phantom22

More about the involvement of the NSS. Turkish Scholar Insists On His Innocence In Court By Emil Danielyan A Turkish scholar facing up to eight years in prison for trying to take old books out of Armenia insisted on his innocence in a Yerevan court on Friday as prosecutors pressed the unusually harsh smuggling charges leveled against him. Yektan Turkyilmaz, who was arrested at Yerevan's Zvartnots airport almost two months ago, pleaded not guilty to the most serious of the accusations and reiterated that he was unaware of an Armenian law that requires a government permission for the export of such books and other `cultural values' from the country. `I did not aim to violate the laws of the Republic of Armenia or to inflict any damage on Armenia or the Armenian people,' the 33-year-old Ph.D. student of the U.S. Duke University told a district court in Yerevan hearing the controversial case. He admitted having made some `mistakes' but said they were not intentional. However, the trial prosecutor, Koryun Piloyan, stated in his opening remarks that Turkyilmaz knew about the legal requirement and lied to Armenian customs officers as he checked for a Yerevan-Istanbul flight on June 17. `He committed a crime defined by Section 2 of Article 215 of the Armenian Criminal Code,' Piloyan said, referring to a clause that calls for between four and eight years' imprisonment for the smuggling of cultural artifacts, narcotics, firearms and even weapons of mass destruction. The National Security Service (NSS), the Armenian successor to the Soviet-era KGB which conducted the pre-trial inquiry, confiscated from the scholar 89 Armenian-language books published more than 50 years ago. The prosecution estimates their total value at 2.1 million drams ($4,600). Seven of the books, including two 17th century Bibles, are said to be particularly rare. That the ex-KGB was instrumental in Turkyilmaz's arrest and prosecution was confirmed at the trial. It emerged that NSS officers stopped Turkyilmaz and had customs officers double-check his baggage just as he was about to board the Istanbul-bound plane. It is not clear what prompted them to do that. The Turkish national had already passed customs and passport control and checked in his two suit cases where most of the books were later found stashed. The very fact of NSS agents checking a foreign passenger is extraordinary in itself. Sources familiar with the case told RFE/RL earlier that the security agency initially suspected Turkyilmaz of espionage but lacked the evidence to prosecute him on relevant charges. Piloyan refused to comment on the claims. The prosecutor also said NSS officers involved in the arrest will not testify at the trial. The court cross-examined instead several traders from a popular souvenir market in Yerevan from whom Turkyilmaz bought the books. They all said they are not quite familiar the existing procedures for the export of artifacts and could not give the buyer appropriate advice. Babken Sakanian, who sold Turkyilmaz the seven most valuable books for a total of $3,200, said he heard about the passage earlier this year of Armenia's Law on the Export and Import of Cultural Values but still has `no idea' about its provisions. The law stipulates that any book printed more than 50 years ago has a high `historical and cultural value' and can not be taken out of Armenia without a written authorization of the Ministry of Culture. The prosecution maintains that Turkyilmaz was aware of the requirement. Piloyan pointed to the pre-trial testimony by the owner of an antique shop in the city center which the defendant repeatedly visited in June. The man, Armen Khorenian, said in it that he warned Turkyilmaz of the need to have such a permission. But Khorenian appeared to contradict his written account during Friday's cross-examination in the court. `It is very possible that Yektan didn't understand what I meant,' he said. The prosecutor's claims were also in conflict with the court testimony of one of the customs officers that questioned Turkyilmaz at the Zvartnots airport. `It seemed to me that he is not familiar with the law,' Hayk Stepanian said. He added that foreigners generally lack knowledge of Armenian customs regulations.

I may be known in this forum as "the village idiot," or "le fou de roi" (court jester), but here is Raffi Hovannissian agreeing with my earlier premise that holding this Turkish scholar is absolute idiocy and is ruining all we have worked so hard for. The NSS (KGB) had their hand in this fiasco. Someone is very afraid of even a slight thaw in Armenian / Turkish relations. We Armenians in the diaspora should threaten Pres. Kocharian and the ROA authorities that unless they fine and release this scholar, the diaspora gravy train will cease. Obviously the Armenian authorities don't give a damn about the consequences of their idiotic actions. Opposition Leader Shocked By Turkyilmaz Prosecution By Emil Danielyan and Anna Saghabalian Raffi Hovannisian, a prominent Armenian opposition politician, on Friday strongly condemned the arrest and prosecution of Turkish historian Yektan Turkyilmaz, saying that it is dealing a `powerful blow' to the long-running efforts at international recognition of the Armenian genocide. He charged that by seeking to imprison Turkyilmaz on smuggling charges the Armenian authorities have exposed their `false patriotism' and serious problems with the rule of law in the country. `It is hard to imagine a more powerful blow to international affirmation of the Armenian genocide than this trial,' Hovannisian told RFE/RL as he attended the second court hearing on the case in an apparent show of solidarity with the jailed scholar. `In my view, real patriotism means the laws of the Republic of Armenia that deal with smuggling, corruption, espionage and high treason should be enforced equally against all citizens, including the current president, members of his family as well as all the ministers and their relatives,' he said. Turkyilmaz, who researched Ottoman history at the National Archive in Yerevan, was charged with deliberately attempting to smuggle rare Armenian books to Turkey last June. However, even individuals convicted of more serious smuggling have rarely ended up in jail in Armenia. Hence, growing questions about reasons for the unusually harsh punishment sought by the Armenian law-enforcement authorities. Hovannisian, who served as Armenia's first foreign minister in 1991-92 and now leads an opposition party called Zharangutyun (Heritage), believes that the scholar was simply not aware of Armenian customs regulations. `I think Yektan violated the Armenian laws apparently without realizing that,' he said. `Let him and his colleagues know and respect those laws from now on. They must also be free to access our state archive. The matter should not have reached the court in the first place.' Similar arguments have been made by more than 200 Turkish, U.S. and Armenian scholars that have signed an open letter to President Robert Kocharian calling for their colleague's immediate release. Kocharian has still not reacted to the letter. Among its signatories is Richard Hovannisian, the Zharangutyun leader's father and a prominent U.S. historian of Armenian descent. He has even offered to post bail to secure Turkyilmaz's release pending trial. The U.S.-born ex-minister said the authorities not only rejected the offer but also reneged on their pledge to allow his father to visit Turkyilmaz in a maximum security jail in Yerevan. Incidentally, the letter to Kocharian was initiated by prominent Turkish intellectuals who openly challenge Ankara's continuing denial of the Armenian genocide. Turkyilmaz, who is an ethnic Kurd, has also questioned the official Turkish line on the mass killings of Armenians in 1915-1918. Fluent in Armenian, he became last May the first Turkish historian to be granted access to the Armenian archive. `The vast majority of Turks who signed the open letter to President Kocharian have pro-Armenian views,' said Rober Hadeller, editor of Istanbul's Armenian-language `Marmara' daily. `They want the guy to be set free as soon as possible.' Speaking to RFE/RL by phone, Hadeller said he and other prominent Istanbul Armenians agree with their demands. `The crime which he is accused of having committed doesn't seem that serious to us,' he said. `After all, he claims to have bought those books in a market. One is left to wonder if there are some other motives behind this case that are unknown to us.' The Turkish government has not yet officially reacted to its citizen's arrest. But according to the `Marmara' editor, the issue is being increasingly covered by the Turkish press. `Everyone is wondering why the Armenian authorities have resorted to such a strict measure against the first Turkish historian who worked with the Armenian archives,' he said. `The fact that his notes and research documents were also confiscated is seen as the most outrageous.' Hovannisian, meanwhile, suggested that Ankara could exploit the case to substantiate its claims that Yerevan has not opened its genocide-related archives and is hampering independent scholarly research of Armenian history. `In essence, this is a serious propaganda victory for the party denying the genocide and a serious defeat for the people who suffered the genocide,' he said. `As a citizen of this country, I feel ashamed while following the court proceedings.' (RFE/RL photo)

When are WE going to start being supportive of one another? When are we going to emulate the Jews when it comes to assisting one's own? When are we going to stop punishing other Armenians? My cousin dropped out because of what she experienced, not out of shame of being an Armenian.

Ara, Your lastest post brought something to mind. My most successful cousin, who travels in the circles of American CEOs avoids her fellow Armenians like the plague and claims that she is of French extraction.

INSIDE HIGHER EDUCATION-Online Higher Education News Far Away Trial Academics and human rights advocates are warily monitoring a trial unfolding in an Armenian courtroom, in which a Duke University doctoral student from Turkey faces up to eight years in prison for allegedly taking used books out of the country illegally. Scholarly groups, which have waged a campaign to defend him, fear the smuggling charges are a subtext for the Armenian government to crack down on a researcher who is studying a politically sensitive period in the country’s tangled history with Turkey. Yektan Turkyilmaz, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in cultural anthropology at Duke, in May became the first Turkish citizen to request and receive access to the Armenian National Archives, where he sought information for his dissertation, “Imagining ‘Turkey,’ Creating a Nation: The Politics of Geography and State Formation in Eastern Anatolia, 1908-1938.” Turkyilmaz is said to be one of a handful of Turkish scholars who have critically assessed the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman in 1915 and 1916, which Armenians and most scholars have long characterized as genocide, and the means by which Turkey took control of the eastern region of the country known as Anatolia. On June 17, according to the Social Science Research Council (which supports his work with a field grant) and the Science and Human Rights Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, authorities at Yerevan Airport in Armenia pulled Turkilman off an airplane as he prepared to leave the country. They seized in the neighborhood of 100 books that he had bought at secondhand stores and compact disks that contained the fruits of his research in the Armenian archives. He was held without bail for nearly a month before being charged, on July 21, with violating an article in the Armenian Constitution that bars transportation out of the country of drugs, nuclear weapons and certain “raw materials or cultural values” without prior permission. According to the scholarly groups’ reports, Armenian customs regulations require travelers to declare books that are at least 50 years old, as seven of Turkyilmaz’s books reportedly were. Turkyilmaz’s supporters say that if he violated the customs policy, he did so unknowingly, and that he is being far more harshly than the charges warrant. They say that the first few days he was held in custody were dominated by interrogation about his research and his political convictions, and that the Armenian authorities pored over his archival material, which arguably had nothing to do with the alleged book smuggling. The arrest, the AAAS said in its report on the case, “sends a negative signal that Armenia does not encourage independent scholarly research into its history.” More than 200 academics from around the world signed a letter to Armenia’s president urging that Turkmilyaz be released and his archival materials returned. Richard H. Brodhead, the president of Duke, where Turkmilyaz is a John Hope Franklin Institute fellow, sent a similar letter, in which he called Turkmilyaz a “scholar of extraordinary promise.” “His exceptional command of many languages is, I am told, unique among scholars of this period and gives him an equally unique opportunity, therefore, to help illuminate this critical historical period,” Brodhead wrote. He added: “As the leader of a great country, you have the ability to intervene in this matter and to determine the appropriateness of the actions of your government and the Armenian prosecutors and police. You also have the ability to release Mr. Turkyilmaz. With respect, I urge you to do so.” International PEN, the writers’ group, issued an alert on Turkyilmaz’s behalf, and the former presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bob Dole weighed in with a letter. Those pleas did not stop the trial, which began Tuesday but was promptly delayed, according to a report by Radio Free Europe. The agency reported that Turkyilmaz’s new lawyer said he needed more time to familiarize himself with the case, and that a delay was granted until tomorrow. Ayse Gul Altinay, an assistant professor at Istanbul’s Sabanci University and an organizer of the campaign for Turkyilmaz, said in an e-mail message Wednesday that “we are hoping that the trial process will not last long and that Yektan will be freed soon. It is also very important that they return his research material, together with his personal things, when he is released.”

Hrant Dink and a Kurdish lawyer are being tried in Turkey for speaking the truth. There should be international coverage of this injustice. The Turkish press is diseminating information about the scholar being held in Armenia. Time to give them the same medicine for their trials of Dink and the Kurdish lawyer. Armenia is still creating problems for itself by holding this scholar. What Turkey is doing to its citizens should be disseminated around the globe.

Gams, Hopefully the GOOD parts of "Old Yerevan" will not be demolished for the New Yerevan." Do we want a soul less city to result there?

Armen, It is good to see someone here with your sensibilities. All these "dak kloochs" with no sense here. Like eshes with their blinders on, they can't see the big picture.

Gams, There is no love of Turkey or Turks in the US. Americans do not expect anything better from Turkey. It is supported due to its strategic location. Americans know full well what Turkey is. No American ever was shocked by what was showcased in "Midnight Express." Armenia, however, is held to a different standard. It is a Christian nation with European elements. I gets the second highest per capita US aid after Israel. What Americans tolerate from Turkey they will never tolerate from Armenia. Support for Armenia is based upon different premises.

This is all part of the game that they have been playing for many years. Where did they conjure this crap about Armenian Nazis? When did Armenians ever kill Jews like the Turks who let a boatful of Jews drown in the Black Sea during WWII?.

This would have been justified IF it was dropped on military targets, but it was dropped on civilians with little control of what was transpiring at the top. Soldiers expect that they may die in battle. These were just innocent civilians going about their daily business, just like our martyrs.

I have took all the same photos as those in the first link, but I have Zvarnots ruins, Gyumri and the ski colony also. Do the tour guides always follow the same route? I went through these photos very quickly, did I miss those photos?

Arpa, While I respect Bob Dole and his wife, I am clearly on the "other side of the fence politically." I have been honest about my American political leanings, even my being enamored by a Republican, John McCain. His personal story is one that is just awesome. To have spent five years in an enemy prison and to then have risen to become a US Senator. What Karl Rove did to him in South Carolina in 2000 shows what low-lifes are running the country (US). You have finally come out of your Republican closet. You are either an elected Republican Armenian or an ardent supporter of the US Republican Party. I agree that the researcher from Duke Univ. should be released IMMEDIATELY. This is the work of the succesor to the KGB. The Russians who do not want any rapproachement between Armenia and Turkey, lest Armenia drift more into the US sphere of influence.

Senator Bob Dole 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. North Building, 10th Floor Washington, D.C. 20004 August 2, 2005 H.E. Robert Kocharian President Republic of Armenia Yerevan Dear Mr. President: I am writing to urge you to release Mr. Yektan Turkyilmaz, a Duke University graduate student who has been detained in Armenia since June 17. As I understand it, Yektan broke an obscure law that prohibits exportation of any book--regardless of its rarity, historical significance, or value--more than fifty years old. I also understand, however, that he has been jailed without being charged, and that your authorities intend to hold him indefinitely pending the filing of charges and an eventual trial. Duke University officials asked me to intervene because I am a longstanding friend of Armenia and because my wife, Senator Elizabeth Dole, is an alumna and former trustee of the university. Elizabeth and I remain prominent supporters of your country, but the issues raised by Yektan's detention go beyond our ties to Armenia and past support by raising questions about Armenia's democratic progress and commitment to the rule of law. Yektan's detention would seem to highlight problems cited in numerous human rights reports about Armenia, including those of Freedom House and the U.S. State Department. Freedom House, upon which Members of Congress rely to evaluate requests for U.S. aid, does not rank Armenia as a democracy, and further lowered its already unflattering "partly free" rating last year due to your government's mistreatment of opposition leaders and supporters. Your detention of Yektan for seven weeks on any grounds would draw attention to failings in Armenia's democratic evolution. To detain him on grounds as dubious as these calls into question Armenia's commitment to democracy in the first place. Yesterday, I was pleased to learn that Dr. Vartan Gregorian has offered to post bail for Yektan, but allowing bail only addresses the symptoms resulting from the larger issues at stake in this case. I urge you to investigate the actions of your government, prosecutors and police and release Yektan at once. I also urge you to ask your legislature to examine this strange law, which, if not unique in the world, is certainly unique in the community of free nations. Your treatment of Yektan makes Armenia look bad--with good reason. Armenia has many friends in the United States, but we cannot and will not defend the indefensible. Thank you for your consideration, and good luck in your continuing service to the people and nation of Armenia. Sincerely, BOB DOLE cc: Ambassador John Evans U.S. Embassy 18 Marshal Bagramyan Yerevan, Armenia Facsimile: 011-3741-52-0800 Armenian National Committee of America Mr. Aram Hamparian, Executive Director 888 17th St., N.W., Suite 904 Washington, D.C. 20006 Facsimile: 202-775-5648 Armenian Assembly of America Mr. Bryan Ardouny, Executive Director 1140 19th St., N.W., Suite 600 Washington, D.C. 20036 Facsimile: 202-638-4904

You are all missing the point. It IS the woman who decides it is time for the question to be popped! She then creates the general circumstances. The best place for the guy to ask is in a beautiful setting-at the beach at sunset, in a beautiful natural mountain setting or in botanical gardens. No guy should be stupid enough to ask UNLESS he already knows the answer will be yes. Any guy who doesn't already know the answer is an imbecile.

Reminds me when the local Der Hayr informed me that as a HYE Pochcagan I was not welcome to participate in the activites of a young person's group that happened to meet in the church basement unless I joined the church. Mind you, I was not an officer or seeking to be of this organization. It was an organization for young adults and I was participating in this social group.

Sure is! There was a Jewish kid in my high school with that surname, except the "s" was a "z."

Skhara, The construction crew were clearly negligent here. You are very lucky, but something seems terribly wrong here. Obviously, the standard procedures that are supposed to be followed by the construction crew were not being followed. Last week I called the police because a large truck working adjacent to a cemetery had parked in a traffic lane. No lights blinking, no cones, no flashers. NOTHING. This was in a traffic lane where the speed limit is 40 MPH. Perhaps the cemetary was looking for business.

What is transpiring in Armenia is no different than what is transpring in other parts of the world. Yes, much of the Soviet architecture is substandard and hideously ugly. The new buildings are a sign of a new age for Armenia. However, much of the Czarist-era architecture is very beautiful and brings a sense of European culture to Armenia. Unfortunately, much of this is also falling to the wrecking ball. Armenia could learn from France and England in this regard.

Ara, It is called CONTROL. Our community has always been in the hands of a few. My ancestors were powerful but benevolent. That is a rare quality among the powerful. Just look at the situation in Armenia. A few nor harousts control everything while Phd's sell trinckets in the marketplace for a few drams.

This is the work of the KGB, still active in Armenia but under a different name. Such idiocy. When I went to Armenia the Russian border guards scrutined me. They could not believe that a man my age could look like a youngster. There are some in the Russian hierarchy who do not want to see any rapproachement between Armenians and Turks. That would mean that Armenia would drift toward the West and come more under the sphere of influence of Turkey and the US. How many parents are happy when their children leave home? They are very comfortable that Armenia is "Russiya-in pechin dage."

The Turks are teaching them their ways. They take the bones sitting in the farm fields that every old Turk knows are those of "Ermeni" and claim that they are of massacred Turks. They know what the Turks and themseves are doing to Armenian cultural relics, so they turn around and claim that the Armenians are doing it to them. It is the same game. Who is supporting these bastards in the US? Who is supporting these bastards in Europe? Vote them out of office!

Congratulations, Lions!

Are you saying that the reason the Conquering Turks reached Vienna and Northern Spain is that Christianity weakens the resolve against invaders? Ditto for Atilla the Hun?

Zartonk, You forget that the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament are rarely followed by Christian leaders. There is a disjunct between these teachings and implementation. Please stop fooling yourself and trying to fool others.