Details of some of the images on CDs confiscated by KGB: map, above, published in 1915 in Tbilisi, titled "Historical Armenia and Neighboring Countries"; page, top, from 1914 document, "On what the Western Armenians and Media Ought To Do in the Course of [Armenian] Reforms [To Be Launched in Eastern Anatolia]"

One scholar who advocated tirelessly for Turkyilmaz was Altinay, the Istanbul-based professor who, like Turkyilmaz, completed her Duke dissertation under Starn's supervision. She has known Turkyilaz for more than five years and says that his research "promises to build important academic and human bridges between areas of scholarship divided by politically troubled borders, languages, and disciplines."

In late July, Altinay entered Armenia on a tourist visa; she was met at Yerevan's airport by the same friends who had seen off Turkyilmaz when he was arrested. Her next meeting, with the imprisoned scholar, was more freighted and frightening. "They first put me in a room that looked like an interrogation room," she recalls. "There was a desk and three chairs, all of which were nailed to the floor. Nothing could be moved. The door was covered with thick leather from the inside, which might have been for sound isolation. Yektan came into the room with a KGB agent, who accompanied us during the whole visit. He asked Yektan to sit behind the desk, while I sat in front of the desk."

Altinay says she tried to provide him with information about the international attention on the case, and "to reassure him that this nightmare would end soon." She recalls, "He looked serious, calm, and strong." As he was being led away, "I told him that we would soon be meeting under very different circumstances. I believed--or wanted to believe--that this would indeed be the case. But he seemed more pessimistic. I could see the deep worry in his eyes."

On her return to Istanbul, she helped organize the Committee for Solidarity with Yektan Turkyilmaz, which included prominent writers, journalists, and intellectuals. They crafted an open letter to President Kocharian and, in less than twenty-four hours, collected 100 signatures. The petition was impressive in its international reach--especially so, Altinay observes, because it was the first time that Turkish and Armenian scholars had come together on this scale.

Even as he was targeted by the national-security apparatus, Turkyilmaz continued to receive support from other sectors of Armenia. In a radio interview, the director of the National Archives called the trial a mistake. One of Turkyilmaz's cellmates burst into laughter, he recalls, on learning that Turkyilmaz's imprisonment hinged on a dispute over book exports. His situation just didn't fit into the convenient categories that define official Armenia's view of the world--or that define scholars who are citizens of Turkey.

"My first thought was that the right hand and the left hand in the Armenian government were working at cross purposes," says UNC's Kurzman, who maintained a "Free Yektan" website throughout the episode. "You have a move by the National Archives to grant Yektan permission to perform his research there, clearly an attempt to further the cause of scholarship and to gain good publicity. On the other hand, you have people there who are very suspicious of outsiders telling their story for them. And it appears that some of those people--many of them, I would guess, Soviet trained--saw only trouble in having a scholar from Turkey look at their documents and leave the country with information that they considered central to their national identity."

The early suspicions that he must have been spying for Turkey constitute "the big irony there," Kurzman says. "That of all the people from Turkey who might come look at their documents, he's among the most sympathetic. So I think it backfired on them. Once they had him, they couldn't just let him go without losing face. But they couldn't keep him either, because of the international outcry and because it was counterproductive to their own cause, which is to have Armenian historical claims validated."

Starn, Turkyilmaz's dissertation adviser, flew to Yerevan, the capital, to observe the trial. It was, in Starn's view, only a show trial. The state prosecutor hinged his argument, he says, on the theory that Turkyilmaz had acquired too many books for any authentic student to absorb; Turkyilmaz's intent, so the argument went, must have been smuggling. At trial's end, as the judge was reaching his decision, the prosecutor blithely walked out of the courtroom. That display of nonchalance, Starn says, was an indication that the verdict was preordained.

"I think this falls within the larger context of this deep historical mistrust between Armenia and Turkey, this feeling in Armenia that they have suffered at the hands of the Turks, that they've been massacred by the Turks, that Turkey took over 90 percent of their territory, and therefore Turkey only means bad things for Armenia and Armenians. The very fact of a Turk, albeit one of Kurdish descent, being in Armenia, photographing documents in the archives, buying books about Armenian history, culture, and politics, making a lot of Armenian friends, was something unusual. Yektan is a real pioneer in this sense. I think that inevitably made him a target of suspicion."

He may have been a target of suspicion there, but Turkyilmaz sees Armenia as a target of scholarly opportunity. "I will definitely go back" to Armenia, he says, though he thinks he has compiled enough material to finish his dissertation. He left having lost 20 pounds in prison, but with his books and CDs back in his possession.

Hovannisian, the UCLA expert on Armenia, says Turkyilmaz's case illustrates how a nation like Armenia--finding itself alongside the historically hostile neighbors of Turkey and Azerbaijan--can be in a perpetual mode of insecurity and crisis. That circumstance can feed a fervent patriotism that perceives threats everywhere, he says. At the same time, Turkey has been slow to deal with the burden of historical memory. "We in the United States have our own difficulties facing the skeletons in our closet," says Hovannisian. "It was a very long time until we acknowledged the mistreatment of the Native American population and the evils of slavery. So it takes maturity to be able to face your history."

"There is hope that civil society is opening up in Turkey, and maybe it will spill over into Armenia," he says. "The Turkish scholars today who are talking about these issues are not doing it for any love of Armenians. They're saying that we in Turkey can't really know who we are, can't really face our future, unless we deal with our past."

www.yektan.org