Dave

[...] Will there be other projects related to Armenian structures? We will launch the restoration of the Ani ruins in Kars. Ani has some interesting characteristics. There are eight mosques and eight churches. Their dates of construction are parallel. Muslims and Christians have lived in the same neighborhood in peace for years. To date, no project has been implemented with respect to the Ani ruins. We will be the first one to tackle this issue. [...] http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar...152&bolum=8 8 mosques? I thought there was only one, which appeared after Ani got taken by the Seljuk Turks. They're distorting history even before having started this new phase of the complete destruction and turkification of Ani. If this isn't cultural genocide, I don't know what is. Khapépa tourker, khapvogh yevrobatsiner

It might be hard today, but prior to 1915, Armenians were different from town to town even.

There used to be as many as 350,000 Armenians in Lebanon before the civil war; this doesn't include those who went to Soviet Armenia in the 40s during the "Nerkaght", an event that took place a long time ago and probably isn't taken into consideration in population figures. All those Armenians who left the Middle East went somewhere. If they left the region, it doesn't mean that they forgot their Armenian-ness.

The 2006 Canadian census asked for the language spoken at home; it will surely give a more accurate view than the 2001 census which asked the origins of only 1/5th of the population, and mulitiplied it by 5.

Yes, of course, but I didn't mention it because Vanahye7 asked for Western Armenian population figures; Iranian Armenians are Eastern Armenians. If the genocide hadn't taken place, there would have certainly been more Western Armenians than Eastern Armenians today.

Gor-Gor, those numbers you gave are very inflated; there are around 190,000 in Syria, 140,000 in Lebanon, and 60,000 in Istanbul. These numbers include the ones that left those countries during times of strife. There are Armenians in other Middle Eastern countries as well, including Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, etc.. Armenians are those who accept what they are, and in population censuses worldwide, they say that they're Armenians. Since there are around 5 million Armenians in the diaspora, I'd estimate Western Armenians as being close to 3 million worldwide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_diaspora

It seems so: Mt. Musa Armenians express concern over Stallone movie The only Armenian village in Turkey, Vakıflı in Hatay province, has expressed concerns over the destruction the peace and tolerance that dominate their lives because of a proposed movie on the so-called Armenian genocide. American actor Sylvestor Stallone recently announced plans to make a movie based on the book "The Forty Days of Musa Dag" written by Austrian Franz Werfel in 1933. He wants to film the movie at Mt. Musa, which rises next to Vakıflı. "We will only approve the plan if the movie underlines the environment of peace and tolerance in which we live. But if it undermines that, we are against this movie," Vakıflı local administrator Berç Kartun said as he expressed conditional approval. Kartun added that they have lived at Musa Dagh in peace and tolerance for centuries. "The theme of the movie belongs here -- right where we live. Mt. Musa is next to us. It is all right for us if someone wants to make a movie here about the book 'The Forty Days of Musa Dag.' There are also beautiful things in that book. If those things will be used without starting a controversy, the movie will be welcome. The movie should tell about the tolerance here. Then it will be beneficial for introduction of Turkey, our village and Hatay. People should come and see the mountain and our life here. Nobody has the right to ruin our peace," he said. 'The Forty Days of Musa Dagh' The book is about the forced emigration of Anatolian Armenians in 1915, with a group of them taking shelter on Mt. Musa, south of İskenderun. They clashed with Ottoman soldiers in Hatay and were taken to Egyptian refugee camps by French ships. 10.02.2007 MEHMET DENER HATAY http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar...7&bolum=101 These "Musa Dagh Armenians" aren't the ones who fought, they're the ones who sat and watched when the rest of the Armenians were fighting.

Jealousy? Mr. Stallone, Don't Forget the Assyrian Genocide Basna Beth Yuhanon (AINA) -- Editor's note: Sylvester Stallone is making a film about the Turkish genocide of Armenians in World War One. The film does not include Assyrians and Greeks, who were also massacred in the same genocide. Dear Mr. Stallone: Please allow me to write you this letter to ask for your support for the oppressed Assyrian people. I have read that you are going to produce a film based on Franz Werfel's novel "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" which deals with the Armenian Genocide. I would like to thank you sincerely for taking this step to make the plight of the victims of this genocide known to the whole world so that justice may finally be done, but also I would like to bring to your attention that during World War I there was not only a Genocide against the Armenians but also against the Assyrian people and other Christians such as the Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. The Assyrians, with a history spanning 7000 years, are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia (Assyria). They are Christians and builders of a great civilization in Mesopotamia. They were the first to accept Christianity and spread with their strenuous and passionate spirit the Gospel of love and salvation to other nations and places. The Assyrians speak a semitic language, Assyrian, also called Aramaic and Syriac, which was spoken by Jesus Christ and which was for many centuries the lingua franca in Middle East. Unfortunately, this glorious part is also marred by centuries of persecutions and atrocities at the hands of Moslems, in particular of Arabs, Turks and Kurds, who invaded and occupied their land over the centuries till this day. One of these horrible calamities that befell the Assyrian nation was the Genocide of 1915. Over 750,000 Assyrians - two third of the Assyrian population - were murdered by Young Turks and their henchmen, the Kurds. The Assyrian people were systematically subjected to massacres, deportations, expropriation, torture, pillage and starvation, concurrently with their Armenian and Greek brethren. Assyrian recruits in the Ottoman Army were reduced to forced labor battalions and worked under conditions of torture, hunger and thirst equalling slavery. Women, girls and children were victims of horrible abuses and abasement. The following statement from a report of an Assyrian eyewitness describes the barbarous methods used by Turks and Kurds to slaughter Assyrian children: "One day the Moslems assembled all the children of from six to fifteen years and carried them off to the headquarters of the police. There they led the poor little things to the top of a mountain known as Ras-el Hadjar and cut their throats one by one, throwing their bodies into an abyss." (Joseph Naayem, Shall This Nation Die?) In the years after World War I Assyrians were subjected to further massacres, expulsion and destruction. The persecution and oppression of the Assyrian Christians by the different Islamic groups, Kurds, Turks and Arabs, continues till this day. As a consequence of these atrocious and destructive experiences the Assyrian people continue to carry pain and unhealed wounds with them. The purpose of my letter is to appeal to you Mr. Stallone to mention in your new film also the Genocide perpetrated against the Assyrian people. By doing this, you would help to create awareness for the unmentioned plight and sufferings of the Assyrian Christians. Since the Genocides against the Assyrians and Armenians were carried out at the same time, it would be a sin not to include the sufferings of the Assyrians in your film. The Assyrian people, organizations and friends would give you all their support to let your film become more successful and should you require access to any material, such as the book quoted above, to gain a deeper insight into the Assyrian Genocide, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will be more than happy to be of assistance. We hope for your solidarity and sense of justice. Thank you for your help and efforts and I wish you every success for your new film. http://www.aina.org/guesteds/20070207115546.htm

I think the only downside about Vista is that it will have a short lifespan compared to XP. M$ was already preparing the next 2 editions of Windows when Vista wasn't yet released.

I think that the main difference between ''Home Basic'' and ''Home Premium'' is that the Premium edition comes with Media Center while Vista Basic does not. It supports HDTV as well. The remaining differences are probably minor ones. There's also, of course, the difference in pricing. This explains pretty well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista...ons_and_pricing You can also choose between the Upgrade edition and the full "from scratch" edition. If you buy the second one, you'll probably have to empty your PC first and install Vista from DOS mode.

All that Azerbaijan and Turkey are saying about Nagorno-Karabagh are baseless rhetoric.

I haven't had the chance to visit Armenia yet, but I always thought that most tourists were Armenians from the Diaspora. Times change I guess. Great that you mentioned it... A few months ago, I read a proper tourism article about Armenia in a French-Canadian website, which was nothing like Conlin's text. Anyway, here are some discussions in French between people who have been there and people who will go there in the summer of 2007. http://voyageforum.com/voyage/cout_vie_en_armenie_D233274/ http://voyageforum.com/voyage/voyage_un_mo...e_2007_D795738/

Sip, I know that Armenia isn't a popular destination among Americans. This author didn't need to make fun of that, and of all the effort done to improve Armenia's tourism (CNN commercials, etc.).

I wouldn't consider this a tourism advertisement for Armenia. In fact, it's the complete opposite if you understand the author's sarcastic style in the beginning and the end of the article. Boutique Hotels Arrive in Armenia: Will Tourists Follow? By JENNIFER CONLIN Published: February 4, 2007 If you’re thinking of spending your next vacation in Armenia — and, really, who isn’t? — you’ll be happy to know that this former Soviet republic now has its first boutique hotel chain. This may be a sign that Armenia is truly “in,” or that boutique hotels are officially “out.” The owners of the Tufenkian Heritage Hotels (www.tufenkianheritage.com) are hoping their three new properties will lure tourists to Armenia’s mountainous countryside, set between the Black and Caspian Seas. Each hotel features Tufenkian carpets, handmade by Armenian weavers, as well as local cuisine. At Avan Dzoraget, a 34-room hotel in Lori (on the main road to Tbilisi), there is an indoor pool, a spa and a gym. At Avan Marak Tsapatagh, on Lake Sevan — a popular lakeside resort town with outdoor sports — the lodge is completely constructed of Armenian stone. Avan Villa, a 14-room hotel 10 minutes from the city of Yerevan, however, sounds the most stylish, with Frette linens and rooms with traditional Armenian fireplaces — the kind used to make lavash bread. But the Web site description also proudly mentions that all Villa rooms have “hot and cold water 24 hours a day” — normally not a big selling point for the average boutique hotel. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/travel/04transarmenia.html

These are simply the words of the US ambassador to Turkey, so we don't need to give importance. When John Evans used the "g word", he was simply shoved away from the scene...

By saying "We're all Armenians" they're obviously trying to fight Turkish nationalism (something that Hrant wasn't fond of) or the idea that 99.9% of Turkey is Turkish. They're also trying to show their solidarity to the Armenians. Unfortunately though, these types of Turks are rare outside of Western Turkey. And we could all be mistaken; all this can be a little show "in front of EU cameras" as someone else said.

Of course there were no more Armenians in Trebizond after the genocide, but I was talking about the Armenians who lived there prior to 1915

There were Pontians, Laz, Armenians, and others too. Face it, Turkey wasn't "homogeneous" until the 20th century. Anyway, what do you say to those degenerates who praise Hrant's assassins? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7PJrMOWu34...ted&search=

Perhaps the Armenians weren't a majority, but that doesn't mean that Turks were a majority either. Besides, Armenian probably reigned Trebizond in the commercial aspect.

It is ironic that Trabzon was included in the Armenia that was drawn in the Sèvres Treaty.

Tension in Black Sea city Trabzon reflected in banners at football match With all eyes turned to the Black Sea city of Trabzon, following the discovery that Hrant Dink's killer had originated from there, along with a group of other people arrested in connection with the incident, tension in Trabzon was apparent last night at a football match between local Trabzonsport and Kayserispor. The stands at the football match were filled with fans, some of whom were holding banners in clear response to the banners that had been carried at Hrant Dink's funeral in Istanbul last week, which had said "We are all Armenian," and "We are all Hrant Dink." In Trabzon last night, some of the banners seen in the stadium read "We are Turkish, We are from Trabzon, We are all Mustafa Kemal Ataturk," and "I am Turkish, I am right, I am from Trabzon." Despite the cold weather in Trabzon last night, the match stadium was filled with an estimated 15 thousand fans holding around 3 thousand banners, many in reference to the now controversial banners seen at the Dink funeral in Istanbul. Crowds were also heard chanting slogans in support of the Trabzon Police Chief Resat Altay, who was removed from his posting by Ankara officials following the discovery that Ogun Samast, the 17 year old held in the murder of Hrant Dink, was from Trabzon. http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/5856630.asp?gid=74 Video clip in Turkish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtSpTnIraL0...ser&search= Another one in Turkish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaGREhM6yEY...ted&search= This is sad; these people are assimilating the assassination of Hrant Dink to a soccer match.

And the barbarous acts continue: Attackers stone Turkish church 28 Jan 2007 15:32:31 GMT Source: Reuters STANBUL, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Unidentified attackers threw stones at a church in the northern Turkish town of Samsun on Sunday in the latest attack on Christians in predominantly Muslim Turkey, Anatolian news agency said. Windows were broken but Mehmet Orhan Picakcilar, a priest at the Agape Church, was quoted as saying there were no casualties. "This does damage to Turkey. This attack depicts Turkey in a bad way before international public opinion," Picakcilar said. The attack happened hours after a nationalist protester with a handgun made a brief attempt to hijack a commuter ferry in the Dardanelles strait on Saturday. Passengers said he had been angered by pro-Armenian sentiment in Turkey after the Jan. 19 killing of the Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink, which prompted large pro-Armenian protests. Growing nationalism among young people from Turkey's Black Sea towns has come under the spotlight since the teenager suspected of killing Dink and his alleged supporters were found to have come from the town of Trabzon. A Catholic priest was killed in his church in Trabzon last February by a Turkish teenager. The killing was believed to have been part of protests in Islamic countries against cartoons in Danish newspapers that mocked Prophet Mohammad. Christians in secular Turkey -- Armenians, Greeks, Syriacs, Catholics, some Evangelical denominations and Jehovah's Witnesses -- make up less than one percent of the country's 72 million people. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L2838747.htm

Conservatives modify position on Turkey Turkey's state policy of denial continues to serve as a daily affront to all Armenians. by Anthony Wing January 26, 2007 Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay recently modified the Canadian government's official acknowledgement of the 1915 Armenian genocide with a statement of support for the government of Turkey's proposal to establish a joint commission with Armenia to investigate the events of that period. This apparent gesture of goodwill towards conflict resolution between neighbour states admits of an astonishing naiveté that may effectively kill the government's acknowledgement resolution first passed in 2004 by the Liberal government and briefly reaffirmed by the ruling Conservatives. Even a cursory glance behind Turkey's proposal should have been enough to stay the Minister's hand: the government of Turkey, after denying for decades historical responsibility for the organized and bureaucratic extermination of an unarmed Christian Armenian minority by Ottoman Turks (which in recent years featured arrests and show trials for writers mentioning the genocide, including current Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk), first floated the joint-commission idea in 2005. However, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) quickly revealed that this gesture amounted to a further act of aggression: Turkish authorities had sought the help of U.S. scholars to obfuscate the historical record and, the IAGS argued, this spurious scholarship would be used to sabotage such a panel. The IAGS expressed this in a June 2005 letter to the Turkish Government, re-sent nearly a year later: We are dismayed that your government, in asking the Armenian government to establish a so-called objective commission to study the fate of the Armenian people in 1915, is refusing to acknowledge the resolved discourse on the Armenian Genocide in the mainstream international scholarly community outside of Turkey. We are concerned that your request is a political ploy designed to create controversy over the Armenian Genocide when in fact, outside of your government, there is none. Also not open to debate is the government of Turkey's transparent record of human rights abuse. Eager to speed negotiations for terms of accession into the European Union, Turkey officially abolished the death penalty and state torture in a new Penal Code adopted in 2004; however, Amnesty International has since reported that torture and extrajudicial executions have persisted outside official detention centres, largely unchecked by a feeble investigation process. Moreover, persecution of the Kurdish minority in the southeast has not abated, and the 32-year control of an impoverished military colony in the northern third of Cyprus bestows on Ankara the title of sole occupying power in mainland Europe since 1945; indeed, the EU recently suspended membership negotiations over Turkey's latest paltry concessions over the latter issue. Here at home, the Harper government's decision to modify their Armenian genocide acknowledgement was criticized by columnist Jeffrey Simpson, but for a different reason: The Globe and Mail's sophist emeritus disagreed with the acknowledgement in the first place. For some time The New York Times had a policy that the term “Armenian genocide” could be used freely and without qualification; not so the Globe's editorial board, which twice recently allowed Simpson to place quotation marks around the word “genocide” when writing of the event. Moreover in a recent Globe online Q&A, Simpson appeared to argue simultaneously that 1) the events of 1915 are a matter for genuine debate and 2) Canada should ignore 1). But in the case of 1), I am in agreement with Simpson, albeit on very different terms: Rafael Lemkin, international law professor and U.S. War Department adviser during WWII, coined the term “genocide,” later furnishing a definition in his 1944 work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. His proposal that the neologism enter language as a violation of international law was adopted by jurists at the Nuremberg trials and thereafter by the United Nations General Assembly. Appearing on U.S. national television in 1949, Lemkin was the first to call what happened to the Armenians “genocide.” Earlier he had elaborated on components of the term in an address to the Geneva Conventions: The objectives of a [genocidal] plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Applying this calculus today, Turkey's state policy of denial continues to serve as a daily affront to all Armenians. Could it not therefore be put that zero acknowledgement of historical responsibility will postpone indefinitely the reconciliation and healing process for the affected group, thus perpetuating several of the articles of genocide as defined in the Geneva Conventions? This may well be the matter for genuine debate, not the “question” of whether the massacres occurred at all. As for Canada, there is absolutely no place for credulity as we begin to emerge as a world leader in 21st century international jurisprudence. The United States government sponsored and encouraged Rafael Lemkin's efforts to entrench genocide into international law, yet in 1994 the U.S. proxy at the United Nations helped block a resolution to assist the UN Rwanda mission on the eve of the 100-day genocide of close to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus. This avoidable event may have occasioned the demise of peacekeeping, and after an intervening period of UN confusion and indecision it was Canada who seized the initiative with their support of the “Responsibility To Protect” commission. The latter's 2001 report provided a template for the policy behind Canada's current Afghan deployment, but if our leaders still hope to maintain a conscientious world leadership in foreign policy, missteps of this magnitude must be addressed. The world's failure to remember the Armenian genocide was an inspiration for both Adolf Hitler, who borrowed its techniques of cattle-car transport and pit-burial for the Final Solution, and Rafael Lemkin, who made an indivisible contribution to human rights, international law and language in the wake of the Holocaust. If the Canadian government supports the formation of a joint commission to look into “genocide allegations,” then we should immediately appoint a committee to investigate whether the 1922 discovery of insulin has really been of any help to diabetics. The Foreign Affairs Minister must interrupt his human rights posturing with China to condemn forthwith Turkey's latest attempt to avert the world's gaze from the 20th century's first genocide. Anthony Wing is a Toronto writer. Source: http://www.rabble.ca/everyones_a_critic.shtml?x=56671

Well that was the title of the first few reports about the murder. I wanted to change it anyway, thanks.

I've read that they're socially close to Russian Azerbaijanis.