Greek Genocide Denial and Remembrance 

For Immediate Release: January 29, 2008

Contact: Nikolaos Taneris, New York,  Tel. 1-917-699-9935

NEW YORK--One of the largest Pontian Greek Diaspora organizations, worldwide, the Pan-Pontian Federation of USA and CANADA, recently released a PROTEST RESOLUTION , with the scope of  , according  to Pontian Greek website, Pontos World ,   “firstly asking the PM not to pay respect to Mustafa Kemal’s tombstone, and secondly  a letter of protest condemning him for his actions. Last week, during Greek PM Karamanlis’s visit to Turkey, the PM paid his respects to Mustafa Kemal by placing a wreath on his tombstone and signing his guestbook, an action which has deeply offended the descendants of the victims of the Greek Genocide, as well as the refugees which were forcefully uprooted from their homeland in the Lausanne Treaty exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey.  “

A major world-wide Cypriot refugee association had this to say “It seems the Turkish lobby has picked up momentum and I fear the worst.  Only last week the president of Greece, Karamanlis went to Turkey and commended Ataturk for being a great leader and a forward thinker. (a bit like the president of Israel saying the same about Hitler). When our only ally bows down to the Anglo American pressures that they are no doubt under, then I can see them selling Cyprus down the river.”

Turkey’s contempt for the many victimized peoples who lost their homelands to some six hundred years of ethnic cleansing, cultural and religious persecution and apparent continuing genocides is long and deep.

Much like the persecution and deep state execution of Armenian writer Hrant Dink this past year, Andreas Rompopoulos, Greek journalist and editor of the newspaper HXO, which is published for the Greek minority in Turkey, was brutally assaulted, just last month, by unidentified assailants in what EFJ (European Federation of Journalists) in a worldwide press release characterized as “the latest in a series of attacks against journalists by nationalistic elements in Turkey.”

The nationalistic elements in Turkey,  resonate long and deep with our people who suffered in the death marches of the Pontic Greek genocide, culminating in the utter destruction, by Turkish nationalist leader Mustafa ‘Ataturk’  Kemal’s genocidal Turkish armies,   of the legendary Greek Orthodox Christian city of Smyrna in 1922, now renamed Izmir by its genocidal occupiers.

Turkey has now entered its final phase of genocide against its minorities-- its state policy of genocide denial, deep state style executions and assaults, and cultural genocide of native populations, exists not only in today’s Turkish borders , but also , in its current illegal military-occupation of Cyprus.

We at CANA abhor the diminution of the suffering of innocent people.

Finally, we encourage all survivors and descendents of survivors of ethnic cleansing and Genocide, to stand up for justice, and FIGHT BACK!

1. The Cyprus Action Network of America (CANA) has made available a Hellenic language PDF flyer and an American English translation in text document, for download on its homepage (www.cyprusactionnetwork.org) for the PROTEST RESOLUTION from PAN-PONTIAN FEDERATION USA & CANADA, Please make sure to distribute this current protest flyer widely , to friends, family and comrades , in church and throughout the community especially in high visibility areas, and all over the internet.

        2.          Diamanda Galas, internationally  reknowned composer of the legendary song cycle  on the Pontic Greek Genocides on the  Smyrna Massacre and related Holocausts, titled “Defixiones; Will and Testament” has just recently alerted us to the following news release on the Hrant Dink Commemoration in London,just following the Pontian PROTEST RESOLUTION,  which we are pleased to circulate and distribute to the community:

*Press Release - For Immediate Circulation*

PROTEST RESOLUTION

25 January 2008

Honorable Prime Minister,

With a difference of eight years the same offensive action of paying tribute to and placing a wreath at the tomb of Kemal Ataturk, was repeated. Following G. Papandreou, you too also honored the Turkish leader that in his effort to frame a modern Turkish state and create a new secular society in his country, dissolved the once almighty Ottoman empire murdering, between a lot of other programmed measures, brutality and interventions, the members of each powerful or organized religious or national minority community.

Your action brutally offends the historical memory of all hundreds of thousands of victims of Kemalist brutality - our fathers and grandfathers - that revolted, fought and sacrificed for Pontos and other areas of Asia Minor for the ultimate values we cherish in the dark years 1914-1924. It also offends the memory of the victims that followed in Constantinople, Cyprus, and other regions under Turkish control that are all victims of the same disgusting, expansive and chauvinistic spirit, that explodes by provocative sparks and betrayal in order to impose it with arms, violence, pillage and the vileness, supposed freedom, supposed justice, supposed equality and peaceful living together between the living.

In the visitors book of the mausoleum you wrote that "Kemal Ataturk along with the Eleutherio Venizelo had the political courage, the will and the perspicacity to leave conflicts and tragedies of the past from becoming obstacles in the efforts to construct a better future of peace and collaboration for the benefit of both populations". What better future of peace and collaboration did this brave initiative build, Mr. Prime Minister? Perhaps the pogrom and the deportations against the Hellenism of Constantinople, the intervention and occupation of Cyprus, the missing persons of Cyprus, the fiasco of Imia, the daily chase in Greek waters of Aegean, the daily trespasses of our air space, the grey zones in part of the Aegean, the weakening of our Ecumenical Patriarchate, the restriction of each elementary form of freedom in Turkey or their shameless propaganda for the Moslem Hellenic population of Thrace?

Mr. Prime Minister, they expelled us in ‘22 from our ancestral lands and we obeyed because we believed that our homeland would embrace us. We experienced the prosfygia (refugees), marginalization, and hunger. We experienced wars and civil war. We were not disappointed however. We worked hard and catalytically contributed in the refinement of our homeland. All admit it, experts and not. This is “divine stubbornness” of the Pontians that imposes on us to maintain and to display, to support and to promote everything Hellenic, everything Orthodox, everything that is right, everything national. Thus we maintained 3000 years of Hellenism and 2000 Orthodoxy in places initially uninviting and barbaric which we transformed however into inviting and holy, in cradles of learning, arts and sciences, in places of culture and prosperity. We also accomplish the same today. However, for over eighty years we live isolated and marginalized in our own homeland. We know what it means to say national loneliness, marginalization and isolation. We are always second class citizens regardless of the big and thick words of all you politicians. “Trantellines” (30 times a Hellene) and “heroic Akrites (guardians)” is how you characterize us. "Holy figures" is how a former minister of yours referred to us, and he meant it. Words without meaning and irresponsible. Reality brings it all down all. They are destroyed by each attribution of honor towards Kemal. They are extinguished by the dishonor against the 353,000 innocent victims of Kemal. Are you aware that the Hellenic Parliament has recognized this genocide? Or was it simply an action for "internal consumption"?

Mr. Prime Minister, we the Pontian inhabitants of the USA and Canada are a “product” of “blessed immigration” (according to a former Greek Prime Minister and intellectual!) that in the little free time and with the limited resources that we have serve with particular effort, modesty and humbly, with dignity and with respect Orthodoxy, Hellenism, the church and our birthplace. We do not claim anything from our homeland. We simply offer without profit and unselfishly. Roughly one month ago the Pontic Hellenism of the USA and Canada achieved a high objective: the recognition with official resolution from the International Union of Academicians on subjects of Genocide (International Association of Genocide Scholars, IAGS) the genocide against the Pontian inhabitants and the other Greeks of Asia Minor. We realized with sorrow that this important event did not move anyone.

Mr. Prime Minister, research in Greece shows that the citizens disdain politicians. We know of one reason. We are experiencing it. It is because the politicians offend and trivialize their citizens. They offend and trivialize historical memories. They offend and trivialize the memories and the national struggles of our fathers and grandfathers. You offended and trivialize us, Mr. Prime Minister and it is a heavy shame. Can we cultivate unity and concord when we sow dispute and offence? What mutation is required for such a thing? Isn't this action on your part one more grave marker for our constant demand for internationalization and recognition of the genocide that Pontic Hellenism suffered? How are we to claim recognition of the genocide when a former Prime Minister proposes the Hitler of the Pontos inhabitants, Kemal Ataturk, for the Nobel of Peace and leading political executives, as a former minister of Foreign Affairs and the current Prime Minister they honor his memory?

The Pan Pontian Federation of the USA and Canada dispatched to you a letter on January 11 in order to not engage in this act, even if to you are under pressure by protocol. You have declared recently that “history cannot be re-written”, but this time you placed the fragile groundwork in the frames of your efforts for more harmonious relations between the two nations. We desire and we seek harmonious relations, peace and collaboration, specifically between neighboring populations that are “condemned” to live together, regardless of their big and diachronic national, religious, social and cultural differences. This peace however should be based on fairness and on the reciprocal respect and not be founded, haphazardly, shoddy and precariously, in the offence, in the unilateral oblivion, in oppression, in the partition and in the humiliation. Mr. Prime Minister, our forefathers did not fight and sacrifice in order for us to have the right... to offend and to minimize something holiest - their memory.

For the Administrative Council of (Pan-Pontian) Federation

The President, Michalis Mouratidis

The General Secretary, Demetrios Molochidis

###

Hrant Dink Commemoration in London

Press Release by Armenia Solidarity, Nor Serount, the Armenian Genocide Trust, the Kurdish Youth Collective, the Science and Art Commission (on behalf of the Kurdish Public Parliament), the Kurdish Student and Academic Association and the Seyfo Centre.

An international crowd including British, Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish intellectuals gathered to commemorate the death of Hrant Dink at the Monument to the Innocents in front of Westminster Abbey, London, on Saturday 19th January 2008.

Prayers were said by Canon Segovsky of Westminster Abbey. Nouritza Matossian, writer and friend of Hrant Dink, paid a personal tribute, and concluded:

I have said it before and I will repeat that Hrant Dink was our Martin Luther King ... Hrant Dink deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and would bring it great honour. We will join the millions around the world who have founded groups and centres bearing his name to continue his work and remember him today.

The author Desmond Fernandes observed that: , who are present, acknowledge the genocide and oppose those denialist discourses that seek to maintain an oppressive, publicly unaccountable structure of governance in Turkey. He spoke about Hrant's position on the genocide and the recognition of the genocide by leading Kurdish organisations, writers and politicians. A moving message from Diamanda Galás, the internationally renowned composer and performer, was read out. Kasim Agpak, a representative of the Kurdish Youth Collective, noted that Hrant's killing cannot only be explained through hysteria, anxiety and ultra-nationalism. Those listed [i.e. targeted] indeed [represent] an outcome of a long implementation of constitutional racism and ongoing racist discourses. Messages from Gurg Bakircioglu (Vice Chair of the Kurdish Student and Academic Association), the Swedish MP Esabelle Reshdouni, the Armenian National Union of Sweden, the Kurdish National Union of Sweden and Professor David Gaunt (from derrn University College in Stockholm) were also read out. For Gurg: Hrant ... lives through his son, Arat Dink, the son that faced the same charges, was convicted for it and given the same one year suspended sentence for insulting Turkishness. For Professor David Gaunt, it is a shame that Turkey has not recognized the Armenian/Assyrian genocide and he condemns the murder of Mr. Dink.

A portion of Hrant's work was read by Nouritza Matossian. Professor Khatchatur Pilikian, as his tribute, sang "God the Free (Song of Freedom)" by Mikael Nalbandian, and two white doves of peace were released by Khatchig Vartanian, Editor of the UK Armenian magazine, Voice of Nor Serount.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Texts:

Speech by Nouritza Matossian:

A whole year has passed since we were in shock at the vile murder of Hrant Dink, a man who stood for peace and harmony, the editor of a small weekly in Istanbul which rocked Turkey. The hideous irony is that Hrant Dink was the one man who succeeded in bringing together and forging friendships between opposing groups. He stood up for the rights of Armenians, Kurds, Alevis, women in Turkey. As you all know, he was shot down outside his newspaper office by a cowardly juvenile assassin hired by the deep state. The truth is that I am still in shock. Today we join millions who are mourning him all over the world.

Like many others Hrant Dink changed my way of thinking and feeling about myself as an Armenian. I, the daughter of a survivor of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, wanted to visit Turkey. But my father who had established us in Cyprus was upset. ˜Do you want to go and break your heart?'

I went for my book on Arshile Gorky and later Hrant Dink interviewed me. Straightaway he struck me as a new kind of Armenian and also a new kind of Turk. He gave me his wholehearted friendship straight away and I to him.

He was forthright, but more than that he behaved like any European would behave in a democracy. There was not the slightest shade of fear or hesitation in him. Like an aristocrat who cannot change his breeding, he was a democrat, and had decided not to compromise, even if he did not live in a democratic country. He campaigned for Turkey to join the EU. He travelled the world as the best kind of Ambassador for Turkey.

He had forged a large circle of his family and friends “ a liberal, intellectual group, also committed to a free society in a modern Turkey who spoke out fearlessly and who respected him. We may well ask why such a man was hounded and persecuted? Ironically Hrant was preaching moderation to both Armenians and Turks, enlightenment and free expression.

The charges brought against him under the infamous Article 301 for insulting Turkish identity seemed so trivial that he did not believe any judge would take seriously. The final straw was when he asked Armenians to take any poisonous hatred for Turks out of their hearts. As he often said to me, ˜These are not the same Turks who killed our grandparents. They have changeded.. Yet his words were taken to mean the opposite and he was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment.

I saw Hrant Dink in October 2006. The torrent of obscenities and poison, of death threats was weighing on him. He no longer drove a car. He was conscious that his every word and movement was monitored. He would place his mobile phone on the table and say, ˜I have nothing to hide. Its better that they know everything.

A year on writers and publishers are still prosecuted today, along with his son Arat Dink. Hrants murderers have not been brought to justice. Next week the Turkish parliament will discuss amendments, to 301, still leaving denigration of the Turkish nation as a criminal offence carrying severe penalties.

Unfortunately, the EU, in its negotiations with Turkey, has insisted on amendment rather than repeal of these dangerous laws. The UK and the EU should now do all they can to ensure Article 301 is no longer used as a tool of repression, and that no one else is killed or tortured, or persecuted solely for expressing opinions. You can support Human Rights Groups, PEN, Amnesty, Article 19, Index, to campaign. We will commemorate him on 28th February.

I have said it before and I will repeat that Hrant Dink was our Martin Luther King. If the blacks in America won their civil rights and now have a presidential candidate, why not the ethnic communities in Turkey?

It is only a matter of time. But let us make it our time. In the life span that Hrant Dink would have enjoyed if he had not been robbed of it so unjustly.

Hrant Dink deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and would bring it great honour. We will join the millions around the world who have founded groups and centres bearing his name to continue his work and remember him today.

Asdvatdz Hokin Lusavore. May God rest his soul.

© Nouritza Matossian 19 Jan 2008. Nouritza Matossian is author of Black Angel, The Life of Arshile Gorky. More information on www.arshile-gorky.com

Hrant Dinks words from an interview with Nouritza Matossian after receiving a 6 months sentence in 2005:

They wanted to silence me. Because my voice disturbed them. An Armenian appeared who was not like the Armenians they are used to. Who lived in Turkey too but who was serious. Who talked about history too. They were used to coming across Armenians, who did as they were told. A man who stood up who spoke differently and who also stirred up ideas on both sides, Turkish and Armenian. They wanted to neutralize this. Thats it.

An Armenian gets up and says, ˜Yes this is genocide. But he says it in such a way that no one can object to him. He influences people. They are not used to this kind of thing. An Armenian who says, ˜Come lets not just talk about our own people, lets talk about the living. And he turns the country inside out. I know what Hrant Dink achieved in this country. In ten years. History has still not written it down. We’ll see when it will get written and how.

It is that simple. At the same time I am a very good Turk, a very good Turk. That’s what amazes them.

When I was a naughty boy in the orphanage they made me learn psalms and now I repeat them.

Psalm 23 says,

˜I will send my angels to protect you.

You will step on the head of the snake and you will pass,

I will prepare a table before you in the face of your enemies

Your head will be anointed with oil

My cup is full

Goodness and justice and mercy will flow all the days of your life

I will dwell many days in the house of the Lord.

And much more.

© Nouritza Matossian 19 January 2008

Excerpts from the speech by Desmond Fernandes:

We are gathered here, as many other people are around the world, today, in your honour and remembrance, and in deepest sorrow and regret at the way your life was taken.

We also stand together, today - in solidarity - to also oppose those forces – and the values of the forces and ideologies - that targeted you, and to reiterate the importance of the struggle for justice, remembrance, rights and recognition of peoples and individuals, as well as of the genocide.

As you stated:

˜Of course I’m saying it’s a genocide ... Because its consequences show it to be true and label it so'.1

We also take note of what you said in March 2006:

The activities of the Diaspora, the Genocide resolutions passed by other countries every year, have contributed to the growing consciousness in Turkey

You also attributed much of the growing recognition of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey to the Kurdish struggle for national rights there 3 - a struggle that many Kurds, Armenians and others, including many human rights groups, clearly also recognise to be a struggle against a genocidal regime.4 As you said:

The [Turkish] government used to say, We don’t have Kurds or a Kurdish problem. Those people fighting up in the mountains are actually Armenians ... And to prove their assertions, they would publish photographs in newspapers showing the uncircumcised corpses of the defeated fighters. The Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan was referred to as ˜The Armenian Bastard’.5

Despite these various state inspired denialist discourses, as you noted:

The process of democratization in Turkey can no longer be turned back. There is a movement to talk about the past and a desire to know what happened to Armenians ... On the other side, the Turkish government has responded with more propaganda”.6

But, as you said:

One day, they will recognize that the Armenian Genocide has to be addressed. But they will try to delay it and water it down as much as possible.7

On the day Hrant was assassinated, the editorial in his newspaper Agos, which he had written, clearly stated the following: The [Turkish] government hasn’t still been able to formulate a correct approach to the 'Armenian question'. Its real aim is not to solve the problem, but to gain points like a wrestler in a contest. How and when it will make the right move and defeat its opponent. Thats the only concern. This is not earnestness. The state ... does not shy from trying its own intellectuals who seriously address this issue. œIt restores - for propaganda purposes - an Armenian church in the Southeast, but only thinks, 'How can I use this for political gains in the world, how can I sell it?'.8

Hrant was not the first person to be targeted as a result of Turkish state inspired ideologies and actions: Nor, sadly will he be the last ...

The Assyrian genocide ... is, alongside the Armenian, Greek and Kurdish genocides, also yet to be recognised by the Turkish state.

We, who are present, acknowledge the [Armenian] genocide and oppose those denialist discourses that seek to maintain an oppressive, publicly unaccountable structure of governance. It also needs to be restated here that leading Kurdish organisations, leaders, community representatives, academics, writers, poets and musicians acknowledge the Armenian and other genocides, as well as the role that some Kurds played in those genocides, even as other Kurds opposed the nature of the genocidal assaults. They also condemn the actions of those Kurds that participated in the genocide. Those acknowledging the Armenian genocide include Zubeyir Aydar, when he was Chair of the Executive Council of the Parliament of Kurdistan in Exile; Abdullah Ocalan and the PKK; Kemal Burkay and the Socialist Party of Kurdistan;9 Mehdi Zana; Sivan Perwer, the late Musa Anter, Anter Anter, Serhat Bucak, Nejdet Buldan, Selahattin Celik, Yashar Kaya and many others.10

A message from Diamanda Galás,11 internationally renowned composer and performer of Songs of Exile, Vena Cava, Schrei X, Plague Mass and Defixiones, Will And Testament - a song-cycle that is dedicated to the forgotten and erased of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Anatolian Greek genocides which occurred between 1914 and 1923: 12

The longer it takes to address the mandate of applying Turkishness to all things good - and good to all things Turkish, the longer will it take to redress the financially-supported cultural disinformation spread by those institutions and persons in Turkey who, using as a criminal mandate the necessity to translate all aural arts (songs, poetry, theatre, and other human ritual practices) into Turkish before they are allowed to be performed by the general public, effectively cleanse it of its owners' names and claim it as Turkish invention, innovation.

Once the art is performed into Turkish it may then be claimed as Turkish, and thusly as a Turkish art form. With the censored owners under control or in prison for performing the work illegally (in their own languages), it can then be safely deposited under "anonymous" or a Turkish name into a vault that has been protected and in fact proclaimed as an ethnically inviolate treasure, with the help of Turkey's good friends, America and Israel.

It is no mystery that the Greeks, the Armenians, the Assyrians, and the Kurds were for centuries expected to provide their own boys and young men to the Turkish military for centuries, in order to ensure protection of their familes and land from the the Ottoman Republic, for example, but this enlistment also included composers of music, performers, singers, poets, and so on, who were NOT allowed to perform in any tongue but Turkish. Later, when their arms were taken away and they were slaughtered, the works they left behind were claimed as Turkish, as are the Hagia Sofia, Assyrian and Greek sculpture, and Armenian poetry.

In the obvious case of the great blind oudist Udi Hrant, he cannot be heard on record singing in Armenian, although he WAS an Armenian, and one of the most famous Armenians who lived in Turkey. He can only be heard singing in Turkish.

The melodies of the amanes, amanethes, shared throughout Greece and Anatolia are now still claimed to be shared by all the cultures who have lived in Anatolia, since the agora of Smyrna/Izmir was the meeting place for Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Jews, Arabs, and Assyrians, and all shared verses and sang this music to "a god invited by despair". The word "amanes" refers to "mana”, or mother, in Greek: in other words, it is the last cry of the soldier on the battlefield, and it is the universal cry of the lonely. Fortunately the word "aman" is permissable in Turkey, but how soon will be be written in Turkish books of musical education that this great vocal tradition is initially a Turkish one? What then will the Greeks who hear our finest amanes singer Dalgas think in 100 years? In even 50?

As a daughter of a Maniate Spartan and an Anatolian hailing from Smryna/Izmir, the Black Sea, and Alexandria, I find the ethnic cleansing of art to be preposterous, but also to be dangerous. If an Armenian is told to reject what may be his by birthright because he is later educated by disinformation passed down through Turkish Ethnic Music Institutes that the music he loves is NOT Armenian but in fact Turkish, what does he have left? How many dromoi/makams (scales) does he have left to sing? This is true for all the cultures I mention above.

Robbery is not just the robbery of money or human flesh; it involves the soul murder of cultures which will soon die if it they have no more songs to sing. Especially in the desert. And survival in the desert has been proven to be perilous.

A message from Gurg n Bakircioglu,13 Vice Chair of the Kurdish Student and Academic Association (KSAF) and Editor of Beyan.net:

What Hrant Dink did was that he spoke about Turkey's most controversial issue and for this, he was slain. But they did not kill Hrant, he lives through his son, Arat Dink, the son that faced the same charges, was convicted for it and given the same one year suspended sentence for insulting Turkishness.

I believe that Hrant installed a concrete foundation before he was murdered by spineless cowards that stabbed democracy and freedom of speech in the back.

Gandhi once said:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

I have some messages with me from Sweden.

Firstly, I have brought a message from the Kurdish Student and Academic Association of Sweden, of which I am Vice-chairman. We wish our Assyrian/Armenian friends peaceful respect between each other and we recognize the massacres as a genocide and for this, we are also sorry. The reason that Hrant Dink was slain was that he had not forgotten the genocide, he had not forgotten his own history.

The Armenian National Union of Sweden and all Armenians of Sweden greet you all.

The Kurdish National Union of Sweden condemns the Armenian Genocide; they hope that the massacres will be recognized as genocide. At the same time they dont want all of the Kurdish people to be associated as active participants.

They are honouring the memory of Hrant, his struggle and the Armenian peoples right to exist as Armenians.

Professor David Gaunt from Sn University College in Stockholm also wanted to send a message: He thinks that it is a shame that Turkey has not recognized the Armenian/Assyrian genocide and he condemns the murder of Mr.Dink.

Speech by Kasim Agpak (Kurdish Youth Collective):

Hrant's killing cannot only be explained through hysteria, anxiety and ultra-nationalism. Those listed [i.e. targeted] indeed [represent] an outcome of a long implementation of constitutional racism and ongoing racist discourses. How is it possible that a 17 year old kid can have a strong nationalistic feeling that drove him to kill someone in the name of defending his nation? What are the elements behind it? It was not long after that that a lynch campaign against Kurds began. Officials who were responsible for the Semdinli incident were released recently. Intellectuals were oppressed under the famous Article 301. Orhan Pamuk had to leave his country. Perhaps he knew, in Turkey, even Doves can be killed. There was even no understanding of people's saying that we are all Armenians, we are all Hrant Dink. There was an immediate response, reaction to it saying, “No, we are all Turks. What does this tell us? The only and true meaning of “we are all Armenians was that we are all human beings.

Hrant is a son of Mesopotamia, he is a son of Ararat, he is a son of Tigris and Euphrates!... His intellectual work, his understanding of humanism, his ideas and thoughts are for me, being a Kurd, a path which should be followed for many people who wish for a democratic and peaceful world.

In Memory of Hrant Dink.

A message from Esabelle Reshdouni, a Swedish MP, Equality-politics representative:

Hrant Dink was an advocate of Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press and champion for minority rights in Turkey. During his visit here in Sweden, as a Member of Parliament, we had the privilege of meeting him and hearing his thoughts and arguments about his articles, his works but also about the development of the situation in Turkey, now engaged in negotiations for membership in the EU. Dink was firmly convinced that the European community would support Turkey in the improvement of several important issues, such as those mentioned above. He had been charged for treason when he had written about the Armenian genocide and the past which Turkey must admit and acknowledge. Article 301, on which he was prosecuted and convicted to a suspended sentence was the kind of shortcoming which Dink hoped to be reformed.

He felt threatened, but never spoke of it. Many organizations expressed their concerns about the threat situation, but no one would take the threat seriously until it was too late. And the governments, the journalists and the rest of the world were swift in condemning the murder and the conditions in Turkey leading to that unfortunate destiny. And it is even more saddening and alarming that today, one year after the murder of Hrant Dink, Article 301 of the Turkish Criminal law, still is in power and continues to be utilized to silence those who speak of reforms, improvements, freedom of speech and human rights in Turkey. Hrant Dinks son, Arat Dink, was, on October 10, 2007, prosecuted and sentenced to the same punishment as his father for reprinting Hrant Dinks last article. I sincerely hope that the world will not stay silent and indifferent and let history repeat itself.

God the Free (Song of Freedom) by Mikael Nalbandian

Sung by Professor Khatchatur Pilikian

Translated as "Liberty" by Zabelle Boyajian

When the God of Liberty

Formed of Earth this mortal frame,

Breathed the breath of life in me,

And a spirit I became

Wrapped within my swaddling bands,

Bounced and fettered helplessly,

I stretched forth my infant hands

To embrace sweet Liberty

All night long,until the dawn,

In my cradle bound I lay;

And my sobbing's ceaseless moan

Drove my mother's sleep away

As I begged her, weeping loud,

To unbind and set me free;

From that very day I vowed

I would love thee, Liberty

                          ----------------------------------------------

Afterwards, a message from Ragip Zarakolu - The Legacy of Militarist Nationalism in Turkeys - was read out [Note: This is an abridged English translation]:

The national security state was a concept utilised during the cold war era when military dictatorships were encouraged by the West not only to deal with the external enemy but with the so called internal enemy too. During the 1960s and 70s many countries in Latin America, as well as Greece, Turkey, Indonesia, South Korea were ruled by military coups with such an objective. Argentina, Chile and Turkey also suffered from a process which destroyed their democratic movements and establishments. In Brazil, Chile and Turkey the regimes were reconstituted either by elimination of or by significant restructuring of their political parties, trade unions, clubs and societies “ all under the pretext of “national security.

This model has a past which takes us to the 1920s: Militarist regimes were established by Salazarism, Francoism and Kemalism. To this list can be added the dictatorships of General Pilsudski in Poland, General Metaxas of Greece and of Admiral Horty of Hungary.

The military nationalist establishment in Turkey has worked hand in glove with the West and the United States in particular, and has enhanced its ideology to the extreme. So much so that elected governments have had little effective power on a number of key issues and areas of government, which are the exclusive domain of the dictates of the military, through its control of the National Security Council. There is in Turkey a SECRET CONSTITUTION known as the “Red Book.

During the summer of 2006 Erdogans government accepted the Red Book in its new form and refused to reveal it to the public, claiming that it should remain secret due to its importance to the state. As the situation stands œextreme nationalism and racism are not classified as dangerous extremism in Turkey. Thus aggressive nationalism is not frowned upon and its murderers will kill on orders but within this psyche they are confidentially looked upon as boys with good intentions literally œour boys.

Some of the media is against this state of affairs, while another section is building up a wave for new heroes for this psyche of militarist nationalism. TV programmes have at times unrealistic stories. For example the seat of the Greek Church in the Fener district of Istanbul is declared to be a New Vatican. The Christian missionaries are stated to be a great threat, claiming that their intention is to Christianise the Kurds and the Alevis ... However those who are seen purely as Turkish by blood [a concept that cannot be proved in Anatolia “ Tr.] are thought not to be in danger. Kurds and Alevis are declared to be unreliable.

Although it is claimed that Turkey is a secular state the pious foundations or schools belonging to, for example, the Armenian and Greek churches have been persistently eroded by the state and are looked upon as foreign. This problem erupted significantly during the presidency of Ismet Inonou [from 1938, second only to Ataturk]. The long term objective is to completely eliminate these so claimed foreign Christian establishments.

The Protestant and Catholic communities in the country have significant difficulties in conforming to and establishing their places of worship officially. Bombs have been thrown in the Greek Patriarchate a number of times.

The militarys official website places the Christian Missionaries among its list of dangers. Denying the Armenian Genocide is one of its primary objectives. Its declarations are in line with the ideology of Turanism-Panturkism. The military even backs Talat Pashas disastrous World War exploits. On 28 April 2007 it even had the audacity to call for a coup by e-mail. These of course can be looked upon as training for the future.

The military during the last 90 years has refused to solve the Kurdish issue by peaceful and political means. There have been generals who have even declared that “if it was not for this damned Human Rights difficulty we would have solved the problem in one day! [In this respect one has to remember the fate of the Armenians of Western Armenia as well as of Anatolia, additionally the fates of the Christian Assyrians and Pontic Greeks must also be considered“ Tr.].

This militarist nationalism will of course utilise veiled methods in its war against the internal enemy. This psyche is expanded through massive propaganda to Turkish citizens abroad, thus persistently harassing progressive researchers and authors such as Taner Akcam during their scholarly public appearances. A direct order from above for such pursuits is even unnecessary since numerous racist and nationalist organisations, according to their ideological brainwashing will pursue and will implement, like programmed robots, what is required or “necessary”.

This regime’s long history even harks to the dark days when it had ties with the Nazis. Since the Cold War, however, it has been significantly revitalised by NATO and is uncompromising on its stance and ideology: Those who stand in its way in the country are told: “you will be pushed out of the way!”

The question here is: Was the attack on Hrant Dink a coincident? Is it also a coincidence that because the Syriac Christian community is now investigating its genocide it is coming under threats and that one of its researchers was recently murdered in Sweden?

Why are the Catholic priests from abroad constantly attacked, and one was murdered?

Why are the Protestants and the Germans who have chosen to live in Turkey having difficulty in pursuing their religious beliefs without harassment?

What has all this to do with a state that claims to be secularist?

None of the above and more are coincidences. The mindset remains militarist. This state of affairs can only be ended by internationalist solidarity of peoples.

The following poem by one of Hrant Dink's favourite poets – Nazim Hikmet – was also recited:

The Strangest Creature On Earth.

You're like a scorpion, my brother,

you live in cowardly darkness

like a scorpion.

You're like a sparrow, my brother,

always in a sparrow's flutter.

You're like a clam, my brother,

closed like a clam, content,

And you're frightening, my brother,

like the mouth of an extinct volcano.

Not one,

not five--

unfortunately, you number millions.

You're like a sheep, my brother:

when the cloaked drover raises his stick,

you quickly join the flock

and run, almost proudly, to the slaughterhouse.

I mean you're strangest creature on earth--

even stranger than the fish

that couldn't see the ocean for the water.

And the oppression in this world

is thanks to you.

And if we're hungry, tired, covered with blood,

and still being crushed like grapes for our wine,

the fault is yours--

I can hardly bring myself to say it,

but most of the fault, my dear brother, is yours.

Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)

1 BIA News (2007) ˜Retrospective On Trials Against Hrant Dink, 19 January 2007 (Accessed at: http://www.bianet.org/2006/11/01_eng/news90480.htm).

2 The Bay Area Armenian National Committee (2006) ˜Hrant Dink & Ragip Zarakolu Visit the Bay Area, The Bay Area Armenian National Committee, 14 March 2006 (Accessed at: http://www.ancsf.org/pressreleases/2006/03142006.htm).

3 The Bay Area Armenian National Committee (2006) Hrant Dink & Ragip Zarakolu Visit the Bay Area, The Bay Area Armenian National Committee, 14 March 2006 (Accessed at: http://www.ancsf.org/pressreleases/2006/03142006.htm).

4 For further details, see Fernandes, D. (2007) The Kurdish and Armenian Genocides: From Censorship and Denial to Recognition? Apec, Stockholm, and the Rasti website (http://rastibini.blogspot.com/).

5 The Bay Area Armenian National Committee (2006) ˜Hrant Dink & Ragip Zarakolu Visit the Bay Area, The Bay Area Armenian National Committee, 14 March 2006 (Accessed at: http://www.ancsf.org/pressreleases/2006/03142006.htm).

6 The Bay Area Armenian National Committee (2006) ˜Hrant Dink & Ragip Zarakolu Visit the Bay Area, The Bay Area Armenian National Committee, 14 March 2006 (Accessed at: http://www.ancsf.org/pressreleases/2006/03142006.htm).

7 The Bay Area Armenian National Committee (2006) ˜Hrant Dink & Ragip Zarakolu Visit the Bay Area, The Bay Area Armenian National Committee, 14 March 2006 (Accessed at: http://www.ancsf.org/pressreleases/2006/03142006.htm).

8 As quoted by Candar, C. (2007) 'The so-called Akdamar Museum', Turkish Daily News, 30 March 2007.

9 See Fernandes, D. (2007) The Kurdish and Armenian Genocides: From Censorship and Denial to Recognition? Apec, Stockholm.

10 See Fernandes, D. (2008) Perspectives on the Armenian, Assyrian, Greek and Kurdish Genocides. Apec, Stockholm

11 Read by Desmond Fernandes.

12 See Defixiones, Will and Testament (http://www.diamandagalas.com/defixiones/the_concept.htm).

13 Read by Kasim Agpak

Please check our website in coming days and weeks, for further developments and updates on media coverage.

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