Greece: Greek government on knife edge as coalition party pulls out

June 23, 2013 By administrator

By Anthee Carassava, Athens

Greece’s troubled coalition government lay in tatters on Friday after a leftist partner withdrew from the alliance amid a crisis over the sudden shutdown of the country’s state broadcaster.

The Democratic Left party, a junior partner in the country’s tense right-left coalition, pulled out of the government after Prime Minister Antonis Samaras refused to back down on his closure of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT), a move which has led to countrywide protests.

The departure of the Democratic Left stoked fears of fresh turmoil in the bailed-out country. Leaving the coalition on a knife edge, it marks the gravest crisis to engulf the government since the three parties joined forces year ago to steer Greece – the first domino to fall in Europe’s lingering debt crisis – to economic recovery.

Officials ruled out snap elections and Mr Samaras was set to swiftly overhaul his cabinet council to reassure Greece’s European peers and the International Monetary Fund that his reform-minded government was up and running.

At least two ministers from the Democratic Left were due to be replaced, including Antonis Manitakis, the minister of public administration, who infuriated creditors with his resistance to mass public sector layoffs and the closure of state organizations. An additional two deputy ministers were clearing out their government offices, preparing to resign, party officials told the Telegraph.

A flurry of emergency meetings and votes at the Democratic Left headquarters on Friday pooled resounding support for the pullout, a move proposed by the party’s leader, Fotis Kouvelis. A soft-speaking grandfatherly-like figure of the leftist party, Mr Kouvelis had stormed out of crisis talks with the prime minister and his socialist counterpart, Evangelos Venizelos of PASOK, late on Wednesday, refusing to sign up to a compromise solution over the sudden switch-off on June 11.

“It was very difficult to continue,” he said. “There was serious disagreement [with the Prime Minister].”

The departure of Democratic Left and the support of its 14 lawmakers from the government leaves Mr Samaras relying on the socialist PASOK party, alone, to press ahead with the vital reforms — including 15,000 public sector layoffs by 2014 – that international lenders want in exchange for continued bailout funds.

The two remaining parties commands a slim three-seat majority in Greece’s 300-member parliament. Still, a duo of independent lawmakers have pledged to back the government’s fiscal policies, while Mr. Kouvelis conceded that he would passively support the government from the backbenches of parliament.

“Reforms should continue,” he said. “We stand by our core belief that that the country should stay within the euro.”

While the coalition may be able to corral enough support to survive in the near term, the Democratic Left pull-out casts a pall over its fate and that of the country’s troubled bailout programme.

“Even if it survives for now, a limping government can not last for long,” said John Loulis, a leading political strategist. “There will be more crises. They won’t be able to push reforms.”

“At some point — sooner rather than later we’ll have early elections,” he added.

Greece plunged into political crisis when the Prime Minister shut down ERT, sacking all its 2656 employees because of what he called a “sinister operation of waste and corruption.” The heavy-handed, abrupt move – with millions of television screens left black and scores of radio signals dead – touched off fiery protests, provoking a powerful political backlash.

For days, both of the premier’s governing partners insisted the 75-year-old network resume broadcasting, allowing restructuring to take place while it was in operation.

To defuse tensions, Mr Samaras offered earlier this week to hire back some 2000 employees for three months, until a new entity with a leaner and more efficient workforce was set up. But it was not enough to keep the Democratic Left in the coalition fold.

Greece’s fresh political turmoil coincides with a new hitch in the country’s multi-billion dollar bailout, following a potential funding shortfall due to the reluctance of some eurozone central banks to roll over their holdings of Greek government bonds, Reuters reported.

As a result Greece saw its borrowing costs spike on Friday with 10-year government bond rising to their highest level – 11.35 – percent since late April. Greek stocks sank by nearly 3 per cent.

Turks, Greeks, Brazilians join in protests in US (calling Erdoğan “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,)

June 23, 2013 By administrator

NEW YORK – Anatolia News Agency

Protesters from Turkey, Greece, Brazil and Mexico jointly demonstrated in New York in support of the ongoing protests in their countries.

Around 300 people, mostly Brazilians, gathered at Zucotti Park in New York’s Manhattan neighborhood to chant slogans, shouting, “We are the public, we are strong, we will not be defeated,” and “This is just the beginning, resistance goes on.”

A group called the Turkish-Greek Solidarity carried banners declaring joint resistance, while some of the Americans and tourists were seen showing support for the protests. The group dispersed peacefully after posing for the media with their flags and banners.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had likened the Gezi Park protests in Turkey to the demonstrations in Brazil on June 22, arguing that the same thing was at stake in both countries.

“The same plot is being laid in Brazil. The symbols, the banners, Twitter and the international media are the same. They are doing everything they can to accomplish what they couldn’t achieve in Turkey,” said Erdoğan.

Thousands of people marched against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Germany’s Köln on June 22, calling Erdoğan “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” German daily Die Zeit reported.

The protesters in Köln demanded Erdoğan’s resignation and early elections, while they held a minute’s silence for all the people who had lost their lives for the sake of freedom and democracy.

June/23/2013

War in Syria challenges the Armenian diaspora

June 23, 2013 By administrator

Glendale News

For the 70,000 Armenians living in Syria, survival is an effort rooted in history.

By Brittany Levine, brittany.levine@latimes.comJune 22, 2013 | 12:38 p.m.

To understand why Zaven Khanjian wants the Armenian community in Syria — a dwindling population caught in the crossfire of civil war — to endure, you have to go back nearly a century.

Long before in-fighting began more than two years ago, Armenians settled in Syria after being driven out of Turkey during the genocide of 1915.

Destitute and sick, the Christians were welcomed by the mostly Arabic Syrians and flourished, especially in Aleppo, a city close to the Turkish border and hard hit by war between rebel forces and the sitting government.

“We want the community to survive as long as the war is going on,” Khanjian, a Glendale real estate agent and Aleppo native, who leads the nonprofit Syrian Armenian Relief Fund, said.

But while many Armenians may feel indebted to Syria — a country that welcomed them when they were at their lowest point — thousands continue to flee amid an increase in the number of kidnappings and reported damage to homes and churches.

Even an Armenian genocide memorial has been ransacked, said Lena Bozoyan, chairwoman of the Armenian Relief Society of Western USA’s executive board.

Humanitarian aid is the primary goal, but there’s also a deeper desire to prevent an Armenian community with historical significance from disintegrating completely.

“The dwindling of the community in Syria will have a detrimental, long-term impact for the cultural vibrancy of the diaspora as a whole,” said Ara Sanjian, director of the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

But the effort to preserve the diaspora in Syria is increasingly difficult as fighting rages on, especially in Aleppo, which claims the largest Armenian population. Most Armenians with roots there are known to be loyal to the current regime, but Khanjian said philanthropic efforts out of Glendale are apolitical.

The U.S. recently announced plans to bolster support of the rebels after determining that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons against its own people.

The Syrian Armenian Relief Fund, launched last year in partnership with Glendale-based Armenian Relief Society and other Armenian philanthropic groups, has sent $500,000 in assistance to struggling Syrian-Armenians. Organizers raised another $100,000 at a benefit concert in Hollywood two weeks ago.

The money is sent to a coalition of Armenian nonprofits in Syria that doles out food, clothing, construction materials for damaged buildings, and medical care to the needy. During Armenian Christmas in January, the group dispersed cash to about 5,000 families, Khanjian said.

Before the fund started, the Armenian Relief Society had already collected $100,000 for Armenian schools.

But there are some things the fund won’t pay for, such as relocation costs.

“We want our people to stay there,” Bozoyan said.

Population estimates vary, but Sanjian, of the Armenian Research Center, said that before the conflict began, there were about 70,000 Armenians in Syria, 70% of them in Aleppo. Armenian news agencies have reported that more than 10,000 have fled to Lebanon and Armenia, but some estimates peg the exodus as being almost twice that.

Syria’s 22.5 million people are 90% Arab, with Kurds, Armenians and others making up the rest of the population, according to the CIA World Factbook. Armenian is widely understood in the country, although it’s a different dialect than what’s spoken in Armenia — a hurdle for incoming refugees.

While the Armenian government has adopted several measures to ease the transition — such as permitting Syrian drivers licenses — the country is struggling economically and many Syrian-Armenians yearn to return home, Khanjian said.

But home continues to be plagued by stray bullets, power blackouts and kidnappings, some of which reverberate even here in Glendale.

At St. Gregory Armenian Catholic Church in Glendale, the congregation — many of whom are Aleppo natives — pray at Mass for a Catholic priest who was kidnapped five months ago. Who took the priest is unclear, said Fr. Antoine Noradounghian, also from Aleppo.

“Everybody is telling you something different,” he said.

Kevork Krajian, a Glendale resident and doctor who moved here from Aleppo about nine months ago, said for a while the war hadn’t encroached on his hometown, until one day, an 80-year-old man came into his radiology office.

The man had been drinking coffee on his balcony when an object fell from the sky, puncturing his back. Krajian couldn’t take an X-ray because the electricity was out, but the man refused to go to another doctor.

When power was restored, the X-ray showed a stray bullet had punctured the man’s right lung. He survived, but others weren’t so lucky. One of Krajian’s friends died after a piece of shrapnel tore through his stomach, kidney and spleen while walking to work.

Already U.S. citizens, Krajian, his wife and two sons — one of whom has autism — were able to quickly flee the violence. They had lived in Glendale for seven years prior to moving back to Aleppo in 2009 with dreams of starting an autistic school in Syria.

That dream was quashed after the building he planned to use for the school, his parent’s summer home, fell under an area controlled by rebel forces.

Despite being unemployed, Krajian said he is happy to start a new life in Glendale, but is heartsick about the people he left behind.

“How can you not be sad or upset?” he said. “Our stability is gone.”

Police use water cannons to disperse crowd in Taksim

June 23, 2013 By administrator

Turkish riot police fired water cannon to clear thousands of protesters from Istanbul’s Taksim Square on Saturday, the first such confrontation there in nearly a week, Today’s Zaman reports.

The crowd quickly scattered, and water cannon trucks parked at several entry points to Taksim to prevent people from regrouping.

People living around the square banged pots and pans, a sign of solidarity with protesters throughout more than three weeks of unrest in Istanbul and other cities across Turkey. Demonstrators shouted “Police, don’t betray your people!”.

The square has been the cradle of protests triggered when police used force to remove a group of environmentalists opposed to government plans to develop Gezi Park, a green space in central Istanbul which adjoins Taksim.

But they turned into a much broader show of dissent against the government and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, who opponents say is an authoritarian leader who is increasingly meddling in their everyday lives.

Erdoğan, who has overseen an economic boom during his 10 years in charge, sees himself as a champion of democracy and has been riled by the show of dissent.

Azeri energy firm says close to buying Greece’s DESFA (the Turks are slowly but surely taking over greece)

June 23, 2013 By administrator

Azeri state energy company SOCAR said it has started talks with the Greek government on purchasing the country’s natural gas grid operator DESFA, after being the only bidder in a failed tender for the asset sale, Reuters reported.

“The tender procedure on the privatisation of DESFA is over and SOCAR has started talks with the Greek government,” SOCAR’s President Rovnag Abdullayev told reporters on Saturday.

“It means that the whole natural gas distribution system of Greece will be in our hands soon.”

Russian energy company Sintez and Greek-Czech group PPF-Terna dropped out of the race for DESFA earlier this month, leaving SOCAR as the only major player in the running.

Abdullayev said that a purchase of Greek assets would “strengthen the export potential of SOCAR.”

SOCAR wants to increase the level of its gas distribution in Greece, from 17 percent at present, and deliver gas from the major Shah Deniz field off Azerbijan to the European country.

Greece failed to attract any binding bids for natural gas firm DEPA earlier this month, meaning a key sale to meet the country’s privatisation targets under its international bailout had floundered.

We have betrayed Iraqi Christians twice (Iraqi Christians protest in America. Their numbers have dramatically fallen in the ten years since the invasion. (AP)

June 22, 2013 By administrator

Wednesday, March 20, 2013 by Mardean Isaac

On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, Mardean Isaac says western states are forcing Iraqi Christians to return home

The travails Iraq has undergone in the decade since the invasion in 2003 have largely played out among, and between, the country’s major ethno-religious groups: Sunni and Shia Arabs, and Kurds. But Iraq’s Christians have suffered disproportionately since the fall of Saddam. Their numbers have fallen from at least 800,000 on the eve of the war to fewer than 400,000 today. Those who have been displaced internally continue to struggle to find a future in Iraq or Iraqi Kurdistan, and those who have fled the country have encountered little support from their western host countries.

Iraqi Christians are culturally and linguistically distinct from other Iraqi communities. They are ethnically Assyrian: non-Arab, non-Kurdish peoples who trace their heritage to the ancient Assyrian empire. They speak a colloquial dialect of Aramaic, though the majority of the liturgy and literature of the Iraqi churches is in Syriac, the classical form of middle Aramaic which produced a wealth of seminal Eastern Christian texts.

Persecuted extensively under the Baathist regime because of their ethnicity, the war and its aftermath exposed Iraqi Assyrians to the horrors of violence and criminality unleashed by Islamist groups, who subjected Christians to an extensive campaign of kidnapping, ransom and murder. As Iraq descended into civil war, Christians – having no militias or security forces of their own, and unprotected by a national security apparatus heavily tied to the sectarian gangs involved in the conflict – were cleansed from their neighbourhoods, either killed or intimidated with threats of murder. The most extreme culmination of the campaign came on October 31 2010, when an al-Qaeda affiliate calling itself the “Islamic State of Iraq” stormed the Our Lady of Salvation church in Baghdad during evening Mass, killing almost 60 people and injuring 80 more in the worst single attack on Iraqi Christians since 2003. Church bombings have become a habitual occurrence in Iraq: 72 have been attacked since 2004.

Thousands of internally displaced Christians fled from urban centres to stay with relatives or to attempt to establish themselves among Christian communities elsewhere in Iraq. Iraqi Kurdistan has been a prominent destination. The autonomous region has been spared the upheaval the rest of the country has gone through since 2003, and the consequent security and stability, coupled with Kurdistan’s considerable oil reserves, have attracted economic investment and development. But the incoming Christians have been largely unable to make lives for themselves there. The journalist Matteo Fagotto interviewed some of them on his recent trip to Iraq. He found a community “who don’t feel they have a future in their own country”, struggling to find employment and housing.

The gravity of the problems faced by Christians in Kurdistan is reflected in the work of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). They have noted that the number of displaced families in Kurdistan has been dropping starkly, as they seek to move to neighbouring countries or the West. In a recent publication of the IOM, details emerge of exorbitant house prices, rising with the demand incurred by the large numbers of new arrivals, and difficulties with finding employment and schooling.

Resilient and dignified nations, whose tribes have long inhabited the same lands, Kurds and Assyrians have had a complex history, which has witnessed both camaraderie and betrayal. Many Assyrian militias fought alongside Kurdish ones against Saddam, and Assyrian villages and churches were destroyed in the Anfal campaign. Today, however, Assyrians and Kurds find themselves on very different ends of Iraqi politics. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the ruling body of Kurdistan, has expanded its authority and territory of jurisdiction since the war, while Assyrian politics remains ineffectual.

The Kurdish theft of Assyrian land, which began under the auspices of the no-fly zone, has continued unabated. In late 2011, a group of Kurds rioted unimpeded in Zakho, a northern Iraqi town, burning down defenceless Christian shops and homes. The KRG, which has been criticised heavily for arbitrary detention and freedom of speech and assembly violations, has intimidated Christian voters and political leaders seeking to assert the rights of Christians in northern Iraq, such as Bassim Bello, the governor of Tel Kippe, a largely Christian area in the Nineveh province. Bello and others wish to establish – under terms of ethnic self-determination according to demographics in the Iraqi constitution – a semi-autonomous governorate in the province in order to provide a safe haven for minorities.

The Nineveh region is a crucible of Assyrian civilisation and the only one in Iraq composed primarily of minorities, Christians around half of them. The KRG flooded the area with militiamen in the aftermath of the invasion, securing a presence in the territories, which belong to Iraq proper, and continues to refuse to allow minorities to train their own security forces to replace the occupying Kurdish forces. Bids in parliament for a referendum over control of the region have been vetoed by the Kurdish government, which hopes that an exodus of minorities and a continuing influx of Kurds to the area will swing the vote, and the control over oil and gas that will accompany it, their way.

The Assyrian-Swedish journalist Nuri Kino recently wrote a report (PDF) on the horrors faced by the Iraqi Christians who fled violence in their own country for Syria, where anti-Christian violence has become increasingly common. He told me that while many are returning to Iraq, the Nineveh Plains in particular – almost all those who fled their homes in Baghdad have since had them occupied, and have no legal recourse to reclaiming prior residences – their focus is on migration to the West. But western states have been sending large numbers of refugees back in recent years: even Sweden, once the European country most receptive to those fleeing Iraq, has deported hundreds of Christian families in the past few years, back to peril, if not doom. So the extirpation of Assyrian Christians from their ancient lands continues: from old homes to new ones and back again, finding repose in none.

Bulgaria’s president Rosen Plevneliev ‘proud’ of anti-government protesters

June 22, 2013 By administrator

Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev said he was ‘proud’ of the demonstrators that have been lining the streets of Sofia during more than a week of anti-government rallies.

Plevneliev said: “Bulgaria can be proud of this good-natured, democratic protest, which delivers a message to the politicians.”

Thousands of Bulgarians have calling for more transparency and less corruption from their government during eight days of mainly peaceful demonstrations.

Bulgaria’s Socialist-led coalition, headed by Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski, has been in power for three weeks.

One demonstrator said: “I’m here to protest against what’s happening in Bulgaria. The governments and parties may change – but the one mafia behind all of them never changes.”

Another activist said the country is on the brink, warning: “Bulgaria’s in a revolutionary situation now and those in power should consider this well. If they don’t change, the country could go up in flames.”

The unrest was sparked by the government’s appointment of powerful media figure, Delyan Peevski, as the country’s national security chief. The decision was later reversed, but the u-turn did little to quell public anger

31 protesters arrested over Gezi Park protests in Ankara and Istanbul

June 22, 2013 By administrator

ANKARA / ISTANBUL – Doğan News Agency

Thirty-one people have been arrested over the Gezi Park protests in Ankara and Istanbul, bringing the total of those arrested during the three-week-long Gezi Park protests to 55.

An Ankara court ordered the arrest of 22 protesters upon the prosecutors’ request in the early hours of June 22 for organizing the demonstrations and provoking violence during clashes with the police. Another three suspects who had been sent to court with a request for arrest were released on probation.

During the hearing, a small group assembled outside the court to protest the prosecution of those who had participated in the demonstrations.

In Istanbul, where 67 demonstrators face charges of provoking violence, nine out of a total of 17 people sent to the court were arrested on charges of damaging public property and being a member of a terrorist organization. The other eight suspects were released on probatory conditions.

24 people had been arrested since the start of the Gezi Park protests, although the arrests against two members of Beşiktaş’s Çarşı supporter group were not directly related to their activities during the demonstrations but had been issued for carrying guns.

Police clash with protesters in Ankara

Clashes broke out again late on June 21 near the U.S. Embassy on Kennedy Avenue, which has become the center of clashes in the last week. Police used tear gas and water cannons against a group of protesters who were making barricades on the road. The protesters dispersed to side streets after the police intervention. One protester reportedly passed out as a result of the tear gas.

Ankara has witnessed violent police crackdowns during the demonstrations over the last three weeks with frequent clashes late at night between security forces and protesters.

Foreign attachés wear red in Ankara, to support Gezi in absence of Turkish gov’t officials

June 22, 2013 By administrator

Nisan Su Aras – ANKARA

Spouses of some attachés as well as some female attachés from various embassies in Ankara displayed their support for the Gezi protests by wearing red dresses while attending the annual reception of the British Embassy.

The event was hosted by British Ambassador to Turkey David Reddaway to celebrate the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II and the United Kingdom Armed Forces Day, held on June 20, and was not attended by any officials from the government.

“We wanted to support the Turkish people in the Gezi Park events,” the ladies in red said while posing for the photographers, making a reference to a lady wearing a red dress who became a symbol of the protests after she was photographed being exposed to tear gas in the early days of the protests in Gezi Park, marking the disproportionate police force used to crush the protests.

“Outside these lovely gardens, these are challenging times.” Reddaway, meanwhile, said as he referred to Gezi protests in his welcoming speech.

“As you know, we and Turkey’s many other friends have been distressed by the violence and injuries we have seen in Turkey’s streets in recent weeks. We hope to see an outcome which shows the world that Turkey is a democracy in which people of diverse views and backgrounds can gather to express their views peacefully and with dignity within the framework of the law,” Reddaway said.

Remarkably, no officials from the government attended the reception, an exceptional case considering the history of the event, — particularly the last decade since the bilateral relations between the EU and now-full membership candidate Turkey have become institutionalized in the first half of 2000s.

“I would like to thank the Europe Minister for his kind greetings and his apology that he cannot be with us in person this evening because of unavoidable commitments in Istanbul,” Reddaway elaborated on this point, as EU Minister Egemen Bağış is known to have traditionally attended the event in the past years.

While the fate of the relationship between the EU and Turkey is being questioned since Germany and the Netherlands have been objecting to the opening of a new chapter as planned on June 26, Reddaway urged Turkey to pursue the membership route. “We urge our Turkish friends to persist with those reforms as a Turkish process for Turkey’s benefit. We stand ready to work with you,” he said.

Not official photo, British Embassy says

As of June 21, the British Embassy hastily released a statement to clarify that the photograph used in the related news reports was “not an official photograph” of the embassy.

“There is no United Kingdom diplomat in the photograph,” said the brief statement, adding that “the comments concerning Gezi Park used in the news report do not reflect the official opinions of the U.K. government.” The statement was referring to a report daily Hürriyet published June 21.

Egypt oppositionists launch anti-Morsi mobile

June 22, 2013 By administrator

Alarabiya network reported that supporters of the Egyptian Tamarod (Rebel) campaign have created a mobile application to promote its initiative to gather 15 million signatures for a petition to withdraw confidence from Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, YNT News reported, citing the Youm 7 daily.

The game, which runs on the Android phone, shows a campaigner running down the street to collect signatures.

Along the way, the campaigner hears segments of the president’s speeches whenever he encounters sheep, which are used by Morsi’s opponents as a symbol to refer to Muslim Brotherhood supporters, who are accused of acting like sheep in blindly following orders.