27 headless bodies

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Today Is 50th Anniversary Of Armenian-greek Pogroms In Istanbul

TODAY IS 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF ARMENIAN-GREEK POGROMS IN ISTANBUL

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 6. ARMINFO. Sept 6 1955 a mob of Turks went to
Istanbul's central square with anti-Greek slogans. This followed the
Sept 6 explosion of the house where Turkish leader Ataturk was born.

The investigation by the Greek authorities found out that the explosion
was committed by the guard of the consulate, a Turk, who got the
bombs in Istanbul. Besides the consul and other officials were not
in the building at the moment of the explosion.

The special international commission of the World Council of Churches
investigating the consequences of the programs found out that 29 of
80 Orthodox Greek churches had been burned down, 4,000 stores and
2,000 houses destroyed. Also destroyed were many Roman Catholic and
Armenian churches.

US Senator Homer Capeheart confirmed in the United States News And
World Report newspaper that there were pogroms in Istanbul, Ankara
and Izmir. Crowds of Turks burned down and robbed 4,000 Armenians and
Greek stores, 80 churches and 700 houses with the damages amounting
to $300 mln.

3,183 people were arrested in Istanbul, 424 in Izmir, 171 in Ankara
with most of them released later. The remaining were brought to
court but as the Halk Turkish newspaper wrote: "Believed to be guilty
these young people have been acquitted. It is very good. But who then
masterminded these actions?"

The above events caused a new wave of Greek and Armenian emigration
from Turkey.

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Turkey's War With History

Thursday September 8, 11:33 PM
U.S. editorial excerpts
(Kyodo) _ Selected editorial excerpts from the U.S. press:
TURKEY'S WAR WITH HISTORY (Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles)

Orhan Pamuk, arguably Turkey's most famous novelist, knew it was risky to ask what had happened to hundreds of thousands of Armenians killed during the era of the Ottoman Empire. But the threats didn't silence him.

Pamuk wondered out loud about the fate of Turkey's Armenian community, and the more recent killings of 30,000 Kurds in a war against armed separatists that began in 1984, during a February interview with a Swiss newspaper.

Seven months later, and one day before European Union ministers were scheduled to discuss Turkey's bid to join the union, a Turkish public prosecutor charged Pamuk with insulting his country.

Last May, Turkish academics organized a conference in Istanbul on the fate of Ottoman Armenians. Justice Minister Cemil Cicek postponed the conference the day before it was supposed to open.


These skirmishes are part of a bigger battle between traditionalists and those who favor European-style modernization.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan should order a halt to Pamuk's prosecution, and his government needs to foster more freedom of expression and thought in Turkey. Striking arbitrary laws that give the government the right to imprison "critics" of Turkey would be a start.

So would an open debate on the fate of the country's Armenian population in the early 20th century. (Sept. 8)

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A Photo Show on a Pogrom 50 Years Ago Is Itself Attacked by a Mob

By STEVE KETTMANN
Published: September 24, 2005http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/arts/extra/24pogr.html
ISTANBUL - Tucked away for more than 40 years, the 120 black-and-white photographs hanging in a gallery here have the stark appearance and potential emotional impact of evidence presented in a legal proceeding.

And that, it turns out, is what they are.
One image shows a mob outside a row of storefronts, with some people watching passively and others cheering as a shop is ransacked. A young man stands with his half-clenched fist raised in the air, as if he is egging on the vandals; his other hand rests passively on his hip, suggesting nonchalance. A boy stares up numbly, as if looking in vain for answers. Above him, a man in the shell of the shop's wrecked building heaves a baby carriage to the street below.

Fifty years ago this month, erroneous reports spread that Greeks had set fire to the childhood home of Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey's founder, in Salonika, Greece. The rumors prompted an angry mob to converge on Taksim Square in Istanbul for an anti-foreigner pogrom that left thousands of houses and many hundreds of shops destroyed.

Gallery officials said about a dozen people were killed, but the death toll has never been confirmed because of official secrecy. Cemeteries were desecrated, dozens of churches were burned, and many schools were plundered.

Fahri Coker, a former assistant military prosecutor, served as a legal adviser to the military investigation of the events of Sept. 6-7, 1955, an inquiry that historians describe as a whitewash. Coker had 250 photographs taken by foreign news photographers and government employees, and even a few by Ara Guler, one of Turkey's few internationally known photographers. Judge Coker held on to the pictures and left word that they could be displayed only after his death, which occurred in 2001.

To mark the 50-year anniversary of the long night of violence, Karsi, a gallery in the Beyoglu neighborhood, where the pogrom occurred, organized an exhibition of the photos to open on Sept. 6. Although curators were no doubt aware that the pictures would arouse strong feelings, given the emotion surrounding historical discussions in Turkey, they have been surprised by the passions unleashed by the show.

The Sept. 6 opening was disrupted by a group of nationalists who entered the gallery, carrying a Turkish flag. Chanting slogans like "Turkey, love it or leave it!," they vandalized some of the photographs and tossed others out the window. They also threw eggs at the pictures, leaving a vivid testimonial to how controversial free expression remains in Turkey.

"We left it that way, but unfortunately, after a few days it started to smell," Ozkan Taner, one of the gallery's directors, said of the exhibition, which the gallery then cleaned and restored. It remains on view through Sept. 26.

News of the attacks spread quickly to the front pages of the Turkish papers and to television and radio news broadcasts, turning the show into a national topic of conversation.

Attendance has been heavy, easily exceeding expectations. On a recent day, dozens of people crowded into the gallery to study the images. The pictures, as might be expected, show faces riven by anger and fear, but the photos are also packed with small surprises.

One centers on the familiar monument at the center of Taksim Square, so crowded with young protesters that some are falling off as others rise to take their places. At the top of the image, a small group is working to hoist the Turkish flag, while a young man in a crisp, clean suit holds unsteadily over his head a small portrait of Ataturk. But away from the monument, the people in the crowd turning to face the photographer have blank, uncertain expressions, as if they are as unnerved by the outpouring as many of the gallery's visitors have been.

In the beginning, the photo exhibition was hailed as a major step forward for a country trying to show a more democratic face in preparation for possible membership in the European Union.

"For the first time in the history of Turkey, a shameful happening has been brought out into the open," said Ishak Alaton, chairman of the Alarko Holding company and a leader of Turkey's tiny population of Jews. "September 6, 1955, was our Kristallnacht."

Ozcan Yurdalan, a freelance photographer here who took part in a recent news conference denouncing the attacks on the exhibition, said the straightforward documentary style of the photos made them more disturbing.

"They show directly what they saw in life," he said. "If you take straight photographs, they show the reality - the faces of the people, some fearful, some thinking, Yeah, we are doing something well against our enemy."

"The pictures showed me this is not the past," he said. "We are still living in the same condition today. I am ashamed of that, and also very fearful."

Greek-Turkish tensions over the future of Cyprus were running high in 1955, and the future of that island remains unresolved, threatening to hold up Turkey's bid to begin negotiations to join the European Union. More broadly, Western ideas of the rightful role of dissent have made limited inroads in Turkey. The acclaimed author Orhan Pamuk has been charged with "public denigrating of Turkish identity" for telling a newspaper: "Thirty-thousand Kurds were killed here, one million Armenians as well. And almost no one talks about it."

Mehmet Guleryuz, an Abstract Expressionist-style painter who helped organize a protest against the attack on the exhibition, said: "We're going through sensitive times. We have to have the ability to open up hidden parts of our history and deal with it. We have to have the ability to argue."

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Turkey, a Clash of Nationalism and History

Turkey, a Clash of Nationalism and History

Exhibit Marking Anniversary of Istanbul Pogrom Breaks Taboos and Kindles Anger

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 30, 2005; Page A15

ISTANBUL -- The exhibit opened 50 years to the day after the mayhem it chronicled in the cobblestone street right outside the gallery.

Captured on black-and-white glossies was a modern-day pogrom, a massive, state-sponsored assault on a foreign community that awoke on the morning of Sept. 6, 1955, still feeling safe in Istanbul. By sunset a day later, a mob of perhaps 100,000 Turks had attacked foreigners' homes, schools and churches, and filled whole streets with the contents of the ruined shops that lined them. In the aftermath of the attack, a city for centuries renowned for its diversity steadily purged itself of almost everyone who could not claim to be Turkish.

(By Murad Sezer -- Associated Press)
The exhibit at Karsi Artworks attempts to confront that history, dubbed the Events of Sept. 6-7, in the era before "ethnic cleansing" entered the popular lexicon. But when ultranationalist thugs swarmed into the gallery on opening night -- throwing eggs, tearing down photos and chanting "Love it or leave it!" -- the question became whether it really is history at all.

"Just like what happened 50 years ago," said Mahmut Erol Celik, a retired civil servant emerging from the defaced exhibit. "It's the same mentality. That's what's so embarrassing."

Appearances have lately counted for a lot in Turkey. Under intense international scrutiny, its government hopes to begin negotiations Oct. 3 that should conclude with Turkey as a member of the European Union. Even if the process takes 15 years, as many predict, the result would apparently fulfill an ambition such as that which drove modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who preached that the country's future lay firmly with the West.

But questions arise almost daily about whether either side wants to proceed. Europe's mixed feelings about absorbing Turkey's large, poor and overwhelmingly Muslim population are well known. But Turkey harbors its own ambivalence, apparently rooted in the recurring question of how much the country cares about the world beyond its own borders.

That question came up again this month, when a Turkish court made headlines by barring a handful of scholars from gathering to discuss the deaths in 1915 of perhaps a million ethnic Armenians, in circumstances that Armenia and many independent scholars describe as genocide but Turkey calls the consequences of war.

The disagreement has poisoned relations between the neighboring nations for decades with an obsessiveness that overtakes Turkish efforts to appear poised. This summer, readers of Time magazine's international edition found a DVD tucked into a four-page ad for Turkish tourism. The disc included 13 minutes of commercials and an hour-long propaganda film accusing Armenians of slaughtering Turks.

"It's not a polemic," said a spokeswoman for the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, which paid for the disorienting mix of polished commercials and grainy footage of dead bodies. "We just wanted to position Turkey on this issue."

Last May, the prospect of scholars gathering for an independent assessment of the controversy brought a chilling warning from Turkey's justice minister, who called them "traitors." After objections from the E.U., the scrapped conference was rescheduled and was finally held this month, but not without an accompanying demonstration by Turkish nationalists. Also this month, a prosecutor filed charges against Orhan Pamuk, the country's most acclaimed novelist, for observing that the Armenian issue was off-limits in the country.

"There is no other country which harms its own interests this much," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said.

But then few other countries are so nationalistic. Turks are raised to believe that Turkey is surrounded by enemies and can rely only on itself. The unitary notion of the state views all citizens as ethnic Turks and regards any other presence as a dire threat.
So there was deep concern in official circles this month when Pope Benedict XVI made plans to travel to Istanbul at the invitation of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the ethnic Greek who serves as spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians. The Orthodox patriarchy remained in Istanbul, then called Constantinople, after the city was overtaken by Muslims half a millennium ago. But modern Turkey still refuses to acknowledge the patriarch's authority and hastened to issue its own official invitation to the pope, who obliged by postponing his trip.

To cultivate Europe, the government also invited Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Assyrian Christian and Muslim leaders to an ecumenical conference due to conclude four days before the crucial opening of the prospective E.U. negotiations, which one analyst predicted will be "contentious"
"When a country is embarking on a major negotiation process, when it's trying to eradicate old taboos and embrace modern norms, you usually do that in the name of nation-building," said Katinka Barysch, an analyst at the London-based Center for European Reform. "As Turkey embarks on this, it invokes nationalism. Which doesn't sit very well with the E.U. process."

So far, E.U. officials have been quick to label the prosecutions, court rulings and other embarrassments as transparent provocations intended to sabotage Turkey's image. But each also reflects a debate within Turkish society that was on plain view in the lobby of the Karsi gallery the day after the thugs trashed it.

Two visitors were recalling the 1955 attacks from memory.

"I was in the street that day and I remember very clearly," said Mehmet Ali Zeren, 70. "In a jewelry store, one guy had a hammer and he was breaking pearls one by one."

Celik, the retired bureaucrat, called the attack a stain on Turkish history, comparable to the infamous "wealth tax" that was enforced only against foreigners. "Therefore Istanbul lost many things," he said. "It lost most of its beauty."

"Why are you all speaking English here?" asked an agitated man, overhearing an American reporter's questions. He carried a bound volume of Ataturk's speeches and pointed angrily to a photo caption on the wall that identified leaders of the pictured mob as provocateurs.

"Shame on you!" he said. "These are our lands! A man holding a Turkish flag cannot be called a provocateur!"

Can San and other officials from the History Foundation, a co-sponsor of the exhibit, answered the man's complaints, then watched him leave through the exit the thugs had poured through the night before while chanting their slogans.

"But," San noted, "the public in the street did not join them."

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Muslim Horde Vandalizes Orthodox Village in Turkey

Street fight over an insult triggers ethnic/religious passions, mob
violence.

by Peter Lamprecht


ISTANBUL, September 30 (Compass) - The unchecked passions of two young Greek
Orthodox Christians in rural Turkey last month showed how a single misstep
can result in the persecution of the larger community.

More than 100 residents of the Turkish village of Karsu vandalized the Greek
Orthodox quarter of Altinozu last month after receiving reports that
Christians had attacked Muslims. A street fight had erupted when two young
cousins allowed themselves to be provoked by a Muslim insult of Christian
women.

The Muslim mob descended on Altinozu's Greek Orthodox neighborhood of
Sarilar shortly before 11 p.m. on August 3, chanting "there is no room for
infidels here."

Gendarmerie reinforced local police and helped halt the violence, but not
before the vandals had damaged 10 houses and injured five people ranging in
age from 12 to 62, including the wife of parish leader Spir Bayrakcioglu.

Cousins Mitri and Engin Keseroglu, Orthodox Christians from the Sarilar
neighborhood, have been charged with using razors to slash two Karsu youth
in a fight earlier that evening that triggered the outbreak of violence. A
knife-wielding Muslim in the altercation, 19-year-old Bahadir Arslanoglu,
was not arrested.

According to Karsu village headman Kenan Yildirim, most of Karsu's residents
were gathered at the town's monthly business meeting when they received a
telephone call saying that Christians were attacking Muslims. In his
comments to the local Ozyurt newspaper, the mayor claimed that he tried to
stop the ensuing revenge attack, and that he even received several blows in
the process.

No One from Karsu Arrested

Tractors and minibuses transported approximately 100 Karsu residents three
kilometers (1.8 miles) to the entrance of Sarilar neighborhood in Altinozu,
where they regrouped before proceeding on foot.

As they made their way unopposed through the Orthodox neighborhood, they
reportedly chanted "get out of here, you have no business here, this land is
ours," while using sticks and stones to break windows and attack the
ethnically Arab Turkish citizens.

One resident, who requested his name be withheld, told Compass that upon
hearing a commotion he rushed outside and saw a large crowd. "Behind them
were five or six policemen watching the event, because they were too few in
number to intervene."

Shortly after 11 p.m., gendarmerie arrived to reinforce the police and
dispersed the crowd by firing shots in the air.

Police did not detain anyone from Karsu in relation to the vandalism.

Later that night, police arrested Sarilar Orthodox Christians Mitri
Keseroglu, 18, in his home, while 21-year-old Engin Keseroglu was taken into
custody the following morning around 8 a.m.

The Keseroglu cousins were charged with "the use of a sharp object to
intentionally injure." They were released on September 1 after nearly a
month in prison. According to their lawyer, Mustafa Dikce, the trial date
has not yet been set.

In official statements made to the police, the Keserogluses denied using
weapons in their scuffle with 19-year-old Bahadir Arslanoglu and 18-year-old
Mehmet Sozer, both Muslims. The cousins claimed that the two Karsu youths
had attacked them first as they were on their way home.

Though Arslanoglu denied any involvement in instigating the fight, the
Ozyurt newspaper reported, and local sources confirmed, that the brawl with
the Keserogluses had started because of rude remarks Arslanoglu had made
about Christian women.

Simmering Tensions

Engin Keseroglu reported that after an initial scuffle ended and he had
continued home with only minor injuries, "I realized that I no longer had my
cell phone."

Returning to the fight scene accompanied by Mitri Keseroglu and another
17-year-old cousin, he found that Arslanoglu and Sozer had also come back
with four more friends. According to Mitri Keseroglu, Arslanoglu pulled out
a knife, and the fight resumed until bystanders managed to pull the two
groups apart.

Arslanoglu and Sozer went to the hospital, where they received stitches for
long slices on the cheek and forehead. According to an August 10 doctor's
report, the scars were permanent and require plastic surgery.

Many residents of both villages claimed that the Karsu attack on Sarilar
later that night was nothing more than a brawl between the Christian and
Muslim young men that got out of hand.

Two days after the violence, Karsu headman Yildirim was quoted by Ozyurt as
apologizing, "We're very sorry that this event was provoked."

"This whole thing was started because of rude remarks made to women," parish
leader Bayrakcioglu explained in the same article. "It grieves me that the
issue got so big."

Sarilar carpenter Selim Bayrakcioglu told Compass that the roots of the
fight went back to April, when the Christian quarter held its annual Easter
celebration of games and folk dancing. "Young men from other [Muslim]
villages come because they can be in the same place as young women," many of
whom, he said, were European visitors who did not dress in a way that was
culturally sensitive to Turkish standards of modesty.

Bayrakcioglu said that while anyone who came with family was welcome, the
Christians did restrict the participation of single males "who were often
there to bother women. I think those young men [Arslanoglu and Sozer] were
not let in to the festivities, and that's how this thing began."

The area has traditionally been a rare example of inter-faith peace in a
part of the world where religious wars like the Crusades have left their
mark. During Turkey's War of Independence following World War I, Turks
protected Altinozu's ethnically Arab Christians, who belong to the Greek
Orthodox Church.

The region's reputation is one reason it was chosen to host last weekend's
"Meeting of Civilizations," attended by Armenian Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish,
and Greek Orthodox leaders.

Muslim Lawyer Mustafa Dikce explained to Compass that he took the
Keserogluses' case because he wanted to defend good relations between
religions. "Here, for years we have been living as brothers with these
people, Muslim, Christian, Alevi, and Sunni," he said. "Altinozu is such a
great place, but there can be people who want to destroy it."

But not everyone from this ethnically diverse region painted a rosy picture
of Muslim-Christian relations.

Bayrakcioglu, the Sarilar carpenter, agreed that relations with neighboring
Muslims have "always been good," but pointed to a deeper problem of identity
that the Orthodox of Sarilar must face.

"We [Greek Orthodox] have never been seen by this mother country as true
children," he said, pointing out that no one had been held responsible for
the late-night vandalism. "The fact that they got enraged over a very simple
thing and appeared to be ready to rub us out goes to show that things aren't
quite as friendly as they appear."

Yet Bayrakcioglu is not one to hold a grudge. The morning after the attack,
he shocked his wife when he gave nails, free of charge, to Karsu residents
who came to his hardware store.

The carpenter said that he hopes things will get better. "I'm not a
second-class citizen here. I'm not a stepchild. This is our mother country.
My grandfather served in the military here, my father served in the
military, and I served in the military. We need to understand this, and we
need the people around us to understand this. But it looks like its going to
take a long time."
http://www.compassdirect.org/>

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New Forensic Tests Ordered On Injured Turkish Christian

Turkey - Monday September 19, 2005
Attack victim’s whereabouts remain uncertain.

September 19 (Compass) -- State medical examiners in Istanbul have been ordered to provide a second opinion in October on whether Turkish Christian Yakup Cindilli, a convert from Islam, sustained permanent damage from being beaten into a coma by nationalists nearly two years ago. But with Cindilli missing from home for the past three months, it is unclear whether forensic experts will be able to find and examine him to provide final conclusions before the Orhangazi Criminal Court in northwestern Turkey. Forensic doctors had presented results of physical examinations concluding that he had not fully recovered from extensive physical injuries and psychological trauma. But defense lawyers for Cindilli’s three attackers -- the president of the local chapter of the Nationalist Movement Party and two younger assailants -- objected to the medical findings filed to the court.

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Muslim Mob Attacks Christian Homes

Pakistan - Tuesday September 13, 2005
Police do nothing as homes are ransacked.

September 13 (Compass) -- A mob of 200 Muslim protestors ransacked at least 16 homes of Christians in Lahore on September 10 after a heroin-addict disrupted an Islamic service. Younis Masih, 35, was accused of insulting the Muslim prophet Mohammed. He faces several years in jail without bail while a lower Punjab court deliberates his case. If convicted, Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws require that he be executed. As Masih is a member of Pakistan’s historical Christian community, angry demonstrators armed with sticks and bricks damaged Christian homes and stoned a church, where they threw Bibles onto the floor. Police did nothing to stop the attacks.

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European mission unearths torture claims in Turkey

European mission unearths torture claims in Turkey

· Reports follow launch of EU membership talks
· Ankara dismisses findings as 'silly stories'

Helena Smith in Athens
Monday October 10, 2005
The Guardian


A European parliament delegation visiting Turkey to check on its progress in human rights has found "shocking" reports of murders and mutilations, a British MEP said yesterday. The findings, which come a week after Brussels launched membership talks with Turkey, highlight the scale of progress the predominantly Muslim country needs to make in its quest to join the European Union.
Richard Howitt, part of the mission by the parliament's seven-member human rights subcommittee, told the Guardian: "What we heard was shocking. There were accounts of soldiers cutting off people's ears and tearing out their eyes if they were thought to be Kurdish separatist sympathisers ... You can't hear these things without being emotionally affected

The MEP, Labour's European foreign affairs spokesman and a champion of Turkey's EU accession, said the abuses had been corroborated by human rights organisations. A trip by the group to Turkey's Kurdish-dominated south-east had also confirmed allegations that security forces were reverting to tactics from "the bad old days", although statistics showed that instances of torture had fallen by around 13% since last year. Indiscriminate shootings, widespread extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and instances of masked men raiding homes in the night were reported to have made a comeback.
"Our sources were very credible and the evidence was corroborated by all the different groups we spoke to," said the MEP. "They left me in no doubt of the veracity of the claims."

But Turkey's foreign ministry spokesman, Namik Tan, called the claims "silly stories". "They are purely fictitious. They have nothing to do with the truth. You won't find anyone who is credible in Turkey saying such things."

Mr Howitt said that in September alone 95 people had been arbitrarily arrested in Van, a town near Iran. Among them was Yusuf Hasar, a 19-year-old suspected Kurdish rebel sympathiser whose body was found last week after being arrested by police the previous day. The violations have coincided with an upsurge of violence in Turkey's troubled south-east. Armed clashes have intensified since rebels lifted a unilateral ceasefire in June last year.

The delegation, whose findings will form the basis of a report that will feed into Turkey's membership negotiations, was equally appalled by reports of violence against women and allegations of body organs being removed by security forces. Mazumber, a group representing the relatives of torture victims, told the MEPs that vital organs were routinely removed from the bodies of ethnic Kurds, presumably as part of the illicit trade in people trafficking.

Mr Howitt said it was essential the abuses be confronted before Ankara got into the nitty-gritty of the talks.

Since assuming power in 2002, Ankara's modernising Islamist government has won plaudits for overhauling the penal code, abolishing the death penalty, dismantling once-dreaded state security prisons and increasing cultural rights for ethnic minorities. But Turkish human rights defenders still speak of a pervasive "culture of violence" in the country's police, security and judicial forces.

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Anca Condemns Turkey's Demolitionof Armenian Church In Dikranagerd

Armenian National Committee of America
888 17th St., NW Suite 904
Washington, DC 20006
Tel: (202) 775-1918
Fax: (202) 775-5648
E-mail: [email protected]
Internet: www.anca.org

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 19, 2005
Contact: Elizabeth S. Chouldjian
Tel: (202) 775-1918

ANCA CONDEMNS TURKEY'S DEMOLITION
OF ARMENIAN CHURCH IN DIKRANAGERD

-- Alerts Congressional Offices to Ankara's Ongoing Practice
of Destroying Ancient Armenian Religious and Cultural Monuments

WASHINGTON, DC - The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA)
today forcefully condemned the Turkish government for the demolition
of an Armenian Church in the city of Dikranagerd, also known as
Diyarbekir.

According to an October 19th report by Bloomberg News, the church,
which was under the Turkish government's official protection, was torn
down by a construction firm. The article, written by Mark Bentley,
added that, "builder Kerem Emre used stones from the demolished church
in the province of Diyarbekir to lay the foundations for a mosque"
in its place.

"Turkey - which in 1915 committed genocide against the Armenian
nation and has since waged an international campaign of threats
and intimidation to deny its crime - is, today, in full view of the
world, destroying the surviving cultural and religious heritage of its
victims, seeking to erase even their memory from the Armenian homeland
of four thousand years," said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian.
"Sadly, our own government's silence - its failure to confront
Turkey's denials -effectively enables, emboldens, even encourages
Ankara's ongoing pattern of aggressive behavior toward the Armenian
people. The time has come for the U.S. government to finally break
this destructive pattern. As a nation, we need to speak with moral
clarity on the Armenian Genocide - signaling to Turkey in clear and
forceful terms that the American people stand on the side of a just
resolution of this crime against humanity."

As part of its ongoing efforts to educate policy-makers and elected
officials about Armenian American concerns, the ANCA has informed
the Administration and Members of Congress about the desecration of
this church.

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'they Destroyed The Church To Build A Mosque'

Under this title Milliyet daily of Turkey informed on October 19 that in Argun village of Kulp province of Diarbekir an Armenian church was pulled down to build a mosque in its place. Construction of the mosque was suspended after a few citizens' complaint. According to Milliyet the historic Armenian church of Argun was partially destroyed in the time of republic to build houses with its stones thus making it useless for religious services.

But the Council of Protection of Cultural Heritage and Ecology included the semi-ruined church and the Armenian graveyard into the list of historic monuments needing protection. But builder Kerem Emre, resident of the village, pulled the church down together with part of the graveyard by approbation of his fellow villagers and used the stones of the church to lay foundation of the mosque.

The construction of the mosque began on May 10 but it was stopped after the complaint of several citizens that made the mayor of Kulp and the Diarbekir museum administration intervened.

Head of the village administration, Sadek Turan, told Milliyet on occasion of the illegal construction: "I tried to stop the construction. I provided them with another area for the mosque and told that there are already two mosques functioning in the village. Then builder Emre gathered his fellow villagers and came to me. They accused me of being against the mosque and therefore concluded that I must be an Armenian. I could not stand the pressure any more and gave in."

The village of Kulp was formerly Armenian village Khulp that administratively belonged to province of Mush before 1915.

By Hakob Chakrian