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Duke Student Free From Jail in Armenia After Conviction on Charges

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  • Duke Student Free From Jail in Armenia After Conviction on Charges

    The Chronicle of Higher Education
    Thursday, August 18, 2005

    Duke U. Student Is Free From Jail in Armenia After Conviction on
    Book-Exportation Charges

    By AISHA LABI


    HEADLINES


    A Duke University graduate student who was jailed for two months in
    Armenia was released on Tuesday and given a two-year suspended
    sentence for attempting to export old books from the country
    illegally.

    The student, Yektan Turkyilmaz, is a Turkish citizen who is a
    Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology. After a weeklong trial, he
    was convicted of violating an Armenian law that prohibits the export
    of books older than 50 years without permission. He could have been
    sentenced to four to eight years in prison, but the court opted not to
    imprison Mr. Turkyilmaz after a last-minute request by prosecutors,
    who said Mr. Turkyilmaz had cooperated and had partially acknowledged
    his guilt.

    Mr. Turkyilmaz was arrested on June 17 as he tried to leave Armenia
    for Turkey with about 90 second-hand books he had purchased legally at
    bookstalls in the open-air market in Yerevan, the Armenian capital. He
    was held for more than a month before he was charged. Scholars from
    around the world, including many Armenians, reacted with outrage at
    his detention and more than 200 signed an open letter of protest to
    Armenia's president, Robert Kocharian (The Chronicle, August 1).

    Orin Starn, a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke who is
    Mr. Turkyilmaz's dissertation adviser, traveled to Armenia for the
    trial. In an e-mail message from Yerevan on Wednesday, he said that
    "all of the books that Yektan had were related to his research on
    Armenian history, culture, and politics."

    Mr. Starn said Mr. Turkyilmaz "was completely unaware of the law
    prohibiting the export of books older than 50 years from Armenia; all
    of the booksellers who testified at the trial related that they, in
    fact, were either unaware of the law themselves or had not told Yektan
    about it."

    Mr. Turkyilmaz's dissertation is to be titled "Imagining 'Turkey,'
    Creating a Nation: The Politics of Geography and State Formation in
    Eastern Anatolia, 1908-1938." The period that Mr. Turkyilmaz's
    dissertation research focuses on and its role in fostering modern
    Turkish and Armenian nationalism is at the heart of continued tensions
    between Turkey and Armenia. An especially inflammatory subject is the
    deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in 1915: Armenians
    characterize the killings as genocide, while Turkey officially rejects
    this view.

    Mr. Turkyilmaz is fluent in Armenian, as well as modern and Ottoman
    Turkish, different dialects of Kurdish, French, and English. His
    fluency allowed him to address the court in his own defense.

    "I regret what happened and accept that as a result of my
    inconsistency and indifference, I did not know legal requirements
    existing in the Republic of Armenia and failed to obtain permission
    for the books in a manner defined by the law," Mr. Turkyilmaz said in
    his final statement at the trial. "As I said earlier, I never sought
    to violate the laws of the Republic of Armenia or to cause any damage
    to the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian people."

    Mr. Turkyilmaz is free from jail but is not permitted to leave Armenia
    until the sentence becomes official, which is expected to take place
    in two weeks.

    When Mr. Turkyilmaz was arrested, the books he was carrying were
    confiscated, as were his laptop computer, his camera, and computer
    disks containing his research materials. In announcing the verdict,
    the trial judge said that the government would return all of the
    research material, according to Mr. Starn.

    "We hope, and expect," Mr. Starn wrote, "that the Armenian authorities
    will allow Yektan to leave the country at the end of this 15-day
    period with the return of all these materials, which are a crucial
    part of Yektan's dissertation research."

    Despite his incarceration, Mr. Turkyilmaz said after his release that
    he was looking forward to doing more research at the Armenian National
    Archives and was hoping to visit them as soon as possible, perhaps
    even before his departure, according to a Radio Free Europe report. "I
    have not yet finished my work there and am glad that I will stay in
    Yerevan for 15 more days," he said. "I love this city."
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