2013
Taner Akçam Teaches ‘Genocide 101′ in Germany
Dec/07/2013 Archived in:Armenian Genocide
BERLIN — Two classes of high school students in northern Germany had the rare opportunity to learn about the Armenian genocide from one of the most authoritative researchers on the topic, Prof. Taner Akçam from Clark University in Worcester, Mass.
During his brief visit to Germany over the Thanksgiving holidays November 26-29, Akçam also lectured for adults, among them a seminar group at the Free University in Berlin, and a broader general public at the Potsdam University and the Lepsiushaus in Potsdam. For Akçam it was not foreign territory. As the dean of the philosophy department of the Potsdam University noted in introducing him, Akçam had found political asylum in Germany after his escape from prison in Turkey, where he had been sentenced for articles he had written about the Kurds. In 1996 he took a degree from the Hannover University with a thesis on the Armenian Genocide and then worked at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, before moving the US, where he studied at the University of Minnesota and Michigan, and went on to a position at Clark University.Read Further...
During his brief visit to Germany over the Thanksgiving holidays November 26-29, Akçam also lectured for adults, among them a seminar group at the Free University in Berlin, and a broader general public at the Potsdam University and the Lepsiushaus in Potsdam. For Akçam it was not foreign territory. As the dean of the philosophy department of the Potsdam University noted in introducing him, Akçam had found political asylum in Germany after his escape from prison in Turkey, where he had been sentenced for articles he had written about the Kurds. In 1996 he took a degree from the Hannover University with a thesis on the Armenian Genocide and then worked at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, before moving the US, where he studied at the University of Minnesota and Michigan, and went on to a position at Clark University.Read Further...
Revisionsprozess gegen Akhanli / Akhanli Case at Istanbul Court
Aug/07/2013 Archived in:Turkey
Revisionsprozess gegen Akhanli / Akhanli Case at Istanbul Court
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Please click hereRead Further...Bad Theater in Istanbul: Turkish Court Performs Kafka
Aug/07/2013 Archived in:Turkey
ISTANBUL — Like any other day in the summer season, on July 31, thousands of tourists were standing in lines in the blistering heat to visit the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace and numerous other sites here.
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Mubarak, Morsi, and then?
Jul/10/2013 Archived in:Middle East
In his famous novel Animal Farm, George Orwell satirized the outcome of the Bolshevik revolution and Stalinism. His allegorical tale showed how a gang of animals had risen up against the exploitative farmer and seized power, only to reproduce the political structures they had sought to eliminate. Something similar may be unfolding in Egypt...Read Further...
Discovering Hayastan Through the Eyes of Children
Jul/08/2013 Archived in:Armenia
WATERTOWN and YEREVAN — For too long the term “diaspora” designated both the identity and homeland for many Armenians. The post-World War I republic was short-lived and Soviet Armenia, especially during the Cold War, was a remote reality, both geographically and politically. Since 1991, that has happily changed, and Armenians worldwide can look at the Republic of Armenia as their “other half.” Armenian Ambassador to Germany Armen Martirosyan has said of these two pillars, “Our unity is the source of our strength and our diversity is the source of our resilience.”Read Further...
Activist Targeted by Turkish Authorities Again
Jul/08/2013 Archived in:Turkey
What is really happening in Turkey? And where is it going to lead? What began as a protest against government plans for Gezi Park in Istanbul’s Taksim Square has swelled into a mass movement throughout the country and those thousands of citizens engaging in civil disobedience are giving no signs of capitulation. Not only: solidarity actions are unfolding in other countries especially in Germany, which hosts a very large Turkish community. Here, a new judicial scandal against a leading German-Turkish intellectual, which broke out just prior to the Gezi protests, is intersecting the ferment and fuelling the wave of solidarity with those fighting for democracy and free speech in Turkey.
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The Quest for a Culture of Remembrance
May/21/2013 Archived in:Armenian Genocide
Armenians in Germany Commemorate Armenian Genocide
By Muriel Mirak-WeissbachSpecial to the Mirror-Spectator
BERLIN — Among the many nations where people gather on April 24th every year to commemorate the victims of the 1915 genocide, Germany holds a special place for three reasons: first, because it was here that the Holocaust occurred, a case of mass murder that was modeled on the Armenian genocide; secondly, because the post-war German political world faced up to what the Nazis had perpetrated. It was not only the fact that many of the criminals were brought to justice at the Nuremburg trials, and that Germany acknowledged it as genocide, but also that in the years and decades that followed, the reality of what had been committed was subjected to historical scrutiny, so that broader layers of the population and members of the successor generations became aware of this past. Germans refer to this process and what it has produced in civil society as “a culture of remembrance” (Erinnerungskultur). The third reason is that Germany’s Turkish population is the largest outside of Turkey, a fact which has a political, social and cultural impact in both countries.Read Further...
Rediscovering Franz Werfel: Potsdam Conference Analyzes Life of Brave Humanitarian
Mar/22/2013 Archived in:Culture
POTSDAM, Germany — Among the required reading for most Armenians is the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel, and the author is thus known among Armenians mainly — if not exclusively — for this monumental work.Read Further...
Gutenberg Museum Displays Armenian Book Treasures
MAINZ, Germany — The relationship of Armenians to their language is very special, actually unique. To my knowledge, Armenia is the only country that offers the foreign visitor a monument composed of giant letters of the alphabet, standing as stone sculptures in a vast field outside Yerevan. And Mesrob Mashtots (360-440), the genius who invented the alphabet as a perfect phonetic system in the year 405 AD, is not only honored as a great intellectual but is revered as a canonized saint. Read Further...
German-Turkish-Armenian Project
Dramatizes Search for Identity
Jan/20/2013 Archived in:Culture
Her name is Sabiha, the same name as the favorite adopted daughter of Kemal Mustafa (Atatürk), who as a female pilot was a symbol for her nation. But this Sabiha is German, and lives with her immigrant mother, whom she calls Anne – “mother” in Turkish. This Sabiha, we learn from her best friend (actually soul mate), also named Anne, is 150 per cent German, and only learns Turkish when she attends university. She soon feels drawn to Turkish nationalist circles, and even participates in nationalist demonstrations, honoring Talaat Pasha, for example.
But who is Sabiha really? Is she German? Is she Turkish? Or is she, perhaps, something else? Could she be Armenian? Read Further...
But who is Sabiha really? Is she German? Is she Turkish? Or is she, perhaps, something else? Could she be Armenian? Read Further...