Phone Records of Journalists Seized by U.S.

May 14, 2013 By administrator

By CHARLIE SAVAGE and LESLIE KAUFMAN NYT.

WASHINGTON — Federal investigators secretly seized two months of phone records for reporters and editors of The Associated Press in what the news organization said Monday was a “serious interference with A.P.’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.”

The A.P. said that the Justice Department informed it on Friday that law enforcement officials had obtained the records for more than 20 telephone lines of its offices and journalists, including their home phones and cellphones. It said the records were seized without notice sometime this year.

The organization was not told the reason for the seizure. But the timing and the specific journalistic targets strongly suggested they are related to a continuing government investigation into the leaking of information a year ago about the Central Intelligence Agency’s disruption of a Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner.

The disclosures began with an Associated Press article on May 7, 2012, breaking the news of the foiled plot; the organization had held off publishing it for several days at the White House’s request because the intelligence operations were still unfolding.

In an angry letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday, Gary Pruitt, the president and chief executive of The A.P., called the seizure, a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into its news gathering activities.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters,” he wrote. “These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news gathering activities undertaken by The A.P. during a two-month period, provide a road map to A.P.’s news gathering operations, and disclose information about A.P.’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

State senators may take a stand on Turkey’s treatment of Orthodox

May 14, 2013 By administrator

By Mitch Smith, Chicago Tribune reporter May 13, 2013

Springfield is a long way from Istanbul — 5,660 miles, in fact — but Illinois state senators are considering a resolution that would criticize Turkey’s treatment of the Eastern Orthodox religious hierarchy. Even though a majority of senators have co-sponsored the nonbinding measure, it may not make it to a vote.

Orthodox Christians say their leader, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, has been marginalized and mistreated by a Turkish government that has also seized church lands, imposed onerous citizenship requirements and closed an important religious school. Local Orthodox officials say the resolution will raise awareness about the church’s status in Turkey and make an important statement about religious freedom everywhere.

“As a nation, we stand for something better, something higher,” said Bishop Demetrios of Mokissos, chancellor of Chicago’s Greek Orthodox Metropolis. “Why shouldn’t we stand for religious liberty of people living around the world?”

Turkey’s consul general to Chicago, Fatih Yildiz, said his government supports religious tolerance, respects the patriarch and is working to address many of the grievances outlined in the resolution. Yildiz believes the resolution is “not fair to Turkey” and not within the purview of Illinois legislators.”Frankly speaking, there’s always room for improvement with respect to religious freedom, including Turkey,” Yildiz said. “We believe that we continue to review and enhance the rights of the religious minorities.

“It’s part of our fabric, this multicultural and multireligious element.”

Yildiz and Demetrios both emphasized that the current Turkish government has made important overtures to the Orthodox faithful. A large parcel of land around the closed religious school was recently returned to the church. The government has also made it easier for Orthodox leaders to acquire Turkish citizenship, a requirement for ascending to Bartholomew’s post.

“Believe me,” Yildiz said, “everyone is doing their best in creating the right atmosphere for this. What we need is not criticism but acknowledgment of the fact that Turkey has done a lot and has the political will” to support religious minorities.

Turkey, an officially secular state on the border of Europe and Asia, is the historical home of the Orthodox Church, though 99 percent of Turks are now Muslim. Bartholomew serves as the spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.

The resolution, which has been co-sponsored by 41 of 59 senators, is currently lodged in the Assignments Committee and has not been scheduled for a vote.Most General Assembly resolutions are locally focused and uncontroversial, often honoring the life of a recently deceased person, supporting awareness of a disease or, in one instance, commemorating a library’s 40th anniversary. A few delve into thornier international issues, including resolutions before the House this year dealing with business in Cuba and U.S. relations with Taiwan.

Senate President John J. Cullerton’s office “discourages foreign policy resolutions,” said Rikeesha Phelon, a spokeswoman for the North Side Democrat. She wouldn’t make Cullerton available for comment or answer questions about whether a vote will take place before the legislative session ends on May 31.

The resolution passed the Illinois House in 2007 and has the support of the Chicago City Council and leaders of other faiths, including Roman Catholic Cardinal Francis George. With the resolution’s path forward in the Senate unclear, George Vranas, a leader of an Oak Lawn congregation, still hopes to see progress.

“We’re not looking to knock Turkey,” said Vranas, parish council president at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. “We’re looking for a resolution that supports the patriarch and supports religious freedom.”

mitsmith@tribune.com

Senor Hasratyan: NKR Defense Army does not need hirelings

May 14, 2013 By administrator

The Azerbaijan Press Agency (APA) has released information saying that a Russian serviceman, who trained Armenian snipers on the frontline, in the territory of Aghdam region, has been rendered harmless by Azerbaijan.

Head of NKR Defense Army press service Senor Hasratyan has commented on this information to Panorama.am.

“Today, like during the Karabakh war, the NKR Defense Army is battleworthy enough, and it does not need hirelings. Special units operate in the NKR Defense Army which are able to prevent any subversions by the enemy as well as to respond to them adequately. The mentioned information is nothing else than a mere creation of the Azerbaijani propaganda machine,” Hasratyan said.

Nuke plants construction in Turkey in exchange for silence on Genocide?

May 14, 2013 By administrator

May 13, 2013 – 18:12 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Countries investing in construction of Turkey-based nuclear power plants will refrain from mentioning the Armenian Genocide in future, Turkish Minister for Energy and Natural Resources said.

“Japan and France’s involvement in the construction of an NPP in Turkey will influence the settlement of issues linked to the Armenian Genocide. After the investments made, the countries in question will be more careful as to their Genocide-related statements,” Sabah quoted Taner Yildiz as saying.

Turkey plans to launch operation of 2 NPPs within 10 years: Sinop, to be constructed by Japan’s Mitsubishi jointly with France’s GDF Suez, and Akkuyu, Russia’s Rosatom project.

Genocide recognition motion has strong focus on the Genocides as part of the Australian national story – Australian MP

May 14, 2013 By administrator

May 14, 2013 – 13:59 AMT

The Hon. Rev. Fred Nile MLC, who introduced the motion recognizing the Assyrian and Greek genocides while reaffirming the Armenian genocide, has directly responded to the Turkish Consul-General’s letter addressed to the New South Wales Parliament.

The Consul-General letter, which is riddled with baseless accusations goes as far as to say “the proponents of these claims have never been able to support their claims of genocide with a single document”.

Below is the text of the letter:

“Dear Sir,

As you noted in your correspondence of 6 May 2013, I moved a motion of recognition of the Genocides of the indigenous Assyrian and Hellenic peoples of Anatolia, incorporating a re-affirmation of the 1997 recognition of the Genocide of the indigenous Armenian people. The motion was tabled and carried unanimously, in accordance with Parliamentary procedure.

Similar motions of a commemorative nature are moved and carried by members of both Houses of the Parliament of New South Wales on a regular basis on a wide range of issues, particularly related to human rights and current affairs.

My intention in moving this motion was NOT to attack or denigrate the modern State of Turkey which was established by a great Turkish leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who I greatly admire.

These Genocides were carried out by the leaders of the Ottoman Empire, not the modern State of Turkey which has wonderful relations with Australia, in spite of the Gallipoli campaign.

In moving this motion, I have drawn on the conclusions reached by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Scholars, and other national and international scholarly groups. The unanimous opinion is that the Assyrian, Armenian and Hellenic peoples were victims of genocide in the 1910s and 1920s.

As noted by Australian jurist Geoffrey Robertson QC in his 2009 study ‘Was there an Armenian Genocide?” (attached), Winston Churchill declared the events to be ‘an administrative holocaust … there is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons.’

When commemorations and scholarly conferences on the Genocide of the Armenians are regularly held within the Republic of Turkey, and Turkish scholars and writers such as Taner Akcam and Orhan Pamuk call for recognition of the fact of the Genocides, I fail to understand how the NSW Legislative Council resolution constitutes ‘sowing the seeds of hatred’ in Australia?

The Genocide Recognition motion has a very strong focus on the Genocides as part of the Australian national story. As documented in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, ANZACs were captured and imprisoned as far south as the Sinai peninsula, as far east as Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) as well as across Anatolia.

The archives of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra have written and photographic evidence that ANZACs rescued Armenians and Assyrians in Persia (Iran) and Mesopotamia (Iraq), as well as during the Palestine Campaign. Many of these ANZACs later became involved in an international humanitarian relief effort on behalf of the survivors for over a decade.

The events of the Assyrian, Armenian, and Hellenic Genocides were documented by the Australian media from early 1914 (before World War One began), throughout the war and well into the 1920s. I also refer you to a recent study by Dr John Williams of the University of Tasmania, published in the April 2013 issue of Quadrant magazine

As the Armenian National Archives were only formed in 1923, when the Genocides were almost over, a ‘joint commission of history’ between the Republics of Armenia and Turkey would have little to discuss. The archives relevant to the Genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians and Hellenes are in Ankara, Constantinople (Istanbul) and Moscow.

In conclusion, for the Christian Democratic Party, as for the entire Parliament of New South Wales, recognition of the Genocides of the indigenous Assyrian, Armenian and Hellenic peoples of the Ottoman Empire is not simply a matter of history. As the effects of the Genocides continue to this day, it is an issue of international law and human rights and I will continue to advocate such issues at every opportunity.

“Let justice be done, souls consoled, broken hearts mended, nations reconciled and honour given to all those who perished so needlessly during a dark hour in mankind’s recent history,” the letter reads.

Global Research: Bombings in Turkish Border City: “False Flag” Pretext to “Retaliate” against Syria?

May 13, 2013 By administrator

By Thomas Gaist

Global Research, May 13, 2013

On Saturday, two car bombs exploded in the Turkish city of Reyhanli, on the Syrian border, killing at least 46 people and injuring 155, while damaging 735 businesses and 120 apartments. No organization has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing.

In the wake of the bombings, Turkish officials pushed Washington to escalate its ongoing intervention to remove the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened, “Those who target Turkey will be held to account sooner or later … Great states retaliate more powerfully, but when the time is right.”

Over the past week, Erdogan has demanded greater US-NATO efforts to topple Assad, cynically claiming that Obama’s “red line” on chemical weapons use has already been crossed by Assad. This stands in direct contradiction to last week’s revelations by UN investigator Carla del Ponte, who said that UN interviews with survivors of a chemical weapons attack showed that the poison gas was used by the US-backed opposition. She said there was no evidence of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government.

Tough Al Qaeda-linked elements in the US- and Turkish-backed opposition forces have carried out hundreds of such terror bombings in neighboring Syria, the Turkish regime immediately placed the blame squarely on Assad. Turkish Interior Minister Muammer Guler asserted that the bombings were carried out by elements “closely linked with pro-regime groups in Syria.” He cited a Turkish Alawite organization, Acilciler, which has been active in Turkey since the 1970s and was allegedly set up by Syrian intelligence, as a suspect in the bombing.

Speaking in Berlin, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu declared: “It is time for the international community to act together against this regime.”

Refuting the Turkish charges against the Syrian government, Syrian information minister Omran al-Zoubi said Syria “did not commit and would never commit such an act, because our values would not allow that.”

Zoubi also denounced Turkey’s decision to give arms and safe passage to terrorist opposition forces backed by the US, Europe, and the Persian Gulf states. Turkey has been a crucial support of the US proxy war in Syria, providing bases for staging and logistical support to the opposition’s offensives and terror bombings in nearby northern Syria.

“They [the Turkish regime] turned houses of civilian Turks, their farms, their property into a centre and passageway for terrorist groups from all over the world,” Zoubi said. “They facilitated and still are the passage of weapons and explosives and money and murderers to Syria.”

Zoubi said that Erdogan should “step down as a killer and a butcher.”

Western press outlets cited fears of clashes between Turkish residents and Syrian refugees around Reyhanli, as the sectarian civil war in Syria and the flood of Syrians fleeing the war fuel ethnic and sectarian tensions in Turkey. More than 300,000 Syrians have taken refuge across the Turkish border.

At least 4.25 million Syrians have been displaced by the war, and more than 80,000 killed. Cities have been pillaged, factories looted, and the economy is collapsing amid a raging civil war stoked by US imperialism. The Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, one of the key elements of the US-backed opposition, has carried out hundreds of terror bombings in Syria.

Protests erupted in Reyhanli against the Turkish government’s participation in the US-led war against Syria, with marchers chanting, “Erdogan murderer!”

“The prime minister brought this on to us,” said a business owner, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Mehmet. “We have no peace anymore. The Syrians are coming in and out, and we don’t know if they are bringing in explosives, taking out arms.”

These protests underscore that the Turkish and US governments are moving to escalate the war in defiance of public opinion. Polls show 62 percent of Americans and 68 percent of Turks oppose the war in Syria.

As popular opposition to war mounts in the working class, the Erdogan regime is intervening aggressively to press for quicker action by Washington, where a debate is raging over how to pursue the Syrian war and broader US imperialist intervention in the Middle East. Former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently warned that increased US intervention in Syria would be a “mistake,” in opposition to the chorus of voices within the ruling class calling for air strikes and “boots on the ground.”

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Senator John McCain blasted what he called the reluctance of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to intervene in Syria, claiming that Israeli airstrikes have proven the weakness of Syria’s air defenses. McCain called for the imposition of a “no-fly zone” over Syria.

There are also reports that sections of the American military and intelligence bureaucracies are considering double-crossing Al Qaeda-affiliated forces in Syria, such as the Al Nusra Front, which have until now served as the US-backed opposition’s shock troops.

A leader of a US-backed opposition militia inside Turkey told the UAE’s The National that US officials were considering mounting drone strikes inside Syria to massacre Al Nusra forces. He cited the US officials as saying, “I’m not going to lie to you. We’d prefer you fight Al Nusra now, and then fight Assad’s army. You should kill these Nusra people. We’ll do it if you don’t.”

This debate is intensified by the manifest failure of the US-backed opposition militias, who have very limited popular support, to topple the Assad regime, despite all the assistance they have received from US imperialism and its allies. With forces of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah now intervening to support Assad, there is a risk that the US-backed opposition could suffer a catastrophic defeat. There are also reports that Assad could receive further military support from Iran and Russia.

After more than two years of civil war, fomented by the US and its allies, the crisis in Syria appears to be coming to a head. Amid a vast crisis threatening a devastating regional war, the American ruling class is threatening to respond with yet more military violence.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Anne-Marie Slaughter—a Princeton professor who is a leading proponent of “humanitarian intervention” and Obama’s chief policy planner at the State Department from 2009 to 2011—wrote that “US credibility is on the line.” From the standpoint of such forces in the US foreign policy establishment, the failure to topple Assad, who has Russian and Chinese backing, would be an unacceptable blow to US efforts to establish its global geo-strategic dominance.

“It comes down to an existential struggle,” said Salman Shaikh of the Brookings Doha center think-tank. “Those who oppose Assad really have to show that they mean it now.”

A history of a perfect crime

May 13, 2013 By administrator

Below is an article by Talin Suciyan, a Teaching Fellow and a PhD candidate at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Institute of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Chair of Turkish Studies, published in The Armenian Weekly on Sunday, May 12.

I spent my high school years in Samatya. The majority of my classmates were the children of the Armenians who had come to Istanbul from the provinces during the republican years. We were allowed to go out during our lunch breaks. Many of the students lived in Samatya and could go home for lunch. Yet, in the early 1990’s, when the political tension in the country reached its peak, because of the Kurdish issue, we were no longer allowed to go outside the school grounds during lunch breaks.

Although we used to work hard to not only be good citizens but the “best citizens”—we took compulsory national security classes taught by a high-ranking military officer, and would do our military exercises in the schoolyard so loud that half the district would hear our voices—it never guaranteed our security.

In those years, constant bomb warnings were reminders that we were not safe. After each warning, we would go out to the schoolyard until the entire school was searched. Sometimes we would be asked to go home early. We hardly had any idea why a bomb would be planted in our school. No one would put these bomb warnings into context. There was nothing to understand; it was just like that. And so we got used to these warnings, along with the changing security measures that were an ordinary part of our school life.

During my doctoral research, I read Armenian newspapers from the 1930’s and had the chance to look at Samatya from a different perspective. Samatya was one of the districts where kaghtagayans were established. Kaghtagayans were kaghtagan (deportee or IDP) centers that hosted thousands of Armenians from the provinces. These centers functioned until the end of the 1930’s. Armenian newspapers published in Istanbul in the 1920’s and 1930’s were full of reports on the kaghtagans’ severe conditions in these centers, where they often had to live on top of one another. The community in Istanbul was responsible for providing food, work, and a sustainable life for these people. Yet, it was not easy, as the financial means of the community were shortened to a great extent, the court cases for saving its properties continued, and its legal status was in the process of complete eradication. And still, Armenians whose living conditions in the provinces were systematically decimated continued to come to Istanbul.

Armenians who remained in the provinces were threatened in several ways. Arshag Alboyaciyan referred to these attacks in his book Badmut‘iwn Malatio Hayots.’

In 1924, Armenians were leaving en masse since a group of attackers—15 people—were raiding their houses asking for money and jewels, beating them up, almost to death. This organization was called Ateshoglu Yildirim… They would put signs on the houses of Armenians and tell them to leave within 10 days… One day, they put a sign on the main church, giving Armenians five days to leave; otherwise, they said, ‘Ateshoglu Yildirim would burn you all.’

Armenians understood that the organization was trying to intimidate them into leaving in order to take over their properties, along with the other Emval-i Metruke (Abandoned Properties). In November 1923, two prominent Armenians, on behalf of 35 Armenians from Malatya, sent a letter to Mustafa Kemal, asking for security and the right to live in their houses. They wrote that if their citizenship was not recognized and they were required to leave, that this should be told to them officially, and not by raiding their houses. The letter did not have a positive impact; on the contrary, the signatories were asked to leave the country, and the 35 families had to follow them. Over the following months, Armenians continued to leave Malatya to Syria or to Istanbul.

I first came across the Ateshoglu Yildirim cases through an oral history project I conducted for my doctoral research. My interviewee said there were others in Istanbul who could talk about this organization and its raids. He contacted one family, they said yes, but then changed their minds. It was during the same time that Maritsa Küçük, an elderly Armenian women, was brutally killed, two others were severely beaten, and another attacked in Samatya. The atmosphere of fear was once again at its peak for the Armenians, and I decided to stall my research on the topic.

Yozgat, Amasya, Sinop, Ordu, Tokat, Kayseri, Diyarbakır, Sivas . . .And so it continued—Armenians were systematically forced out of Asia Minor and northern Mesopotamia throughout the republican years. They were essentially forced to come to Istanbul, looking for shelter, food, work, and a secure life, following the Settlement Law of 1934; sometimes through extraordinary decrees ordering them to leave a certain place and be settled in another; through racist attacks that occurred on a daily basis; or simply through the state’s refusal to open Armenian schools in the provinces, which was one of the “guaranteed rights” of the Lausanne Treaty of 1923.

Armenians who came to Istanbul remained at the bottom of all hierarchies. They were caught helpless between the institutional power structures of the Armenian community in Istanbul and the state. The latter cared about them the least. These centers were closed at the end of the 1930’s; yet, Armenians continued to come to Istanbul from the provinces throughout the republican era, and their socio-economic problems occupied the agenda of the community for quite some time.

An Armenian suspect was recently arrested for the murder of Maritsa Küçük and for the other attacks on elderly women in Samatya. On the same day, the Turkish media covered the arrest with a news item, disseminated by the police, implying that since the suspect was Armenian, no racism was involved. Hence, the issue has been resolved.

We know that law has little to do with truth or justice. On the contrary, the mechanisms of law create substitutes for truth or justice. The cases of Pınar Selek, Hrant Dink, Sevag Balıkçı, along with the murder of Maritsa Küçük and the other attacks in Samatya, remind us of not only the impossibility of justice, but also the perfection of a crime, which continues to silence the witnesses.

Turkish fighter jet reportedly crashes near Syrian border

May 13, 2013 By administrator

May 13, 2013 – 17:26 AMT

Contact with a Turkish F-16 jet fighter that was flying over the Amanos Mountains in the southern province of Osmaniye near the Syrian border was lost on May 13 afternoon, according to Hurriyet Daily News.

“We have received information that the jet crashed in the Yarpuz region of the Amanos Mountains in the direction toward Hatay,” Osmaniye Gov. Celalettin Cerrah said.

The pilot sent a message saying “I’m jumping” before radio contact was lost, said a written statement from the Turkish Armed Forces.

The jet, which is based at the 5th Main Jet Command in the northern province of Amasya, was performing a mission flight over the area.

A search and rescue mission to locate the pilot and the debris is continuing, Gov. Cerrah said.

A Turkish military plane was shot down off of Syria’s Mediterranean coast by Syria in June 2012, leaving two soldiers dead.

Javakhk Armenians pin great hopes on Georgia’s ruling coalition – analyst

May 12, 2013 By administrator

May 11, 2013 | 14:29

YEREVAN. – The main problem of the Javakhk Armenians is the regional government officials that were appointed during the rule of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Georgian affairs specialist Alik Eroyants noted the aforementioned during a press conference on Saturday.

In his words, the Armenians of Javakhk—Georgian name: Javakheti, is a predominantly-Armenian-populated part of Georgia’s southeastern Samtskhe-Javakheti Province—pin great hopes on the ruling Georgian Dream coalition, specifically on its leader, PM Bidzina Ivanishvili.

“Ivanishvili’s team will win the forthcoming presidential election, which assumes a binding solution to the problems that the [Georgian] Armenians face,” Eroyants noted.

The analyst also stressed that the Meskhetian Turks’ resettlement in Georgia is a serious threat for the Georgian Armenians in the context of Georgian-Turkish relations. But at this point, as per the analyst, there are no specific threats in that plan.

“The number of people wanting to return to Georgia is not that many,” Alik Eroyants added.

Pilots of Russian military base in Armenia conducted about 500 flights in winter

May 12, 2013 By administrator

May 11, 2013 | 15:06

The pilots of the Russian Federation (RF) aviation base in Armenia continue to carry out their military turn of duty within the CIS united air defense system.

The pilots of the aviation unit conducted about 500 flights during the winter training period, press service of the Southern Military Okrug (District) of the RF Armed Forces informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The MiG-29 jet fighter aircraft pilots conducted over 300 training maneuver dogfights, and more than 150 such dogfights were conducted under limited visibility.

To note, based on an intergovernmental agreement, the aforesaid aviation unit carries out military turn of duty in the CIS united air defense system ever since 1994.