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ber 2012 / REUTERSTensions are running high between autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad after both sent troops to reinforce areas along their disputed internal border, bringing them close to confrontation in their long-running feud.
Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
If it were possible to clone prominent Turkish commentator Orhan Kemal Cengiz and make multiple copies of his kind heart and righteous conscience, the Turkish government would then be able to come to grips with Armenian demands from Turkey in a humane and just manner.
Cengiz visited Germany recently with a group of Turkish journalists and human rights activists at the invitation of the European Academy of Berlin with the financial support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Turkish visitors participated in a conference titled, “Difficult Heritage of the Past,” on how today’s Germans face crimes committed by Nazis.
After returning to Turkey, Cengiz wrote two poignant articles published in Today’s Zaman: “Can Germany be a model for Turkey in confrontation with past atrocities?” and “Turkey and Germany’s past atrocities.”
Cengiz confesses that before his visit, he thought that “Germans were forced to look at their troubled past by external powers who had them on their knees after World War II.” He wonders whether Germany could serve as a model for other countries in facing their past voluntarily. To his surprise, the Turkish columnist discovered that even though Germans had begun confronting their past after a devastating defeat, they were determined to create a new country “based on an endless process of remembering, commemorating and confronting the past.”
The righteous Turkish writer was “extremely impressed and touched” seeing a brick wall in a Berlin kindergarten. Every year teachers would ask students to identify themselves with Jews who once lived in the neighborhood before being killed by the Nazis. The students would then write the Jewish names on bricks and put them on top of each other forming a wall. It became clear to him that “remembering has become a part of daily life in Germany.”
Cengiz hopes that someday Turkish “children would do a similar thing. I imagined children in İstanbul building a wall by writing on bricks the names of Armenian intellectuals who were taken from their homes on April 24, 1915 and never came back again.” He is convinced that “confronting the past is a clear state policy here in Germany. Museums, exhibitions and the school curriculum all show how the state apparatus invested in this endeavor. So little by little I started to realize that Turkey can significantly benefit from the German experience on this difficult terrain of confrontation with the past.”
In his second article, Cengiz boldly describes the 19th and 20th centuries as “centuries of genocide,” which included the Armenian Genocide. He explains that contrary to the mass crimes committed by other nations, the ones perpetrated by Germans and Turks were against “neighbors with whom they had lived side-by-side for centuries. I think this alone is the most distinctive element of the German and Turkish example. … When you kill your neighbors, it creates a black hole, a gap in your national identity.”
In seeking to emulate the German experience, Cengiz hopes that he would see memorials erected in Turkey about “Armenian massacres, pogroms targeting Jews and Greeks, massacres targetingAlevis and others. When Turkey starts to remember and commemorate past atrocities, the Topography of Terror Museum, which is built on a former Nazi headquarters, the Jewish Museum of Berlin and others might be good examples to follow…. Turkey has a lot to learn from Germany in coming to terms with past atrocities.”
While Turkey’s acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide is long overdue, the actual process of reconciliation could begin by removing the names of the Turkish masterminds of the Armenian Genocide from schools, streets and public squares throughout Turkey. The Turkish government should also dismantle the shameful mausoleum of Talaat in Istanbul and replace it with a monument dedicated to the Armenian Genocide. It should also pay billions of dollars in compensation to descendants of Armenian victims, similar to German payments to Jews. Most importantly, Turkey should return to Armenians the occupied territories of Western Armenia!
Germany too, as Turkey’s close ally in World War I, has an obligation to Armenians — theacknowledgment of its role in the Armenian Genocide. It should apologize and make amends to the Armenian people. Only then would Germans fully deserve the praise heaped upon them by OrhanCengiz for honestly facing their past.
While Turkey’s genocidal precedent served as model for Nazi Germany in committing the Holocaust, it is now Germany’s turn to become a role model to Turkey for reconciling with its genocidal past.
Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
December 11, 2012 | 12:11
The ArmTech 2012 congress got underway in San Jose, California, and a delegation led by Armenia’s PM Tigran Sargsyan likewise attended the official opening of the event.
“The ArmTech congress plays an important role in Armenia’s economy. It enables to discuss and outline the prospects for the development of our Information Technology [IT],” Sargsyan noted in his opening remarks. He stressed that the IT sector is at the focus of the Government of Armenia, and that an approximately 25-percent annual IT growth is recorded in the country in recent times.
“We have certain competitive advantages in the region. First and foremost, that is the high level of education of the population. In the Soviet years, the IT itself was one of Armenia’s economic specialties,” Sargsyan said.
With respect to the ongoing development in this sector, Armenia’s Premier underscored the role of the large Armenian community in California. He stressed that the Armenian diaspora has a tremendous potential in establishing contacts with the world’s largest IT companies and leading centers and properly representing Armenia.
Tigran Sargsyan informed that over 350 IT organizations currently operate in Armenia, 107 of them represent foreign companies, including 50 organizations that function with American capital. The total turnover of Armenia’s IT sector is $205 million, whose $120 million are exports. Also, 6,760 people are currently employed in the country’s IT sector, but this number continues to grow.
“There are numerous education-related matters in the Government’s action plan, and today we are obligated to make a significant contribution to the education of future generations,” Armenia’s PM stated.
In conclusion, Tigran Sargsyan expressed a conviction that the ArmTech 2012 congress will contribute to the development of Armenia’s IT sector.
Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Leader Selahattin Demirtaş said yesterday they knew there had been secret meetings prior to the actualization of Kurdistan Communities Union’s (KCK) operations and that they had received minutes from these meetings.
Demirtaş spoke to members of the press before the Central Enforcement Committee meeting that took place in the Kayapınar BDP district headquarters in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır yesterday.
He said that some 80 BDP members were detained in the eastern province of Batman and the southeastern provinces of Siirt and Mardin in the last two days.
“They should have no doubt that one day the [ruling party] will give account for its direct interference with legislation and the constitutional crimes they are committing.”
“We know it very well where the so-called KCK operations are being carried out and where the decisions for these operations are being made. Those who are preparing and staging the KCK operations will face charges one day just like those who attempted the Ergenekon coup were disclosed with their meeting and preparation minutes.”
‘PM intimidated by hope for solution’
Demirtaş said the hope for solution that emerged after the end of the hunger strikes intimidated Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The BDP leader also said they submitted a constitutional change petition to the parliament for annulment of all political immunities apart from the parliamentary chair immunity and they had no choice outside talk, dialog and negotiation for the establishment of peace.
It is little likely that Azerbaijan would dare to send a spy drone to its border with Iran, Mansour Haghighat-Pour, Vice Chairman of Majlis National Security and Foreign 
Policy Committee, said, commenting on the Iranian media reports suggesting that Azerbaijan is using drones to carry out spying missions along its border with Iran, Arannews.ir reported.
We will remind that Amin Partu, post-graduate student at Tehran University Political Science Chair, wrote in an article in IRAS recently, “Azerbaijan bought military equipment worth about $3.6 billion during the past two years. Most of the equipment was purchased from Israel. In 2012 alone, Israel and Azerbaijan signed a deal on purchase of military equipment worth about $1.9 billion. Besides, Azerbaijan announced its intention to produce warships in 2013. Surely, Israel will have a big role in this project.”
The Iranian analyst named the types of ammunition, which Azerbaijan purchased from Israel over the past years, and asked, “What threat is Azerbaijan going to fight using this military equipment?”
“Baku states that this military equipment is directed against Armenia. But studies by military experts show that it is directed against Iran or Turkmenistan because Armenia has no outlet to sea. So, Azerbaijan’s anti-ship rockets are only directed against Iran and Turkmenistan,” the author concluded.
Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan on Saturday began his working visit to the United States, which will last until December 12, Armenian government’s press service said.
On the first day of his visit, Tigran Sargsyan visited the California Institute of Technology, where he met with Institute’s president Jean-Lou Chameau.
During the meeting, the Armenian PM presented the reforms implemented in Armenian educational field as well as the current process of international accreditation of Armenian universities. The sides also discussed the perspectives of bilateral cooperation as well as issues related to IT sector in Armenia.
Adam Schiff, member of the United States House of Representatives, who was attending the meeting, said that Armenia has sufficient potential to become the Silicon Valley of the Caucasus.
Tigran Sargsyan also met with Institute’s graduates and students of Armenian descent as well as with U.S.-based Armenian scholars.
Avedis Hadjian is a writer based in New York. He has published in the Los Angeles Times, CNN, Bloomberg News and other newspapers and news sites. This article is an excerpt from his book “A Secret Nation: The Hidden Armenians of Turkey,” due in fall 2013
“Who are you? This is Turkey. Do you know what Turkey is?” a man asked me, his thick glasses magnifying the fear in his eyes. He belonged to the little-known Armenian 
Gypsy community, in the Kurtuluş district of Istanbul. I was at a teahouse where Armenian Gypsy men usually gathered, trying to interview them. And he was right. I didn’t know what Turkey is. But Turkey, and many Armenians themselves, didn’t know who he was either.
In Turkey, there lives a mysterious minority known as the “secret Armenians.” They have been hiding in the open for nearly a century. Outwardly, they are Turks or Kurds, but the secret Armenians are actually descendants of the survivors of the 1915 Genocide, who stayed behind in Eastern Anatolia after forcibly converting to Islam. Some are now devout Muslims, others are Alevis –generally considered an offshoot of Shia Islam, even though that would be an inaccurate description by some accounts–, and a few secretly remain Christian, especially in the area of Sassoun, where still there are mountain villages with secret Armenian populations. Even though Armenian Gypsies wouldn’t strictly qualify as Secret Armenians, they share many traits with the latter, including reluctance or fear to reveal their identity even to fellow Armenians.
No one knows whether the secret Armenians are in the thousands or the few million. For the most part, they fear coming out. “Turkey is still a dangerous place for 
Armenians,” one secret Armenian woman from Palu told me.
The secret Armenians do not mingle with the other, “open” Armenians, of the active but dwindling community in Istanbul. Most don’t talk to strangers. Breaking taboos in Turkey can be deadly. After all, they remember what happened to Hrant Dink. Dink, an Armenian-Turkish journalist, was shot dead in Istanbul in 2007 by a young man, enraged by his unforgiving pen on controversial issues ranging from the Armenian Genocide to modern Turkey’s founding father, Kemal Atatürk.
It is not easy to define who is a secret Armenian. Some refuse to be called Armenian, even though they admit their parents or grandparents were so, but sometimes, often against their own will, they are still considered Armenian by other Turks or Kurds, unconvinced about their conversion. Some are known to be Armenian to their neighbors and don’t hide it, while others keep it even from their own children, some of whom find out from other kids, who taunt them for being Armenian.
Rafael Altıncı, the last Armenian in Amasya, was raised a Christian and for one year studied in Istanbul at the Üsküdar Surp Haç Armenian High School, where Hrant Dink was also a student at the time. For all practical purposes however, he’s a Muslim and is married to a Turkish woman, with whom he has had a daughter raised as a Turk. Still, he considers himself an Armenian.
In the mountains of Mush, Jazo Uzal is the last Armenian in the Armenian village of Nish, four hours of tortuous drive from Bitlis. Mr. Uzal remains a practicing Christian, 
spending the winters in Istanbul, but back in the village he observes the Muslim feasts, including the Ramadan.
For his part, Mehmet Arkan, a lawyer in Diyarbakir, didn’t know his family was Armenian until he got into a fight with a Kurdish kid when was 7 years old and came back home crying, saying he had been called “Armenian.” He soon found out from his father that they were indeed Armenian, though telling anyone outside home was strictly forbidden.
“Ten years ago we would not admit it, but now it’s no longer unsafe in Diyarbakir,” he said in an interview, as the local government is embracing its Armenian past, recently restoring the St. Giragos Church and instituting a course in Armenian for beginners. Mr. Arkan feels no less Armenian for being an observant Sunni Muslim.
As my trip in search of secret Armenians was drawing to a close last summer, I experienced a final incident that shed new light on the characters that play out the drama of Turkey every day, a reminder that we are all actors trapped in the plot of history, playing roles most of us haven’t chosen.
I was heading to the Istanbul Airport, where my flight to New York awaited me. I took the metro, and I got off at Lâleli Station for my transfer. After a ten-minute walk, I 
learned that I had disembarked at the wrong station. Then, trying not to panic, I also realized that I had left a four-foot tube on the tram, wrapped in old newspapers, containing valuable and potentially troublesome material: a map of Tünceli, a rebellious province, with the name “TÜRKİYE” torn off. Inside the cylindrical tube, I had also placed compromising notes written in Turkish of an interview with a Zaza activist. (Zazas are a branch of the Kurdish people who are in the majority in Tünceli.) But what I really wanted was what I had rolled inside the map: four precious, autographed photos by Armenian-Turkish photo-reporter Ara Güler.
I debated whether I should try to recover the tube. I knew that should anyone unwrap the map, the contents could get me into trouble with the police. I was also aware of how slim the chances were of getting back an item lost in the mass transit system of a city of 13 million people.
The map of Tünceli had been given to me by the Zaza activist, who had torn off the name of Turkey from it –fragments from the E in “TÜRKİYE” were still visible at the 
bottom of the map, looking like stripes of a tattered flag. The name of Tünceli had been angrily crossed out in thick, black sharpie, and atop it the activist had written the province’s old name, Dersim. “Dersim is not Turkey,” the activist said.
Turks mention “Dersim” and “1938” in the same breath, the way people elsewhere speak of the Olympic Games. Nineteen thirty-eight was the year of a massacre by Turkish military forces sent to suppress an uprising. Although Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had recently apologized for the massacre, calling it “the biggest tragedy in our history,” the name “Dersim” still has subversive resonances. Any Turkish police officer looking at the defaced map would have no difficulty getting the point. And it would easily pass for an “insult to the Turkish nation,” as defined in Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, punishable by up to three years in prison.
But that was small beer compared to what the notes revealed. During an interview conducted in a building facing the Turkish military base in Dersim, this Zaza activist had told me, as recorded in the notes:
“You are Armenian. This land has been waiting for you. Come and claim back your land. Get a gun, and go to the mountains to fight. If your wife doesn’t join you, we’ll get you one of our women, and she’ll fight alongside you.”
Dersim probably has the highest concentration of secret Armenians, a topic that obsessed Hrant Dink, who claimed that there are about 2 million of them in Turkey. And, 
in a way, Dersim and secret Armenians are connected to Dink’s murder.
In an article published in his newspaper Agos, Dink claimed Sabiha Gökçen, the first female combat pilot in both Turkey and the world, and Atatürk’s adoptive daughter, was an Armenian orphan from the 1915 genocide, Khatun Sebilciyan.
Thus, she was a secret Armenian. Gökçen is considered a Turkish hero, in no small part due to her role in suppressing the Dersim uprising in 1938, strafing rebel positions at close range. Dink was murdered in the furious aftermath that followed his story on Gökçen’s alleged Armenian origin and the tragic irony of an Armenian genocide orphan, with the identity of a Turk, taking part in a massacre of Kurds, only two decades after the Genocide.
Back at the tramway station in Istanbul, I went to see the stationmaster to report the lost map. A polite, solemn young man, he spoke with a thick Eastern Anatolian accent, his K’s turning into “Kh’s.”
After taking my report, the stationmaster invited me for tea. Someone dropped by to greet him. The station master’s friend wanted to know where I was from. 
“Argentina,” I replied, but he wasn’t buying any of it and kept pressing me about my origins. Why did I speak Turkish? Why did I look “almost like a Turk?” I insisted that I am Argentine. “Yes, of course, I’m Japanese,” he said with a sour smile. “You loved Turkey, didn’t you?” he asked me and walked away without waiting for my reply. As I watched him leave, I remembered that a few months earlier, Argentina had received unflattering coverage in the Turkish press over formally recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Many Turks are aware of Argentina’s sizable Armenian community.
A few minutes later, a young man in sunglasses, a black T- shirt, and trousers, flashed a police badge and passed through the turnstile. He reminded me of a similarly dressed plainclothes agent who had given me trouble in Dersim, after I walked out of the building where the Zaza activist had given me the map. The man did not approach me.
Then, the telephone rang inside the supervisor’s booth. “They found the map,” he said stoically, staring at me through his dark sunglasses. “It will be here in fifteen minutes.” I began to steel myself for a trip to the police station.
Indeed, the tram pulled over fifteen minutes later. The driver quickly stepped outside and handed the tube with the map to the stationmaster. The stationmaster walked up to me, shook my hand, and wished me a safe trip home –“wherever that is,” he said. He returned the tube with the map to me unopened, the old Hürriyet newspapers rolled along the outer side, with a photograph of Prime Minister Erdoğan sporting an angry expression and wagging his finger at God knows what.
Avedis Hadjian is a writer based in New York. He has published in the Los Angeles Times, CNN, Bloomberg News and other newspapers and news sites. This article is an excerpt from his book “A Secret Nation: The Hidden Armenians of Turkey,” due in fall 2013
By:
| ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ o.cengiz@todayszaman.com |
The government has introduced a new institution which we all welcomed at first. I am talking about the newly established ombudsman.
However, t
he government’s choice to fill the role has shaken all the country’s democrats from head to toe. It’s like a bad joke; it is an insult to anyone with a little intelligence in this country. Our conscience was deeply wounded with this appointment.
The government appointed, through parliamentary election, one of those judges from the Supreme Court of Appeals who voted in favor of punishing Hrant Dink under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) for the infamous article that brought about charges of “insulting Turkishness” to be the ombudsman. Actually, later on I learned that he was not only one of the judges who voted to sentence Hrant, but he, in particular, was one of those who actively lobbied to get this punishment. This former judge has taken his oath before Parliament and will very soon take office as Turkey’s first ombudsman.
I do not know if you remember all this time later what it was that lead to Hrant’s murder. He was first labeled an Armenian who insulted Turks, and then, of course, became an open target and was shot down in front of the Armenian Agos weekly in 2007. It is such a sad, painful story to remember.
Everything started with a media campaign. Hrant had uttered some words that made some circles extremely angry; he said Sabiha Gökçen, Atatürk’s adopted daughter, was actually an Armenian. His words made headlines.
Then some lawyers and some notorious figures brought lawsuits against Hrant by cherry- picking some of his words from one of the pieces in a long series of articles he published in the Agos, where he was editor-in-chief.
In this series of articles, Hrant was speaking to Armenians and advising them to get rid of hatred of Turks in order to emancipate themselves from the chains of the past. The Turkish judiciary, however, read his words in a completely distorted manner. He just said “replace the poisoned blood associated with the Turk with fresh blood associated with Armenia.” Both the court of first instance and the court of appeals evaluated this sentence as if Hrant was insulting Turkish blood, and he was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence.
I think what Hrant said was unmistakably clear. Interestingly, back then “expert opinions” requested by the courts reaffirmed that Hrant’s words had nothing to do with insulting Turkishness, but the court of appeals just wanted to understand his words as an insult under Article 301.
And now we have one of those judges who punished Hrant as the nation’s ombudsman. How on earth can a judge who has the capacity to misunderstand these words that were so clear be relied upon to understand the true meaning of the words of citizens who have problems with state institutions? Is his appointment as ombudsman a reward for his deliberate misunderstanding of Hrant’s words? Has he been appointed by the government for that very purpose, namely, to make sure that he will always misunderstand the words of citizens when they have a conflict with the state?
It is hard to believe that the government chose one person out of 70 million in Turkey to be ombudsman and that this person happened to be the one who sent Hrant Dink to his death by deliberately misinterpreting his statements.
In my view, with this move alone, the government cancelled out 1,000 good things they have done, like they killed our hopes for the future of this country.
Turkish police detained dozens of people across Turkey on Saturday, including Siirt Mayor Selim Sadak, in operations carried out against the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), which prosecutors say is a political umbrella organization that includes the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization.Siirt Mayor Sadak was among about 80 people detained in simultaneous operations in three southeastern cities, police said. The operations were ordered by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutors’ Office in Batman, Mardin and Siirt. Many of the detainees are reportedly local officials from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).
The detainees were taken to local police departments for questioning. The BDP said in a statement police operations were continuing.
The KCK investigation started in December 2009 and a large number of suspects, including several mayors from the BDP, have been detained in the case. The suspects are accused of various crimes, including membership in a terrorist organization, aiding and abetting a terrorist organization and attempting to destroy the country’s unity and integrity. The suspects include mayors and municipal officials from the pro-Kurdish BDP.
The BDP says the raids are politically motivated and designed to stifle the Kurdish movement, but the prosecution and terrorism experts maintain that the KCK is a criminal organization whose purpose is to create an alternative state mechanism.
The latest raids coincide with efforts in the capital Ankara to lift the parliamentary immunity of 10 lawmakers, nine of them from the BDP. This would pave the way to prosecute them, in a move that would weaken Kurdish representation in parliament and may fuel tension in the southeast.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last week said he favored stripping the Kurdish MPs of their immunity after they were filmed in August embracing armed PKK terrorists who had stopped their convoy in the southeast.
BDP deputies are often under investigation, accused of links to the PKK, but are protected from prosecution while they are in office. The BDP denies any outright ties to the PKK.
Erdoğan has pledged greater Kurdish political and cultural freedoms since his party came to power in 2002 while applying increasing military pressure on the PKK and, occasionally, the BDP, which he calls the PKK’s “political extension.”
Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) Executive Director Aram Hamparian expressed regret at the latest statement by the Heads of Delegation of the 
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group Co-Chair countries in Dublin, Ireland, this week which “demonstrated an artificial even-handedness toward Azerbaijan and Armenia, with no mention of the ongoing Aliyev government’s aggression against Armenia and glorification of anti-Armenian attacks, including the praise and promotion of convicted Azerbaijani axe-murderer Ramil Safarov.”
“The Heads of Delegation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries do a disservice to the cause of peace by, once again, seeking to impose a false symmetry on the Nagorno Karabakh situation,” Hamparian said.
“For all their patently political and artificial attempts at evenhandedness, the facts on the ground are undeniable: Azerbaijan is the party that started, and lost, a war aimed at destroying democracy in Artsakh and preventing self-determination for the people of this proud Republic. It is Azerbaijan that regularly commits fatal cross-border attacks, and is threatening to use its rapidly expanding arsenal of arms to restart its open aggression and plunge the region into conflict. It is Baku, not Yerevan, that is rejecting international calls to pull back its snipers and deploy more OSCE observers, and that is vetoing the participation of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh – the key stakeholder in any enduring settlement – from full participation in the peace process.”
“It is an act of undeserved charity to the Azerbaijani regime of Ilham Aliyev to call on both parties to refrain from acts of enmity, when the record shows that the only state-sponsored incitement to hatred has come from Baku – through both words and actions. Examples include Azerbaijan’s cross-border, fatal attacks on Armenia during Secretary Clinton’s visit this summer to the region, as well as the Azerbaijani military’s documented destruction and desecration of the Armenian cemetery in Djulfa. More recently, of course, was President Ilham Aliyev’s pardon and promotion of an unapologetic axe-murderer, Ramil Safarov, who is, today, hailed as a hero in Azerbaijan for killing an Armenian officer, Gurgen Margaryan, while he slept, during a 2004 NATO training exercise in Hungary,” he said.
“Inventing a pretend parity between the parties may serve some political purpose, but, sadly, such contrived statements by the OSCE Minsk Group do nothing to advance the cause of peace,” Hamparian concluded.