Turkyilmaz Goes on Trial in Yerevan
RFE/RL reports that Yektan Turkyilmaz, the 33-year-old PhD student from Duke University arrested last month for attempting to take historical books out from Armenia, went on trial in Yerevan today. Despite protest from foreign academics and many others, Turkyilmaz faces up to eight years in prison if found guilty.
Turkyilmaz has attracted strong support from fellow academics in the United States, Turkey and Armenia. More than 200 of them have signed an open letter to President Robert Kocharian describing the accusations as “disproportionate” and calling for his release. Also demanding his liberation was Bob Dole, a former pro-Armenian member of the U.S. Senate. “To detain him on grounds as dubious as these calls into question Armenia’s commitment to democracy in the first place,” Dole wrote to Kocharian last week.
Individuals convicted of smuggling have rarely ended up in jail in Armenia. Hence, growing questions about reasons for the severity of the charges leveled against the Turkish national of Kurdish extraction. The chief prosecutor at the trial, Koryun Piloyan, refused to explain them on Tuesday.
[…]
Avetik Ishkhanian of the Armenian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group, was also at the trial and urged the authorities not to give the defendant a prison sentence. “This is not the kind of case where we should demonstrate the strictness of the law,” he said, arguing that Turkyilmaz is among the few Turkish historians who question Ankara’s official line on the 1915-1918 mass killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.
Incidentally, Ishkhanian was quoted in the last post about out-migration from Armenia. The RFE/RL article on Turkyilmaz can be found here.
Why are they really doing this Onnik? Even Bob Dole has jumped on this research students side, and as far as I can remember, Bob & Elizabeth Dole are both friendly to the armenian cause. Thanks.
Comment by Hagop Bedrossian — August 10, 2005 @ 6:49 am
Hagop, to be honest, I don’t know. It defies all logic. What should have been a simple confiscation of books and a fine is fast becoming something significantly more. Maybe we’ll have a clearer idea during the trial but I doubt it as we’d also know more before the trial began. I have no theories or ideas and haven’t even heard any speculation from journalist and analyst friends.
Comment by Administrator — August 10, 2005 @ 7:27 am
There is no doubt in my mind that the Armenian government is using Turkyilmaz as a bargaining chip against the Turkish governments actions against Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist based in Istanbul who will face up to three years in prison for saying “i am not turkish, but, an armenian who lives in turkey”. Where is the outrage with Hrant Dink?
Comment by Raffi Meneshian — August 12, 2005 @ 5:45 pm
Well, if that’s the case, it’s a pretty stupid thing to do. Firstly, because Armenians are prosecuting a PRO-Armenian Turkish historian and secondly, because the Turks will be able to say that Armenia is not truthful in saying that it is comfortable having the Genocide examined by historians and that its archives are open.
All in all, it is a huge embarrassment and I have to wonder if the KGB didn’t just make a mistake, and true to how things are done here, weren’t willing to admit that mistake even if the whole case turns into a scandal for Armenia.
Besides, Turkyilmaz can not be a bargainng chip because sure as hell, the Turkish government don’t feel much love for their historians who actually accept and speak openly about the Genocide.
Ironically, now, slowly but surely, the Turks are at least understanding the propaganda benefits of the Turkyilmaz case and to my knowledge at least, no Armenian historian or academic has faced this kind of trouble in Turkey.
Comment by Administrator — August 13, 2005 @ 6:34 am