373) Turkish scholar's detention contested -Supporters decry his arrest in Armenia -By Catherine Collins -Chicago Tribune

ISTANBUL -- In a rare display of cooperation, more than 200 international academics and intellectuals have sent a letter to the Armenian president urging the release of a Duke University scholar who went on trial this month in the former Soviet republic.

 

Yektan Turkyilmaz, a Turkish citizen of Kurdish background, has been charged with violating the Armenian criminal code, a catchall that forbids transporting contraband ranging from narcotics and poisons to nuclear weapons and cultural objects.

 

Turkyilmaz, a doctoral candidate, was arrested June 17 as he tried to leave the country with two suitcases of used books. He has been held in a former KGB maximum-security prison in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, and faces up to eight years in prison if convicted.

 

"The political implications of this arrest cause grave concern," read the letter, sent recently by a group that included intellectuals and academics on both sides of the Armenian mass killings divide. Professors from the Universities of Chicago, Michigan and Minnesota were among those who signed the letter.

 

The treatment of Turkyilmaz, the letter said, "would send a deterrent signal to other independent scholars."

 

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, a staunch advocate for Armenian issues, also weighed in with a letter to Armenian President Robert Kocharian.

 

"Your detention of Yektan for seven weeks on any grounds would draw attention to failings in Armenia's democratic evolution," Dole wrote. "To detain him on grounds as dubious as these calls into question Armenia's commitment to democracy."

 

The trial started Tuesday and is expected to last up to a month.

 

Turkyilmaz's research into how Turks, Armenians and Kurds interacted for centuries in the Anatolia melting pot touched on the sensitive issue of the mass killings of Armenians in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire.

 

Armenia and Armenian-Americans have been lobbying governments worldwide to label the deaths genocide. The Turkish government insists the deaths were the results of a civil insurrection that also claimed the lives of innocent Turks.

 

Turkyilmaz's supporters contend that the emotional topic got the scholar into trouble, not the books he bought in second-hand stalls and markets.

 

In nearly two weeks of interrogation, the academic said through friends, he was never questioned about his books but instead about his research and a compact disc of archival information that was to be the basis for his writing. The disc has been confiscated.

 

"This should not be a political issue; this should be for the historians to look into and decide," said an official at the Turkish Foreign Ministry who spoke on condition of anonymity. "From what we had heard, this young scholar seemed to support the Armenian side of the so-called genocide debate. It is such a strange turn of events, to arrest him."

 

For the last two years, Turkyilmaz has conducted research in Turkish and Armenian libraries and the Turkish national archives. This year, he was the first Turkish citizen allowed access to the Armenian national archives, according to an Armenian government press release.

 

A bibliophile, Turkyilmaz scoured bookstores and open-air markets for old books. Supporters say no one told him he needed special permission to take the books from Armenia.

 

Several American and Armenian scholars have said that they also were unaware of the restriction. Although the law has been used in stopping the export of cultural goods such as religious icons and carpets, it is thought to be the first time it has been applied to books.

 

Special to the Tribune
Published August 15, 2005