Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm

The Islamist regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has sanctioned a covert operation in a number of Western countries in Europe and North America, aiming to locate former police chiefs who had in the past investigated wrongdoing in the government.

According to a secret government document obtained by Nordic Monitor, the Erdoğan regime has been running highly classified, intelligence-gathering operations in nine Western countries that were tasked with a specific goal to accomplish.

The operations, kept strictly confidential, were launched to locate former police chiefs who had investigated and gathered incriminating evidence in cases involving pervasive corruption in the administration, sophisticated Iran sanctions-busting schemes, the government’s aiding and abetting of armed jihadist groups and its links to organized crime syndicates.

The document, dated September 28, 2022, and distributed by the Security General Directorate (Emniyet), Turkey’s main law enforcement agency, shows that 55 police chiefs are located in the US, Canada, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, and Norway.

Secret Security General Directorate document reveals spying operations in nine Western countries by Turkish intelligence: 

While sharing the information with provincial police departments to further investigate the profiled police chiefs, the Security General Directorate warned that the information passed from abroad must be treated on a “need-to-know” basis and was “not to be shared with unauthorized people/institutions.” The warning is a measure to avoid a diplomatic backlash and problems at the bilateral level with these nine countries in the event that the unlawful spying activities on foreign soil are exposed.

The intelligence-gathering operations in these countries were directed by agents who use Turkish embassies as their base of operations. The document refers to “Institution V” as the original source of the intelligence, which is a way of indicating the Foreign Ministry Security and Research Directorate (otherwise known as the intelligence section, or Araştırma ve Güvenlik İşleri Genel Müdürlüğü in Turkish), a secretive spy section of the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

President Erdoğan has unlawfully and summarily purged tens of thousands of police officers including most veteran police chiefs since December 2013, when corruption cases were made public and incriminated him, his family members and his business and political associates in illegal schemes that helped Iran launder money using Turkish banks.

Apparently Erdoğan and his cronies fear that the police chiefs who managed to escape from wrongful imprisonment in Turkey and sought asylum in Western countries may create headaches for him and his inner circle in the future. Many of these police chiefs are believed to possess critical information and evidence that may very well help build legal cases abroad against Erdoğan and his close associates.

In fact, one of those police chiefs, Huseyin Korkmaz, turned up as a government witness in a federal case in New York in which US attorneys indicted a Turkish state bank official, a former minister and an Iranian operative named Reza Zarrab, who laundered Iranian government funds using the Turkish state-owned Halkbank in order to avoid US sanctions.

Testifying in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York during the 2017 trial, Korkmaz detailed how the bribery scheme worked to facilitate money transfers between Turkey and Iran in violation of US sanctions based on a 2013 probe for which he was part of the investigation team. Although Erdoğan managed to kill the 2013 corruption case by removing police chiefs, prosecutors and judges in Turkey, he could not prevent US prosecutors from pursuing a similar case in New York.

Although Erdoğan and his ministers had lobbied both the Obama and Trump administrations to derail the case, they failed in their efforts. Zarrab, saved from the Turkish case by Erdoğan, who helped secure his release, turned into a US government witness after his arrest in Miami and submitted submitted damning evidence about how he had bribed Turkish government officials and testified about the money he distributed to Erdoğan family foundations as well as ministers to get the money laundering scheme going through Turkey.

The police chiefs and the countries that were subject to spying activities by Turkish agents in the West (the names and identifying information were redacted by Nordic Monitor): 

Read more: https://nordicmonitor.com/2023/02/turkey-runs-special-covert-operation-in-western-europe-us-and-canada-secret-document-reveals/

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This was Sasun Mikayelyan’s second immoral statement. Sasun Mikayelyan made his first statement in 2018, which can be described as an ideology, anthem, manifesto of velvet coup, and velvet banditry. We are talking about the statement according to the “revolution” has greater value than the Artsakh liberation war.

Naira Zohrabyan, the chairwoman of the “Security and Democracy” NGO, and former deputy of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia, Naira Zohrabyan, said about this during the conversation with Davit Fidanyan, referring to the scandalous statements of Sasun Mikayelyan regarding the army. Zohrabyan, talking about Mikayelyan’s statement, invited them to a live debate. “At one time, I invited Hayk Marutyan to a debate and said:

come without Nikol. I would have said: you choose the broadcast, you choose the topic, you choose the agenda. Now I invite Sasun Mikayelyan from your booth to a debate for the statements he made. Sasu, you can come with Nicole. You choose the air, you choose the place. It should be live. A question arises: if there was no army, then what kind of Armenian booty was presented at the Baku military parade on December 9,” said Zohrabyan. According to the former deputy of the National Assembly, Ruben Vardanyan is being targeted both by Azerbaijanis, Pashinyan’s government and even certain sections of the RA opposition. “We see who made Vardanyan a target, the Nikol-Aliev tandem. Bayramov speaks from Vardanyan, Azerbaijan’s representative at the UN speaks from Vardanyan, some marginalized rejected forces in Armenia, with their Facebook activists, declare a holy war against R. Vardanyan. I say that today Ruben Vardanyan is the fragile link that tries to keep the sovereignty of Artsakh. And all those who targeted him are Aliyev’s eunuchs. Regardless of whether they are Azerbaijanis, representatives of the RA government, or representatives of the opposition, whose plans have failed,” Zohrabyan said. Speaking about the tactics of the opposition, Zohrabyan mentioned that the parliamentary opposition has exhausted itself. We need such an opposition, which is not afraid of decisive actions and ending up in prisons. “Today we need a deadly opposition,” he said. Details in the video.

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By Harut Sassounian,

On January 27, Israel’s international TV station, i24NEWS, aired a half-hour program full of falsehoods to glorify Azerbaijan’s relations with Israel and vilify Armenia, Iran, and Russia.

This scandalous program had nothing to do with journalism, and everything to do with Azerbaijan’s notorious ‘caviar diplomacy.’

Here are excerpts from the TV program which I have transcribed. My comments are in brackets:

The narrator, Israeli journalist Henrique Cymerman, said: “Azerbaijan has problematic neighbors, especially Vladimir Putin’s Russia in the North and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Iran in the South. Yet, its main historical enemy is another neighbor, Armenia, a country with a Christian majority that has clashed with Azerbaijan in two major wars, causing thousands of victims. In the first war of Nagorno-Karabagh in 1991, Armenia, backed by Russia, [first lie] managed to conquer 10,000 square kilometers in the border zone, a region the size of Lebanon. The official objective was to create a buffer zone. For Azerbaijan, 2020 was the year of victory in the second Karabagh war. Pres. Ilham Aliyev’s army reconquered all areas [second lie] occupied by the Armenians only to find dozens of villages and small towns completely destroyed and booby-trapped. [Third lie]. Such was the case in Khodaafarin area, just a few meters from the Iranian border on the banks of Arax River. In this scenario, Iran supported Armenia [fourth lie] and Israel supported Azerbaijan.”

The reporter interviewed Mubarak Qurbanli, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Religious Affairs, who said: “Armenia seized our lands. [Fifth lie]. It took a huge heroic effort for our army to win them back in the last war. The Azerbaijani people know that during this war, Iran was on the side of Armenia. [Sixth lie]. So you can understand these unpleasant feelings, not towards the people, but towards the Iranian regime…. Iran reproaches Israel it seems from the point of view of Orthodox Islam. But, where was Iran for 30 years when Armenia, violating all international laws [seventh lie], occupied Azerbaijani lands, including the Iranian border. Why did Iran remain silent then?” [Eighth lie].

The narrator continued: “The ceasefire was finally achieved by Vladimir Putin. At the liberation celebration in Baku, the army viewed the offensive drones it had acquired from Israel and which caused many casualties among Armenian forces [shameful boast about killing Armenians]. One of the strong men in the Baku government is Hikmet Hajiyev, Pres. Aliyev’s top advisor and his foreign policy strategist. He claims that Israel is one of the first countries that recognized Azerbaijan’s independence in 1991 and delivered news that angered Tehran.” Hajiyev said: “The President of Azerbaijan and National Parliament made a decision to open a full-fledged Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the State of Israel, and with the opening of the Azerbaijan Embassy in Israel we will be able to manage to bring to a quantitatively new level the Israel-Azerbaijan strategic partnership.” [Hajiyev did not mention that due to Pres. Aliyev’s fear of a backlash from Islamic States, Azerbaijan opened an Embassy in Tel Aviv only in 2022 — almost 30 years after Israel opened its Embassy in Baku in 1993. And then, to soften the negative reaction of Islamic states, Azerbaijan opened a representative office in Ramallah, the West Bank].

The reporter then added: “The closer the strategic relation between Baku and Jerusalem is, the more Tehran threatens both countries. In a video broadcast by the Islamic Republic of Iran, it clearly defined that the path to the Holy Mosque of Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem passes through the capital of Azerbaijan. It is the first time that Tehran has threatened the two countries, saying ‘you are digging your graves. Anyone who defies Iran will be destroyed.’ Tehran also attacks Israel’s new Arab partners that support the Abraham Accords: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and even Saudi Arabia…. This is one of the most explosive borders in the world. On this side, we are in Azerbaijan which is a secular Muslim country, a strategic ally of Israel, and there we can see the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran which defines the U.S. and Israel as ‘the big Satan and the little Satan.’ According to Iran, the road through Jerusalem passes through Baku, the Capital of Azerbaijan. In October 2022, the Iranian army decided to launch an act of intimidation against Azerbaijan accusing its Northern neighbor of being agents of Israel. Thousands of Iranian soldiers crossed the Arax River on the border between the two states with tanks, planes, helicopters and military trucks. The Iranian army also dropped hundreds of paratroopers over the border area. There were dozens of videos of military maneuvers which showed time and time again, the target of their missiles: The Jewish State’s Star of David. Tehran points to the growing ties between Baku and Jerusalem.” Then a video is shown of an Iranian General saying: “We are turning at the crossing of the Arax River on the border with Azerbaijan so that they will take us seriously. We do not accept the presence of Zionists next door.”

The i24NEWS program continued: “Many of the military drills took place on the Iranian side of the river, but at times, there were air and ground infiltrations within Azerbaijani territory. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev responded to Iranian Generals with a tweet that enraged Tehran: A photo of the leader of Azerbaijan embracing the Israeli Harop type kamikaze drone. Azerbaijan bought the SkyStriker and LORA drones from Israeli companies Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries.”

The journalist then interviewed Efraim Sneh, a former Israeli Minister, who is described as “the architect of the alliance between Israel and Azerbaijan.” He said: “I recognized the importance of friendly Azerbaijan, given its very close proximity to Iran and the fact that a big part of Iran is Azeri. [Ninth lie]. I thought this is a case for us to establish a strong, sound bridge between Israel and Azerbaijan…. The Azeri people took a major role in the combat against Nazi Germany. Hundreds of thousands of Azeris who went to the war against Hitler during the ‘Great Patriotic War,’ didn’t return home. They fell in the battlefield in Europe and Germany. And this is something that a Jew can never forget. We remain always grateful for the contribution of Azerbaijan to the defeat of the Nazis.” [Tenth lie. The Israeli Minister seems unaware that fighting for Nazi Germany were 70,000 Azeris who participated in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. Hitler called these Azeris his reliable allies].

The narrator continued: “During our journey along the 700-kilometer border, we saw other Israeli technologies being used to surveil the Iranian side, for example, high-precision cameras and very sophisticated electronic sensors. According to several sources, these systems support operations conducted by special units and Israeli secret agents who infiltrate Iran to fight against its nuclear projects. It’s a delicate surgical fight, according to the international press. Israel permanently maintains pilots of its Air Force in Azerbaijan as well as several [U.S.] F-35 fighter jets, the fifth generation of combat aircraft considered to be the most sophisticated on the planet. Following the Iranian drills, an F-35 apparently infiltrated Iranian airspace to assess the efficiency of its anti-aircraft system.” [If true, this is a clear admission that Israel has violated its agreement with the U.S. not to transfer the F-35’s to another country].

[Part 1: To be continued next week]

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There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The quake was also felt in the nearby Turkish provinces of Mugla, Izmir, and Antalya, with Turkey’s AFAD emergency management agency saying it had a preliminary magnitude of 5.4.

The undersea quake struck at 14:37 Greek time and had an epicentre nearly 400 kilometres southeast of Athens and 58 kilometres southeast of the Rhodes town of Lindos, the Athens Geodynamic Institute said.

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Armenia’s state debt has crossed the threshold of 10 billion dollars. It does not violate the fiscal rules, but the debt service is becoming more and more burdensome, the billions of drams from the budget are directed to interest rates.

The strengthening of the dram against the dollar was in favor of the national debt. As of the end of December 2022, the state debt of Armenia amounted to 10 billion 638 million dollars. In one year it increased by 15.3% or 1 billion 412 million dollars. We learn about this from the data provided by the Ministry of Finance. Public debt increased at the expense of domestic debt. At the end of the year, the domestic public debt amounted to about 4 billion 189 million dollars, increasing by about 1 billion 610 million dollars or 62.5% during the year.

Domestic debt was created mainly at the expense of government treasury bonds purchased by residents. Foreign debt amounted to 6 billion 451 million dollars. Unlike the domestic debt, the external debt decreased during the year due to repayments made. Compared to the beginning of the year, it decreased by 197.6 million dollars or by 3%. Most of the external debt is the loans and borrowings taken from other states and organizations. In the last ten years, the national debt of Armenia has increased 2.4 times. The debt burden will not exceed the “red line” threshold Without debt, the state budget of Armenia cannot meet its expenses, because the expenses are always more than the revenues. However, sometimes the debt burden crosses the “red line”. Of course, this is not a default, but it is a dangerous threshold. How dangerous the level of public debt is for a country is measured mainly by the ratio of gross domestic product (GDP).

GDP for 2022 has not yet been released. However, there are already predictions that although the state debt has increased, the Government debt/GDP ratio will decrease. The national debt of Armenia is the sum of the debt of the Government and the Central Bank. However, the debt of the Central Bank actually has a small share. In particular, at the end of 2022, 10 billion 86 million dollars of Armenia’s public debt of 10 billion 638 million dollars is the debt of the Government, and the remaining 551 million dollars belongs to the Central Bank. According to the fiscal rules (RA Law on State Debt) as of December 31 of each year, the threshold for the ratio of the Government’s debt to the gross domestic product is set at 60 percent. This is the so-called dangerous threshold of debt, which, if crossed, obligates the executive to limit current expenditures, as well as to present a plan to reduce the level of the Government’s debt to GDP. In 2020, the national debt crossed that threshold, making 63.5%. In the following year, it declined to close to 60%. On November 16, 2022, Tigran Khachatryan, the already former Minister of Finance, announced that according to forecasts, according to the year-end data of 2022, the Government’s debt/GDP ratio will return to the level below 60%, making 51%.

Both the economic growth and the 20% devaluation of the dram against the dollar contributed to this. calculations are done in drams, while external debt is in dollars. Back in June 2022, Tigran Khachatryan announced that if the dollar exchange rate is lower at the end of the year compared to the beginning of this year, then the state debt will be smaller in dram terms. Therefore, the Government debt/GDP ratio is predicted to be low. In other words, although the volumes of public debt are increasing, they will not cross the dangerous threshold of the fiscal rules. The government’s public debt has never crossed the 60% of GDP threshold until 2020. Until the global economic crisis of 2008, that figure gradually decreased.

During the crisis, the state significantly increased its debt, but even in that case, the ratio to GDP was not so high. Later it also gradually increased and made a sharp jump in 2020. Debt interest payments are becoming a heavier burden for the budget every year Although the public debt will not violate the fiscal rules, its growth, one way or another, has a negative impact on the state budget. Therefore, the budget is created at the expense of the taxpayers, whose taxes are also generated. Every year, the Government allocates billions of drams to pay off the interest payments on the state debt. Along with the growth of the physical volumes of the debt, the interest payments as well as the principal amounts grow. In recent years, about 10% of the budget expenses are allocated to the interest payments of the Government’s debt, and repayments of the principal amount are mainly made at the expense of newly taken international loans. As we are informed by the Ministry of Finance, in 2022 the interest payments of the state debt amounted to 198.3 billion drams, of which 125.9 billion drams are the interest payments of the internal debt, 72.4 billion drams are external. Moreover, these amounts would have been larger if the dollar had not depreciated against the dram. Debt interest is paid in dollars, and the cheaper it is, the less drams are allocated from the budget for their payment. In all cases, compared to 2021, debt interest payments increased by 17.5 billion

Source: https://hetq.am/hy/article/152298

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Armenia’s third President Serzh Sargsyan issued a message on the occasion of Army Day:
It is very important, that we realize and accept simple truth which is critical for our future victories. Any nation or state is doomed to perish as long as there is no understanding that the army is the guarantee of the nation’s existence: “no army, no state”

Any army is doomed to perish if it is led by a coward with no scruples who believes that defeat is victory.
Foreign, even a friendly country’s army will never defend borders of any nation.
If we want a victorious army, we need to get rid of a weak and immoral leader who has plunged the nation and the state into a total disorder.
The enemy saw the victorious spirit of the Armenian Army, saw and feared the unbelievable deeds of the Armenian soldiers, when the Army had worthy commanders.
To those who disgrace the Army and are skeptical about it, I will say again and again – you haven’t seen the real Armenian Army. Those, who think that our Army, which brought the enemy to its knees, was a myth, disrespect on purpose the memory of the thousands of our heroes and also on purpose drive our people to despair.
The Army is abandoned just like the entire state. Only by disposing of those who degrade and brought on purpose the state to defeat we can restore the former glory of our Army and our country’s full sovereignty.
I bow to the memory of all our heroes who gave their lives for the freedom and independence of our country, to many of my brothers-in-arms, to our hero brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.

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