For your information:  

Blogian, as part of Hayastan.com, was hacked by Azeris/Turks.  Many of the archival photographs are not available for that reason.

via iArarat, Radio Free Europe reports:

A large number of Armenian nationals have been arrested in Turkey in recent days for violating the country’s immigration rules, an Istanbul-based Armenian diplomat said on Monday.

The Irish Times daily reported last week that about 100 Armenians illegally residing in Istanbul and other Turkish cities were rounded up by police and are facing deportation to Armenia. The paper suggested that the Turkish authorities ordered the crackdown in retaliation for the anticipated adoption by the U.S. House of Representatives of a resolution recognizing as genocide the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

Just past Sunday, Turkish professor Kemal Cicek – a co-author of a book denying the Armenian Genocide called Armenians: Deportation and Migration and published by the Turkish Historical Society – wrote a Turkish article in the Zaman newspaper suggesting deportation of Armenian citizens in Turkey as a response to the U.S. Congress’ Armenian Genocide resolution.

Dr. Cicek was not the first or the only one suggesting deportation of Armenian workers from Turkey. Past Friday, the English-language Turkish Daily news published an article by another ultra-nationalist writer – Vural Cengiz, president of Azerbaijani American Institute, stating:

Actually, House Resolution 106 does not make much sense for Armenians themselves. What if Turks say “Okay, we understand Armenian animosity here; we accept the challenge. We are ending all diplomatic relations with Armenia and canceling all flights for Armenians in and out of Turkey and over Turkey. No more use of Turkish ports until Armenia demolishes all genocide statues in Armenia?” What will Armenian-Americans do to stop Turkey? Ask Congress to stop giving billions of dollars as foreign aid, which does not exist?  What else could Turks do? How about deporting all 70,000 illegal Armenian workers from Turkey? […] Armenian-Americans had one shot only and they fired it. Who is going to be hit is unknown now. If Turks make sure it is Armenians to be hit, that shot will be the one Armenian-Americans fired in their own foot.

So, as always, Armenians are at guilt for the deportation, I meant RELOCATION, of Armenian workers from Turkey.

Even some (self-perceived) liberals in Turkey, who will go an extra mile to oppose Turkey’s anti-Armenian sentiment, will often find blame in the Armenian blood.  A Kurdish Parliamentarian of the Turkish legislature, Ibrahim Aksoy, wrote an unnoticed article last year (“Armenian Turks,” August 2006, in Turkish) claiming that none of the “original Turks” (the Turkmens that came from central Anatolia) are claiming “Turkishness” (Türkçülük) – the idea-turned-to-law (Article 301) under which recognition of the Armenian Genocide is a crime in Turkey.

Aksoy gave names of some prominent politicians – many of who anti-Armenian ultra-nationalists – allegedely of Armenian origin:

Hafize Özal…
Recai Kutan…
Oguzhan Asiltürk…
Devlet Bahçeli…

Hasan Celal Güzel…
Mehmet Agar…
Mehmet Keçeciler…
Mesut Yilmaz…
Murat Karayalçin…

Aksoy’s conclusion was:

We have nothing against people who have had to deny their origins to continue living. We appreciate their condition. But what we do not get is how can some others while they fully know that they are of Armenian origin and continue the Turkish racism and Turk-Islam ideas? Especially it is impossible to understand their animosity against the non-Moslems and Kurds in Turkey.

Although he also claims that his mentioned politicians have no choice but to be ultra-nationalists, the generalization that Aksoy suggests resonates with Turkey’s anti-Armenian sentiment that the reason for every problem in the country are the Armenians. 

And the idea to “relocate” new Armenians seems very logical to solve the problem.  After all, it has always been the fault of the Armenians – from the Dinosaurs to the Genocide.

Armenia’s parliament adopted a bill on Thursday aiming at identifying and saving human trafficking victims on airplanes before take off

The National Assembly of Armenia passed the Anti-Human Trafficking on Air Act on Thursday requiring notification to all air passengers about the threatening high number of women and children being transported from/through Armenia by traffickers for sexual exploitation purposes without the passengers’ knowledge or consent before airplanes take off.

The notification process will include distribution of brochures in three languages (Armenian, Russian and English) to all passengers shortly describing human trafficking and asking passengers to let the attendant know they are in danger at any time during/before the flight and they will be guaranteed safe evacuation and persecution of their traffickers.

Before the airplane takes off, a video-recording or an attendant will announce in three languages (Armenian, Russian and English) that if there are any children on the airplane who are traveling with somebody else’s passport they are at high risk of being raped and abused in the countries of their destination. They will be also given additional two-minutes of presentation about how to identify human trafficking. The passengers will be told if they have a slight doubt they may be a victim of human trafficking they will be in safe protection after notifying an attendant. Two unidentified enforcement agents, trained to combat human trafficking, will be on the flight to help the victims before the plane takes off or after it arrives or to interfere during the flight if absolutely needed.

“Even if this Act saves one life it will serve its purpose,” said Raffi Hovhannisyan, an American-born Armenian legislator who sponsored the bill. “It is time to fight the horrible abuse of already oppressed women and children from poor and unprotected families who are treated like animals after being tricked into human trafficking.”

Armenia is not only a resource for human traffickers, experts say, but also a transit country for other victims of eastern European and central Asian origin. The victims, often from single-mother families, are told they will be working in restaurants and cafes in rich Middle Eastern or European countries. Once they get to their destinations, they are beaten and forced into prostitution serving dozens of men every day against their wills.

A handful legislators who voted against the bill expressed concerns for the funding of the project. But several Armenian NGOs and charity organizations vowed to contribute to the project. “We will do everything in our power to support the fight against human trafficking in Armenia,” said a spokesperson for the U.S.-based Cafesjian Foundation.

Armenia’s President Robert Kocharyan signed the bill into law the following day, expressing his admiration for the legislature’s readiness to combat modern day human slavery. “The Armenian leadership can have no moral leadership in the fight for Genocide recognition if it ignores the sexual exploitations and physical and psychological tortures of women and children at the hands of human traffickers.”

The sponsors of the Act still expressed concerns about a fabricated news item posted on Blogian.net and republished by other websites several months ago announcing the passage of a “bill combating human trafficking” claiming Armenian parliament’s official website as the source. The webmaster of Blogian.net, an Armenian-American student, had deliberately fabricated the story with hopes that Armenia’s leadership and parliamentarians would finally start thinking about ways to fight human trafficking.

“I am glad Blogian.net brought the inevitability of this issue to our attention ,” Hovhannisyan said, “But I thought I was dreaming when I read the news attributing statements to me I had never made – not that I didn’t wish I had made them in the first place.”

Several Armenian-American groups also denounced Blogian.net for “misleading tactics” and “spreading lies in uncivilized ways.”

Source: http://www.parliament.am/

A friend has received the following e-mail and excerpt from another friend and I thought our readers may want to read it.  

I thought I would share an excerpt from “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story” By Henry Morgenthau American Ambassador to Turkey during the Genocide. I found it to be eerily prophetic and certainly apropos.

————————————————————————————————–

 

This is from Chapter 25

After this exchange of compliments we settled down to the business in hand. “I have asked you to come to-day,” began Talaat, “so that I can explain our position on the whole Armenian subject. We base our objections to the Armenians on three distinct grounds. In the first place, they have enriched themselves at the expense of the Turks. In the second place, they are determined to domineer over us and to establish a separate state. In the third place, they have openly encouraged our enemies. They have assisted the Russians in the Caucasus and our failure there is largely explained by their actions. We have therefore come to the irrevocable decision that we shall make them powerless before this war is ended.”

On every one of these points I had plenty of arguments in rebuttal. Talaat’s first objection was merely an admission that the Armenians were more industrious and more able than the dull-witted and lazy Turks. Massacre as a means of destroying business competition was certainly an original conception! His general charge that the Armenians were “conspiring” against Turkey and that they openly sympathized with Turkey’s enemies merely meant, when reduced to its original elements, that the Armenians were constantly appealing to the European Powers to protect them against robbery, murder, and outrage. The Armenian problem, like most race problems, was the result of centuries of ill-treatment and injustice. There could be only one solution for it, the creation of an orderly system of government, in which all citizens were to be treated upon an equality, and in which all offenses were to be punished as the acts of individuals and not as of peoples. I argued for a long time along these and similar lines.

“It is no use for you to argue,” Talaat answered, “we have already disposed of three quarters of the Armenians; there are none at all left in Bitlis, Van, and Erzeroum. The hatred between the Turks and the Armenians is now so intense that we have got to finish with them. If we don’t, they will plan their revenge.”

“If you are not influenced by humane considerations,” I replied, “think of the material loss. These people are your business men. They control many of your industries. They are very large tax-payers. What would become of you commercially without them?“

“We care nothing about the commercial loss,” replied Talaat. “We have figured all that out and we know that it will not exceed five million pounds. We don’t worry about that. I have asked you to come here so as to let you know that our Armenian policy is absolutely fixed and that nothing can change it. We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert but nowhere else.“

I still attempted to persuade Talaat that the treatment of the Armenians was destroying Turkey in the eyes of the world, and that his country would never be able to recover from this infamy.

“You are making a terrible mistake,” I said, and I repeated the statement three times.

“Yes, we may make mistakes,” he replied, “but” —and he firmly closed his lips and shook his head—“we never regret.”

After unsuccessful attempts to persuade Congress that reaffirming the Armenian Genocide is not in the interest of America’s national interests, the Bush administration seems to have realized that the realpolitik of yesterday is not necessarily the realpolitk of today. The American military is looking for alternative airspace for the war in Iraq in case Turkey cuts access (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/12/us.turkey/?iref=mpstoryview).

Remember how ADL chief Foxman changed his long stance on denying the Armenian Genocide couple of months ago? It seems the Bush administration is not too far from a similar action. At least it is playing more real in the realpolitik sphere today than couple of days ago.

There is so much air for space – that’s the realpolitik of today and tomorrow.

And we do give standing ovation to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6992435,00.html)

So today I finally decided to save the number of the place where I have my hair cut, but instead of saving it in my Sprint phone I accidently sent a message to the landline number (and cursed myself for wasting $0.15).

In couple of seconds I got a text message from 8353 saying, “Your message was addressed to a landline…”

I was quite confused, and got even more confused when I saw the name of the hair place in that text message.

When I got home, I texted my landline (wasting another $0.15). I got an automated call in a few seconds on my landline saying that I had a message from a Sprint PCS customer (it also said my cell phone number).  After I pushed 1 to listen to the message, I had fun listening to how the machine butchered the Armenian word “barev” meaning hello.

I am really surprised that you can text landlines. Am I really behind in the techno world or is this something new?

If you live in the United States and have been wasting a fortune on 411 directory calls, it is time to say good bye to the charges.

Google has introduced a free directory service, 1-800-Goog-411. I guess the only minus is that Google’s service employs no human operators for back up, but I tried it a minute ago after learning about it from my brother and it works great.

So stop wasting money on 411. Dial 1-800-4664-411 instead. Goo Google!

By Prof. Fatma Muge Gocek, Published by permission

Sociologists look for patterns in social behavior.  The pattern I observe in the recent Turkish court decision convicting Serkis Seropyan and Arat Dink, the owners of the Agos newspaper, to one year imprisonment in accordance with the infamous Penal Code 301, for publishing an interview with Hrant Dink where he discussed the Armenian Genocide, is one of blatant discrimination based on prejudice.  Just as it had been in the previous lawsuit and subsequent sentencing against Hrant Dink.  I think this lawsuit has been brought against Seropyan and Arat Dink and they have been subsequently sentenced — just as the lawsuit previously brought against Hrant Dink leading to his sentencing — because they are Armenians.  That is, because they are minorities in Turkey.

Why do I think so?  Because the interview that Hrant Dink had given and Agos printed , the one that formed the legal grounds of the decision against Seropyan and Arat Dink, was also printed in all other Turkish media outlets.  Yet those outlets were not targeted by either Turkish public prosecutors or by Turkish courts.  As a consequence, those other Turkish newspapers and journalists will therefore not be targeted or gagged the way Seropyan and Arat Dink now are and will be in the future.

Previously, in the Hrant Dink case, while there had been many of us who had been talking critically about the Turkish past in general and 1915 in particular, only he from among us was singled out and targeted by the Turkish public prosecutor and then by the Turkish court because he was an Armenian.  He was a minority member in Turkey.  We did not go through that entire legal process culminating in the delivery of a sentence.  I think we did not because we were ethnic Turks, and educated white Turks to boot.  While some of us stood there watching, while some of us tried to help Hrant Dink by conducting signature campaigns aimed at Turkish state officials foolishly thinking it would make a difference, he went through a grueling trial process, was found guilty, and sentenced. 

Hrant Dink was sentenced on what I consider to be trumped-up charges, after an intentional, willful misreading and misinterpretation of what he had written.  I would contend that not only had Hrant Dink not ‘insulted Turkishness’ in what he had written, but that anybody holding a college degree ought to have had the knowledge, intelligence or capacity to have recognized that.  Hence, in my opinion, it was a travesty of justice that a group who had the alacrity to call themselves ‘deliverers of justice’ reached what I view as a shameful, illegal decision based on untruth and prejudice.  In my mind’s eye, I shall always continue to see that group as ‘deliverers of death’ because I think it was as a consequence of the process they set in motion, the process they sanctified with their legal decision that Hrant Dink was assassinated. 

Until that decision to sentence Dink was reached in Turkey, I had thought legal systems were instituted to protect individuals.  Yet the Hrant Dink decision taught me that the Turkish legal system can also set individuals, especially minority members, up for destruction by placing them as offers upon the altar of ethnic nationalism: it would then quietly withdraw and watch some people gather ‘in the name of the majority.’  These would chant ignorant songs of unity, thus feeling superior against the unprotected.  And they certainly did.  Yes, some also stood against them and protested, but they were so few in comparison…

Now, today, when there had been many Turkish newspapers that had also published or referred to the interview Hrant Dink had given, once again it was only the Agos newspaper among them that was singled out and targeted by the Turkish public prosecutor and then by the Turkish court in exactly the same manner as Hrant Dink had once been because, once again, the people involved were Armenians.  The rest were not because they were ethnic Turks.  And, once again, all the other newspapers were all owned by white Turks.  Once again, Seropyan and Arat Dink are minority members in Turkey and I think that is why they alone have been convicted.

What are we going to do now?  Are we going to stand and watch?  Or are we going to conduct media and signature campaigns that will lead us who knows where? 

At this point, I am certain of only one thing: I am sickened at the possibility of the pattern of death repeating itself.  I am also sickened by the timing of the Turkish court decision regarding Seropyan and Arat Dink, given the Genocide Bill that has just passed in the U.S. and given how the Turkish media, society and state are now reacting to it — as always, emotionally and, due to lack of knowledge about the past, with vengeance.  I personally think this conviction date was intentionally chosen by the Turkish court to intersect with the U.S. Bill to further foster and justify Turkish ethnic nationalism, and that intentionality further sickens me.

What to do?  I look back at those signature campaigns we conducted for Hrant Dink thinking it would make a difference, thinking it would protect him…  After all, all of us who signed those pleas of protection — at least I personally — believed that there was a state in Turkey that somehow, somewhat upheld the delivery of justice and the protection of the rights of all of its citizens among its fundamental principles, that is, it at least aspired toward such principles, even if it could not reach them.  What on earth was I thinking, given how the Hrant Dink trial is going at the moment, given how all attempts of Hrant Dink’s lawyers to investigate and uncover the real instigators and culprits behind his assassination that reach deep into the Turkish state and the military are being stonewalled!  How could I have been so delusional!  There is only one thing I can think of doing at this moment: if those Turkish officials who once received our signatures and pleas about protecting Hrant Dink did nothing back then, if they just put them aside, did not act upon or investigate them, I now condemn each and every one of those Turkish officials.  For in collecting those signatures, we might have deluded ourselves in relation to what the Turkish state might have been capable of, but at least our intentions were good.  Yet those Turkish officials who, in relation to the assassination of Hrant Dink, did not uphold the delivery of justice and the protection of all of its citizens as the fundamental principles of the Turkish state back then and who still do not uphold them today by enabling a full, open and transparent investigation fully, I condemn each and every one of them.  I do so because I find their intentions foul, and their behavior complicitous; I think those particular officials uphold and foster an alternate vision of the Turkish state that is no different, in my view, from the state that once condemned hundreds of thousands of its subjects to death by deportation.  

I also condemn the naturalized prejudice and the subsequent discrimination that still perseveres in Turkish society today, as it has ultimately led to the targeting of minorities in this manner.  And I also condemn the falsified Turkish Republican history taught in school textbooks that has erased all the violence the Turkish state once committed in the past.  Not only has that violence created the category of minorities in our society to start with, thereby fostering all this prejudice and discrimination against them, but it has also been exploited by the same Turkish state and especially by segments of the Turkish military to create an ethnic Turkish identity, an identity which was then periodically mobilized against the minorities both to replenish that hallowed ethnic unity and also to sustain the political status quo.

As I see the same pattern that eventually led to Hrant Dink’s assassination unfolding right in front of my eyes in this case, that is, in the case of Serkis Seropyan who happens to be a very dear friend of mine and of Arat Dink who I regard as a very precious gift entrusted to us all for safekeeping by his slain father whom we obviously were not able to protect, I end up with a final condemnation.  I condemn and curse myself for my own present state of helplessness.

Fatma Muge Gocek

University of Michigan

Mark Elrod has an interesting entry on the Armenian Genocide bill:

[…]  

If you’ve ever wondered if the Bush administration’s foreign policy is driven by realpolitik rather than a genuine interest in human rights of their citizens, consider the question, “When is a genocide not really a genocide?”

• When it happened ninety years ago.
• When it happened to a group of people that most Americans have never heard of.
• When those same people have no tangible assets or raw materials that effect our economic interests.
• When the perpetrators are an important ally.
• When you can call it something else and get away with it.

Visualize history:

Map of what is now Turkey showing areas inhabited by Armenians in 1915. Turkey has condemned a vote by a US House of Representatives committee branding the World War I Armenian Genocide as such and urged them not to take it to a full vote.(AFP Graphic)

In the wave of the news of the acceptance of House Resolution 106 in the Foreign Affairs Committee, Arat Dink’s conviction by a Turkish court this morning seems to have been lost and ignored. Yet Associted Press has an article on the subject.

ISTANBUL, Turkey: The son of a journalist killed earlier this year after calling the massacre of Armenians genocide was convicted Thursday of insulting Turkey’s identity for republishing his father’s remarks.

Arat Dink, editor of the Armenian newspaper Agos, and publisher Serkis Seropyan each received a one-year suspended sentence for “insulting Turkishness,” said their lawyer, Erdal Dogan. He said they would appeal the sentences.

Dink is the son of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was convicted of the same charge for calling the killing of Armenians during World War I genocide. He had appealed the conviction when he was killed by a Turkish youth in January.

The massacre of Armenians is one of the darkest periods in Turkish history. Armenians say up to 1.5 million people were killed in 1915-17 during the Ottoman Empire, before the birth of modern Turkey.

Turkey rejects the label “genocide,” maintaining that the death toll is inflated and insisting the killings occurred at a time of civil unrest.

The verdict for Dink and Seropyan came a day after legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of a nonbinding bill that declares the Armenian killings genocide — over Turkey’s objections.

“The discriminatory mentality which turned intolerance into a state tradition has yet again declared criticism and expression of opinion an insult to Turkishness and a crime,” the rights group Human Rights Associated said in a statement.

The European Union has pressured Turkey, which aspires to join the 27-nation bloc, to scrap the controversial law on “insulting Turkishness,” saying it restricts freedom of speech.

Some Turkish leaders, including President Abdullah Gul, also believe the law has harmed Turkey’s EU bid.