Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Armenia Report
Monday 20, June 2005
http://www.armenialiberty.org/armeniareport/report/en/2005/06/2E697258-C7D0-4F44-B93F-4333FB60B91A.ASP
Turkish Scholar Arrested In Armenia For ‘Smuggling’ Bid
By Gayane Danielian
A Turkish scholar who researched Ottoman history in Armenia’s state
archives has been arrested on charges of attempting to smuggle old
Armenian books seen as cultural treasures by law-enforcement
authorities out of the country.
The National Security Service (NSS) said in a statement late Friday
that Yeftan Turkyilmaz, 33, was detained at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport
as he was about to board a plane bound for Istanbul. The statement said
he carried undeclared Armenian-language books about history, religion
and geography published from the 17th to 19th centuries.
The security agency described them as “literature of high
historical and cultural value.” Under Armenian law such items can not
be taken out of the country without a permission from the Ministry of
Culture.
Turkyilmaz, who spent more than one month in Armenia, was charged
under an article of the Armenian Criminal Code that carries heavy fines
and up to five years in prison. The NSS refused to officially comment
on the case. But sources there told RFE/RL that the Armenian successor
to the Soviet-era KGB is unlikely to seek a jail sentence for the
Turkish national.
A doctoral student at the Duke University in North Carolina,
Turkyilmaz became last month the first Turkish historian who sought and
was given access to the Armenian National Archive. In an interview with
RFE/RL, he said he is working with documents relating to activities of
Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian nationalist parties during the final
decades of the Ottoman Empire.
Armenian officials portrayed Turkyilmaz’s presence as proof that
the Armenian archives have always been open to Turkish researchers.
Turkey’s government has repeatedly urged Yerevan in recent months to
make documents kept in the available to them as part of its push for a
joint Turkish-Armenian study of the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire.
Turkyilmaz suggested on May 11 that he became the first Turk to
work with the archives because very few of his colleagues in Turkey
speak Armenian.
It is not clear how the scholar got hold of the old books. He was
said to be experiencing financial difficulties and enjoyed discount
fees for accessing archival materials. The National Acrhive director,
Amatuni Virabian, said he thinks Turkyilmaz did not deliberately break
Armenian laws or regulations.
“He showed interest in books and I gave him a few [recently
published] books,” Virabian told RFE/RL. “But I didn’t know that he
bought old books. You can transport anything except arms and drugs out
of Turkey. I guess the guy thought things are the same here.”
“In any case, we are now in a silly situation,” he added.