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In Defense of Turkey’s Imprisoned Armenian Maverick
Armenian intellectual and entrepreneur Sevan Nisanyan, 60, could spend the next 25 years in a Turkish prison as punishment for a long list of charges relating to construction violations stacked against him. As a journalist and a critic of government policies, Nisanyan has been too loud and too bold for an Armenian in Turkey. His friends have launched petitions calling on the Turkish authorities to at least allow him his intellectual pursuits.
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Why Armenians are still in Turkey? they should’ve planned their gradual departure from that crime-filled country, there’s no hope in staying there. We have heard so many sad stories like this and I always wonder “when will Armenians there understand that it’s time to leave…”
The diaspora Armenians and the Catholicosate should hire lawyers to defend this person and all other Armenians who will be in a similar situation.
What is being done in this case, has any Armenian organization or political party moving a finger or just organizing events to collect money for their pockets??!
As long as Armenians are not organized, Turks will have a green cart to do whatever they like and nobody will stop them.
Goodness, gracious. If one were to apply the same legal principles to the infamous Erdogan posse related to illegal building and expropriation of heritage land, the prison term would be life times at least five . . . . Keep up the pressure. Most intellectuals in Turkish prisons should not be there.
Nishanyan’s online toponymic index “Index Anatolicus” (http://nisanyanmap.com/?) is an important resource for those many Armenians, who wish to locate their ancestors’ native towns and villages which have been Turkified by the successive Turkish governments starting in the 1920s. With a little patience, trying various possible transliterations in English for a town or village Armenian name, it is possible to locate it and to learn what Turkified name it now bears. Nishanyan has done a meticulous, rewarding work.
Thank you for pointing out that site.
I believe those Turkification projects usually referred to the Armenian and other non-Turkish original names as “foreign names”. Just goes to show the how deep the psychology of animosity goes. People who lived there before you are “foreigners”?
United States punishes every other militant undemocratic country. Time for the US, Germany, England, and other countries to take on Turkey. Time for Turkey to be kicked out of NATO, where it never belonged betroying the West, and time for the West not be subjected to constant Turkish bullying.
“United States punishes every other militant undemocratic country.”
That’s not even a little bit true. And Turkey will remain in NATO so long as it serves its purpose as NATO/US yes-man in the middle east. Get over it.
Dear Nanore and American Weekly,
Thank you for the article about Nishanyan. I am waiting for a documentarian to tell the story of 100 years of abysmal treatment of minorities by successive governments in Turkey. This is after the Genocide.
A TRUE STORY:
Garbis Benlian was a shoemaker in Istanbul who owned a tiny shop. On November 12, 1942, the draconian wealth tax known as VARLIK VERGISI was passed by the government in Turkey.
1) Tax assessments arrived in secret.
2) Individuals were directed to settle their government assessed liabilities within two weeks without any appeal provisions in place.
3) The penalty for Christians and Jews who failed to do so within a month was deportation to forced labor camps in eastern Turkey in addition to having their property confiscated.
Garbis was deported and his shoe repair business confiscated. He was gone for years. His granddaughter and my friend, Armenuhi always thought that her grandfather had abandoned the family. Garbis’s wife died and his daughter Siran was cared for by relatives in Istanbul. She was in Istanbul, in 1955 when the government sanctioned destruction of the Greek community took place which also targeted Armenians and Jewish citizens.
I’m waiting for someone to make a documentary film.
Sincerely,
Ellen Sarkisian Chesnut
I have got sympathy for Sevan Nisanyan as I was a regular reader of his website.But he knew what he was doing and possible consequences that’s why I do not understand the motivation he had. It is extremely unlikely that someone will builds a construction on a historical sites and won’t receive a prison sentences. He could have avoided this unnecessary prison term but he is a special man so deserve to be free
So, based on the Turkish “logic” of someone posting under a ridiculous pen name “John the turk”, members of Erdogan’s ruling circle who were complicit in illegal building and expropriation of heritage land must also receive prison sentences? Yes? Or in Turkey the law only applies to the Armenians?
The issue is the nature of the prison term itself. High security prison for 16 years? He’s being targeted.
JtT,
Here’s a very nice article from Today’s Zaman on Nisanyan. I don’t know how long it will be up since the government has taken it over:
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist/sami-m-akgonul/nisanyan-wont-be-forgotten-in-jail_414024.html
Some choice quotes from the article:
“Being Armenian, atheist, anti-nationalist, anti-Kemalist and a contrarian is too much for Turkey.”
” For this construction he has been sentenced to two years in prison. In total, he was “handed a cumulative jail sentence of 16 years and 7 months after he made the fatal mistake of using mocking language about Islam in a blog entry in September 2012. He has been held in a maximum-security Turkish prison since January 2, 2014. He will not be eligible for parole until 2024.”
“
Nothing new here..turks being turks, who cannot bear to be criticized, because they know they are wrong..
DON’T BLAME THE TURKS OR ERDOGHANIST DESPOTS WHY DON’T WE ASKE THE SO CALLED FREE
WORLD WHO ALLOWED IT TO GET TO THIS STAGE. ONCE AGAIN THE SO CALLED FREE WORLD EVERY
ONE OF THEM HAS A SHARE IN WHAT THE SULTAN OF TURKEY HAS OR IS DOING.