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Not surprising that Turkish government denying genocide uses force against peaceful demonstrators – Serj Tankian

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June 03, 2013 | 17:12

Not surprising that government denying genocide of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians is using force against peaceful demonstrators, Serj Tankian said about uprising in Turkey.

156405“Not surprising that a government that puts journalists in jail indiscriminately and denies its Genocide of 1.5 million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians doesn’t hesitate to use force against peaceful demonstrators. Gezi park in Taksim Square, with its surrounding international hotels, was built on an old Armenian cemetery. It’s impossible to hide the bones of your past with your current demeanor. I am appalled by Obama’s closeness to this hypocrite named Erdogan, Turkey’s Prime Minister,” he wrote on his Facebook.

Police used violence against protest action in Taksim Square of Istanbul which was followed by uprising throughout the country. Around 2,000 people were arrested and dozens were injured during the clashes. Environmental mottos turned into political ones demanding Erdogan’s resignation.

‘unprecedented violence’ Turkish Protesters Target against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

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By Ivan Watson and Gul Tuysuz, CNN
June 3, 2013 — Updated 2146 GMT (0546 HKT)

Istanbul (CNN) — Protesters seething over their treatment by security forces hurled rocks at riot police in Ankara’s Kizilay Square on Monday, the latest in a string of violent clashes that have punctuated massive anti-government demonstrations spreading across Turkey — leaving thousands injured and at least one dead in the past two days alone.

The protests united demonstrators from across the political spectrum against a common foe: security forces who unleashed tear gas and water cannons on them in response to what had been largely peaceful protests against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“There has been unprecedented violence against protesters and social protest,” demonstrator Neslihan Ozgunes said Monday.

The Turkish Medical Association claimed that at least 3,195 people had been injured in clashes Sunday and Monday. Only 26 of them were in serious or critical condition, it said. One protester, Mehmet Ayvalitas, died of his injuries, the association said.

  • Medical group: More than 3,000 are wounded in two days of clashes
  • The protests are the biggest movement against the prime minister in his decade in power
  • Hundreds have been detained across Turkey, with most released, a local agency says

Anonymous launches attacks against Turkish government for Gezi Park protests

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ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

The global hacking collective Anynomous has promised to launch attacks against the Turkish government in response days of police violence against protesters at Taksim Gezi Park and around the country.

n_48089_4Erdoğan should learn from the fate of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and resign before inflaming the situation further, it said in a YouTube video that displayed shots of the recent violence between protesters and police.

The group managed to take down access to the Official Gazette and other sites with a hacking attempt late on June 2. The website of private channel NTV, which has come in for stiff criticism for failing to adequately cover the events, was also subjected to an apparent Anonymous attack early June 3.

Accusing the government of censoring social media to prevent citizens from learning the truth, Anonymous vowed to bring the Turkish government “to its knees” by attacking all state websites in “#opTurkey.”

Early on June 3, the group announced on Twitter that they had taken down websites of President Abdullah Gül, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Istanbul Governor’s Office and the Istanbul Police Department.

“We have watched for days with horror as our brothers and sisters in Turkey who are peacefully rising up against their tyrannical government [have been] brutalized, beaten, run over by riot vehicles, shot with water cannons and gassed in the streets,” the group said in a message posted on YouTube.

Anynomous said that while Turkey’s government claims to act like a democracy, it was more akin to the “petty dictators in China or Iran.”

Turkey’s building boom unrest conceals fear of corruption (a company run by Erdogan’s son-in-law and the Turkish armed forces.)

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Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
The Observer, Saturday 1 June 2013 19.44 BST

corruption, especially linked to the construction industry, has been a growing problem. In April, for the first

Turkish protestors face riot police on J

time ever, two officials in Turkey’s public housing administration – which enjoys a virtually unopposed monopoly to redevelop private and public land, including a 20-year, $400bn urban renewal budget – were charged with extorting bribes and abuse of power.

Indeed those who have benefited from recent large projects have allegedly included key players in Turkish society, including members of Erdogan’s own party, a company run by Erdogan’s son-in-law and the Turkish armed forces.

Istanbul riots started over proposed parkland development but government’s increasingly authoritarian policies fuel unrest.

The protests triggered in Turkey by plans to redevelop a park into a shopping mall at first seem an unlikely cause for public anger. In reality, the demonstrations over Taksim Square’s Gezi Park go to the very heart of Turkey’s modern discontents.

Why it has become such a fraught issue was hinted at in a statement issued in the midst of the protests by Istanbul’s Chamber of Physicians, insisting: “It is not [the] job [of police and officials] to protect the profitability of the contractors who will build a shopping mall on Taksim Square.”

The rapid urbanisation of Turkey – and huge growth of Istanbul in the past two decades – has defined the transformation of Turkish society and politics. The continuing migration from rural areas like eastern Anatolia to Istanbul has fuelled the growth of the city, driving a building boom. Politically, it has been prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan‘s moderate Islamist AKP that has benefited from this expansion, the recently urbanised being more socially conservative.

While tension between Turkey’s old secular elites and this new class have long been inevitable, two consequences have not been. As Transparency International made clear in a recent survey of Turkey, while its elections largely have been free and fair, corruption, especially linked to the construction industry, has been a growing problem. In April, for the first time ever, two officials in Turkey’s public housing administration – which enjoys a virtually unopposed monopoly to redevelop private and public land, including a 20-year, $400bn urban renewal budget – were charged with extorting bribes and abuse of power.

Indeed those who have benefited from recent large projects have allegedly included key players in Turkish society, including members of Erdogan’s own party, a company run by Erdogan’s son-in-law and the Turkish armed forces.

The perception in Turkey that barely regulated development is being driven for the economic benefit of entrenched interests with links to party politics, rather than in the public interest, has been fuelled by the hard data about some of the most controversial developments, including Gezi Park.

As a recent article in Hurriyet Daily News made clear, Turkey, and Istanbul in particular, hardly needs more malls. Istanbul already has so many that 11 in the city have been forced to close down.

All of these are issues that have been exacerbated by the majoritarian political style of Erdogan and the AKP. In refusing to back down over the mall development in a speech on Saturday, Erdogan underlined suspicions that he has no interest in dialogue with those who oppose him at a time when he is being accused of leading his country down an ever more authoritarian route.

A new controversial law has limited the sale of alcohol in the country, journalists increasingly have found themselves in jail, and moves by Erdogan would replace the 1980 coup constitution with a presidential system where the president would be elected directly and would no longer be reliant on the confidence of parliament.

If there is one thing that links all the themes of Taksim Square together, it is the question of accountability. Or rather the lack of it.

Turkey Protests Rage On: More Than 1,700 Held (Turkey Breaking world Record of demonstrator Arrest)

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Thousands of demonstrators have gathered in central Istanbul for a third day of protests against Turkey’s Islamist-rooted government.

After a few hours of calm earlier in the day, Taksim Square, the focal point of the protests, began to fill up again with protesters waving flags, chanting anti-government slogans and calling on the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to step down.

“They call me a dictator,” he said in a speech on Sunday, a day after he called for an immediate end to the protests.

“If they liken a humble servant to a dictator, then I am at a loss for words.”

TURKEY Protest 18 Dozens have been injured and more than 1,700 people arrested in 235 demonstrations that have flared up in 67 cities across the vast nation.

In the capital, Ankara, on Sunday, police reportedly fired tear gas in an attempt to disperse a crowd demonstrating against the government.

Some protesters camped overnight at Istanbul’s Taksim Square, gathering around the monument to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern secular Turkey.

Akin, who has been in Taksim for the past four days, said: “We are not leaving. The only answer now is for this government to fall. We are tired of this oppressive government constantly putting pressure on us.

“This is no longer about these trees,” he said, referring to Taksim’s Gezi Park, which was the initial focus of the protests.

Amnesty International said there had been two deaths, and Turkey’s Western allies including Britain and the US called on the government to show restraint.

Police withdrew from Taksim Square on Saturday after violent clashes in which they fired tear gas and turned water cannon against the demonstrators.

Analysis: Erdoğan no longer almighty

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Murat Yetkinmurat.yetkin@hdn.com.tr

To cut the story short, the Taksim wave of protests has turned into the first public defeat of the almighty image of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, and by Turkish people themselves.

n_48072_4It was around lunch time June 1 when Erdoğan reiterated his hard-line position regarding the demonstrators protesting his decision to turn the only remaining green spot in Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square into a reconstructed historical building with a shopping mall.

He asked the demonstrators to abandon their efforts to try to get into Taksim Square, which was encircled by police squads, with the faint promise of an investigation into the excessive use of tear gas, stressing that there was no way the demonstrators could succeed. The crowds have grown to literally hundreds of thousands from a lonely 50 four days ago, thanks to the brutal methods that the Turkish police used in order to disperse them, particularly the serial use of tear gas and water cannons. The protests have not only spread to the European and Asian sides of Istanbul (Taksim being on the European side), but also to different cities across Turkey: the capital Ankara, İzmir, Eskişehir, and a dozen others.

Then, two unusually smart political moves took place. The first was the cancellation of a major demonstration by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which had been planned for June 1 in their Istanbul stronghold Kadıköy on the Asian side against the government policies. The CHP leader, Kemel Kılıçdaroğlu, asked all his supporters to cross the Bosphorus and rally to Taksim in support of protesters there. Many thought that this move might be counterproductive, as Erdoğan had preemptively accused Kılıçdaroğlu of trying to use the protests politically. So, tens and thousands of CHP members started to pour towards Taksim, despite the police barricades reinforced by gas and water squads.

The second move came from President Abdullah Gül, who on his return from Turkmenistan made at least three phone calls, to the Istanbul governor, the interior minister, and Erdoğan himself, asking them to try not to further antagonize the demonstrators. Right after those calls, at around 4 p.m, the police started to withdraw from Taksim. Around five hours after Erdoğan’s address, hundreds and thousands of protesters started to march to Taksim Square in a mood of victory, chanting slogans calling on him to resign.

In return, Kılıçdaroğlu did not show up in Taksim, and no CHP flags and banners were there either. A CHP spokesman said he did not want to come in order to avoid being accused of political opportunism – that was a smart move indeed.

To call this a “Turkish Spring” would be over-dramatizing it. It could be, if there were opposition forces in Turkey that could move in to stop the one man show of a mighty power holder. But it can easily be said that the Taksim brinkmanship marked a turning point in the almighty image of Erdoğan.

BBC: Azerbaijani authoritarian government glorifies the murderer Ramil Safarov and persecutes writer Aylisli

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Over the last two years dozens of journalists, opposition activists and bloggers have been arrested in Azerbaijan, accused of possessing drugs or weapons or charged with hooliganism, the BBC correspondent Damien McGuinness reports.

“But according to human rights groups, the charges are trumped up – an authoritarian government’s attempt to stamp out any Arab Spring-style uprising, they say. And now, faced with presidential elections in October, the authorities are accused of clamping down even more heavily,” the article reads.

As the author notes participants in anti-government demonstrations in the city centre face heavy fines worth more than the yearly earning of many Azeris. And tough new libel laws are criminalising criticism online.

“In Baku’s Fountain Square, I meet a young man, Araz, who tells me how police violently broke up a peaceful protest he took part in here. Araz says police beat him and then sprayed tear gas into his eyes while he was being held by another officer,” the author says.

As the young man says, “Somebody has to do something at some point. If you want big changes, at least one generation has to sacrifice itself. And I think that we are that generation,” he says.

“President Ilham Aliyev, whose family has ruled for decades, looks set to win October’s elections. But now there are signs that dissatisfaction is spreading beyond the traditionally small opposition circles of young, digitally minded youth activists,” the article reads.

According to the author recent protests have also involved middle-aged mothers, outraged by the unexplained deaths and abuse of their sons conscripted into the Azeri army. “And there are suspicions that the government is trying to counter this growing dissent, and bolster support, by appealing to nationalist sentiment,” McGuinness writes.

“I think the president’s family is using the nationalist card to distract people from the real problems, such as corruption,” says investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova. “They need an external enemy to keep people under control.”

And in Azerbaijan, that enemy is Armenia. “Earlier this year, just as the country was seeing an unusually high number of anti-government protests, a scandal erupted over an Azeri book which portrayed Armenians sympathetically. Fortuitous timing to distract from the unrest, whispered government critics. The novel had actually been published months before,” the article notes.

It also reads that the author of the book, the renowned Azeri writer Akram Aylisli, was stripped of his literary awards and pension by President Aliyev. His books were publicly burned and protesters gathered outside his home chanting death threats – demonstrations which the authorities did not disperse. This once-revered writer suddenly found himself castigated as a national villain.

Azeri soldier Ramil Safarov, on the other hand, was turned into the nation’s hero. He chopped the head off a sleeping Armenian with an axe in 2004 in Hungary, the BBC writes. Last year he returned to Azerbaijan, where he was supposed to serve out the rest of a life sentence. Only he did not. He was given a hero’s welcome, was pardoned by the president and promoted to the rank of major.

“Of course he’s a hero,” one of Ramil Safarov’s neighbours told the BBC correspondent. The other one said Armenians are not human. “I would have done the same.”

“I think the leaders just love this conflict, they embrace it,” the journalist Khadija Ismayilova believes. “The right thing to do right now would be to embrace Armenian citizens in Azerbaijan. But that would end the conflict. And the government doesn’t want that.”

Source: Panorama.am

Iranian presidential candidate: Azerbaijan has become a threat to Iran’s security

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Iran should not show indifference to Azerbaijan’s threats, Hassan Rohani, Iranian presidential candidate, representative of the Iran’s Supreme Leader in the Supreme National Security g_image34Council (SNSC), told Irdiplomacy.ir in an interview.

The Iranian presidential candidate spoke of Iran’s foreign policy problems and challenges of relations with some neighboring countries. “After the collapse of the USSR, new states were established in the Caspian Sea region and Azerbaijan is among them. It is not an exaggeration to say that Azerbaijan has become a threat to Iran’s security. The actions taken by some Azerbaijani officials pose threat to Iran’s territorial integrity. Therefore, Iran’s responsible officials should not show indifference to Azerbaijan’s threats.”

Vartenis-Mardakert Highway to Shorten Travel to Karabakh

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YEREVAN—The funds to be collected during the upcoming Armenia Fund Telethon will be allocated toward the construction of the Vartenis (Armenia)-Martakert (Karabakh) highway.

Hayastan-Fund-1-620x300It will take just three hours to drive from Yerevan to Stepenakert, the capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, through this highway.

According to Ara Vardanyan, executive director of the Fund, the estimated cost of the project is nearly $30 million.

“This amount will be allocated to the construction of the second highway to the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Such decision was made based upon some strategic purposes, and development of Armenia’s Martuni region,” Vardanyan told reporters at conclusion of the meeting of the Fund’s Board of Trustees on Thursday.

He said that the Armenian and Artsakh governments have financially supported the project and most of the work has already been carried out. The Fund will just inject money into paving and landscaping the 114-km long highway.

“It is time now to modernize the highways to Karabakh, because Goris-Stepanakert highway is very inconvenient. The new highway will also contribute to the advancement of the tourism sector,” Vardanyan added.

The project will be launched in January 2014 following the fundraising at the European Phonethon, the Thanksgiving Telethon and charity dinners in different countries.

Last year, the traditional telethon in Los Angeles raised over 21.4 million dollars in donations.

The donated funds were invested in constructing community centers in the rural regions of Karabakh, agricultural program development in Tavush region of Armenia, and assistance to the Syrian Armenians.

Hayastan All- Armenian Fund was established in 1992 to implement the national projects and support the development of infrastructures in Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. The trustees’ board headed by the Armenian president includes respected representatives of Armenian communities worldwide.