A tribute to our fallen Turkish Diplomats
"Please take a moment of reverence on January 27, 2002 ..."
Sema Karaoglu, Daughters of Ataturk, January 27, 2002 - Twenty-nine years have passed since the brutal killings of the Turkish Consul General Mehmet Baydar and Vice-Consul Bahadir Demir in Santa Barbara, California and 20 years since the assassination of the Turkish Consul General Kemal Arikan in Los Angeles, California. To this day, I get misty eyed when I go by the hotel in Santa Barbara and by the corner on Wilshire Boulevard where the brutal killings of these three Turkish diplomats took place, their images engraved in my mind forever. Today I pay tribute to them as well as other Turkish diplomats who became victims of ideological hatred. I remember going to the airport to see their lifeless bodies to be shipped home, I remember the Turks singing the Turkish National Anthem and crying. Buried beneath the feelings of sadness, horror, anger, and disbelief we cried.

I had known these three diplomats and had a good, close relationship with them. It seems only a few days ago that I was playing volleyball with Mehmet Baydar and Bahadir Demir when I heard the news of their assassination and it was only a few days ago that I had talked to Kemal Arikan when telephone started ringing announcing his assassination. Tragic events of September 11, 2001 seem to stress this fact even more so as I mourn their death. The days, months, years following were a difficult time for me as well as for many Turks and all those who have been touched with tragedy, to return to our daily lives. I remember .

Demir crying silently during the funeral ceremony; holding back her tears as she gently touched her unborn baby.

My condolences go out to all the families of the innocent victims of these killings who fell because of what they represented. Please take a moment of reverence on January 27, 2002 in their memory even though our words can never repay the debt we owe. We are merely caretakers of their memory. They were men with mission; they were fathers, husbands, sons, brothers; they were the candles lost to terrorism.

"Turkish Pope" Who Saved Jewish Lives
Two new Italian productions. Ed Asner cast as the "Pope."
Ercument Akman, www.turkfilm.net - Two television productions are under way on the life of John XXIII who lived in Istanbul as Cardinal Nuncio Roncalli. British actor Bob Hoskins, 59, will play the "Good Pope" in a TV film directed by Ricky Tognazzi and written by several authors, including Marco Roncalli, one of the Pontiff´s relatives. Filming will begin in November. The producer is Mediaset, whose principal shareholder is Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi´s family. The Italian public network RAI, Berlusconi´s immediate competitor, will also produce a TV film on John XXIII. In this film, directed by Dominique Othenin-Girard, the Pope will be played by American actor Ed Asner, 72. Filming will begin by year-end.

On September 7, 2000, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF) launched an international campaign aimed to acknowledge the humanitarian measures undertaken by Nuncio Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII and was the Vatican Representative between 1935-1945 in Istanbul. During those years, many did not understand his work. However, in 1936 he wrote in his "Diary of a Soul": "A few years from now, they will surely thank me for it." Although a diplomat, Roncalli was above all a pastor and man of peace.

Turkey has not forgotten him, and now even thanks their "friend the Pope." Istemihan Talay, Minister of Culture from Ankara, was in St. Peter's Square yesterday, leading the Turkish delegation, which was later received by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State, and by Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture."Roncalli lived in Istanbul for 10 years as a guest worthy of esteem, respected and admired, yet, unable to establish direct relations with the government of the country," his faithful secretary, Monsignor Loris Capovilla, wrote in the prologue to the biography, "Jean XXIII, Friend of the Turks," written by Rinaldo Mammara, and published for the occasion by the Turkish Ministry of Culture.

Since that time, Roncalli maintained an extraordinary relation with Numan Rifat Menemencioglu, Turkish ambassador, who later shared his life in Paris and eventually visited him in Venice. "A year or so later, Menemencioglu congratulated Roncalli on his election to the Papacy, and anticipated the development of new and closer relations between the Turkish nation and the Vatican," Capovilla wrote. The Door to the East was indeed closer: on April 11, 1960, Nureddin Vergin, the first Turkish ambassador to the Vatican, presented his credentials to John XXIII. Roncalli's activities was also portrayed in the documentary, Desperate Hours by Victoria Barrett , that premiered at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2001, chronicling one of the least known of the Jewish people's Turkish connections - the often heroic attempts made by Turks to save Jews during the Holocaust in Turkey and in Nazi occupied Europe.