Publisher, The Clalifornia Courrier
Last month, I reported in this column the results of the Zogby Analytics survey, which found that 35% of the American public was aware of the Armenian Genocide. I thought this was a low figure, having expected that a larger percentage of Americans would be cognizant of the Armenian Genocide.
Several readers correctly pointed out that the 35% figure is not low at all since:
1) One third of the US population of over 300 million means that at least 100 million Americans are aware of the Armenian Genocide.
2) Most Americans are unaware of events occurring in their own time, let alone a genocide that took place in a far off land a century ago. This week, I would like to present the results of another important survey conducted in 31 countries by two French groups: Fondapol (Foundation for Political Innovation) and Foundation for the Memory of Shoah. This international poll asked 33 questions in 24 languages to 31,172 young people between the ages of 16 and 29, regarding their knowledge and characterization of various significant world events, including the Armenian Genocide.
Here are highlights of the 164-page global poll, originally published in French:
— On average, 90% of respondents in 31 countries acknowledged that the Jewish Holocaust was a genocide, while 77% considered the killings of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turkish government also a genocide. This is a significantly high percentage since 100 years later the memory of those barbaric acts continues to remain alive in the minds of much of the world’s younger generation.
— The percentage of those aware of the Armenian Genocide is even higher among Europeans (82%), with France in the lead (93%), followed by Greece (90%), United Kingdom (68%), and Americans (64%). Not surprisingly, the lowest figure was registered in Turkey (33%). However, this percentage is not as discouraging as it seems at first glance. Despite a century long genocide denial concocted by the Turkish government, using massive state resources, it is a miracle that fully one-third of the Turkish youth, in tens of millions, reject their government’s propaganda by responding truthfully to the pollsters without any reluctance or fear. The 33% figure also shows that the facts of the Armenian Genocide are acknowledged in Turkey much beyond the small circle of Turkish liberals and intellectuals.
— The percentage of the young people cognizant of the Armenian Genocide in the other 26 countries is as follows: Australia (67%), Austria (85%), Belgium (81%), Canada (71%), China (80%), Croatia (87%), Czech Republic (74%), Denmark (81%), Estonia (81%), Finland (83%), Germany (83%), Holland (76%), Honduras (87%), India (51%), Israel (88%), Italy (87%), Japan (68%), Latvia (84%), Lithuania (70%), Poland (87%), Romania (72%), Russia (84%), Serbia (86%), Spain (86%), Switzerland (87%), and Ukraine (65%).
— The Rwandan Genocide of Tutsis by Hutus has the third highest public awareness (76%) in 31 countries, less than the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide, despite its more recent occurrence 21 years ago!
— A varying percentage of survey respondents classified the following events as genocide, while ignoring the existence of the Cambodian Genocide:
1) United States dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 70%.
2) The 1937 Nanking Massacre in China by the Japanese Imperial Army: 66%.
3) Colonization of African and Asian countries by Europe and the United States: 55%.
4) The 1932-33 famine in Ukraine: 41%.
5) The 1943 famine in India: 37%.
The above figures indicate that the knowledge of the Armenian Genocide among young people in 31 countries is higher than those five historic cataclysms.
The most important revelation of this global survey is the Turkish government’s obvious loss of the protracted battle of genocide denial not only internationally — as an increasing number of countries have recently recognized the Armenian Genocide — but also domestically, since one-third of the Turkish youth also acknowledges it!
Finally, if we assume that the entire population of the surveyed countries has a similar knowledge of the Armenian Genocide as its youth (77%), we can estimate that around three out of the four billion people living in these 31 countries are informed about the Armenian Genocide. We can similarly extrapolate that 77% of the world’s total population of 7.25 billion — over five billion people — recognize the Armenian Genocide!
ANCC Canada calls on Turkey to investigate Kurdish lawyer’s assassination
The Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC) is calling upon the Turkish government to immediately commence a fair and transparent investigation of the murder of prominent Kurdish human rights lawyer Tahir Elci, Asbarez reports.
Despite the fact that almost two weeks have passed since Mr Elci was shot and killed during a gun battle between Turkish police and unidentified gunmen, the Turkish authorities have not taken any steps to investigate this murder. The ANCC joins with calls from Kurdish politicians and international human rights organizations to ask that Turkey immediately investigate the killing and to stop covering up the facts of what occurred.
Mr Elci was a defender of the rights of Kurds living in Turkey and was under constant threat of criminal prosecution by the Turkish government for defending Kurds and others accused of being terrorists. Mr Elci was on his way home from a news conference calling for the end to the resumed violence between Kurds and the Turkish government when he was killed.
For Armenians, the assassination of Mr Elci reminds us of the murder of prominent Turkish-Armenian intellectual Hrant Dink who was gunned down in front of his office in January 2007. Mr Dink’s murder was never properly investigated and members of Turkish law enforcement treated Mr. Dink’s murderer as a hero. To this day the involvement of ultranationalist elements of Turkey’s military and civil service in Mr Dink’s murder is not fully known.
Dr Girair Basmadjian, President of ANCC stated: “Tahir Elci’s murder cannot be allowed to become the subject of a cover up like Hrant Dink’s assassination. Anything less than a full investigation and prosecution of the responsible parties is a travesty of justice and calls into question Turkey’s respect for the rule of law.”
Dr Basmadjian added: “Despite eight years having passed since Dink was assassinated, we still don’t know the full responsibility of the Turkish deep state for this crime. The international community cannot allow for Tahir Elci’s murder to remain unsolved for that long.”
The ANCC is the largest and the most influential Canadian-Armenian grassroots human rights organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout Canada and affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCC actively advances the concerns of the Canadian-Armenian community on a broad range of issues
Armenian soldier laid to rest after being killed by Azerbaijan
Military serviceman Erik Grigoryan, who died as a result of an infiltration attempt by Azerbaijan, on Monday was laid to rest with a military order.
Mayor Vahan Ghazaryan of Shaki village, where Grigoryan was from in the Syunik Province of Armenia, told Armenian News-NEWS.am that military servicemen, acquaintances, and relatives attended the funeral.
The fallen soldier was interred at the Karabakh War cemetery in Sisian town, in the Syunik Province.
As reported earlier, Azerbaijan had launched an intelligence-gathering and sabotage infiltration attempt, on December 4, in a northeasterly direction (Talish) of the Line of Contact between the Karabakh-Azerbaijani opposing forces.
Vanguard units of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) Defense Army, however, had detected this advance by the special units of the Azerbaijan army, and they had pushed them back to their starting positions, also causing them casualties.
Unfortunately, NKR Defense Army serviceman Erik Grigoryan (born in 1995) had sustained a fatal gunshot wound during the skirmish.
Terrorist State of Turkey Wave of Arrests Targets Erdogan Opposition
Turkish police on Tuesday arrested 18 people within the police force who are alleged to be supporters of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, a foe to President Tayyip Erdogan.
Arrest warrants have been issued for 27 police officers across 13 provinces, but primarily in Istanbul, according to State-run Anadolu Agency. The operation focuses on former officers, including police chiefs, private news agency Dogan reported.
A stream of similar operations targeting alleged supporters of Gulen have been launched since November 1, when the AK Party which Erdogan founded convincingly won a parliamentary election.
Is #Turkey #Erdogan reading #Hitler Mein Kampf
More arrest warrants for former associates officials & police chiefs who don’t agree with him— Greig Markham (@BearGardenMan) December 8, 2015
Last month, senior police officers and bureaucrats were among the dozens of people detained for alleged links to what prosecutors have dubbed the “Gulenist terror group.”
Gulen was formerly an ally of Erdogan and was very influential. However, Erdogan turned against Gulen after police and prosecutors seen as sympathetic to the cleric opened a corruption investigation into Erdogan’s inner circle in 2013. The president accused Gulen and his followers of trying to create a “parallel state.”
Gulen, who is wanted for arrest in Turkey, has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999. He faces up to 34 years in prison for allegedly seeking to topple Erdogan, allegations which Gulen denies.
From January to October, 98 Turkish citizens across the country were arrested on charges of insulting Erdogan, according to a report by the Republican People’s Party. In total, 5,795 people viewed as being opponents of the government were arrested from January 1 through October 7, the report states.
It also said that in a four-year period, the number of blocked sites gradually increased annually. In 2011, 15,562 websites were blocked, while in 2015 the number has reached 96,000.
US & Russia to present joint anti-terror finance UNSC resolution
The United States and Russia will soon be ready to present a draft UN Security Council resolution aimed at crippling the sources of Islamic State’s income, as well as other terror groups. The new text will also finally single ISIS out as a separate terror entity.
“We are working together with the US delegation on a joint project,” Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin told reporters. “This is a grand resolution to fight terrorism. We are quite confident that we will achieve this, that this resolution would be ready by December 18.”
The new resolution against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) would be based on a similar resolution passed back in 1999 to target the financing of Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden.
The new text, according to Churkin, will “expand the sanctions regime,” finally “singling out the Islamic State as a separate anti-terrorist structure.”
But most importantly, the new resolution will contain a clause that would enforce the stricter implementation of Resolution 2199, which “forbids illegal oil trade with terrorist groups, [and] objects of cultural value.”
The new document is a follow-up to Russian-sponsored Resolution 2199, which was adopted by the UN on February 12 to put a stop to illicit oil deals with terrorist groups, using the UN Security Council’s sanctions toolkit.
The latest analysis of ISIS profits conducted by IHS Conflict Monitor revealed that Islamic State functions under a model that enables the group to finance its activities using the “inner” resources of the territories under its control.
Illegal oil trade on behalf of jihadists contributes to about 43 percent of revenues while taxation from occupied lands brings in as much as 50 percent of all income.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Turkey of profiting from lucrative trade deals with IS in neighboring Syria. He put forward the allegation after Turkey downed a Russian bomber which Ankara accused of having briefly crossed into its airspace in late November.
Turkey detains & deports Russian journalists investigating ISIS oil trade reports
Russian journalists preparing an investigative report into Ankara’s alleged involvement in the oil trade with ISIS have been detained and deported from Turkey. Moscow strongly condemned the treatment of the Rossiya 1 TV crew, demanding explanations.
We strongly condemn the illegal actions of the Turkish authorities,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “Such an attitude towards the media is absolutely unacceptable.”
On Monday, the press crew of the TV program ‘Special Correspondent’, headed by Alexander Buzaladze, were detained in southeastern Turkey by authorities in civilian clothes. The journalists were preparing an investigative report into the alleged smuggling of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) oil into Turkey.
READ MORE: ISIS smuggles majority of oil through Turkey, says Iraqi PM
The trouble for the Rossiya 1 TV crew started only once they arrived at the border, Buzaladze said after the deportation. He told Russian state-owned channel Vesti that while the crew worked in Istanbul and Ankara they had faced no opposition from the authorities.
But as soon as they and tried to film close to the Turkish-Syrian border the crew was “blocked [by] the Turkish security forces” leaving them no time to even “get the camera out.”
The Russian crew was arrested in Hatay province bordering Syria as they were on their way to the neighboring province of Gaziantep. According to Buzaladze, there the journalists wanted to film “the border itself, military hardware, people that work at the border, and the border crossing.”
Turkish authorities were first of all concerned “whether we had a camera,” Buzaladze says.
“The first thing they wanted to know [was] if we had a camera. The camera was left in the luggage compartment, locked in a case. Despite this, they took our documents, we were taken to the police station, later we photographed, fingerprinted, brought to the doctor for a medical examination to confirm that we are in a sane state, and that we are alive and well,” the journalist said.
The crew was later informed by the Turkish side that they were being deported. At the same time, authorities failed to explain the reason behind their move, Buzaladedze notes. The Russian journalists were escorted by police to the airport and put on a plane back to Russia.
Throughout the entire incident the Turkish authorities refused to cooperate with Russian diplomats on the ground. The Russian Foreign Ministry wants to know the real reasons behind the detention of the Rossiya 1 crew, and remains curious as to what “rules” were violated by the Russian journalists.
“The Turkish authorities refused to give explanations to representatives of the Russian Embassy in Turkey who got in touch with the crew shortly after its detention,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. The group was deported apparently under the pretext of its members having violated laws for foreign journalists working in Turkey.
Iraq: demonstrators in central Baghdad against the entry of Turkish troops
(IraqiNews.com) Baghdad – On Tuesday, people demonstrated in front of the Turkish embassy building in central Baghdad to protest against the entry of Turkish troops into Iraqi territory, demanding the withdrawal of these forces “immediately.”
The reporter of IraqiNews.com said that, people demonstrated, today, in front of the Turkish embassy building in central Baghdad to protest against the entry of Turkish troops to Iraq.”
The reporter added that the demonstrators carried banners denouncing this intervention and demanding the withdrawal of the troops “immediately.”
Noteworth the office of the Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced on Saturday (5 December 2015) that a Turkish armored regiment with a number of tanks had entered Iraqi territory, specifically in the province of Nineveh.
Terrorist State of Turkey in conflict with almost every country in the Region
Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia, Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Russia, just to mention few..
Setting up a military base near Mosul with neither permission nor approval from the central government in Baghdad, Ankara has been given an ultimatum: “Withdraw your soldiers within 48 hours!” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has written Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi a letter underscoring Ankara’s commitment to and recognition of Iraq’s land unity and its sovereignty. But clearly, the letter really hasn’t helped. Baghdad has reiterated the timeframe it has given Turkey to withdraw its troops and has made it clear that it is not going to soften on this front.
the Iraqi government is now convinced that activities outside the category of “training” are going on in Bashika which is a christian Town. Of course, another major reason for the angry reactions from the central Iraqi government is that there has been no attempt to coordinate these developments with it; this is why it has cut off monthly payments to its own paramilitary forces being trained at the Bashika camp. To wit, there is no agreement or contract with the Baghdad government as to any of this.
It should also be noted that the paramilitary forces organized and put together by Nujaifi have, to date, not participated in any military action against the local ISIL presence. Thus, it seems likely that the determination to maintain a military training camp — a camp whose plug has been pulled by the Baghdad government and whose presence is clearly opposed by the state — is kept alive with other intentions.
Foreign capital fleeing Turkey FAST hits 2.5-year high on Fed, jet crisis
Jolted by strong signals from the US Federal Reserve (Fed) for a hike in interest rates in its Dec. 16 meeting and escalated diplomatic tension between Russia and Turkey, foreign investors in the Turkish stock exchange, Borsa İstanbul (BİST), sold off $1.14 billion worth of stocks in November, the highest amount since June 2013.
Having recorded a short-lived rally immediately after the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) regained its parliamentary majority after a five-month hiatus on Nov. 1, assets at BİST dropped 5 percent in value for the whole month, during which the Fed deemed a rate hike more likely than before, attracting investors to assets in the US. Also, Turkey’s downing a Russian jet on Nov. 24 over a border breach at its Syrian border also unnerved investors, with BİST dropping more than 4 percent on the same day.
Foreign nationals made a net purchase of $2.58 billion in 2014, during which they bought $392 million worth of government bonds. This group of investors has sold $5.9 billion worth of government bond this year so far, of which $405 million were sold in November alone.
Quoted by the Hürriyet daily on Tuesday, Murat Barışık, a senior executive at the Ata Yatırım consulting firm, said November saw the greatest exodus from Turkey since the Fed’s announcement in June 2013, which triggered a capital exit from emerging markets.
Russia intends to bring up Ankara’s invasion of northern Iraq at the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
“The issue will be raised at a closed-door meeting,” TASS cited a diplomatic source within the organization as saying. The source also dismissed earlier reports that Moscow was going to call a separate UNSC meeting.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has expressed grave concern over reports of the US-led coalition’s missile airstrike on the Syrian Army base near Ayyash in the Deir ez-Zor province, which killed three Syrian soldiers, as well as an airstrike in Al-Hasakah Governorate that resulted in multiple civilian casualties.
“Generally, these facts serve proof that the situation on the frontline with Islamic State is heating up,” the Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department acknowledged.
“An additional and extremely dangerous factor promoting international tensions is the unlawful presence of the Turkish armed forces on Iraqi territory near the city of Mosul, which arrived there without a request and approval of the legitimate government of Iraq,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“We consider this [military] presence unacceptable,” the statement says, adding that violation of international law principles, such as respect towards other states’ sovereignty is “at the core of the emerging problems.”
READ MORE: ‘NATO member Turkey gets immunity from violating international law’
According to Iraqi media, Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi has put the Iraqi Air Force on high alert and the ruling National Iraqi Alliance has given the prime minister the go-ahead to take “any measures” to ensure territorial integrity and protect its borders, including addressing the UN and the Arab League.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday that the country is suspending further deployment of troops to Iraq, but refuses to withdraw servicemen and hardware already on Iraqi soil.
Baghdad was informed of Ankara’s decision in a phone conversation between the Turkish and Iraqi foreign ministers late on Monday.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reiterated Ankara’s respect for Iraq’s territorial integrity, Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic told reporters.
In a separate statement, Turkish PM Davutoglu expressed readiness to visit Baghdad as soon as possible to discuss the current troop deployment crisis between Ankara and Baghdad.
Iraqi media reported earlier that on December 4 Iraq’s PM said: “Turkish troops numbering around one regiment armored with tanks and artillery entered Iraqi territory,” labeling the incident as a “serious breach of Iraqi sovereignty.” He added that the move “does not conform with good neighborly relations,” and called on to Ankara to “withdraw immediately from Iraqi territory.”