December 16 marks the 11th anniversary of destruction of 2,000 Djulfa khachkars
On the 11th anniversary of Azerbaijan’s unpunished destruction of the world’s largest medieval Armenian cemetery, the Djulfa Virtual Memorial and Museum commends ongoing initiatives to rebuild the 2,000 sacred cross-stones (khachkars) of Djulfa and calls for measures to prevent similar acts of cultural genocide in Artsakh.
Armenian communities and their supporters around the world have responded to the December 2005 destruction of Djulfa by erecting dozens of replica khachkars in many corners of the world, including on the prominent grounds of the Colorado State Capitol in the United States of America.
A groundbreaking project to recreate the entire cemetery through holographic technology is being pursued by the Australian Catholic University, albeit it is scheduled to discontinue in 2017 due to unmet fundraiser goals.
Reactions to Djulfa’s destruction have also contributed to the development of satellite archaeology. The first American Association for the Advancement of Science remote investigation of a human rights violation case that concerned cultural monuments was that of Djulfa, conducted in late 2009. This approach is widely used today for preventive and documentary monitoring of cultural properties threatened by ISIL and other terrorist organizations.
The eleventh anniversary of Djulfa’s destruction is also a cause for grave concern regarding the vast medieval Armenian heritage in Artsakh – the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh. Its hundreds of medieval churches and other Christian monuments would likely be targeted for total destruction should Azerbaijan gain control – through force or negotiation – any of the Artsakh regions that were outside the Soviet boundaries of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast.
Azerbaijan’s April 2016 Four Day War against Artsakh, during which Azeri forces beheaded captured Armenian soldiers and mutilated elderly civilians in Talish, demonstrated yet again the oil-rich dictatorship’s determination to ethnically cleanse indigenous Christian communities in the Caucasus. Therefore, we call on the twin states of the Armenian homeland – Armenia and Artsakh, international bodies, as well as academic communities around the world to take proactive measures to protect the vast medieval Armenian heritage of Artsakh.
Founded in 2007, the Djulfa Virtual Memorial and Museum (www.Djulfa.com) documents the intentional destruction of the largest medieval Armenian cemetery at Djulfa (Old Jugha, Culfa) in the exclave of Nakhichevan (Naxçıvan), Republic of Azerbaijan. For more information, visit Djulfa.com and FB.com/SilencedStones.
The video compilation below are satellite images of a vandalized medieval cemetery at the Iranian-Azerbaijani border called “The New Tears of Araxes” and produced by Simon Maghakyan.
Barbaros Leylani during a demonstration on April 9, 2016 in Stockolm made anti-Armenian remarks (Photo: isvecpostasi.com)
STOCKOLM, Sweden (Panorama.am)—The Stockholm District Court made a formal judgement on the case of the former Deputy Chairman of the Turkish National Association of Sweden Barbaros Leylani, who made xenophobic, anti-Armenian statements containing clear expressions of incitement to violence, hatred and racial discrimination, website of the regional socio-political newspaper Sydsvenskan reports.
Besides, the court sentenced Leylani to fine in an amount equal to his 40-day income.
According to Arshak Gavafyan, Chairman of the Armenian National Committee of Sweden, the court’s decision was too lenient.
An anti-Armenian demonstration was organized by the Coordination Center of Azerbaijani Associations in Sweden in the square Sergels, Stockholm, on Saturday, April 9 where over 100 people participated. Representatives of local Azerbaijani and Turkish organizations were among the protesters. The Armenian embassy in Sweden reported in a statement that during the demonstration, the vice chairman of the Coordination Center of Turkish Associations in Sweden, Barbaros Leylani, made a speech in Turkish coming up with anti-Armenian and nationalistic statements.
“It is time for uniting the Turkish nation. The Turks will wake up putting an end to the Armenian dogs. Death to the Armenian dogs! Death! Death!” Barbaros Leylani stated. It was noted that the protesters chanted his remarks.
Leylani’s speech was widely spread throughout Sweden and as a result, the reaction of the central media followed.
Swedish MP Fredrik Malm and the chairman of the Coordination Center of Armenian Associations, Karlen Mansuryan, condemned such aggressive statements commenting the demonstration and Leylani’s statements on air.
Dagens Nyheter reported that according to Simon Sahakyan, the secretary of the Armenian Academic Association in Sweden, Leylani’s statements reflect the Turkish authorities’ position led by the president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He reminded the audience of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Turkey and highlighted that this historical fact has already been recognized by many states despite Turkey’s resistance.
On April 11, short after backlash about his remarks, Leylani resigned from his position of vice president of the Turkish National Association of Sweden.
Donald Trump and Mike Pence met on Dec. 14 tech industry leaders, including, from left, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Alphabet Chief Executive Larry Page and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. (Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (CNBC)—Engineers and employees from major tech companies — including Google, IBM, Slack, and Stripe — have pledged never to build a database of people based on their religious beliefs.
A group of employees at major tech companies have signed a pledge refusing to help build a Muslim registry. The pledge states that signatories will advocate within their companies to minimize collection and retention of data that could enable ethnic or religious targeting under the Trump administration, to fight any unethical or illegal misuse of data, and to resign from their positions rather than comply.
The group describes themselves as “engineers, designers, business executives, and others whose jobs include managing or processing data about people.”
“We, the undersigned, are employees of tech organizations and companies based in the United States. We are engineers, designers, business executives, and others whose jobs include managing or processing data about people. We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies. We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable,” the pledge reads.
“We have educated ourselves on the history of threats like these, and on the roles that technology and technologists played in carrying them out. We see how IBM collaborated to digitize and streamline the Holocaust, contributing to the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others. We recall the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. We recognize that mass deportations precipitated the very atrocity the word genocide was created to describe: the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey. We acknowledge that genocides are not merely a relic of the distant past—among others, Tutsi Rwandans and Bosnian Muslims have been victims in our lifetimes.”
Racist attacks against the bilingual Armenian weekly newspaper, Agos, as well as against Armenian schools, are increasingly widespread in Turkey.
On April 24 of last year—the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide—a black wreath was hung on the front door of the office of the newspaper Agos together with a sign stating that, “One night, we might come to visit you unexpectedly.” Agos filed a criminal complaint against this threat.
On April 24 of last year a black wreath was hung on the front door of the office of the newspaper Agos together with a sign stating that, ‘One night, we might come to visit you unexpectedly.’
Those accused of having threatened were tried on Nov. 18. The chairman of the Nationalist Turkish Party of Istanbul, Bilal Gokceyurt, and the chairman of the “Turan Organization,” Ercan Ucar, were acquitted on the grounds that there was no evidence of an actual crime.
Speaking during the hearing, the newspaper’s editor Yetvart Danzikyan said: “They had hung up a black wreath while the office was closed. We found it in the morning. Then, we saw that they released a video about their action called, ‘One night, we might come to visit you unexpectedly.’ We filed a criminal complaint. There had been similar actions when Hrant Dink was working in Agos. You know what happened to Hrant Dink. We therefore considered this action to be a threat.”
Hrant Dink, the then editor-in-chief of the Agos, was murdered in 2007 in front of the office of his newspaper in Istanbul. He had received numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists and was prosecuted three times for “denigrating Turkishness” in his writings and remarks about the Armenian Genocide.
The Turkey Branch of Reporters without Borders (RSF) made a statement via Twitter on the court ruling: “That the threat against the newspaper Agos goes unpunished is dire and encourages similar attacks.”
Some have recently written racist graffiti on the Armenian Bomonti Mihitaryan High School. “One night, we will be in Karabagh unexpectedly,” read the graffiti, referring to Nagorno-Karabagh Republic (NKR/Artsakh), a historically Armenian land.
Armenian schools are regularly targeted by Turkish nationalist groups. Racist remarks were also written on the Surp Hac Tibrevank High School and the Kalfayan Armenian School in Istanbul in the last four months. The perpetrators have not yet been found. In one incident, the graffiti read: “Torture Armenians.”
‘One night, we suddenly will be in Karabagh,’ read the graffiti in Turkish. (Photo: Aykan Erdemir/Twitter)
“Threats against Armenians in Turkey are of many kinds,” Murad Mihci, an Istanbul-based activist with the Armenian Nor Zartonk Association, said.
“Racist graffiti on Armenian schools is only one aspect of aggression against Armenians. There is much more to it. For example, fewer people are getting married in churches in Turkey because they are scared that a terror attack could happen during the wedding ceremony. Many Armenians are planning to leave Turkey like they did in 1950’s and 1980’s in large numbers,” Mihci added.
In September, Sezgin Tanrikulu, a Member of Parliament from the Republican People’s Party (CHP), submitted a motion about the racist graffiti on Armenian schools in Istanbul to the Turkish parliament, requesting Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim to answer it. The motion is stillunanswered.
Meanwhile, the editorial board of Agos has recently published an article about verbal attacks against Armenian schools:
“Such racist writings have been going on for the last year. Not only has there been no legal enforcement against the perpetrators who engage in hate-speech, but they cannot even be identified… It is not hard to guess what kind of impact such writings have on the children who go to these schools and their parents. But the perpetrators just get away with it.”
Hate-speech is a widespread phenomenon in Turkey that targets all religious and ethnic minorities. Armenians are one of the main victims but, they are not the only ones.
According to the latest report by “The Media Watch on Hate Speech Project,” which monitors Turkish local and national newspapers, the group most commonly exposed to hate speech in Turkey from January to April 2015 were the Armenians, with 103 news items.
Jews represented the second largest group targeted with 75 items, followed by Christians (in general) as the third with 73. They were followed by hate-speech against the British (21 items), Syrians (16 items), non-Muslims (14 items), Kurds (13 items), Anatolian Greeks (12 items), and atheists (11 items).
In another report, Media Watch concluded: “The fact that certain groups remain targeted for an extended period of time through great number of news items not only shows the vulnerability of these groups to hate speech, but also presents deep seated and persistent efforts to insult these groups. That these groups consist of people, beliefs, and ethnic groups living together in this part of the world enhances potential risks of hate speech and its particular role in preparing the ground for hate crimes.”
According to the Armenian National Institute, during the Armenian Genocide, “Up to a million and a half Armenians perished at the hands of Ottoman and Turkish military and paramilitary forces and through atrocities intentionally inflicted to eliminate the Armenian demographic presence in Turkey… In the process, the population of historic Armenia at the eastern extremity of Anatolia was wiped off the map. With their disappearance, an ancient people which had inhabited the Armenian highlands for three thousand years lost its historic homeland and was forced into exile and a new diaspora. The surviving refugees spread around the world and eventually settled in some two dozen countries on all continents of the globe.”
Despite much evidence to the contrary, Turkey still claims that the mass murders and forced deportations of Armenians in 1915 did not constitute genocide.
The current population of Armenians in Turkey is about 60,000. Even when there is today a tiny Armenian minority left in the country, Turkey continually threatens and insults its Armenian population, turning a blind eye to and even encouraging more attacks against Armenians.
A century after the genocide, the Armenians of Turkey are still under attack… and the attacks still go unpunished.
Turkey’s Crackdown Curiously Spares the Literary World
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Signs showing the imprisoned Turkish novelist Asli Erdogan at a protest against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in November in Cologne, Germany. Ms. Erdogan is facing life in prison not for her books but for work with a Kurdish newspaper.CreditOliver Berg/European Pressphoto Agency
ISTANBUL — Some Turkish authors who are not in prison may well be wondering why not.
This country’s literary world has a proud tradition of enduring imprisonment and repression, but mainstream authors have enjoyed an odd, if partial, immunity to the crackdown by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after a failed coup attempt this summer.
It is not that no authors are jailed: A prominent novelist and human-rights advocate, Asli Erdogan, is facing life in prison. And the thousands of books put out by 29 publishers aligned with the exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Mr. Erdogan blamed for orchestrating the failed coup, have been withdrawn from bookstores, universities and schools and reduced to pulp.
Ms. Erdogan, who is not related to the president, is not in prison for anything in her books, but for work with a beleaguered, and since suppressed, Kurdish newspaper, Ozgur Gundem. Another novelist, Ahmet Altan, and his brother Mehmet, an academic, were jailed for “subliminal messaging” in favor of the attempted coup — again, not in their books but during a TV appearance.
In bookstores, works by mainstream publishers, other than those deemed pro-Kurdish, have been untouched by the crackdown. Ms. Erdogan’s books continue to sell, and even better than before, according to book industry officials.
Compared with people in other intellectual fields, writers have gotten off easy. Since the coup attempt, some 120 journalists have been jailed, along with hundreds of academics and thousands of teachers. Only three authors are behind bars, none of them for their books.
It is not clear why the literary world has been given a pass so far. Some think it reflects the book world’s status, which is higher than journalism’s, and suppression of authors has unpleasant associations with previous periods of authoritarian rule in Turkey. Others speculate that writers may be self-censoring, steering clear of issues that could prove troublesome. And many warn that this could just be a short-lived phase.
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The Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk in 2014. “I had various troubles with the government and court cases not because of my novels but because of my interviews and random brief political essays,” he said.CreditAyman Oghanna for The New York Times
It is not that Turkey’s literary figures have not been outspoken about current events. “In the last three decades, novelists were not much in trouble for what they wrote in their fiction,” said Orhan Pamuk, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006 (the only Turk to be so honored).
But Mr. Pamuk has often run afoul of the Erdogan government. “I had various troubles with the government and court cases, not because of my novels but because of my interviews and random brief political essays,” he said. “Journalist political commentary is dangerous in Turkey, and after the failed coup, the situation of free speech got worse.”
Irfan Sanci, the owner of Sel Publishing, has been prosecuted 10 times over books he has published, and is free while he appeals a three-year prison term. But those prosecutions were all on obscenity charges and mostly involved foreign works, such as Beat novels by William S. Burroughs or erotic works by Guillaume Apollinaire.
Social and political criticism, especially of the current government, often gets writers jailed, but rarely when it appears between two covers.
That is, if the work has nothing to do with Mr. Gulen’s movement, and if it refrains from any sympathetic treatment of Kurdish issues — two big ifs in contemporary Turkey. But most Turks opposed the coup attempt, even if they detested Mr. Erdogan. And fresh in memories is a time, only a few years ago, when the Gulen movement was aligned with the president and Mr. Gulen’s followers were blamed for persecuting authors.
The Kurdish issue is murky, too, because Turkey’s military is in a shooting war with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the P.K.K.
Still, no one is taking heart from what may prove to be a temporary and limited immunity. “Yes, books seem more untouchable than newspapers, and they’re kind of scared of accusing the authors of books,” said Eray Ak, an editor for the book reviews at the Cumhuriyet newspaper, whose editor in chief, Turhan Gunay, has been jailed.
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Hasan Cemal, a former editor in chief of the Cumhuriyet newspaper, in 2006. He faces criminal charges for a book he wrote about a Kurdish guerrilla and singer, although he has not been jailed.CreditCem Turkel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Tora Pekin, a lawyer for Cumhuriyet, said the government had already done enough to raise concerns: “Arresting Asli Erdogan and Necmiye Alpay was crossing a threshold. After them, they can put anyone in jail.”
Ms. Alpay, who also faces life imprisonment, is a linguist and is often described as a living dictionary of the Turkish language.
Mr. Sanci, too, said no one should be complacent. “The fact that the journalists are in jail but not the authors yet doesn’t mean we won’t be in the future,” he said. “This is a period without law.”
Mr. Pamuk noted that prominent novelists were in jail because of ties to journalism.
“Asli Erdogan, whom I admire a lot, is emblematic, and her case is heartbreaking,” he said. “She only did a symbolic act of lending her name to a newspaper as an editor.”
“It is not easy to accept that a great literary critic, Necmiye Alpay, who educated the Turkish readership about the intricacies and glories of the Turkish language in her book columns, is in prison for being a ‘traitor,’” he continued. “It is also hard to believe the government newspapers’ claims that these writers whom the Turkish public are reading, discussing and enjoying at least for the last 20 years are ‘terrorists.’”
Most, Mr. Pamuk noted, are being held under pretrial detention under a state of emergency declared after the coup attempt. “If there is evidence against them, they should be tried,” he said, “but not put into prison before the verdict.”
Hasan Cemal, a former editor in chief of Cumhuriyet, has published a dozen books without incident — even some that are quite provocative, such as one challenging the subject of a deeply rooted taboo here, “1915: The Armenian Genocide.” But his book “Delila,” about a Kurdish guerrilla and singer, was banned last year, and he faces criminal charges over it, although he has not been jailed.
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Ahmet Sik, an investigative journalist, in 2012. When Mr. Sik was arrested in 2011 and jailed for a book he had not yet published, Mr. Erdogan justified that by saying, “Sometimes a book is more dangerous than a bomb.”CreditDaniel Etter for The New York Times
Mr. Cemal said he thought a large part of the reason more authors had not been arrested over their books was that many were being careful about what they wrote. Thousands of people, after all, have been charged after insulting the president.
Senay Aydemir, the editor in chief of the Posta Kitap publishing house, said more time needed to go by for literary responses to the crackdown to begin to filter in.
“The tradition of literature in Turkey is strong in this sense,” he said. “Throughout the history of the republic, authors faced similar pressure, exile or prison, but found ways to resist. I think this tradition will continue.”
In the meantime, he said, the book business is doing well, because in unsettled times, more people read. He also sees signs that more people are writing books, including many journalists whose publications have been closed.
“Book publishing is still Turkey’s most free arena,” said Cem Erciyes, another publisher. “I see lots of journalists, lots of literary writers taking shelter in the world of books. The book is the oldest media — its wisdom, its accumulation of knowledge is thousands of years old.”
When an investigative journalist, Ahmet Sik, was arrested in 2011 and jailed over a book he had not yet published, Mr. Erdogan justified the arrest by saying, “Sometimes a book is more dangerous than a bomb.”
The book was seized in draft form and banned. It came out anyway in an edition listing 125 editors, a who’s who of Turkey’s literary, academic and journalistic world, under the title “000Book” to avoid the ban on the actual title, “The Imam’s Army.”
It turns out that Mr. Sik’s book was an investigation of the infiltration of Turkey’s security services by Mr. Gulen, the man Mr. Erdogan now accuses of trying to overthrow his government.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses local administrators in Ankara recently. (Pool photo by Kayhan Ozer/Presidential Press Service via AP)
Facing a barrage of criticism from myriad governments in the West over its arrest and detention of journalists, Turkey issued a defiant riposte over the weekend, pointing to European and U.S. hypocrisy when it comes to press freedoms.
“Countries that frequently criticize Turkey include Western democracies such as, France, Germany, England, Sweden, Spain, Netherlands and the USA,” read the statement emailed to foreign journalists over the weekend by Turkey's Directorate General of Press and Information. “So, is freedom of press unlimited in these countries? Do not the journalists, media workers, and reporters face problems in these countries?”
In what amounts to an official document of whataboutism, the Turkish statement listed a roster of supposed transgressions by various governments now scolding Turkey for its dramatic purge of state institutions and civil society in the wake of a failed coup attempt in July. It has arrested dozens of journalists and shuttered media outlets linked to a religious organization that Ankara alleges was behind the plot.
It pointed to the passage of strict anti-terror laws in countries such as France and Britain and various instances in which state authorities intimidated or prevented journalists from doing their work. These included a 2005 case filed against a German publication for its reporting on the activities of the German intelligence service during the Iraq War and the more recent smashing of hard drives containing documents leaked by American whistleblower Edward Snowden, which was carried out by Britain’s Guardian newspaper under pressure from officials.
The statement also leveled blame at the United States, gesturing to its supposed crackdown on journalists attempting to cover domestic flashpoints, such as the protests over police shootings and the recent standoff over a proposed oil pipeline near sacred Native American tribal lands.
“Canadian journalist Edward Ou, who wanted to cover the protests of the Indians and the violent intervention of the police against the protesters for the pipeline planned to be built in the state of [North] Dakota, was not allowed to enter the US on December 1,” it said, referring to an incident The Washington Post wrote about last week. The statement also added that “14 journalists,” including reporters for the German newspapers Die Welt and Bild and Turkey's state Anadolu News Agency, were “arrested and exposed to police violence” while covering the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo.
The United States and other Western nations do get rapped on the knuckles by rights groups and media watchdogs for such intimidation and mistreatment of the media. In the annual World Press Freedom Index, put out by Reporters Without Borders, the United States is ranked 41 out of 180 nations. Turkey is at 151.
The Turkish statement concluded with a rather surreal nod to 20th-century French Marxist theorist Guy Debord. It quoted from Debord’s celebrated 1967 treatise, “The Society of the Spectacle”: “The spectacle is the existing order’s uninterrupted discourse about itself, its laudatory monologue.”
Debord was not making an argument about the differences between sovereign states and governments, but about the ways in which mass media and its layers of images and representations supplant reality. Nevertheless, the Turkish press office carried on, arguing that “Western democracies” — with the phrase in quotation marks — “are trying to make Turkey a part of this ‘society of the spectacle’ that they established themselves yet do not observe the rules thereof.”
Such airing of grievance is not uncommon for Turkish officials, who frequently argue that the West or foreign media deliberately misunderstand their country and its politics. Ankara is also no stranger to tit-for-tat retaliation: After the United States issued travel warnings about Turkey in the wake of the July coup attempt and a spate of terrorist attacks, Turkey issued its own advisory to its citizens, warning against travel to the United States in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in November.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power (Photo: AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
NEW YORK—Comments made by the United States’ Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who lamented that denial of the Armenian Genocide contributed to continued injustices around the world, has renewed the debate over the Obama Administration’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide—a campaign promise that he did not keep as president.
Speaking at an event honoring Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Power hailed the human rights activist and said that “Genocide against the Armenians” was one the reasons that injustices continue to this day.
In covering Power’s remarks, the Associated Press asked: “Has the Obama administration quietly recognized the World War I-era killing of Armenians as genocide?”
The Associated Press also cited Obama’s campaign pledge to recognize the Genocide, and his subsequent failure to do so, which the news agency said “has angered advocates and lawmakers who have accused the president of outsourcing America’s moral voice to Turkey.”
The AP also said that Power’s statement was surprising given her position as the United States’ second highest ranked diplomat adding that the statement “sounded like her implicit criticism of Obama.”
Kurtis Cooper, Power’s spokesman, said the genocide reference came in the context of honoring Wiesel’s life and were meant to “convince others to stand up, rather than stand by, in the face of systemic injustice, mass atrocities and genocide like the one he was forced to endure,” reported the Associated Press adding the Cooper said they don’t reflect a change in administration policy.
A similar sentiment was expressed by State Department spokesman Mark Toner, who asserted that there has been no change in U.S. policy.
“The president and other senior administration officials have repeatedly mourned and acknowledged as historical fact that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their deaths in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, and stated that a full, frank and just acknowledgement of the facts is in all our interests,” Toner said, according to the AP.
Before becoming an adviser and later the Unites States’ Ambassador to the UN, Power was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote extensively about America’s responses to genocide, criticizing the U.S.’s continued denial of the Armenian Genocide.
According to officials, Power has lobbied had behind the scenes for Obama to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Power released a video urging Armenian-Americans to vote for Obama, who, she insisted would follow through on his campaign promise to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
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