Massacres Turkey

My obsession began on a day shortly before my 25th birthday, when my father brought his Aunt Eva to visit me in San Francisco. We stood on the deck of one of those silly bay tourist boats, Eva with a scarf wrapped tightly around her head, my father translating into Armenian the recorded commentary, and me bundled up against the wind.

Police dug up six bodies near a militant Kurdish Islamic group's hide-out in southern Turkey, raising to 31 the number of corpses uncovered recently of people believed killed by the militants. The latest grisly find came in a field near Tarsus, 235 miles southeast of the capital, Ankara. In previous days, police found 25 bodies buried on the grounds of four houses in Ankara, Istanbul and Konya.

Rebel Kurds launched their most deadly attack in two years Sunday night, killing at least 20 civilians in a remote village in southeastern Turkey. The Anatolian News Agency said Monday that at least 20 civilians were killed, and sources in the regional city of Diyarbakir said the toll could reach 26.

Under heavy political pressure, officials of California's mammoth public employee pension fund voted Monday to rescind approval to hire an investment consultant whose comments about the slaughter of Armenians and Greeks under Ottoman Turkish rule were seen as insensitive and inaccurate. Board members of the California Public Employees' Retirement System also voted unanimously that consultants hired to assess its foreign investments will be required to "put a premium on historical truth."

Turkey will open its archives next year to permit historians to judge the facts about the massacre of Armenians by the Turkish government during World War I. Turkish President Kenan Evren, whose government does not acknowledge the deliberate slaughter of Armenians, made the announcement in Washington.

Police dug up six bodies near a militant Kurdish Islamic group's hide-out in southern Turkey, raising to 31 the number of corpses uncovered recently of people believed killed by the militants. The latest grisly find came in a field near Tarsus, 235 miles southeast of the capital, Ankara. In previous days, police found 25 bodies buried on the grounds of four houses in Ankara, Istanbul and Konya.

Under heavy political pressure, officials of California's mammoth public employee pension fund voted Monday to rescind approval to hire an investment consultant whose comments about the slaughter of Armenians and Greeks under Ottoman Turkish rule were seen as insensitive and inaccurate. Board members of the California Public Employees' Retirement System also voted unanimously that consultants hired to assess its foreign investments will be required to "put a premium on historical truth."

The state Department of Education paid a Thousand Oaks man $50,000 to make a documentary on the massacre of Armenians by the Turks, but has refused to distribute the film to schools after expressing concerns about alleged interference from the Legislature and about the quality of the film. J. Michael Hagopian, who was born in Turkish Armenia in 1913, the son of a surgeon, was nominated twice for Emmy awards for earlier films on the subject.

It's a memory she says only death will erase. Siranosh Papazian Tanossian was born almost 100 years ago in the village of Izmit in northern Turkey. But today, the North Hills resident recounts with surprising detail so many memories, some happy, some of horror, from her days in the seafaring community. As a child, Tanossian attended kindergarten in the morning, played in her father's fabric shop after school and spent summer vacations in Istanbul.

TODAY They make the hip hop REDCAT at Disney Hall celebrates the vitality and variety of street dancing in "The Legends of Hip-Hop," a program featuring groundbreaking Philadelphia-based concert-dance choreographer Rennie Harris as well as such earlier pop-dance pioneers as the Electric Boogaloos, Don "Campbell Locking" Campbell, Crazy Legs and Boogaloo Sam. Archival films will fill in the historical blanks. "The Legends of Hip-Hop," REDCAT Theater at Walt Disney Concert Hall, 631 W. 2nd St.

It's a memory she says only death will erase. Siranosh Papazian Tanossian was born almost 100 years ago in the village of Izmit in northern Turkey. But today, the North Hills resident recounts with surprising detail so many memories, some happy, some of horror, from her days in the seafaring community. As a child, Tanossian attended kindergarten in the morning, played in her father's fabric shop after school and spent summer vacations in Istanbul.

My obsession began on a day shortly before my 25th birthday, when my father brought his Aunt Eva to visit me in San Francisco. We stood on the deck of one of those silly bay tourist boats, Eva with a scarf wrapped tightly around her head, my father translating into Armenian the recorded commentary, and me bundled up against the wind.

The state Department of Education paid a Thousand Oaks man $50,000 to make a documentary on the massacre of Armenians by the Turks, but has refused to distribute the film to schools after expressing concerns about alleged interference from the Legislature and about the quality of the film. J. Michael Hagopian, who was born in Turkish Armenia in 1913, the son of a surgeon, was nominated twice for Emmy awards for earlier films on the subject.

Rebel Kurds launched their most deadly attack in two years Sunday night, killing at least 20 civilians in a remote village in southeastern Turkey. The Anatolian News Agency said Monday that at least 20 civilians were killed, and sources in the regional city of Diyarbakir said the toll could reach 26.

Turkey will open its archives next year to permit historians to judge the facts about the massacre of Armenians by the Turkish government during World War I. Turkish President Kenan Evren, whose government does not acknowledge the deliberate slaughter of Armenians, made the announcement in Washington.

To the large Armenian community here, the arson slayings of a mother and her six children--allegedly by the family's father--raises a disturbing question. Was this an isolated instance of one man's madness--or a sign that traditional Armenian family values are breaking down under the stresses faced by recent immigrants? Armenian Americans pointed to the incident as a possible harbinger of worse to come, as the latest wave of Armenian immigrants arrive from Iran.

History provides no simple answers to big questions, particularly those involving policy. One thing it can do, as historian Carl L. Becker remarked, is help free us from the tyranny of misleading historical analogies. Let me discuss certain ones as they apply to Kosovo. One can be quickly dismissed: the analogy between the situation today and those of World Wars I and II, suggesting that the current crisis could lead to World War III.