. Those who honored Talaat, Bahaettin Sakir and Dr. Nazim yesterday are doing the same for Hrant’s murderer today.

If we can come out and declare Hrant’s murder a “shameful act,” then we should be able to state the same, as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk did, about the acts that occurred in 1915. Today, hundreds of thousands of us condemn this murder by declaring “We are all Armenian.” In 1915, Turks, Kurds, Moslems and Alevites did the same. We have to choose, not only for today but for yesterday as well.

Whose side are we on? Which “Turkishness” are we defending, the one that defends the murderers or the one that condemns the murderous acts? Do we stand with Kemal, the Mayor of Boğazlıyan, who annihilated Armenians in 1915, or with Abdullahzade Mehmet Efendi, the Mufti of Boğazlıyan, who bore witness against that mayor at the trial that lead to his execution, stating, “I fear the wrath of God”?

Are we going to represent the “Turkishness” that defended the crimes of Talat, Enver, Bahaettin Şakir, Doctor Nâzım, and Governor Resit of Diyarbakır? Or will we oppose them in the name of a Turkishness that condemns such horror?

We need to know that in 1915 we had Mazhar, the governor of Ankara; Celal, the governor of Aleppo; Reşit, the governor of Kastamonu; Cemal, the lieutenant governor of Yozgat; Ali Faik, the mayor of Kütahya; and Ali Fuat, the mayor of Der-Zor. And we had soldiers and army commanders in 1915, men we can embrace with respect, for opposing what happened: Vehip Pasha, Commander of the Third Army; Avni Pasha, Commander of the Trabzon garrison; Colonel Vasfi; and Salim, Major Commandant of the Yozgat post.

Trabzon has its share of murderers like Ogün Samast in 2007 and Governor Cemal Azmi and Unionist “Yenibahçeli” Nail in 1915. But those who opposed the crimes of 1915 and didn’t hesitate to identify the murderers in court included many citizens of Trabzon: Nuri, Chief of Police; businessman, Ahmet Ali Bey; Customs Inspector Nesim Bey, and parliamentarian Hafiz Mehmet Emin Bey, who testified, “I saw with my own eyes that the Armenians were loaded onto boats and taken out and drowned, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

These are just a few of the dozens, hundreds, even thousands of people who opposed the horrible acts committed.

We, Turks and Turkey, have a choice to make. We will affirm either the Turkishness of murderers past and present, or the Turkishness of those who cry out today, “We are all Armenian!” and who yesterday declared, “We will not let our hands be stained with blood.”

The whole world looks upon us with respect because they see us draw a line between Turkishness and barbarism. Today we are building a wall between murderers and Turkishness; we are Turks who know how to point the finger at a murderer.

We must show the same courage in regard to the events of 1915. Hrant wanted us to. When he said, “I love Turks and Turkey, and I consider it a privilege to be living amongst Turks,” that’s what he was asking for. We need to acknowledge the murderers of the Hrants of 1915, and we need to draw a line between them and Turkishness. If we are going to own up to this murder in 2007 then we need to do the same for those of 1915.

That’s what confronting one’s history is about. Today, by saying to Hrant’s murderer, “You don’t represent me as a Turk: you are simply a murderer,” we have begun the process of confronting and acknowledging our history. We must do the same with the murderers of 1915 by drawing a line between their acts and our Turkishness. We must condemn these murderers as having smeared our brows with the dark stain of their crimes. Then, and only then, can we Turks go about the world with our heads held high.

I cry out in the name of Turkishness. I cry out as a Turk, as a friend who lost Hrant, my beloved Armenian brother. Let’s take back Turkishness from the murderous hands of those who wish to smear us with their dark deeds. Let’s shout in one voice, “WE ARE ALL HRANT! WE ARE ALL ARMENIANS!”

Radikal (Turkey)

January 24, 2007

America’s so-called president George aBush has introduced his glorious budget, that like last year’s, gives reduced economic and military aid to Armenia and much more aid to Armenia’s friendly neighbor and the most tolerant country in the world – Oilzerbaijan. Moreover, the Bushdickcandy administration is apparently cutting humanitarian aid to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Here is why and how, according to Blogian (this is also what exactly happened last year).

1. Bush hates the “Armenian lobby,” which even being not so-powerful (to say the least), can have Congress to keep the aid parity for Armenia and Oilzerbaijan (because it is retarded otherwise).

2. The Turkish foreign minister is in America gulling candy to convince bush to stop the Congress from passing the Armenian genocide resolution. They need something to entertain the loshtak.
3. Bush will swap his own daughter with Borat before recognizing the Armenian genocide.

Bush wants both Armenians and Turks be happy. So he will make Armenians angry as Gull in Bulling in America, but will later let the glorious Armenian lobby convince the Congress to give more aid to Armenia and some aid to Nagorno-Karabakh (by making Turks and Azeris angry). As Armenians will celebrate their unbelievable glory of conquering the Congress (and the Turkish media will condemn The Protocols of Ararat) and convincing them that it is wrong to give more economic and military aid to the most tolerant country in the world than to democratic Armenia, they will find out that the genocide recognition resolution was killed. But hey, they still changed the budget!

In the words of George W. Bush himself, “More and more of our [oil] imports come from overseas.” He was referring to Canada and Mexico.

UPDATE: What Reuters reports as a nationalist demonstration, was actually an anti-Armenian gathering in the Armenian populated district of Istanbul, where Turkish nationalists chanted things like “Armenians should know their limits.” According to a group e-mail I received from a Turk in Istanbul, “Yesterday a crowd of people gathered in the center of Samatya (an area, mostly inhabited by Armenians) and shouted anti-Armenian slogans like ‘Armenians should know their limits.’ Police came and dispersed them.”
Photographs distributed by Reuters via YahooNews show a group of nationalist Turk “protesters carrying a banner that reads, ‘We all are Mustafa Kemal. We all are Turks’ during a demonstration in Istanbul February 4, 2007. A group of nationalist protesters on Sunday demonstrated in reaction to banners that read ‘We all are Armenians’ carried by those who attended the funeral ceremony of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink last month.”

Several Turkish children were wrapped in Turkish flags and placed in the front of the demonstration. As always, Reuters “forgot” to mention that there was also, at least, one Azerbaijani flag during the apparent anti-Armenian protest.

Why are nationalists using Turkish children again and again? Wasn’t the 17-year-old kid enough?

Cem Ozdemir, a columnist with the Turkish Zaman, has published a surprising yet very welcoming entry about Armenian and Turkish relations. He asks important questions, and I think his column is the essence of a Turkey that the world wants to see.

Everybody — journalists, party leaders, the president of the republic, the chief of general staff — found harsh words to condemn the murder of Hrant Dink. But don’t they see that there is a link between what they are writing, saying and preaching in their daily professional lives and what happened to Hrant? How can one condemn his murder and still argue for the absurd Article 301, which brought him to court multiple times for nothing but his opinion?
How can one continue to argue that the border to Armenia should remain closed? Some are against opening the border because of the Armenian occupation of Azeri territory. But that’s all the more reason to take the initiative and establish good relations with your neighbors, thereby becoming the good broker in the process to negotiate a fair and just solution.
Those who continue to oppose the recent legislation on foundations don’t understand that treating Armenians and other Christians as second-class citizens was exactly what Hrant was fighting against.
How can one still be against Christians becoming officers, generals and members of parliament?
How can one still continue to declare as an enemy everybody who has another opinion than the official one on the events of 1915?
Just before Hrant was murdered, Sylvester Stallone became the new enemy. What did he do wrong? He supported the views of the majority of historians and experts in the world and described the events of 1915 as genocide. Even if one doesn’t agree with him, has anyone bothered to read the script of the movie he is planning? How many people have actually read Franz Werfel’s book about the 40 days of Musa Dag? Or does the fact that Werfel and Stallone don’t share the official views of the state automatically make them enemies? And if so, is it treason if I watch Stallone’s new film, “Rocky Balboa”? Recent commentaries on TV and in the papers that say this film too is now bad, even though it has nothing to do with his announced movie about Werfel’s book, are incredibly shortsighted.
In case it matters: I am still a fan of Stallone and his movies (OK, except for the Rambo series) and I look forward to seeing “Rocky Balboa,” just as I was looking forward to it only a couple of weeks ago. The difference now, of course, is that since last Friday, I don’t feel much like going to the movies?.
There is enough sadness in Hrant’s death. But it increases my pain even more to watch people talk about him and his heritage who never understood Hrant while he was alive. For all the talk about Hrant’s legacy let’s not overlook Agos, his Turkish-Armenian newspaper, which should persevere. Hrant’s death should not be used to make arguments in favor of or against Turkey’s accession to the European Union. Obviously, Turkey’s EU prospects were for Hrant — and remain for other people of different origins in Turkey — a chance to improve their rights. Nor should the death be employed in the debate surrounding the events of 1915. Hrant did not insist on recognizing the genocide as a precondition for a dialogue as some people in the diaspora do. But remember his words when he said that the Armenians know what happened to them.
One man come in the name of love
One man come and go
One man come he to justify
One man to overthrow
One man caught on a barbed wire fence
One man he resist
One man washed on an empty beach
One man betrayed with a kiss
U2 sang this song for Martin Luther King, Jr. I would like to dedicate it to my brother Hrant Dink.
Do they who betrayed him with a kiss know what they did?
Turkey produced both Hrant Dink and the 17-year-old boy who killed him. And let’s not forget the thousands of people who marched in solidarity and chanted, “We are all Hrant Dink! We are all Armenians!”
This is Turkey, and its future depends on whether it produces more Hrant Dinks — who live in the name of love — or more 17-year-old boys who kill in the name of hate.

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.

Translated from Turkisb by Fatma Gocek (received in e-mail communication):

Below and attached please find my translation of the eulogy Hrant Dink’s wife Rakel Dink delivered in front of his coffin today, on 23 January 2007, in Osmanbey, Istanbul in front of a very large crowd. I have used the text that was printed in the Yeni Safak newspaper.

Muge [Fatma Gocek]

“Letter to My Beloved” by Rakel Dink

“I am here today full of immense grief and dignity. We are all here today with our sorrow. This silence creates within us a sorrowful contentment.

Today we send off half of my soul, my beloved, the father of my children. We are going to actualize a march without any slogans and without any disrespect. Today we are going to generate immense sound through our silence.

Whoever the assasin may be, either 17 or 27 years’ old, I know myself that he too was once a baby. One cannot accomplish anything without questioning first how an assasasin was created from such a baby.

It was Hrant’s honesty, transparency and love that brought him here. They say “he was a great man.” I ask you, Was he born great? No, he too was born just like us. He did not come from the skies, he too came from soil [like us]. It was what he did, the style he chose, the love in his heart that made him great. He became a great man because he thought great things and pronounced great words.

And you too are great for being here today. But do not let this suffice, do not be content with this act alone! One cannot accomplish a great future through hatred, through offense, through holding one blood superior to another. One can only rise through respect for the other.

My beloved!

You departed without having your body age, without getting sick, without spending enough time with those you loved. We too will join you there, my beloved, in that matchless heaven… Only love can enter that domain. We shall live there together forever with true love.

A love that is not jealous of anyone, a love that does not murder, belittle, hold grudges; a love that forgives, respects one’s brothers; a love found in the Messiah….

My beloved, which darkness is capable of erasing your words and your deeds? Could it be fear? Life? Injustice? The temptations of the world? Or death, my beloved?

I too wrote you a love letter, my beloved! It was very hard to write these [words] my beloved!

You departed from those you loved, from your children, your grandchildren, from us, from my lap, but you did not depart from your country, my beloved!”

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.

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