COALITION AGAINST ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION CONTINUES TO UNRAVEL

Xerox, American Express, Altria, and FedEx are the Latest to Distance themselves from Turkey's Efforts to Defeat Human Rights Legislation

WASHINGTON, DC - Major U.S. companies continue to distance themselves from two corporate coalitions that are publicly backing the Turkish government's campaign against the Armenian Genocide Resolution, according to documents released today by the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). The American Turkish Council (ATC) and the American Business Forum in Turkey (ABFT), both coalitions claiming to represent U.S corporations doing business in Turkey, have each publicly - and aggressively - opposed the adoption by Congress of legislation recognizing the Armenian Genocide (H.Res.106/S.Res.106.) In response to these efforts, the ANCA sent formal letters last month to each member of the two coalitions, requesting that they clarify their position on the Armenian Genocide Resolution. To date, the ANCA has received written confirmation from a number of these companies that they are not opposed to the adoption of the Armenian Genocide Resolution. Among these are several major multinationals, such as Microsoft, Xerox, American Express, Altria, Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, and Cargill. Relevant excerpts from these letters are provided below: * Leonard W. Condon, Vice President of Altria's International Business Relations, explained in a letter to the ANCA that: "Our international tobacco company, Philip Morris International (PMI) is a member of the Turkish American Council. However, neither PMI nor Altria have taken a position - and neither company plans to take a position - on the proposed Resolution." Altria is ranked 20th on the Fortune 500 and had revenues last year of $101.4 billion. * Thomas Schick, the Executive Vice President for American Express Corporate Affairs and Communications, in a letter to ANCA, wrote: "Please be assured that, as a matter of company policy, American Express does not take a position on issues before any legislative body that do not directly affect our company." American Express is ranked 69th on the Fortune 500 and brought in revenues during 2006 of $30.08 billion. * Ann S. Dickey, Staff Vice President of Government Affairs for Federal Express, wrote to the ANCA that: "FedEx does not participate in communications regarding information of this nature." FedEx is ranked 70th on the Fortune 500 and generated $32.3 billion in revenue last year. * Anne M. Mulcahy, Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer of Xerox, wrote that, despite its listing on the ABFT website: "Xerox is not a member of the ABFT. Therefore, Xerox did not participate in any way in the decision of the ABFT to send a letter to the United States Congress." Xerox is ranked 142nd on Fortune 500 and had annual revenues last year of $15.9 billion. * Clement R. Gagne III, Microsoft Central and Eastern Europe's Director of Legal and Corporate Affairs, in a letter addressed to ANCA, wrote that: "Microsoft has not participated in any discussions or decisions of ABFT, and was not involved with the communication to which you referred in your letter." Microsoft is ranked 48th on the 2006 Fortune 500 and had annual revenue last year of $44.28 billion. * Thomas M. Gorrie, Ph.D., Johnson & Johnson's Corporate Vice President for Government Affairs and Policy, wrote to the ANCA that: "Johnson and Johnson in Turkey is not a board member and has not been engaged in any role in the ABFT communication you have mentioned in your letter. As [the] world's largest and most comprehensive and broadly based health care company, we would not engage in political issues of this nature." Johnson & Johnson is ranked 32nd on the Fortune 500 and had annual revenue last year of $53.32 billion. * Van Yeutter, Cargill's Director of International Business Development and Washington Operations, explained in writing that: "We are a commercial enterprise focused on business matters rather than on political or foreign policy matters. As such the company does not have a position on the issue of your enquiry." Cargill, a multinational corporation based in Minnesota, is the world’s second largest privately held corporation. In 2006, it had revenue of $75.2 billion. The controversy surrounding this issue was the subject of a March 28, 2007 article by Kate Ackley in Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. The article cites ATC President, Jim Holmes, listing Philip Morris International as one of the companies he claims is working through the council to stop the Armenian Genocide Resolution. This point is clearly contradicted by the letter from Altria, the parent company to Philip Morris, which states that neither company opposes H.Res.106. Copies of these letters can be obtained by writing to the ANCA at anca@anca.org. Visit ANCA.org for more details

Seeds of Turkish nationalism sown at school

By Emma Ross-Thomas

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - "Happy is he who says he is a Turk," pipe hundreds of uniformed children in unison, lined up in the playground before a golden statue of Turkey's revered father Ataturk, for a daily pledge of hard work and sacrifice.

The enthusiastic chanting ends and the children file into school, past an inscription saying their first duty is to defend Turkey and another of the national anthem -- texts which appear again on the classroom walls and preface all their textbooks.

When they move up to high school, they will take a weekly class from army officers about the military's exploits. Their school books will tell them European powers have their sights set on Anatolia and Turkey's geography makes it vulnerable "to all kinds of internal and external threats".

Textbooks are peppered with the sayings of Kemal Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey in 1923 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. "Homeland ... we are all a sacrifice for you!" comes particularly recommended by one textbook's authors.

These are just some of the features of Turkey's education system that reformist teachers and activists want changed. They say it encourages blind nationalism -- something Turkey is looking at more seriously since the ultranationalist-inspired murder in January of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

MILITARISM

Political rows with the European Union, which Ankara hopes to join, have also fanned nationalism -- especially in an election year -- but many experts say the seeds are first sown at school.

"In newly founded nation states like ours education is an effective political lever to train and transform people ... but in recent decades this concept, which needs to be loosened, continues," Ziya Selcuk, university professor and former head of the government's Training and Education Board, told Reuters.

This government has reformed the curriculum in a way teachers say makes students more active and reduces traditional rote learning, but the emphasis on nationalism remains.

"There's still some emphasis on militarism, the importance of being martyred, the importance of going to war, dying in war and so on," said Batuhan Aydagul, deputy coordinator of the Education Reform Initiative.

Teachers also say they feel pressure not to stray from the official line or curriculum in class.

"If you present some arguments which are the opposite of the established arguments ... you might get reaction, absolutely, from students, from other teachers, from directors -- negative reactions of course," said one teacher who declined to be named.

His colleague, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, laughed at the idea of criticizing Ataturk in a history lesson, saying to do so would spark investigation by prosecutors.

"They think ... if you do such a thing you confuse their minds and confusion is not good for young people," the first teacher said.

But the textbooks could be confusing for some: while foreign historians say Ottoman forces massacred Armenians in 1915, high school history books here say it was the other way around.

"It must not be forgotten that in eastern Anatolia the Armenians carried out genocide," one 2005-dated book reads.

In its latest progress report the EU also criticized the portrayal of minorities such as Armenians, saying further work was needed to remove discriminatory language from textbooks.

LOW SCORES

Nationalism is not the only problem with schools in Turkey, which, hemmed in by the budget restraints of an International Monetary Fund accord, spends little on education.

With a population of 74 million, Turkey already struggles to find jobs for its ever-growing army of young people.

But in terms of spending per head as a proportion of the economy, Turkey spends least among OECD countries.

Primary school teacher Ayse Panus said parents at her public school -- where there are 21 teachers for 680 pupils -- make contributions of about 50 lira ($35) a year to keep it going.

Turkey is also around the bottom of the OECD league in terms of years spent at school, the proportion of the population with tertiary education and the maths ability of 15-year-olds.

Teachers are low-paid and spend the first years of their career in a state-assigned posting.

This government has increased spending, but experts say more is needed to narrow the gap in Turkey's two-tier system between high quality selective academies and regular schools.

Enrolment has also improved, especially for girls -- helped by a high-profile government and UNICEF-backed campaign to persuade conservative rural parents to send their daughters to school.

Citing such progress, the EU says Turkey is well prepared for accession when it comes to education, but many disagree.

"On the one hand they want to be in Europe, and on the other ... they are encouraging the feeling that there are enemies all around," said Panus.

Armenia Names a New Prime Minister

(Source AP)
After Andranik Markarian died, Serzh Sarkisian was named Armenia's prime minister.

Sarkissian, 52, will serve as head of the Armenian government only until the May 12 parliamentary elections, which his Republican Party is widely expected to win.

Margarian, 55, who died of heart failure on March 25, had served as prime minister since the politically tense period that followed an October 1999 armed attack on parliament that killed eight politicians, including Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkisian, who is not related to the defense minister.

Under the Armenian political system, the prime minister has mostly executive powers and is a much less powerful figure than the president.

Armenia's Foreign Debt Grows by $192.49 mln to $2.05 bln in 2006

( RIA Novosti ) - Armenia's foreign debt increased by $192.49 million to $2.05 billion in 2006, the country's top statistics body said Tuesday.

Armenia's National Statistics Service said the Armenian government's foreign debt was $1.02 billion, the private sector's liabilities stood at $390.19 million, the debt of monetary authorities amounted to $185.76 million, commercial banks owed $211.01 million and foreign direct investment in the form of loans totaled $244.44 million.

Long-term liabilities accounted for the largest part of Armenia's foreign debt ($1.45 billion or 70.60%), the statistics service said.

Armenia's international assets increased by $307.06 million in 2006, to $1.39 billion as of January 1, 2007, the statistics service said.

Gyumri Mayor Survives Assasination Attempt; 4 Killed

Vardan Gukassyan, the mayor of Armenia's second largest city, Gyumri, was severely injured in the gun attack while four people travelling with him were killed, the prosecutor general's office said in a statement.

Armenia's President Robert Kocharyan met with his security ministers and ordered them to do everything possible to find the attackers, the president's press service said.
Gukassyan had just attended a special session of the ruling Armenian Republican Party's governing council, which agreed to put forward the acting defence minister, Serzh Sarksyan, as the country's new prime minister.

His nomination follows the sudden death from a heart attack last month of Andranik Margaryan.
The mayor, his deputy and their driver were all hospitalised following the late-night attack while three bodyguards in an accompanying vehicle died as they travelled home by road from the capital, Yerevan. The driver later died in hospital.

So far, local authorities have no clear information on who carried out the attack.

The sound of religious footsteps under the bubble of nationalism

ETYEN MAHCUPYAN- Zaman Gazetesi

When nationalism began to permeate the Ottoman Empire, it found itself facing an extremely accommodating base. This was because the Ottoman “millet” system had created protected, public arenas that could be kept closed to the outside and within which religiously “different” communities could maintain their autonomies. Thus nationalism was naturally quickly embraced, particularly in cases where sectarian differences also meant ethnic differences. Two of the large ethnic communities in the Ottoman Empire, the Greeks and the Armenians, never hesitated to embrace nationalism as a basic part of modernization.

As for Ottoman Muslims, rather than immediately occupying the highest spot amongst the hierarchies of the different communities, they went through a long period of indecisiveness, torn between Ottoman-ness, Islamic-ness and Turkish nationalism. As Turkish nationalism began to move step by step toward being the predominant ideology, the elites who defended this stance also came under the influence of the science-based positivism, which was so popular among French intellectuals of the period. In this way, we saw the rise of the idea of Turkishness following 1910, witnessing also the racist nuances added to this ideology through some of its scientific approaches. In short, within the Muslim community of the Ottoman Empire, nationalism first functioned as an ideology which helped “find” and then “reject” the self. To this end, the Kemalist movement first declared Ottoman Muslims were “Turks” in order to create the people of the Republic, and then, in an authoritarian and positivist interpretation of this ideology, turned these same people into “secular” citizens.

This settling in of ideologies, which took place over what was essentially an historically short period of time, deeply affected the Muslims of Turkey. The religiously devout, who gained confidence when facing the West due to the Turkification of their “Muslimness,” were left obliged to turn over their identities to the state as the republic came into being. Following 1980 in particular, there was a “Turkish-Islam synthesis” which aimed to solve the hesitant relationship that existed between the Turkish society and Turkish state. According to proponents of this synthesis, it was only when Islam united as a whole with Turkishness that a historically strong identity would be formed, and that this was the identity necessary to take authority and control over Turkey’s future.

The “socialization” of nationalism had its natural reflection in the political arena. There were many nationalistic parties formed, among them notably the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Grand Unity Party (BBP), and some of these parties still participate in elections. But in the years following 1990, a period emerged which no one had expected: that Turkish Muslims would begin to individualize, would begin to become integrated with modern life according to their own preferences and demands. Just as the level of variety and of varying religious stances expanded within this trend, the political perceptions of the Islamic factions changed in Turkey. Thus the birth of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the ease with which it has found and nurtured support across the country is due to the sociological changes in the background that we have talked about here. Lest this be misunderstood, it is important to clarify that the factor which has worked to alter the mentality of the Islamic factions in Turkey has not been the AK Party itself, but that to the contrary, the mentality which created the AK Party is in itself this very change.

It is not at all surprising that those who today try to block Erdogan’s presidency and single party administration are again embracing nationalism. Because the process that the devoutly religious have gone through in the past 10 years, with the re-separation of the Muslim and Turkish identities, has in a sense brought us back to end of the 19th century. Those who talk about the recent rise in nationalism are actually trying to hide the fact that in Turkey, nationalism has been lost as a candidate to whom the future can be tied. Due to that fact that current polls on the subject are being carried out in an atmosphere which makes it hard for people to say “I am not a nationalist,” there are figures showing hints of a spreading nationalism. But the fact is, under this bubble of nationalism, you can hear the footsteps of modern religious devotees, searching for ever more individuality and freedom.

UN Highlights Human Trafficking

The UN has launched a campaign to highlight human trafficking, an issue it says has reached epidemic proportions over the past decade.

Modern-day slavery affects millions of people around the world, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said.

Its initiative aims to raise awareness of trafficking both among potential victims and those who buy services or products that rely on slave labor.

The move comes as the UK marks 200 years since its abolition of slavery.

The campaign, entitled The Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, brings together a raft of UN agencies and NGOs.

At the launch in London, UNODC Executive Director Antonio Costa said that the types of exploitation varied from place to place.

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