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Turkish court finds 330 military staff guilty of attempted coup (plans to bomb historic mosques in Istanbul and trigger conflict with Greece)

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Agencies in Silviri

guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 September 2012 16.59 BST

Turkey’s former top navy commander Ozden Ornek (centre, background) arriving at court in February over the attempted coup. Photograph: Tolga Bozoglu/EPA

A Turkish court has convicted 330 former and current military officers of plotting a coup to overthrow prime minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

The court earlier sentenced three former generals to life in prison, which was reduced to 20 years each because the coup plot was unsuccessful, and two serving and one former general to 18 years.

Sentencing is still to come for the remaining 324 defendants convicted of a role in the plot.

The court earlier acquitted 34 officers in the case, which has underlined civilian dominance over the once all-powerful military in Turkey.

The “Sledgehammer” conspiracy is alleged to have included plans to bomb historic mosques in Istanbul and trigger conflict with Greece to pave the way for an army takeover.

Prosecutors had demanded 15-20 year jail sentences for the 365 defendants, 364 of them serving and retired officers.

The Turkish army has traditionally played a dominant role in politics, staging three coups between 1960 and 1980 and pushing the country’s first Islamist-led government from office in 1997.

Its authority has been reined in sharply since Erdogan first came to power nearly a decade ago and the trial has been seen as a show of strength by a government that has emerged from its shadow.

 

Mexicans puzzled by Azerbaijan leader monument

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A life-size bronze statue of late Azerbaijan president Geidar Aliev on Mexico City’s main boulevard has some Mexicans upset.

Why has a memorial to an authoritarian leader from the Caucasus been erected within sight of Mexico’s bicentennial monument, and down the street on Reforma Avenue from a statue of India’s Mahatma Gandhi?

It turns out that Azerbaijan contributed millions of dollars to landscape and remodel the park where the monument is located, as well as another public square in downtown Mexico City.

Despite Azerbaijan’s generous gift, protesters say that a man who ruled such a far-away land with such a heavy hand shouldn’t be on a boulevard decorated with statues to Mexican and foreign heroes.

Armenian FM slams Azerbaijan over Safarov Affair at UN

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Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian called Azerbaijan a threat to the security and stability of the South Caucasus and accused it of being responsible for the ‘frozen’ conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh as he addressed the 67th Session of the UN General Assembly on Monday.

Armenia’s top diplomat devoted much of his speech to raise concerns about the policy of hatred towards Armenians in Azerbaijan that he said was being promoted “at the very top level”.

“Year after year Armenia has been raising its concerns from this podium over the militaristic rhetoric, blatant violation of international commitments and anti-Armenian hysteria being instilled into the Azerbaijani society from the highest levels of its leadership. Many international organizations on human rights alerted about flagrant cases of xenophobia, racism, intolerance and violations of human rights in Azerbaijan, alerted on the policy of hatred against Armenians,” said Nalbandian.

“What is the Azerbaijani response? It is not only ignoring the expectations of the international community, but is constantly making new and new steps going against the values of civilized world. The latest such case is the Azeri government’s release and glorification of the murderer [Ramil] Safarov, who had slaughtered with an axe an Armenian officer in his sleep, during a NATO program in Budapest simply because he was an Armenian. The Azerbaijani leadership made him a symbol of national pride and an example to follow by youth,” continued the Armenian foreign minister.

Nalbandian stressed that the world reaction was “unanimous” and “very clear” in condemning what was done by Baku. But he added: “The Azerbaijani leadership is continuing to pretend that this act corresponds not only to the Azerbaijani constitution and legislation, but also to the norms and principles of international law, the respective European Convention. The leadership of this country is claiming that what was done is just very good. It is very sad that the constitution and legislation of any country could allow the glorification of a murderer…”

“It is clear that the international community should not tolerate the attempts of the Azerbaijani leadership to adjust the international law to their own racist ideology,” stressed the Armenian official.

Nalbandian also suggested that the Safarov Affair had “seriously undermined” the Nagorno-Karabakh negotiation process and “endangered the fragile regional security and stability”.

“Azerbaijan poses a threat to the security and stability in the region by its constantly menacing to use force against Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia along with unprovoked daily war-mongering by its leadership, by not only rejecting the proposals of the three Co-Chair countries on the consolidation of the ceasefire agreement, on the creation of a mechanism of investigation of incidents on the line of contact, but also by systematic ceasefire violations not only on the contact line between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, but also by provocations on the border with Armenia, by ceaseless acts of vandalism towards the Armenian historical and cultural heritage,” said Nalbandian.

“While Armenia together with the international mediators is exerting efforts around the table of negotiations, Azerbaijan is multiplying its military budget, increasing it more than twentyfold during the last few years, and boasting about it. While Armenia and the international community are calling for withdrawal of snipers from the line of contact, Azerbaijani leaders are rejecting it and opening sniper schools for the youth. While Armenia is calling for regional economic cooperation, which could become a tool for increasing confidence between the parties, Azerbaijani authorities are declaring that together with Turkey, they will continue the blockade until there are no more Armenians in Armenia,” he added.

The Armenian foreign minister underscored, however, that regardless of Azerbaijan’s “destructive stance”, Armenia will continue to make efforts towards the settlement of the Karabakh issue “exclusively through peaceful means and on the basis of the purposes, principles and norms reflected in the UN Charter and the international law.”

Nalbandian also used the UN tribune to raise concerns about the worsening of the humanitarian situation in Syria, which directly affects the large Armenian community in this country. He said that Armenia continues to receive refugees from Syria that are “full of worries about the escalation of violence in their country”. “It is impossible to reach a durable settlement without the cessation of hostilities by all parties and without an inclusive political dialogue taking into account the interests of all Syrians,” the Armenian foreign minister stressed.

Kurds Prepare to Pursue More Autonomy in a Fallen Syria

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Published: September 28, 2012

DOHUK, Iraq — Just off a main highway that stretches east of this city and slices through a moonscape of craggy hills, a few hundred Syrian Kurdish men have been training for battle, marching through scrub brush and practicing rifle drills.

The men, many of them defectors from the Syrian Army living in white trailers dotting a hillside camp, are not here to join the armed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s government. They are preparing for the fight they expect to come after, when Mr. Assad falls and there is a scramble across Syria for power and turf.

These men want an autonomous Kurdish region in what is now Syria, a prospect they see as a step toward fulfilling a centuries-old dream of linking the Kurdish minorities in Iraq, Turkey and Iran into an independent nation.

But that desire, to right a historical grievance for a people divided and oppressed through generations, also threatens to draw a violent reaction from those other nations. They have signaled a willingness to take extreme actions to prevent the loss of territory to a greater Kurdistan.

The first step is already in motion, as the Iraqi Kurds provide haven, training and arms to the would-be militia. “They are being trained for after the fall, for the security vacuum that will come after the Assad government collapses,” said Mahmood Sabir, one of a number of Syrian Kurdish opposition figures operating in Iraq.

That the Kurds are arming themselves for a fight, one that could prove decisive in shaping post-revolutionary Syria, adds another element of volatility to the conflict. It suggests that the government’s fall would not lead to peace — but, instead, an all-out sectarian war that could drag in neighboring countries.

Against the backdrop of the raging civil war, Syrian Kurds have already etched out a measure of autonomy in their territories — not because they have taken up arms against the government, but because the government has relinquished Kurdish communities to local control, allowing the Kurds to gain a head start on self-rule. Kurdish flags fly over former government buildings in those areas, and schools have opened that teach in the Kurdish language, something the Assad government had prohibited.

“We are organizing our society, a Kurdish society,” said Saleh Mohammed, the leader of the Democratic Union Party, or P.Y.D., which is viewed with deep suspicion by other Kurdish groups for its ties to Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K.

The P.K.K. is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Europe and has lately stepped up its guerrilla attacks in Turkey.

The Kurds say they are girding for a fight, should the government try to reclaim Kurdish cities or if the Sunni-dominated militias, loosely organized under the banner of the Free Syrian Army and fighting to bring down the government, try to move into Kurdish areas.

“Of course, we’ll defend ourselves,” Mr. Mohammed said. “According to Kurdish tradition, we have weapons in our houses. Every house should have its own weapon.”

Much of the Syrian Kurds’ efforts are being guided by Masoud Barzani, the head of Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, whose autonomy and relative prosperity serves as a model for Syrian Kurds. The men at the camp are being trained and provided weapons by an Iraqi Kurdish special forces unit that is linked to Mr. Barzani’s political party.

Mr. Barzani has sought to play a kingmaker role with his Syrian brethren by uniting the various factions, like he has in the sectarian and ethnic tinderbox of Iraqi politics. In July he reached a deal to organize more than a dozen Kurdish parties under the Kurdish Supreme Council, and many of the officials work out of an office in Erbil, in a mixed-use complex of cul-de-sacs and tidy subdivisions called the Italian Village.

Oppressed for decades under Arab autocrats, denied rights by one post-Ottoman Turkish leader after another, and betrayed after World War I by Allied powers who had once promised Kurdish independence, this time the Kurds are determined to seize the upheaval of the Arab Spring and bend history to their will.

 

Armenia to have own satellite

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September 28, 2012 | 19:47

YEREVAN. – Armenian Minister of Transportation and Communication Gagik Beglaryan has recently visited Russia on working visit and met with the head of the Russian Roskosmos space agency Vladimir Popovkin.

The sides discussed issues of creating and deploying cosmic satellite for Armenia’s communication system, as well as operation of jointly owned geostationary orbit 71.4 E position in the space.

Armenia has launched the program on creation of space apparatus for the country, as well as the deployment of the geostationary communication satellite in the 71.4 E orbit position, ministerial press service reports. As a result, Armenia will for the first time have its own communication satellite operating in the space. It will help to the development and perfection of Armenia’s security, science and communication technologies.

U.S. Senator urges immediate re-incarceration of Azeri ax-murderer

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California Senator Barbara Boxer(D-CA) has expressed her outrage over Azerbaijan’s pardon, promotion and praise for convicted axe-murderer Ramil Safarov, and called for his immediate re-incarceration, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

In a strongly worded letter to President Aliyev, Senator Boxer stressed that Safarov’s release is “deeply disturbing and provocative action has only served to inflame tensions and endanger efforts to forge a lasting peace in the Caucasus.” Calling the Safarov’s pardon a “blatant disregard for the rule of law,” she went on to demand that Aliyev “adhere to the standards of the international law by returning Safarov to jail, where he belongs, for the heinous crime that he committed.”

Last week, during the Center for European Policy Analysis’ U.S.-Central Europe Strategy Forum, Assistant Secretary of State Phil Gordon told RFE/RL that the State Department continues “to express our dismay and disappointment. We’re not satisfied with what has happened here. In our view this is someone who should have continued to serve out his sentence and certainly we were appalled by the glorification that we heard in some corridors of somebody who was convicted of murder, and so no, we’re not satisfied with the responses.”

Azerbaijani ex-president Heydar Aliyev statue dismantled in Canada

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September 26, 2012 – 20:36 AMT

Administration of Canadian town of Niagara-on-the-Lake dismantled the statues of Azerbaijani ex-president Heydar Aliyev and his daughter-in-law Mehriban Aliyeva, considering them as monuments to dictators, member of Public Chamber of Canadian representation Hasan Saftarov said.

The step was taken by the town administration in response to Azerbaijani opposition’s campaign.

“With the whole world having declared war against dictatorship, a statue to Heydar Aliyev undermines the image of Canada, as one of the most democratic countries in the world.

“Aliyev is no different from Saddam, Mubarak, Ben Ali, Gaddafi and Assad. For this reason, we request to dismantle and return statues of Heydar Aliyev and his daughter-in-law Mehriban Aliyeva to Azerbaijani authorities,” Azeri opposition’s letter to the mayor’s office reads.

According to the official response by the mayor’s office addressed to Hasan Saftarov, the statues were removed, with the monument to Heydar Aliyev to be restored in case Canadian government and Azerbaijani embassy reached an agreement, Internet gazeta reported.

Hurriyet: Come back, Diyarbakır mayor tells Armenians

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The mayor of Diyarbakir Metropolitan Municipality has invited all Armenians (and other non-Muslim peoples) whose ancestors were born in the southeastern province before being forced to flee during the 1915 events to return to the city, Hurriyet writes.

“An Armenian, an Assyrian and a Chaldean, whose grandfathers or great-grandfathers were born in Diyarbakır, have the same right to live in Diyarbakır as I have, as a Kurdish person who was born in Diyarbakır. Come back to your city,” Osman Baydemir told Turkish and Armenian journalists on Sept. 25 on the sidelines of a roundtable conference called “Expanding the Scope of Dialogue: Media and Armenia-Turkey Relations at the Current Stage” that was organized by the Yerevan Press Club in Diyarbakır.

According to “Talat Paşa’s Black Book,” written by the historian Murat Bardakçı, there were 56,166 Armenians living in Diyarbakır before the events of 1915. Baydemir also said “he curses the cruelty of 1915 within his conscience.” “We refuse the legacy of our grandfathers, who took part in this massacre [the events of 1915], we refuse to be a part of what they lived, and we commemorate those of our grandfathers who were opposed to this massacre and cruelty,” said Baydemir, who is from the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which is focused on the Kurdish issue.

Many researchers have said the ruling Party of Union and Progress during the Ottoman Empire used Kurdish militias known as the “Hamidiye troops” against the Armenians in the events of 1915.

“Denying the crimes that were committed by some of our grandfathers would be the same as becoming a part of [those crimes]. We first have to accept the sufferings of the people in order to be able to heal the wounds,” the mayor said.

Baydemir said one of his biggest dreams was to construct a common monument in memory of all of those who were lost in the region, including Armenians, Turks, Kurds, Assyrians and Chaldeans up until the 1930s. “I would like to visit this monument with Turks, Armenians and Kurds all together and cry for our lost ones all together. Turks, Kurds, Persians, Arabs – we all have to succeed in negotiation and dialogue in order to be able to live with each other.”

Armenia says damage caused by Azerbaijan ‘beyond measure’

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The damage caused to Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia by Azerbaijan cannot be measured with any numbers, said Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan reacting to reports from Baku that put the cost of the ‘Armenian occupation’ at hundreds of billions of dollars.

“In response to the implementation by the people of Nagorno-Karabakh of their right to self-determination Azerbaijan committed massacres and ethnic cleansings against the Armenian population. It unleashed a large-scale aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh which led to victims, destruction of settlements, infrastructure and occupation of territories,” the Armenian official told the state-run news agency Armenpress.

“And today, by proclaiming an axe-murderer a hero and refusing to withdraw snipers, create mechanisms for investigating border incidents and strengthen the ceasefire regime, the Azerbaijani government is responsible for the loss of life regardless of what ethnicity the victims are. The machinations of numbers, international laws and distorted regional history will not help the Azerbaijani government to avoid responsibility,” concluded Kocharyan.

Azerbaijani dictator is constantly rattling his sword and threatening his peace-loving neighbor: Fresno Bee newspaper

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14:56, 27 September, 2012

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 27, ARMENPRESS: American Fresno Bee  daily newspaper dwelled on Azerbaijan and it dictator Ilham Aliyev, identifying  Azerbaijan with  North Korea. As Armenpress reports, the newspaper writes:” There is a despotic dictator in a small, isolated country who has an aversion for democracy and human rights. He is in charge of his country only because his now-deceased father, the former dictator, groomed him to be in charge. This dictator and his inner circle of cronies and kleptocrats are wealthy beyond belief, yet the people he is charged with leading languish in poverty. He is constantly rattling his sword and threatening his peace-loving neighbor. You cannot be faulted if you are immediately picturing North Korea, but you would be wrong. Actually it is Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is the North Korea of the Caucasus, and its dictator, Ilham Aliev, son of the former dictator Heidar Aliev, is wealthy beyond belief while his citizens suffer an opposite fate. On a regular basis he threatens to attack Armenia, its placid Christian neighbor. But Aliev has oil, so he can ignore democracy, rule of law and human rights.So the only difference between Azerbaijan and North Korea is oil, which means that Azerbaijan is a ne’er-do-wrong ally of the United States. Other than that, Azerbaijan and North Korea are pretty much identical”.