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Thomas Goltz

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Thomas Goltz
Born(1954-10-11)October 11, 1954
Japan
DiedJuly 29, 2023(2023-07-29) (aged 68)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materNew York University
Occupation(s)Journalist and author
Websitehttp://thomasgoltz.com

Thomas Goltz (October 11, 1954 – July 29, 2023) was an American author and journalist best known for his accounts of conflict in the Caucasus region during the 1990s. He spent 15 years in and around Turkey and Caucasus.[1]

Career

He directed and co-produced a documentary for Global Vision's Rights and Wrongs program[2] which was a finalist in the Rory Peck Award for excellence in television journalism in 1996[3][1][4]

Goltz has written news for most leading US publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. In-depth articles have appeared in Foreign Policy magazine, The National Interest, The Washington Quarterly and other broad-based magazines. In  electronic media, he has worked on or produced video documentaries on a variety of topics for ABC/Nightline, BBC/Correspondent and CBS/60 Minutes.[5]

He became known mainly as a crisis correspondent due to coverage of the first war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Karabakh, the war of secession in Abkhazia from Georgia and the separatist conflict in Chechnya.[1] Thomas de Waal, who was a friend of Goltz and praised Azerbaijan Diary for being informational on Azerbaijani society, admitted Goltz had a pro-Azerbaijan bias and that his book "doesn’t actually tell you that much about the war in Karabagh".[6]

Goltz claimed to have seen 479 corpses from the Khojaly massacre at the morgue in Aghdam, however only 181 corpses in Aghdam were forensically examined. Vahram Atanesyan has speculated that, because there was no electronic communication within Azerbaijan at the time, it is likely that Goltz's report that was published by The Washington Post had been delivered the Turkish embassy in Washington.[7] Goltz's eyewitness account also included graphic killings of alleged Azerbaijani victims whose names did not appear on the official list of deaths complied by Azerbaijan.[8]

On August 22, 2000, Goltz carried the symbolic “first barrel of oil” from Baku, Azerbaijan with IMZ sidecar motorcycle, to Ceyhan, Turkey with other 25 riders. They used to future Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline route at the time. The aim was to draw attention to this mega project which symbolizes both Azerbaijan's and Georgia's (country) economic independence.[9][10]

He lectured at most leading US universities including Columbia, Georgetown, Berkeley, Northwestern, Princeton, etc and foreign policy-related institutes in Azerbaijan, Canada, Georgia, the United Kingdom and the United States.[5] Other than that he was also professor in Montana State University.[11] In 2020, he was awarded an honorary PhD by the ADA University.[12]

Personal life

Thomas Goltz was born in Japan and raised in North Dakota. He graduated from New York University with an MA in Middle East studies.[1]

He married to Hicran Oge in 1984 in Istanbul, Turkey.[13]

Goltz fluently spoke English, German, Turkish, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Russian and Japanese.[1]

Thomas Goltz died on July 29, 2023, at the age of 68 after a long illness.[14][15][13] Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev sent a condolences message to his family and described Goltz as "great friend of Azerbaijan".[16]

Controversy

The Armenian National Committee of Canada accused Goltz of racism in March 2009 for remarks made at a lecture sponsored by Assembly of Azerbaijani-Canadian Organizations. According to the Armenian National Committee, Goltz characterized the Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh as "garlic-growing Armenians", and selectively mentioned instances of ethnic cleansing by Armenians against Azerbaijanis while omitting mention of cases of ethnic cleansing of Armenians by Azerbaijanis.[17]

Books

  • Requiem for a would-be republic (1994)[18][19]
  • Goltz, Thomas (1998). Azerbaijan Diary. ISBN 076560244X.[20]
  • Oil Odyssey (2000)[10][21][22][23]
  • Chechnya Diary (2003)[24][25]
  • Georgia Diary (2006)[26]
  • Assassinating Shakespeare (2006)[13]
  • Türkiye Diary ('The Bridge') (2020)[27][28]
  • Zakhrafa : Memories of a disappearing Middle East (2021)[29][30]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Gausan, Robert. "Thomas Goltz - Biography". IMDb. Archived from the original on 2023-09-27. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  2. ^ "Rights and Wrongs Series: Europe, Chechnya: Russia's Human Rights Nightmare | Alexander Street, part of Clarivate". search.alexanderstreet.com. Archived from the original on 2023-09-27. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  3. ^ Goltz, Thomas (1996-12-29). "U.S. Quietly Abandons the Kurds of Northern Iraq". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2023-09-27. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  4. ^ "News Award". The Rory Peck Trust. Archived from the original on 2023-06-08. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  5. ^ a b "Thomas Goltz: books, biography, latest update". Amazon.com. Archived from the original on 2023-09-27. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  6. ^ "AN INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS DE WAAL". Onnik Krikorian. 16 April 2002. Archived from the original on March 19, 2023. Retrieved March 19, 2023.
  7. ^ Atanesyan, Vahram (25 July 2013). "Thomas Goltz: The Godfather of the Legend of the "Khojaly Genocide"". Horizon Weekly. Archived from the original on 6 February 2023. Retrieved 6 February 2023.
  8. ^ "Pro-Azerbaijani propagandist Thomas Goltz caught on falsifications of 1992 Aghdam events". Panorama. 26 February 2016. Archived from the original on 24 May 2019. Retrieved 24 May 2019.
  9. ^ "Oil Odyssey 2000". Azerbaijan International: 60–61. 2001.
  10. ^ a b "Oil Odyssey". Amazon. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  11. ^ "Thomas Goltz | Pulitzer Center". Pulitzer Center. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  12. ^ TheEditor (2021-06-15). "American author Goltz: Eccentric regional icon still at it". The Tribune. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  13. ^ a b c "Thomas Caufield Goltz Obituary 2023". Franzen-Davis Funeral Home, Crematory and Monument Company. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  14. ^ American writer Thomas Goltz who wrote about Khojaly tragedy passed away
  15. ^ Pope, Hugh (2023-08-01). "RIP Thomas Goltz, the journalist who knew no limits". Hugh Pope. Archived from the original on 2023-09-27. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  16. ^ "To the family of Thomas Goltz". President.az. 29 July 2023. Retrieved 29 July 2023.
  17. ^ ‘Let the garlic-growing Armenians beg to join you [Azerbaijan’]
  18. ^ Requiem for a would-be republic: The rise and demise of the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan : a personal account of the years 1991-1993. Istanbul: The Isis Press. 1994-01-01. ISBN 978-975-428-068-5.
  19. ^ Goltz, Thomas Caufield (1994). Requiem for a would-be republic : the rise and demise of the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan ; a personal account of the years 1991 - 1993 (1. publ. ed.). ISBN 978-975-428-068-5.
  20. ^ "Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter's Adventures in an Oil-rich, War-torn, Post-Soviet Republic". Amazon. Archived from the original on 2023-09-27. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  21. ^ Abdel-Hassan, Mohamed Aziz (2018-01-30). "Geopolitical dimensions to build the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Nabucco gas pipeline to Western Europe". International Journal of Multidisciplinary and Current Research. 6 (1). doi:10.14741/ijmcr.v6i01.10909. ISSN 2321-3124.
  22. ^ "An Oil Odyssey". 2021-02-07. Archived from the original on 2023-03-26. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  23. ^ "Oil Odyssey by Thomas Goltz, Judy Gunderson-Muncy". app.thestorygraph.com. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  24. ^ CHECHNYA DIARY | Kirkus Reviews.
  25. ^ Chechnya Diary: A War Correspondent's Story of Surviving the War in Chechnya. ISBN 0312268742.
  26. ^ "Georgia Diary: A Chronicle of War and Political Chaos in the Post-Soviet Caucasus". Amazon. Archived from the original on 2023-09-27. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  27. ^ "Amazon.com: Türkiye Diary ('The Bridge'): Forty Years Of Intimate Association With A Wayward US Eurasian Ally eBook : Goltz, Thomas: Kindle Store". Amazon. Archived from the original on 2023-09-27.
  28. ^ Chaffetz, David (2020-11-30). ""Türkiye Diary (The Bridge): Forty Years Of Intimate Association With A Wayward US Eurasian Ally" by Thomas Goltz". Archived from the original on 2022-11-25. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
  29. ^ Zakhrafa : Memories of a disappearing Middle East. New Silk Road LLC / Publishing. 2021-09-01.
  30. ^ "Zakhrafa". 2021-08-29. Retrieved 2023-09-27.
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