Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Armenia Report
Monday, 1 August, 2005
http://www.armenialiberty.org/armeniareport/report/en/2005/08/2640DF4D-6EB7-4D0E-8A12-2A62CFBDED34.asp

Arrested Turkish Scholar Denies Smuggling Charges

By Karine Kalantarian and Emil Danielyan

A Turkish scholar arrested last June for allegedly attempting to
smuggle rare books out of Armenia has pleaded not guilty to
extraordinary criminal charges that could land him in prison for up to
eight years, his Armenian lawyer said on Monday. 

Vartuhi Elbakian told RFE/RL that the Armenian authorities have
rejected her petitions to release Yektan Turkyilmaz, a doctoral student
at Duke University in the United States, pending trial. They also seem
to have ignored protests from a group of Turkish intellectuals, among
them prominent critics of Ankara’s continuing denial of the 1915
genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. 

Turkyilmaz was detained at Yerevan’s Zvartnots international
airport on June 17. Armenian law-enforcement authorities said he
carried old Armenian books of “high historical and cultural value”
which can not be taken out of the country without a government
permission. 

The 33-year-old scholar was remanded in custody and charged under
an article of the Armenian Criminal Code that carries between 4 and 8
years in jail for the contraband of anything ranging from old books to
weapons of mass destruction. 

Elbakian said her client was not aware that he needed a government
permission for seven of the 88 books which he bought or received as a
gift during his two-month research in Armenia. She argued that neither
Turkey nor the United States have such legal requirements. 

The attorney also said that investigators from Armenia’s National
Security Service (NSS) gave “no concrete reasons” for the rejection of
her appeals for Turkyilmaz’s release on bail. The petition was
accompanied by personal guarantees from an opposition member of
Armenia’s parliament, Shavarsh Kocharian, and a renowned U.S. historian
of Armenian descent, Richard Hovannisian. 

According to Elbakian, the Turkish government has still not
demanded explanations from official Yerevan in connection with the
case. She claimed that Ankara is showing little interest in
Turkyilmaz’s fate because he has questioned in the past the official
Turkish line on the 1915-1923 mass killings and deportations of Ottoman
Armenians.

The Armenian authorities are instead facing pressure from prominent
representatives of Turkish civil society. In an open letter to
President Robert Kocharian last month, about two dozen of them
expressed “grave concern” about Turkyilmaz’s prosecution and called for
his “immediate release.” 

“We understand that none of the books he had with him were
absolutely prohibited from being taken out of the country, but only
required permissions,” read the letter. “We are convinced that Mr.
Turkyilmaz did not know about this requirement at the time and would
have undoubtedly complied with this requirement as he has demonstrated
to be a serious scholar and a friend of Armenian culture on many
occasions.”

“While it may be appropriate to impose a fine for the unknowing
violation of customs regulations, prison terms of 4 to 8 years are
grossly disproportionate and would send a deterrent signal to other
independent scholars,” said the signatories. 

Among them are academics Taner Akcam, Murat Belge, Halil Berktay as
well as publisher Ragip Zarakolu and Turkey’s most famous writer, Orhan
Pamuk. They have all repeatedly denounced Turkey’s denial of the
genocide despite threats and condemnation from nationalist circles. 

Kocharian’s spokesman, Victor Soghomonian, told RFE/RL that the
Armenian leader will examine and react to the letter only after
returning from his two-week vacation which began on Monday. It is still
not clear when Turkyilmaz will go on trial. According to his lawyer,
the authorities have already chosen a Yerevan court of first instance
that will hear the case.

Turyilmaz became last May the first the first Turkish historian who
sought and was given access to the Armenian National Archive. His
research there focused on 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
despite Ankara’s claims to the contrary. The signatories of the open
letter to Kocharian warned that his prosecution could “raise serious
doubts as to whether Armenia encourages independent scholarly research
on its history.”

The potential punishment facing Turkyilmaz is unusually harsh given
the nature of his alleged crime. Imprisonment of individuals detained
while trying to smuggle cultural treasures out of Armenia has been
extremely rare. Such cases usually end in heavy fines and the
confiscation of those items. 

Individuals familiar with the case claim that the NSS, the Armenian
successor to the Soviet-era KGB, considered charging Turkyilmaz with
espionage before bringing the smuggling case. Giving weight to this
theory is the fact that the suspect is being held in the ex-KGB’s
basement jail, the most tightly guarded in the country, and that
law-enforcement officials confiscated electronic copies of the archival
documents which he studied in Yerevan. 

Furthermore, the Turkish intellectuals who appealed to Kocharian
said Turkyilmaz “has been questioned about his research and theoretical
orientations.” “There can be no justification for this treatment,” they
said. 

Among the individuals questioned by the NSS as witnesses in the
case are three ethnic Armenian citizens of Turkey who live and study in
Yerevan. The security agency has so far refused to divulge or comment
on details of the investigation.