I’ve grown to admire Elif Shafak’s opinions, especially nowadays as they give us a solid preview of what life can be like for a progressive Turkish contemporary writer/intellectual living and working in a post Hrant Dink world.

Listen to this recent interview on NPR’s Fresh Air radio program and please share your thoughts:

In this particular interview, it was interesting to listen to Shafak’s continued solid stance that the radical Turkish Nationalist movement is really a minority voice that is on the fringes of contemporary Turkish society, a compete opposite of what I originally conceived. There is a lot about Turkish society I have yet to discover, but it seems to be clear that there is this silent majority within the literate groups of Turkey who seem to be intellectually frustrated and actively questioning the official government “feed” about many current issues and past dark historical events. This is a good thing, as it may directly or indirectly propel a richer level of communicative openness and idea-exchange within Turks about various “Armenian” taboo topics in Turkish society such as the Ottoman era Armenian Genocide and the moral legitimacy of Turkey’s current day Armenian economic/border blockade.

Author Elif Shafak was acquitted after being taking to trial for “insulting Turkishness” when a fictional character described the Armenian genocide in her latest book. AFP/Getty Images

As I travel through out rural Armenia, I am realizing that there is too much educational capacity. In the typical town, there are over 15 schools. Each school has a large half used building, a director, two vice directors, a director of grounds and a full compliment of teachers. In Europe or the US, similar areas would have at most two primary schools and two secondary schools. It is estimated by various international organizations that Armenia has a 63% public employment and for a country of 2.5 million people, that is a huge public sector. It is easy to see much of that capacity exists in the education sphere.

more…

An update on last week’s blog about T.J., a transgendered Armenian attending graduate school in the U.S.

An organization, Eats4Education has set up a scholarship fund for T.J. to get through the rest of the school year financially. (Ironically, this organization happened to start at my high school hang out diner, oddly enough!)

If you’re interested in making a donation to T.J.’s education, please click here. They’ve raised enough to cover T.J.’s fall semester, but he still has to finish up the winter term.

Armenian Studies Seminar

This term there will be two meetings of the seminar:

Thursday 16 February (5th week)Dr Elizabeth Redgate (University of Newcastle) title to be announced.
Dr Redgate is the author of The Armenians, (in The Peoples of
Europe series), Oxford: Blackwell 1998 (repr. 2000, 2002)

Thursday 2 March (7th week) Dr Valentina Calzolari (University of Geneva)
title to be announced.
Dr Calzolari is a specialist of Armenian Apocrypha and saints’ lives, and the director of an international project on Neoplatonism in Armenia.

Further announcements will be made closer to the dates of the presentations.
All are cordially invited.

Prof. Theo M. van Lint
Convener

This weekend was a busy one for many Armenian economists and policy makers. The “Armenian International Public Research Group” conducted its fourth annual conference at the World Bank in Washington D.C. Like other years, the conference brought together many Armenians and non-Armenians who work on Armenia related economic, political and judicial spheres, and hoped that the policy recommendations will be taken up by the Armenian government in its pursuit of reforming and improving the mentioned aspects.

I would highly recommend those of you that are interested in the future of Armenia to visit the website: http://www.armpolicyresearch.org and read the abundant materiel on the topics I mentioned earlier. Some of the readings are a bit technical, but the rest can be digested by most of us.

Seriously, how long have I been talking about Linux in Armenia?

Since the mid-1990s?

No one ever listened to me.

Spitux aside, there isn’t much going on with Linux in Armenia, to be sure.

And look what smart Azerbaijan did:

President of Azerbaijan recently signed an order titled “ICT Implementation Programme in Azerbaijan High Schools (2005-2007)”. According to the document $20M in total is provisioned for this project. Project involves installation of new computers in 4521 high schools countrywide. Thus, by the end of the project one computer will be available for each 33 school students.

The Azerbaijan Internet Forum presented these reason for using Linux:

*Software cost saving - Lin.az is Free:
- Roughly 300$ saving on each workstation
- Saved funds can be spent for education of teachers, staff problems and inter-school infrastructure
* More Secure and Reliable:
- Almost virus free and better protected against viruses
- No need for regular critical updates
* More Flexible:
- Easily can be adopted for special needs of Ministry of Education.
- Local vendors will be given the chance to support their schools.
- In the future integrated infrastructure can be easily implemented among schools in order to manage and share resources.
* Azeri User Interface:
- Today, Lin.az/Linux is the only OS with the fully translated Azeri UI.
- 95% of applications (OpenOffice, Mozilla Firefox, etc.) also translated into Azeri
- Minorities can translate and use OS in their native languages in the future.
* Other Advantages:
- Distributive includes wide range of educational programs for mathematics, chemistry, geography, programming and foreign languages education.
- Existing Windows compatible application could be used from emulators if required.
- User interface can be switched into other languages in few seconds, which is very important for multilingual schools.
* International Practice:
- Nowadays, more and more schools all over the world are moving to OSS.
- All workstations in IOI’2006 (International Olympics of Informatics) will run Linux.
- 100$ (a.k.a. green) laptop is running Linux.

EXACTLY!!!!! ARGH!!!

Don’t blame me when Azeri kids have significantly better technology skills than their counterparts in Armenia. It isn’t just ArmenTel. It isn’t just the oil money. It is the fact that the MoE LISTENED to the experts and made a SMART decision.

I am SO frustrated now.

[source]

Facing History Ourselves, an NGO based in the US developed a genocide curriculum that focuses on the Armenian case. The state of Massachusetts adopted this curriculum for all public schools.

Two high school teachers, a student and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations are suing state education officials in federal court, challenging a law that set guidelines for teaching students about human rights violations. The law, which went into effect in 1999, specifically lists the Holocaust, the Mussolini fascist regime, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and “the Armenian genocide.”

“We are not taking sides on the ultimate issue of whether there was an Armenian genocide. We are simply insisting that both sides be allowed to have a place at the table,” said Harvey Silverglate, a Boston civil rights lawyer who represents the plaintiffs.

Read more here.

The World Bank released a Brain Drain report yesterday.

The study’s findings document a troubling pattern of “brain drain,” the flight of skilled middle-class workers who could help lift their countries out of poverty, some analysts say. And while the exact effects are still little understood, there is a growing sense among economists that such migration plays a crucial role in a country’s development.

In Armenia? I doubt it. Where are these people going to work and make a decent (if not good) income?

The study also included a report on:

the effect of the money that migrants from Guatemala, Mexico and the Philippines sent home, typically to their families. Those payments, known as remittances, helped reduce poverty in those countries and were a major source of foreign exchange, but the broader implications were complex.

There was also another Brain Drain related publication last week. Devesh Kapur and John McHale argue in their book, “Give Us Your Best and Brightest,” by the Center for Global Development, a research group in Washington DC, that the loss of institution builders - hospital managers, university department heads and political reformers, among others - can help trap countries in poverty.

Is this the case in Armenia? I don’t think so. I don’t think that there are enough jobs to sustain those Brain Drainers.

NY Times article

Cross-posted at neweurasia.

It is nice that Pskov will have an Armenian language Sunday School and all, but as for these children “keeping their language,” I’ve never met a graduate of a one-day-a-week language school that knows more than a few songs and that vozni means hedgehog.

ARMENIAN CHILDREN IN PSKOV WILL NOT FORGET THEIR LANGUAGE

Really?

Here’s the link. It was a pretty interesting interview, I think.

Mark D. Simakovsky is a U.S. Fulbright Post-Graduate Fellow working with the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS). Simakovsky is following up an MA in International Relations from Georgetown University with research focusing on Georgian—Russian relations. He took time to speak with Georgia Today about his work here, his interest in the Caucasus and Georgia’s increasingly important role as a player on the world stage.

The online journal “Inside Higher Ed” has published an interview with Yektan Turkyilmaz.

Some highlights:

The interrogators’ questioning in the initial few days of my arrest was entirely devoted to my research, my political views and connections with Turkish intelligence and state officials. The concept of “scholar” is meaningless to them. According to them, as the investigator put it, “all scholars are spies.” All my friends and contacts in Yerevan (most of whom have nothing to do with the books found in my suitcases) have not only been interrogated by the KGB but were also harassed and threatened. They were all told that I was a Turkish spy. My friends who were at the airport with me were threatened not to let anyone, especially my family, know about my arrest. (When my sister contacted them via phone they denied that they were with me at the airport! For that reason my family did not know about my situation for 15 hours.)

KGB officials’ mentality — a mixture of the Soviet way of thinking and nationalism with xenophobic overtones — played a crucial role in making the decision to detain me. Unfortunately, in today’s Armenia (like many other ex-Soviet republics), there isn’t adequate political control over KGB. I should also underline that there is an ongoing fight between pro-democracy advocates and pro-Russia Soviet-style rule. For me, it is relieving to know that I have received a good deal of support from the pro-democracy politicians and large segments of the Armenian society, which is very important.

Two sad news stories to report regarding the state of NGOs in the Former Soviet Union, specifcally in Central Asia.

#1, via registan, IREX in Uzbekistan has had to shut down. “A court in Tashkent on 12 September ruled that the International Research and Exchange Board, or IREX, has broken Uzbek laws on foreign assistance groups. The Uzbek Independent Committee for Freedom of Speech and Expression today quotes the Uzbek Justice Ministry as saying IREX had failed to provide authorities with information on Uzbek citizens studying in IREX-funded programs in the United States. ”

#2, via Volodymyr Campaign, the President of Kazakhstan has cautioned NGOs that they will be watched. “The Kazakh president warned foreign NGOs not to interfere in the country’s politics and threatened to prosecute them if they meddled in the election campaign. But analysts say Nazarbaev is concerned about a repeat of the colored revolutions that have hit other former Soviet states.”

Pretty bogus, if you ask me.

School isn’t cheap. Kids have to buy notebooks, books, pencils, not to mention gifts for teachers on the first day, or at least they do in Armenia. In the U.S., at least, kids don’t have to buy anything other than the clothes on their back for school. (Not that I am defending the American education system, but just for comparison…)

While organizations like Orran try to help kids in Yerevan pull together these resources, not all kids are as fortunate.

ArmeniaNow covers this topic this week.

Even during the harsh years of the early ‘90s, school attendance was at 97 percent. Now, however, according to Human Poverty Study, the number is only 77 percent.

In an effort to curb the trend, this year the Ministry of Labor and Social Issues of RA has implemented a new program in which socially-vulnerable families who have children attending the first grade can apply for a one time help of 20,000 drams (about $44).

If these kids aren’t paid for now, the country is going to pay for them later…

John Hughes has a great article today at ArmeniaNow, so I thought I’d post the whole thing:

I have a friend who is a teacher. She teaches at one of the most prestigious universities in Yerevan. Students in fine clothes and fancy cars with cell phones and suntans from holidays on foreign beaches returned to the school yesterday to start another year.

She teaches a foreign language there. Her expertise, passed on, is a ticket for the ones who apply it to get the best jobs in this country of rare best jobs.

If they care about their financial future, they will not choose the profession the teacher has chosen.

She is a fulltime university professor and she makes about $70 a month. She spends about $10 of that each month riding a bus to the university. She lives in the suburbs. A person with her salary can’t afford an apartment in the center.

She has a son. Thursday was his first day of school.

Earlier in the week, like thousands of mothers in this city, she went shopping for school things for the boy.

She dressed him in a new suit. It cost $15

She bought him new shoes. They cost $10

She bought a new shirt, $5. And a new tie, $2.

She took him for a haircut. It cost $1.50.

She bought notebooks, a book bag, pencils, pens. The cost was about $11.

It cost the teacher nearly a month’s salary to properly send her boy off for his first school day.

The teacher started her new school year this week too, with eight groups of 20 students each. 160 students; about 85 cents per student per month. She will spend 64 hours a month with them. She will make $1.09 per hour, not including preparation time.

Other teachers in Armenia make even less.

If my friend were a math teacher, I’d ask her to explain to me how those numbers add up to anything that makes sense.

Crossing the street in Yerevan is dangerous. Basically you have to run as fast as you can and pray in order to make it.

[Via A1+] Well, the “Police Car Inspection” department (what the heck is that? I guess the licensing department?) has started a new initiative to help kiddies cross more safely.

We turn to all the parents to use only underground crossings and to follow the signals of the traffic lights. Dear drivers, keep to the traffic rules while driving, and be especially careful in the areas near schools. Dear teachers, remind the children about the necessity to follow the traffic rules. Pupils of high school, help your young co-learners in any way you can.

Good luck…

As Onnik mentioned, it is hard to tell from outside of Armenia and Turkey what kind of press coverage the Turkyilmaz trial is getting. Here is a sample via Groong.

AZG 8/17

Not to satisfy the demand to release Turkyilmaz will mean to justify assaults those scholars face at the hands of the Turkish government, moreover, it will create the illusion in the Turkish society that the latter are rejected by the Armenian authorities as well. This blocks their attempts to oppose the state approach to the Armenian Genocide in Turkey and opens a second front to confront the Armenian authorities as regards Turkyilmaz case.

Noyan Tapan 8/17

Journal of Turkish Weekly 8/16

Zaman 8/12

I apologize for the short posts lately, but I’m back at home and ready to blog again.

Inside Higher Ed has an update that basically paraphrases the RFE/RL article from yesterday.

But, some commentary…

What I think is really great in this situation is how Armenians, Turks, Kurds, Americans and other groups all came together to do what they felt was the correct moral decision and support this young scholar. I never read or heard a negative word.

Also, the Armenian government didn’t try to cover up the mistake that they had made in putting him in a maximum security jail.

This bodes well for the future of Armenian and Turkish scholarship in both countries.

We’ll have to wait and see if Yektan will publically speak out against the treatment that he received or anything along those lines.

More later this evening… here’s what RFE/RL has:

Turkish Scholar Freed After Two-Month Arrest In Armenia

By Emil Danielyan and Ruzanna Khachatrian

Yektan Turkyilmaz, a Turkish scholar who was arrested in Armenia two months ago, walked free from a court in Yerevan on Tuesday after being given a two-year suspended prison sentence for attempting to illegally take old Armenian books out of the country.

The court in the city’s Malatia-Sebastia district convicted Turkyilmaz of two counts of smuggling but chose not to imprison him at the last-minute request of state prosecutors that cited his partial acknowledgement of his guilt and cooperation with investigators. The doctoral student of the U.S. Duke University will have to stay in Armenia until the verdict’s formal entry into force on August 31. He will then be free to leave the country and visit it again.

“I’m now free, right?” an incredulous Turkyilmaz asked journalists that surrounded him immediately after the announcement of the ruling. “I am happy to be free,” he said after hearing a positive answer. “I now want to concentrate on my doctoral dissertation. I was, I am and I will remain a friend of the Armenians.”

The presiding judge, Karen Farkhoyan, also upheld the confiscation of 88 secondhand Armenian books which Turkyilmaz bought in Yerevan and wanted to take with him to Istanbul. All of those books were published more than 50 years ago, with four of them dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries. Under an Armenian law that took effect last January, they can not be taken abroad without a written permission of the Ministry of Culture.

Turkyilmaz had no such permission when customs and security officers at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport found and confiscated those books on June 17. Both during his arrest and throughout his short trial he insisted that he was unaware of the requirement. Nonetheless, he was charged under an article of Armenia’s Criminal Code that envisages between four and eight years’ imprisonment for the contraband of “cultural-historical values,” narcotics and weapons.

“I believe that the accusations leveled against the defendant are absolutely substantiated,” the trial prosecutor, Koryun Piloyan, said in his concluding remarks.

Piloyan dismissed the defendant’s arguments that the books, most of them relating to the activities of Armenian nationalist parties in the Ottoman Empire, were needed for his doctoral studies at the prestigious U.S. university. “I don’t want to discuss his doctoral dissertation or events that took place in Anatolia from 1908-38,” he said. “We are investigating a criminal case regarding smuggling.”

The prosecutor then cited “mitigating circumstances” such as the defendant’s young age and his “at least partly truthful court testimony” to invoke another clause in the Criminal Code that envisages largely symbolic prison sentences.

“I regret what happened and accept that as a result of my inconsistency and indifference, I did not know legal requirements existing in the Republic of Armenia and failed to obtain permission for the books in a manner defined by the law,” Turkyilmaz send in his final court speech which he delivered in Armenian.

“As I said earlier, I never sought to violate the laws of the Republic of Armenia or to cause any damage to the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian people,” he added. “I therefore ask the court to be forgiving to myself and apply the softest possible punishment.”

Turkyilmaz’s release was welcomed by Orin Starn, a representative of Duke University who attended the trial. “Duke University is very pleased that Yektan has been given his freedom,” Starn told RFE/RL. “The books that Yektan collected were a reflection of his interest in Armenia. I know that Yektan will do wonderful work that will help us to understand the history of this region and the facts of the Armenian genocide.”

The Duke University president as well as over 200 U.S., Turkish and Armenian scholars have sent open letters to President Robert Kocharian calling for the release of their colleague. They said the punishment initially sought by Armenian prosecutors is too strict and unjustified. It is not clear if their protests have played a role in the prosecutors’ eventual decision not to seek the imprisonment of the Turkish citizen of Kurdish origin. Officials in Kocharian’s press service could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

Individuals accused of smuggling have rarely ended up in prison in Armenia. This fact raised questions about reasons for the severity of the charges brought against Turkyilmaz. The latter’s interrogations by officials from the National Security Service (NSS), which conducted the pre-trial investigation into the case, reportedly focused on his academic work and political beliefs.

The electronic copies of his research material collected at Armenia’s National Archive were also confiscated and closely examined by NSS investigators. The Malatia-Sebastia court ordered them to return the CDs to the scholar.

Turkyilmaz, who has repeatedly visited Armenia since 2003, became last May the first Turkish national who asked for and was granted access to the Armenian state archives. He said on Tuesday that despite his two-month ordeal he wants to conduct more research at the archives and may again visit them as early as this week.

“I have not yet finished my work there and am glad that I will stay in Yerevan for 15 more days,” Turkyilmaz told reporters. “I love this city.”

Oneworld has great commentary and photos from the Turkyilmaz trial today. Thanks Onnik!

Via Freshmeat: Barbar is a JavaScript transliterator that converts Latin transliterated text to coresponding Armenian letters and vice versa. The conversion is done by consulting conversion rules, and no guessing is performed.

This is awesome, but not perfect. I typed in “shoon” and it gave me: շooն. Where as shun became: շուն.

Regardless, check it out. Here’s the site: http://www.esiminch.org/barbaros/