For the first time, teams from Diyarbakir and Dersimvont participate in major Pan-Armenian Games-Yerevan largest mass sporting and friendly which meets annually in August hundreds of athletes from Armenia and the Diaspora. This summer, the presence of these teams, who will join the other 57 competing teams from different cities of Armenia, Russia, Georgia, Lebanon, Iran, France, the UK, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, the United States and other countries
TURKEY Opening a criminal investigation against the leader of the pro-Kurdish party
Istanbul, July 30, 2015 (AFP) – Turkish judicial authorities opened an investigation Thursday against the pro-Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas for “disturbing public order” and “incitement to violence,” said the government agency Anatolia.
The charges against Mr Demirtas date back to October 2014, but the opening of this investigation comes amid offensive of the Islamic-conservative power against Kurdish rebels. If it was found, Mr. Demirtas could face up to 24 years in prison, according to Anatolia.
Mr. Demirtas heads the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), considered one of the big winners of the parliamentary elections of June 7 With 13% of the vote and 80 elected, he has partly prevented the Islamic-conservative ruling party to retain an absolute majority in Parliament.
Since then, Mr. Demirtas is a favorite target of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused of supporting “terrorism”. According to the Anatolia news agency, the prosecutor of Diyarbakir (south-east) launched proceedings against the HDP leader for his alleged role in the violence that occurred in October 2014.
Demonstrations, which the HDP had called, were held throughout the country to protest against the lack of support of the Turkish power in the Syrian Kurds threatened by the fighters of the Islamic State Group (EI). At least 35 people, including two policemen, were killed in the protests.
In a Thursday interview with AFP, Mr Demirtas accused Erdogan of pursuing a policy of “showing off” by claiming now fight against EI, to please the West. He also insisted that “the HDP is not the political wing of the PKK,” the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which multiplies the guerrilla operations against the security forces.
According to the HDP, power seeking to destabilize the country to create a Legitimist reflex in case of possible early elections.
Ara © armenews.com
Turkey’s Erdoğan says his only concern is Islam, takes jab at atheists
Turkish President Recep Erdoğan has said his only concern is Islam, while slamming the defenders of terrorists and atheists in Turkey, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.
“We have only one concern. It is Islam, Islam and Islam. It is impossible for us to accept the overshadowing of Islam. Islam is damaged from what is all being done now. We all have to show the will to categorically deny terrorism without looking at its basis or identity,” said Erdoğan in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta as part of a visit to the Far East and Southeast Asia.
Erdoğan also said some people in Turkey who belong to different sects even defended atheists and terrorists due to sectarian reasons.
“When it comes to speaking, they say ‘We are Muslims.’ But on the other hand, we see those who defend both terrorists and atheist organizations just because of that sectarian difference. Therefore, we have to be on alert against those people,” said Erdoğan.
Erdoğan also added Islam was at a turning point with sectarianism being the primary problem.
Turkey does not have a problem with different sects, but terrorist organizations attempt to take advantage of differences in sects under the guise of Islam, he said. In this regard, he named the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as a terrorist organization and said it was damaging Islam and the perception of Muslims in the world.
“The footage disclosed to the world by the hand of this organization greatly damages the perception of Islam and Muslims in the world. We all have to defy this as Turkey does. However, there are some dark powers spreading propaganda that Turkey supported this organization. Turkey has never been involved in that support,” Erdoğan said, adding that the actions of ISIL had no place in Islam.
Erdoğan also said the cost of Syrian refugees to Turkey had now exceeded 6 billion dollars, while criticizing the West over its failure to show as much sensibility as Turkey in terms of refugees.
“They [European nations] are even giving opportunities to refugees coming from the Aegean and Mediterranean to drown in the sea,” Erdoğan said.
Karin’ folk ensemble performs a round dance on top of Mount Ararat
A 100-meter-long Armenian tricolor was raised at the summit of Mount Ararat on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide committed in the Ottoman Empire, photo journalist Srapion Gevorgian – a participant of Artsakh Liberation War, Chairman of Tigran Mets charitable foundation – reports from Western Armenia.
“As scheduled, the team of pilgrims reached the summit of Ararat on July 29. The participants of the initiative raised the 100-meter Tricolor at the summit of Ararat and observed 100 seconds of silence in memory of the innocent victims of the Armenian Genocide. Then members of Karin folk ensemble along with Karin’s artistic director Gagik Ginosyan performed a round dance on top of Mount Ararat. The team of pilgrims descended Ararat on the evening of July 30”.
Source: Panorama.am
Trans-Asian train targeted in Turkey mine blast
A passenger train travelling from Ankara to Tehran was attacked Thursday in a mine blast thought to have been carried out by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants, a local official said.
The Trans-Asian service was travelling between Genc in the eastern province of Bingol and Suveren, Igdir province, when it was targeted by suspected PKK militants, the Bingol Governor Yavuz Selim Kosger told Anadolu Agency.
A mine laid under the tracks was detonated by remote control, causing damage to carriages and the line but the train was able to continue its journey, according to Worldbulletin.net.
There were no casualties, Kosger said. Security forces have been sent the site of the blast.
PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union.
Turkey has been hit by a number of attacks over the past week — mostly in the country’s southeast — following a ISIL-linked suicide bombing in Suruc, Sanliurfa province, which killed 32 people on July 20.
Across Turkey, more than 1,300 people suspected of links to the PKK, ISIL and a militant left-wing group have been arrested.
Source: Panorama.am
Washington: Freedom House refers to Ankara’s PKK operations as ‘a cynical ploy’
The US-based international democratic and human rights NGO Freedom House has slammed the recent operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) by the Turkish government, claiming that it appears like a cynical ploy meant to benefit the Justice and Development Party (AK Party).
In a blog article published on the Freedom House website, Senior Program Officer for Eurasia Nate Schenkkan evaluates the events in Turkey ever since the July 20th Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) suicide bombing in Suruç which killed 32 pro-Kurdish activists and the subsequent killing of two Turkish police officers by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as ‘revenge for Ankara’s support for ISIL.’
“It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Erdoğan and the AK Party have opportunistically used the Suruç bombing and the PKK’s revenge attack as a pretext to crush the party that has threatened their hold on the parliament and government,” wrote the piece, referring to the pro-Kurdish, leftwing People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which by successfully passing Turkey’s prohibitive 10 percent election threshold for the first time in the June 7th general election effectively ended the one-party rule enjoyed by the AK Party since it first took power in 2002.
Suggesting that the ongoing crisis was one heralded by “AKP mouthpieces” who had “warned loudly that the election results will lead the country to chaos,” Schenkkan notes, “Diving headlong into a renewed conflict with the PKK is a breathtakingly cynical ploy to make this prediction come true and thereby win the AKP a parliamentary majority when the coalition talks fail and fresh elections are called for the fall.”
Reminding that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had declared dead the settlement process with the Kurds, launched in 2012 by Ankara to reconcile with Turkey’s Kurdish minority, and called for the prosecution of HDP lawmakers, “The frightening fact is that the ploy could work. If a suppressed HDP loses around 3 percent of the popular vote and falls below the threshold, and if the AKP can poach a larger number of Turkish nationalist votes from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the AKP could return to a parliamentary majority only a few months after losing it.”
Schenkkan adds that while an excellent tactician, Erdoğan belies a “strategic myopia,” noting that his attempt to shut down the Kurdish movement is less likely to succeed than ever before.
also published on BGNNews.com
Turkey PKK, attacked Police Headquarters: 2 killed
PKK, attacked with rifles Pozantı District Police Department building. The police also clashed on the response. Short-term clash killed two police officers at the scene, while two PKK members were killed trying to enter the garden from different points of safety building. The two PKK members who carried out the attack fled taking advantage of the darkness of the night. Large-scale operation was launched in the district to arrest the terrorists. Adana reinforcement of the teams from the Police Department was dispatched. 1 with two Kalashnikov guns and three grenade over the terrorists out. However, on one diagnosed after bomb disposal experts were asked to bomb. Bombs on the terrorists killed in the Police Department Crime Scene Investigation teams with the entrance staircase was defused after a long struggle.
Provincial Police Director Cengiz Zeybek also get information about the conflict going to Pozantı District Police Department, investigation was made. Chief Cengiz Zeybek, said that the two police officers killed in the conflict.
Source: cumhuriyet.com.tr
In Iraq bastions, PKK braces for new war with Turkey
For three decades, Turkey was at war with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) but two years ago, after months of secret talks with Ankara, jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan urged his people to lay down their arms and withdraw to their mountain bases in northern Iraq.
An uneasy truce since then ended Friday when Turkish fighter jets began bombing PKK positions in the Qandil area as well as some camps north of the city of Dohuk, further west.
“We were committed to the cease-fire up until the very last moment but Turkey was not,” said Zagros Hiwa, a member of the PKK political leadership, a large portrait of Ocalan hanging from the wall behind him.
“Now we will protect ourselves and follow our own strategy,” he said without elaborating.
Hiwa said at least five PKK members have been killed since then, and another four wounded. There were reports that some civilians were wounded north of Dohuk.
At one PKK base in Qandil, there was no sign of extensive destruction but some buildings were damaged, as was a graveyard for PKK fighters.
A visit to the political leadership’s main base further up the mountain was not possible due to “security reasons,” and the extent of the destruction there remained unclear.
Hiwa showed AFP huge craters caused by airstrikes but they were mostly in wooded areas and did not appear to have struck any targets.
In recent days, the PKK has been blamed for a string of attacks against Turkish government targets which Ankara says justifies its renewed military campaign. On the same day it struck the PKK in Iraq, the Turkish air force for the first time raided ISIS militants in Syria.
Critics have suggested its strikes on ISIS were merely providing cover for its onslaught against the Kurds.
Hiwa argued that by striking Kurdish fighters, NATO member Turkey had done more to help ISIS over the past week than to bolster the U.S.-led coalition’s war on the extremist group. “Turkey is using NATO and the international community’s war against ISIS to attack the PKK, and the Kurds in general, who are the main fighting force against ISIS,” he said.
Rasul Abdullah Faqi, a father of seven from Inzi, a village at the foot of the Qandil mountains, said the population lived in fear of more air raids. “The strikes hit our village in several spots and we have lost a lot of cattle. Some of our farms were damaged or burned down,” the 40-year-old said.
He pulled his donkey out of an enclosure to show a makeshift bandage he wrapped around his animal to cover a deep wound.
“There are no PKK members in my village, they’re further up, quite far from here,” Faqi said.
“The people are scared, some have left but many are staying and will stay until the bitter end,” he said.
Celebration of Light Team Brazil at Vancouver’s 2015 Video
More than 300,000 people flocked to the area around Vancouver’s English Bay for this year’s second Celebration of Light fireworks display, Wednesday night.
The throngs of spectators seemed generally impressed with the pyrotechnics show, put on on by Team Brazil. Vancouver Police say there were 50,000 or 60,000 more spectators downtown, compared to Saturday night, when Team China performed.
Const. Brian Montague said there were the usual liquor pour-outs and trouble with people smoking cigarettes and marijuana on the beach, but it was otherwise fairly peaceful.
“We did have some minor problems, like we usually see every fireworks. It’s the nature of having such a large crowd in a small area, but we managed to deal with it very quickly, and didn’t have anything escalate,” said Montague.
He said the Vancouver Police Marine Unit was kept busy with the heavy boat traffic in English Bay, and there was one incident on the water when someone tried to swim out toward the fireworks barge.
The year’s third and final Celebration of Light fireworks display will be put on by Team Canada this coming Saturday.
Egypt is accusing Turkey of working with the Islamic State on the Sinai Peninsula,
A senior Foreign Ministry official said later that Egypt could prove Turkey was supporting the Islamic State affiliate in Sinai, Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, or Champions of Jerusalem, a terrorist group that has fired rockets at Israel and attacked security forces after the Egyptian military under Mr. el-Sisi overthrew the country’s Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi. The group also calls itself Wilayat Sinai, or Sinai Province.
“We have evidence linking the Turkish government to Ansar Beit Al Maqdis,” said the source. “This is in addition to the support the Turks have given to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.”
On July 4, Egyptians made public pictures of men killed or captured in Sinai who were suspected of being agents with Turkey’s intelligence agency, MiT. On July 23, the privately owned, pro-government Tahrir News identified the four men as MiT colonel Ismail Aly Bal and operatives Diaa El Din Mehmet Gado, Bakoush Al Hussaini Youzmi and Abd Allah Al Turki.
Egypt made the striking statements after Turkey launched its first attacks against the Islamic State in northern Syria last week and allowed the U.S. to use Turkish air bases for bombing runs against the militants after Turkey resisted American assaults from its territory for the past year.
Jacques Neriah, a former deputy head for assessment of Israeli military intelligence, said the American-Turkish cooperation likely reflected Ankara’s attempt to conduct damage control and bolster its image in Washington.
“I believe that after the Egyptians published the names of four captured Turkish agents, the Americans started asking Ankara tough questions,” Mr. Neriah said. “The Turks needed to reassure the Americans that they are in fact the good guys and this is why out of the blue they let the Americans use Incirlik [Air Base] in order to attack ISIS.”